Everybody Goes to Jimmy's (11 page)

She agreed. Weeks asked if she wanted a gun. She said she had one.

That night, they loaded the suitcases again. She drove away, and that was the last they saw of her and the money and Benny Numbers.

They stayed for another month, generating a wealth of rumors among the staff and guests. Weeks and Jacob bought another car and went to Miner's Camp No. 3, where they found nothing but a few empty buildings. It wasn't even big enough to be called a ghost town. They wandered through all the mountain roads and trails they could find, hundreds of miles, but they were virtually empty except for a few villages and mining outfits. They considered hiring the Pinkertons. But Jacob would have nothing to do with the idea at first. He was afraid that word would get back to the cops. Weeks said that he'd bought the Ford under a false name. It couldn't be traced to either of them, so Jacob agreed. Weeks went to Denver and hired the Pinks but only to search for the car. Not that it mattered. The private dicks came up empty, too.

Then the first big snow hit, and that was it. They packed up and went back to New York. Jacob set about straightening up his policy racket. While he'd been gone, everyone involved from the runners on up were skimming as much as they could. With Weeks gone, nobody had been making their payments on loans. Angry and frustrated at what had happened, they threw themselves into work. They talked about going back to Colorado with more men to search, maybe to find more locals who could help. But without Benny Numbers, the policy business took up all their time and energy, and it had been almost a year since Benny had been snatched.

By the time he finished the story, Jacob was really steamed. Talking about it made him mad all over again.

“Then yesterday,” he said, “I'm sitting here, right where I'm sitting now, and the phone rings.” There was a phone on the table beside him.

“I pick it up, and this voice says, ‘Are you Jacob Weiss?' And I say that I am, and she says, ‘Jimmy Quinn has your money' and hangs up.”

“You said
she
, so it was a woman.”

“Yes, an old woman. She was hoarse, whispery, hard to understand, and that makes two people putting the finger on you.” He jabbed the cigar at me.

“And you believe them; you think I've got your money?”

“We don't know.” Weeks came over to stand by Jacob. “But this is the first thing we've heard. So somebody knows something, and you're in on it.”

“OK, let me ask you something—did you check out this guy Alteri who worked with Capone?”

“Yeah, but there was nothing to him. He spends his time playing cowboy.”

“Then, as I see it, you've got two possibilities. First, one of the locals had been waiting for somebody like you to show up, somebody with money who won't call the cops. He snatched Benny Numbers and killed him. Then he killed the Signora after she delivered.”

They stared at me, looking grim. This was nothing they hadn't considered.

“Or, this is a deal that Benny and the Signora cooked up together, and now they're whooping it up with your money in Paris or South America or somewhere, and somebody else is pulling your leg, saying that I'm in on it when I've never been west of New Jersey.”

At that, Jacob shook his head. “No, I know Benny and Sophia. If there was anything going on between them, I would know. I was too close to both of them not to know. And besides, the way Benny worked, he didn't have time to fuck around. And Sophia—I gave Sophia everything she needed.”

I rolled my stick and said, “Tell me about Signora Sophia.” I thought I probably already knew a lot about her.

When I said her name, Jacob's expression went soft for just a tiny second. But as soon as he started talking, he closed back down and tried not to let anything show in his face or voice.

He met her at Saratoga Springs, at the races. Now, you've got to understand that being seen at the races was quite the big deal for New York society folk. Jacob had been going ever since Rothstein opened a casino there back in the '20s. As a runner for A. R., I was strictly a city kid and never went out of town with him, but I heard it was a real elegant joint. Must have been, he had to pass out fifty thousand dollars a year in bribes to the local bosses to keep it open. Jacob and A. R. got along pretty good because Jacob didn't gamble. He just enjoyed Rothstein's company, and like Longy Zwillman, he wasn't competition. I think Jacob and A. R. liked to watch all the swells playing the tables at A. R.'s place, knowing that sooner or later, they were going to be handing over their money. A. R. once said to me that every game is fixed, and when you own the house, the fix is locked in. A. R. also told me more than once that the people who lost their dough at his place were dubs and dumbbells. I guess Jacob probably thought the same about his customers. Like I said, they were pals, and after A. R. got killed, Jacob still went to Saratoga Springs. Signora Sophia was staying at his hotel.

She was a brunette Garbo—silent, cool, and glamorous. She dressed in dark colors and usually wore sunglasses. She ate alone, and Jacob watched dozens of guys get the brush-off. Everybody had stories to tell about her. Some said she was a white Russian countess whose family lost everything in the revolution. Or she was an Italian duchess whose husband was killed in the war. I don't know what Jacob said to get on her good side. He didn't give away any details, but he persuaded her to join him for dinner one evening, and they ate together that night and the next night and the next.

It turned out that the stories about royalty were bunk. She told him she was a widow from Wisconsin. Her husband had been in the war, but when he came back, he wasn't the same, and two years ago, he had shot himself. She came to that hotel because they spent their honeymoon there, and that was why the management made an exception to their policy about not allowing single women. As for the other stories, she knew about them and didn't discourage them because they made her sound exotic, and she guessed they kept some of the Lotharios from pestering her.

Jacob said, “I knew she wasn't cheap. From the first time I talked to her, I knew that. She had taste. Her clothes and jewelry were the best, and she knew how to order from a good menu, but she wasn't one of those society broads who look down their noses at you.”

She told him it had taken her a long time to get over her husband's death, and now she was determined to start again. She didn't know what she wanted to do, but she wasn't ready to go back home and she'd never seen New York, so she was going to begin there. Jacob said he was just the man to squire her around the city.

And that's how she wound up in a swank Park Avenue apartment.

“We were happy,” he said. “The ‘Signora Sophia' business, that was a joke. When we were alone, I called her Soph. She knew about me, what I do and that I was married, and she didn't care. I didn't care about the secrets she kept from me.”

Sometimes she'd be gone for hours or overnight. She said there was another part of her life that she couldn't tell him about. It wasn't another man, she swore that, or a drug habit or anything like that. It was something she deeply believed in and that she had to do. She looked him straight in the eyes and said that she knew how he felt about her, and she felt the same about him. She knew that if he ever caught her with another man, he'd kill them both. She understood it and said that he'd better remember that she would do exactly the same if he took up with some flapper.

“OK,” I said, “you set up housekeeping here. Tell me something—this trip out West, was it her idea?”

Jacob puffed on his stogie like he was getting mad. “No, we had to talk her into it. What's with all the questions?”

“Benny Numbers?”

“No, like I said, he wanted to stay here and work. We had to drag him along.”

I rotated my stick in my hands and looked over at Mercer Weeks, who'd moved to lean against the mantle and was following everything we said. He had his works out and was rolling a smoke. I asked if he had any ideas.

He finished making his cigarette. “What you said earlier, I guess. Figure somebody on the staff told somebody else when some well-heeled guys from the east were passing through. The reservations were under aliases, but somebody could have figured out that we were the kind of guys who weren't going to call the cops. That would explain them knowing we'd need five days to get the money.”

The tip of Jacob's Havana glowed like a hot cherry. “Enough with the fucking questions. Now we get back to the point. People say you've got my money. What's going on, you little punk?” He leaned forward and blew more smoke.

I was already pissed off, and that did it. I choked up on the tip end of the stick and flicked the crook with a snap of my wrist. It missed Jacob's nose by inches and knocked that goddamn cigar right out of his fat mouth. Both he and Weeks were so surprised, it gave me the moment I needed to stand and pull the .38 out of my pocket. I didn't point it at anybody. Weeks stayed where he was. If I'd hit Jacob, he'd have torn my head off, but he knew Jacob was out of line calling me a punk.

“All right, goddammit,” I said. “I know you're mad about your money and your woman and your business, and you think I've got something to do with it and you want to take it out on me. Well, you're not. Stay right there, Weeks, I will shoot you.”

The cigar was burning a hole in the herringbone wood floor.

“Like that guy said, strange things happen everywhere. There's a guy I saw in a warehouse a few hours ago. He was carrying papers that said he was Jimmy Quinn. Maybe he's the Jimmy Quinn you want to be talking to, but it won't do you any good because he's dead.” That surprised and worried them. “If you want to talk to me again, you know where my place is.”

I put the gun back in my pocket and walked out.

I wish I could say that I turned my back and showed them my ass, but I backed out, keeping my eyes on both of them. I may get a little reckless sometimes, but I'm not stupid.

Chapter Ten

I had Jacob's doorman call a cab, and as I waited for it, I realized I was hungry, so hungry it was painful. I hadn't eaten since my ham sandwich the evening before. So instead of heading back to the Chelsea, I told the driver to take me to an all-night place I knew on Seventh near Times Square. It was still dark when I got out of the taxi. I bought the early edition of the
Times
and the
Mirror
from a couple of kids on the sidewalk. As I was paying, another cab pulled up, and the guy who got out was careful not to look at me. He wore glasses, a cheap brown suit, poorly knotted tie, and a wrinkled shirt.

Inside, I took a booth and ordered three over easy, rye toast, a glass of really cold milk, and a side of salami. When the waitress brought my coffee, she said they were out of salami. Who ever heard of such a thing? I switched to pastrami.

I went through the local section of both papers quickly, but there was nothing about a cop being shot in a warehouse. Detective Ellis was tight with most of the police reporters. If he asked them to sit on a story, they probably would. For a little while, at least. Long enough for him to learn what Betcherman was up to and how bad it would look for the department if it came out. Until then, Ellis would keep it on the quietus.

How had it gone at the warehouse? Betcherman told Ellis that Malloy, the night watchman, found the body of the guy who'd been carrying the phony papers with my name. But Malloy said that it was Betcherman who found the body while he, Malloy, was outside. If that was true, maybe Betcherman had the fake cards all along or took them after he killed the other guy. But why would he do that, and what was he doing in the warehouse owned by the Germans in the first place?

The waitress brought my plate, and as I ripped into my eggs, I tried to figure out where Anna fit into whatever the hell it was that was going on. I first knew her as Anna Gunderwald, the bright beer-loving teenager who wanted to explore the city and race the fastest boys. And then she turned out to be Mrs. Pauley Domo, Midwestern bank robber, gun moll, and kidnapper. And then it seemed likely to me that Mrs. Domo had become Signora Sophia Sugartits, the dark, silent, mysterious Wisconsin widow. I didn't know how or why, but somehow, with her, it made sense. And now she said there was a sizeable amount of cash floating around, somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred thousand dollars, depending on which story was true, with my name on it, and a lot of interested parties who wanted to get their hands on it.

Sopping up my eggs with good rye toast, I understood that there was a lot I didn't know, but Anna had sounded so certain, so confident when she said she'd sent the money to me that I had the feeling that part was true. At least I couldn't see how she would have anything to gain by lying about it. But why? Forget the nonsense about my being the one person in the world she could trust. Why would she send it to me?

But, if she did, then I had a pretty good idea of where it might be.

The eats revived me. I paid and left a hefty tip. Back out on the sidewalk, I couldn't see the brown suit. I headed west. When I turned on Eighth, I thought I saw the guy half a block back, but the sky was just starting to get light. After that, he stayed mostly out of sight. I didn't get another look at him until I stopped at a newsstand for more papers and saw a quick reflection in a plate-glass window. He was still the better part of a block behind me. What to do?

If I was right about the money, I wouldn't be able to check on it for another hour or so, anyway. And I worried that the bad brown suit was part of a team. Even if I thought I'd shaken him, I might not be unobserved. So I decided not to try to lose him and climbed the stairs at the Forty-Second Street station of the Ninth Avenue el. I waited in the middle of the platform and saw him again as he topped the stairs and turned away. It wasn't crowded that early. I didn't see him get on the train.

I didn't see him when I got off at Twenty-Third Street and went back to the Chelsea either. By then, the night had caught up with me, and I was yawning.

Tommy, the nightman, was still behind the desk. His normal expression was a queasy little smile that suggested something nasty. He sounded even oilier than normal when he said, “Good morning, sir. I think you should know that you have company, and the young lady is scrumptious, if you take my meaning.”

That was his favorite phrase, “if you take my meaning,” and I never understood why he was like that. Even then, the Chelsea had a reputation as a place where anything goes, but we also had a fair number of proper older ladies, women who had been there a long time. Sure, there was a lot of screwing and drinking and drugging, but most of the people who lived there didn't make much of it and stayed out of your business. Tommy acted like a horny kid who was sneaking into the burlesque show.

Going up the stairs to the third floor, I figured he meant that Anna was waiting in my room, but the moment I opened the door, I saw that was wrong.

Connie Nix was asleep on my bed. I shut the door quietly. This was another first.

Until now, whenever I suggested that we retire to my place, she said that it wasn't right for a respectable single girl to go to a man's hotel room. To which I replied, “Huh?”

But here she was. Maybe mentioning an old girlfriend wasn't such a bad idea. She was on top of the covers and had her big coat over her like a blanket. Boy, she looked sweet, scrumptious, even.

I took off my coat, sat in my chair, and left the lamp off. There was just enough light coming in the crack between the heavy drapes. I put my right foot up on the ottoman, rolled my pant leg up, and unbuckled my brace. It had begun to chaff, and it felt great to be able to flex my knee. It felt so good I took off my shoe and flexed my toes.

And so I was sitting there with one shoe off and one shoe on when I heard somebody putting a pick to my lock.

Right off the bat, I did the wrong thing. I should have grabbed my .38, but instead, I took three fast steps to the bed, grabbed Connie by the shoulders and pushed her down between the bed and the wall. Everything that happened after that is kind of confusing, and I know all this isn't right, but it is how I remember it, and this is as true as I can tell it.

Connie yelled really loud when I shoved her, and at the same time, I heard footsteps outside on the wrought-iron balcony. Right after that came the snap of the door lock opening, and then I thought about the pistol in the pocket of my coat neatly folded over the chair by the desk. My stick was there, too. I reached into my pocket and slipped on the knucks.

The door banged open against the wall, and I could see two guys bulling their way through. They looked like big guys. They probably couldn't see me in the dark as well as I could see them, so I tried to jump off the bed and roll across the room to my stick, but my knee gave way, and it turned out to be more crawling than rolling. About then, the window shattered behind the curtain. I made it to the desk and reached for my stick when hands grabbed me from behind, yanked me up, and somebody else started punching my face. I got smacked pretty good before I got one hand up around my head. Connie was still yelling. A brief flash of light cut through the room, and then it went dark again. I still sensed motion near the window. Really, all I was trying to do was to keep from being hit.

The hands that were holding my shoulders were pulled away. I twisted against them and saw two guys fighting in front of me and, I think, another guy behind them going for Connie. I was fumbling for the stick when I heard a loud rip and the drapes came loose. Morning light flooded the room, and finally I could see what was going on.

Two big guys, at least one with a knife, were wrestling right in front of me. As I watched, they went after each other viciously, arms in close to their bodies, both grunting and fighting for the knife.

Another guy was on his knees on the bed. He was trying to pull Connie up from the floor by her hair. She grabbed one of his hands and pushed away from the wall. His hand came down in front of her mouth, and she bit him as hard as she could. Blood flowed. He howled.

The two guys grappling in the middle of the room stumbled toward the broken window and fell to their sides. A fourth guy appeared from underneath the curtain that had fallen over him. It was the cheap brown suit. He took one look at the guys fighting in front of him and went right back out to the balcony.

I felt for my stick, grabbed it, and edged around the two guys on the floor to get to the bed. The guy there pulled his hand away from Connie's bloody mouth and slugged her. I got the crook of the cane around his neck and jerked it back with both hands. He landed on his back with a strangled scream. I got on top of him and pulped his face with the knucks.

The grunts and curses coming from behind me got more intense. I saw that both guys were smeared with blood, and so was my carpet. They were on their knees, barely moving but straining against each other until one of them stopped moving and collapsed against the other. The second one let go, and the first fell on his face and was still. I couldn't see the knife. The guy on his knees tried to get up, but I rabbit-punched him twice with the knucks. He went down and was quiet after that.

My room looked like hell.

Connie was on her knees on the bed, more angry than scared. She said, “You've been trying to get me up here for weeks. I finally show up and you kick me out of bed. Goddamn, what's a girl got to do?”

I'd never heard her curse before. Working in a speak will do that, I guess, or just being around me.

“Are you OK?”

She wiped some of the blood off her mouth, made a face when she saw it, and then spat on the guy on the floor. I got her a damp cloth from the bathroom. She cleaned up, told me I needed to do the same, and went to work on me. I had a bloody nose and two cuts near my left eye, one above and one below. She wasn't nearly as gentle and careful as she could have been and said I looked like hell.

I asked if she wanted to talk to the cops. “They'll be here pretty soon. I think it'd be better if you stayed out of it.”

She agreed. I helped her into her coat, covering up most of the blood on her dress, and said, “Go down to the desk. Tell Tommy that I said he should give you a room. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

“What the hell's going on, anyway? Who are those guys?”

“I don't know.”

“I know it's none of my business, but do they have anything to do with your old girlfriend?” She sounded hurt or jealous, I couldn't tell which.

“Probably. Now, go. No, wait a minute. Here, put these in your purse.” I gave her my .38 and knucks.

She got away before the crowd gathered in the hall. A few minutes later, I heard an ambulance outside, and then the guys in white showed up. They decided that the one guy was already dead. They turned him over and put him on a stretcher. He'd been stabbed and sliced so bad it made you sick to look at him. The other guy, the one I'd knocked out, had been cut pretty bad, too, so I guess they both had knives. He was still alive when they carried him out, but they said they didn't think he'd make it.

The guy who attacked Connie was in a bad way. I crumpled part of his windpipe with my stick and made a mess of his face. They said he'd be fine. They cleaned my nose and cuts again and taped them up nice before they carried out the two wounded guys and the dead one.

The truth is, they were working on me when the uniformed cops showed up. I said they might want to call Detective Ellis because these guys might have something to do with a homicide he was working.

Ellis got there twenty minutes later. He was pissed.

I told him some of the truth. I'd just got home. Was about to turn in when I heard somebody picking my lock. Before I could do anything they had the door open. One of them jumped me. While that was happening, a couple of guys broke in from the fire escape. You could see how they tore down my curtains. After that, it was confusing. They fought each other. One guy went back out the window. That's about it.

Ellis gave me a cop's cold, level stare. He knew I was lying, but, really, could he have expected anything else? Neither of us was fooling the other. He was wearing the same clothes he'd had on earlier at the Cloud Club and the warehouse, and he hadn't slept either. But nobody had been punching him in the face so, for once, he looked better than I did.

He lit a cigarette and used my blood-soaked rug as an ashtray.

“OK,” he said. “Here's how it goes. Two nights ago, a bomb goes off half a block from your place, and there's a fresh corpse in a nearby alley. Coroner says it could be that he planted the thing and was too close when it went off. We're still not sure about that. And sometime last night, another man is beaten to death over near the East River docks with counterfeit papers made out in your name. Yeah, we checked, they're fake. And somebody's waiting up in the rafters, and they shoot a cop. Now four guys take it upon themselves to attack you here.”

He paused, smoked, flicked ashes, and went on. “This doesn't add up, but you're in the middle of it. Explain it to me so I understand.”

I found my missing shoe and sock under the desk and put them back on. “I can't explain it, Ellis. The simple truth is that I never saw those guys before. The guys who broke in here and beat me up, I don't know who they are either.”

“And if you did, you wouldn't tell me because you'd take care of it yourself.”

There was no need to agree with something that obvious, so I asked Ellis about Betcherman. “I got the idea from Malloy that there was something not completely kosher about him. If Malloy really was outside when Betcherman found the body, maybe he had something to do with it.”

Ellis got his back up. “Detective Betcherman was an outstanding police officer. He will be missed—”

“Can the hearts and flowers, Ellis. He was bent. Find out who he double-crossed recently and you'll probably find your shooter. Here's something else to think about. Remember when we first got to the warehouse? Where was Betcherman? He was up on the second level in the back looking for the light switch or some such. Then he came back down to where we were. Where did the shots come from? The second level in the back where he had just been.”