Everybody Goes to Jimmy's (20 page)

I sensed movement nearby, turned, and saw the boy, the boy who'd slipped me Anna's note and gone after Pauley Three Fingers in the bus station. He was standing right next to my chair, and it was almost spooky the way he just appeared there. He leaned in and whispered, “Anna says you should come with me.”

I shook my head. “Not now.”

The two downed Germans got to their feet, and one of them was so damn stupid he made another move on Mercer Weeks, who backhanded him with a sap across the cheek and then broke his right arm with it. You could hear the bone go, even with all the noise in the place. By then, Marie Therese was yelling something, and Frenchy was coming around from behind the bar. Connie racked a load of birdshot into the shotgun.

Jacob watched it all without disturbing the ash on the end of his cigar.

The smarter German tried to help his friend who moaned and cradled his arm. The smart guy made the mistake of pulling a nickel-plated pistol, but before it cleared the shoulder holster, Weeks was on top of him. He smashed the guy's wrist with the sap. As he twisted the piece from the numb fingers, it went off.

Everybody got quiet as the report echoed away. But the noise coming from downstairs got louder. I could hear banging and thumping and yelling, like several guys in a fight. Weeks scooped up the nickel-plated pistol and put it on the bar by the crate.

Klapprott got up and retrieved his hat and cane from Connie. She put the gun down long enough to get them. He walked to the elevators and pushed the button.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” he said looking at me and ignoring Jacob, “I believe it's time for me to say good evening. I've done what I came here to do. Mr. Quinn, again I apologize for what happened earlier today. It was unnecessary. I am, however, still interested in purchasing your establishment. We shall talk of it another time.”

The elevator doors opened and he left.

Jacob the Wise, who would not be moved off his point, asked me again what the hell I did to his money.

That did it. I was tired of him. “First, I don't know what it is. I only got the stuff this afternoon. Look at it. It's a big chunk of brown wax. They tried to separate the banknotes from the wax, and it didn't go so well. It's going to take a while to do that right, and, when you think about it, if this really is
your
money, I should be asking you what the hell you did with it.”

He snorted. “Don't get smart with me, you—”

“Fuck off.” The cigar drooped. “You'll get a chance to state your case.”

Damn, it felt good to say that.

Jacob cut his eyes to Mercer Weeks like Weeks was going to lay into me for mouthing off. Weeks paid no attention. I wondered what he'd told his boss about his talk with Anna and me that evening. Or if he'd even told him that Anna, aka Signora Sophia, was back in town.

Jacob and Weeks messed about trying to pull a bill out of the smaller block of wax for a few minutes. A familiar face peeked around from the corner of the stairs. I said, “Come on in, Pauley, you're invited to this party, too.”

Pauley Three Fingers edged in slowly, like he was ready to rabbit at the first sign of trouble. That sign turned out to be Jacob. He looked up from the money, saw Pauley, and said, “That's him. That's the guy who tried to tell me you'd bought my money for a penny on the dollar.”

Pauley flinched. He wanted to run, but by then he'd seen the money on the bar and he wanted it bad. You could tell that by the way his remaining fingers twitched as he scanned the room. If he'd thought that he had half a chance, he'd have grabbed that box and gone straight to the stairs. But that wasn't in the cards, not then, so he straightened up and said, “I guess I got part of the story wrong, but Quinn did have the money, didn't he? I shot straight with you. And I know more now than I did when I talked to you. That's not your money. It belongs to my wife.”

The older woman, Anna's grandmother, came up the stairs. She had the baby in her arms, and she hung back, away from Pauley Three Fingers. I don't think Jacob or Weeks noticed her. They were focused on Pauley as he edged closer to the bar. Sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip.

“He is
not
my husband.”

Anna must have come in from the elevators. Her voice was loud and cold, and everybody in the room turned to look at her.

She was wearing a long black coat unbuttoned over that tight red dress. She shrugged the coat off as she strode across the room and gave Pauley a scornful glare. He tried to meet her eyes but really couldn't. I had the feeling that maybe he had never seen her looking like she did then, hair blonde and bobbed, expensive beautifully fitted clothes, heels that made her legs look even better than they always did. All I can say is I'd seen her at her best, and I hadn't seen anything like that.

It was hard for me to read exactly what Jacob was thinking. He stood up and kind of smiled when he first saw her, but that turned into a calculating suspicious frown in two heartbeats. She turned from Pauley to him and said, “Good to see you, Jakey.”

He said, “You too, Soph.”

More confusion spread across Pauley Three Fingers's face. He had no idea what was going on between them.

Jacob said, “Weeks told me I was in for a surprise. He knew what he was talking about. I never thought I'd see you again. Everybody said you ran off with Benny, but I thought you were dead. Tell me what happened.”

She crossed her arms across her chest. “I followed the instructions that night and drove to the place on the map, Miner's Camp Number Three. Another car met me there, and I followed it a long way up into the mountains. We ended up at a little cabin that the gang had been using as a hideout. There were three of them—two white men and a half-breed, the one I followed. All of them had guns. They'd tied poor Benny to a chair. He looked like hell, and right off they started arguing about how they were splitting up the money and whether they should let us go or kill us. They locked me up in an outbuilding, and I heard them arguing and fighting all night long, and finally, I heard shots. A lot of shots.

“The next morning, the half-breed came into the outbuilding and locked a chain around my ankle. He said they were all dead. They'd killed each other, and he didn't care because they'd just been renting his place. Now I was going to stay there and be his squaw.”

“Do you mean he …”

“Do I have to spell it out for you, Jakey? Yeah, he did everything you think he did, and he kept me locked up for ten months before he got careless and I found a knife.”

The best lies are almost the truth. She must have rehearsed the story to herself a hundred times because she delivered it with the right anger and bitterness.

Jacob bought it, I think. He looked at Weeks.

Weeks shrugged and said, “It's screwy but it squares with what happened and what we know.”

Jacob said, “But that doesn't explain all this,” waving his hand at the waxy mess.

Pauley found his voice and stepped up. “She doesn't have to explain anything. She'll take care of this, and I'm here to help her.”

Laughing, Anna said, “You son of a bitch, you broke into my room and stole every dollar you could get your hands on. In a pig's ass you'll help me with anything.”

Without my noticing, the grandmother had joined the group. She reached out and slapped Anna and called her something in a language I couldn't understand, but I knew it was a curse. She tried to slap her again, but holding the baby on her hip, she couldn't move her free arm very well. Anna blocked the slap and muttered something to her grandmother.

The old woman spat more curses back at her and finally said in English, “A woman does not like this talk to her husband which is the father of her only child.”

The only child bawled, and it seemed like everybody was yelling at everybody else to shut the hell up. Pauley was sidling over to the money. I noticed Ellis coming from the stairs. He heard the raised voices, walked into the middle of everything, and yelled, “Pipe down!”

Nobody did. This was turning into a four-alarm Chinese fire drill.

When Ellis realized that the Saengers had tiptoed away, he really got pissed. Pauley Three Fingers being close at hand, the cop slammed him down into a chair.

“All right,” Ellis said in his big cop voice, “somebody explain this. Seems to start with you, Quinn.”

Following Anna's lead, I explained that I had received these two boxes from Railway Express. Anna didn't give anything away when I said “two.” All the people who worked for me examined their fingernails or found something fascinating to look at up near the ceiling. I told Ellis I couldn't be sure who sent them. Over the past couple of days, several parties had approached me and said that they were the rightful owners.

“Actually,” I said, “the first one was Detective Betcherman. Right after that bomb went off, he put the arm on me. He said that he knew an item had been delivered to the speak and he was part of the deal. Those were his exact words. The next night, somebody plugged him in a warehouse on the East River. You remember, there was another dead guy in the warehouse, and he had papers made out in my name. From the way he was dressed, I'd say there's a good chance he was one of these Saenger fellows from Chicago.”

I explained how one of the Saengers had thrown in with the Free Society of Teutonia and the Nazis and the other Germans, while other parts of the family, probably including the guy who planted the bomb, were in it for themselves and hated the Krauts.

“Can it,” said Ellis pointing at the stuff on the bar. “Maybe that's true and maybe it ain't, but it doesn't tell me what this is or who it belongs to.”

Without dwelling on boring details, I said we'd picked it up that afternoon and found that the crate contained a big block of sticky brown wax. There appeared to be something inside, so we did a little work using this and that and discovered that paper money was embedded in the wax. Since so many people, including the deceased detective, claimed a piece of this, I decided to invite them here to make their case.

“Johann Klapprott bowed out early on, but his associate Luther and his fellow thugs, some of them anyway, are still around.”

He scowled. “I've got more people on the way. Who are you?” he said to Pauley Three Fingers. “You look familiar. I've seen you somewhere before. Where was it?”

I gave him a hint. “Did you catch the attempted stickup of a mail truck about, what, five, six years ago?”

Pauley said, “I did my time.”

“That's right, I was in uniform then. You wrecked the car, you and that other guy.”

“Yeah,” Anna said. “One of the highlights of his extensive criminal career.”

“You don't have any room to talk,” he answered. “You were there. If you hadn't distracted me, it would have been perfect.”

“You are a lying son of a bitch. Go back to that skinny bitch, Hildy.”

He jumped up and got right in her face. “Don't say that. You know it isn't true. I explained that.”

“You didn't explain shit, you slimy little weasel. Now just get the hell out of here. None of this concerns you.”

She hauled off and hit him with her fist. He slapped her back. Until that moment, I hadn't understood how much they loved each other. Ellis waded in to break it up and shoved Pauley into the bar. The bastard whirled back around with the German's nickel-plated pistol in his three-fingered mitt. In the same motion, he grabbed Anna around the waist, pulled her in front of him, and stuck the muzzle into her ribs.

In a calming tone, Ellis said, “Don't be crazy, son. Put it down.”

Pauley looked around until he spotted the older woman and said something to her in her language. She smiled and said something in agreement and hurried over with the squalling baby, shoving Weeks and Jacob out of the way. Anna struggled against him. He tightened his grip, leaned down, and whispered something that made her stop. I picked up the Smith. Anna saw what I was up to and shook her head. The old woman moved in so close I didn't have a clear shot at him anyway.

The boy who went after Pauley at the bus station slipped through the crowd and glared at Pauley with pure anger.

His voice breaking, Pauley Domo said, “The money belongs to my wife, so it belongs to me, too. Isn't that right, darling?”

She nodded.

“And Quinn is going to loan us his car.”

I didn't say anything. Anna said, “Please, Jimmy, I can straighten this out.”

Jacob said, “The hell you can. That's my money.”

She said, “Let me handle this. You don't understand. She's
your
daughter.”

Jacob's mouth opened in surprise, and he almost dropped his cigar. Either he hadn't had a good look at the baby or he was even worse at judging kids' ages than I was. I didn't think the lie would last. He was figuring it out already.

There were too many guns in the small room. I could see that Ellis and Weeks were unbuttoning their coats to get at the holsters on their belts. Malloy had his Luger hidden under his jacket, and Connie had the riot gun at her shoulder. Too much could go wrong there.

I stood up and said, “Frenchy, Malloy, take the crates. When you get downstairs, give him the keys.”

Everybody looked like I was nuts.

“It's all right.” I got up and made my way through the crowd to the bar. Pauley turned, keeping Anna between us.

I said to Frenchy, “You and Malloy take the crates. Remember, we've got to change elevators on the sixty-first floor.”

They all started talking at once. Pauley's voice came out louder than the others. “You heard the man. Just stay out of the way.” The boy faded to the back of the crowd and scurried for the stairs.

I held the elevator doors open as Frenchy and Malloy got on, followed by the grandmother and the baby and Pauley Three Fingers and Anna. She looked as angry as I'd ever seen her.