Shamrock Alley (45 page)

Mickey, who happened to be in the company of some of his own friends, was in no mood for drinking with a traitor and a thief. “Either you come clean with me right now,” he told Corcoran, “or you and your nigger friend are gonna see God tonight.”

“You know what?” Corcoran said then. His tone was quite un-apologetic. “You’re one crazy piece of shit, Mickey—you know that? Got some nerve, accusing me of somethin’ like that. I wouldn’t rip you guys. Jimmy’s like family to me. You think you’re being ripped, I’d go see your buddy Clifton instead of wasting time poking me …”

It is difficult to say what made Mickey murder both Harold Corcoran and Fee Williams that night as they stepped from Toby’s Bar on West 41
^st
Street, but it was not solely about the counterfeit money. Some of it was Corcoran’s attitude—the way he held his hand up in front of Mickey’s face, the way he spoke to him in front of the guys. It could have also been Fee Williams, Corcoran’s black friend, who set Mickey over the edge: Mickey was a dedicated racist who thought blacks and Hispanics and Italians and anyone else who was not what he considered “white” deserved to burn in the hottest depths of hell. Or it could have been something as simple as his mood that evening. Regardless, when Corcoran and Williams stepped from Toby’s Bar, Mickey O’Shay and his boys were outside waiting for them.

“Mickey—” was all Corcoran managed to say.

The gleam of a knife appeared in Mickey’s hands. It shot out in a swift, decisive streak and embedded itself into the soft flesh of Fee Williams’s throat, pinning the man against the brick alley wall.

Corcoran began to run, but he would not make it very far: he tripped and spilled to the street like a cripple. Above him, Mickey and his boys walked circles, staring down at his exhausted body. He was held down and, with the same knife, his tongue was cut from his head. Following that, someone produced a hammer and, amidst a storm of insanity, the West Side boys took turns beating Harold Corcoran to a bloody pulp.

Mickey’s one hope was that Corcoran would live long enough to feel the worst of the pain.

Later, Jimmy was somewhat incensed by Corcoran’s hasty disposal. Killing Harold Corcoran left them without a printer, which meant whatever money they had printed before Corcoran’s death was all they were going to get. Taking Corcoran’s advice, Mickey suggested they approach Douglas Clifton and see what he had to say. “Maybe,” Mickey suggested, “they got a stash of it somewhere.”

If Douglas Clifton had any of their counterfeit hidden, they’d get him to give it up. One way or another.

Clifton had been spending a lot of time at the warehouse, confident that there were salvageable, salable antiques among Evelyn Gethers’s dead husband’s junk. The night Jimmy and Mickey approached him, he was half bombed from smoking too much weed and had several days’ beard growth sprouting from his face. As the door was lifted and Mickey and Jimmy entered, Clifton struggled to pull himself to his feet and achieve some semblance of sobriety.

“Hey …” Clifton righted himself against a wall, his features seeming to swim across his face. The entire garage was veiled in a thin haze of smoke and reeked of pot. Clifton’s words came out slow and stupid. “You guys …”

Jimmy was in no mood for games. “What’s been going on with our money, Doug?”

Rubbing a hand across the nape of his neck, Clifton managed to turn around and run his eyes over the two printing presses and, beyond the presses, at the duffel bag full of printed counterfeit. “What about it?” he said, his throat scratchy and dry. “It’s here …”

“You and Harold Corcoran been ripping us off,” Mickey added, “been selling the shit from under us. How much you got left? How much you guys print that we don’t know about?”

The fear in Clifton’s eyes—sober or not—registered immediately. “I wouldn’t fuck you guys! Christ, come
on
. What am I, an idiot?” And he tried a frightened laugh. He sounded pathetic. “I don’t—I mean, you—the fuck do I know ‘bout printing money?”

Jimmy was relentless and unemotional. “How much you got left, Doug?”

“No!” Clifton shouted, his fists balled, his face flushed. He was no stranger to the stories that circulated around about the brutality of the two West Side boys, no stranger to the jobs they’d pulled and the people they’d ripped apart.

Mickey circled around the printing presses, his hands stuffed customarily in his pockets. Before him, his shadow bled across the concrete floor.

Jimmy took a step closer to Clifton. “How ‘bout we make a deal, huh?” Jimmy said.

Distrustful, Clifton stammered, “Wuh-what deal?”

From behind, Mickey grabbed Clifton’s shoulders and pulled him back with amazing force. Clifton, too stoned and frightened to react, spilled to the floor, cracking his head on the cement, and howled like an injured coyote. He struggled to roll over and away from Mickey, but Mickey held him to the floor with little difficulty, both his hands squeezing the flesh of Clifton’s upper arms. A wide grin on his face, Mickey hung his head directly above Clifton’s, their noses only inches apart, the curled and wet strands of Mickey’s hair tickling the sides of Clifton’s face.

Jimmy came forward, pulling a long knife from inside his jacket. Kneeling down, he managed to pin both of Clifton’s legs to the floor, Jimmy’s knees pressing heavily into the man’s thighs.

“The deal,” Jimmy said, snatching Clifton’s right wrist with the speed and accuracy of a snake’s strike, “is
that you
take something of
ours,”
and he pressed the point of the knife slowly into the tender flesh of Clifton’s wrist, “and
we
take something
of yours.”

Jimmy slammed the knife all the way through Clifton’s wrist; the knife point chinked dully against the cement floor on the other side. Douglas Clifton screamed, and hot, rancid breath rushed up into Mickey’s face, the entry wound in Clifton’s wrist spilling over with blood. He continued to struggle, but his terror coupled with fresh pain had immediately weakened him.

Jimmy continued to slice through Clifton’s wrist, pausing briefly when the knife blade struck bone. Gritting his teeth, Jimmy worked the knife through bone and gristle, streaks of Clifton’s blood spraying his face.

The deed was completed in a matter of two minutes. When finished, Jimmy slowly rose to his feet, a bit out of breath from the rush of adrenaline. He held the bloodied knife in one hand and Douglas Clifton’s severed right hand in the other.

“Good deal, right?” Jimmy said, taking a few awkward steps backward.

Mickey released Clifton and stood as well. All the fight had drained from Clifton’s body. Even now, Clifton was capable only of pulling himself into a fetal position, his abbreviated right arm tucked under the folds of his shirt. His back hitched, though he was still too shocked to emit a single sob.

“You come up with the money you and Corcoran stole,” Jimmy told him, his shadow washing over Clifton’s tortured body. “We’ll see you in a couple days. You don’t have the money when we come back, I take off another piece. Got it?”

Clifton could not manage an answer, but it was evident that he got it. In the end, they
always
got it.

Mickey took Clifton’s keys to the print shop warehouse, shouted at the cripple to get the hell out of his sight, and locked the warehouse door. And like any street hustler who had grown up within the cold embrace of Hell’s Kitchen, Jimmy and Mickey kept good on their word: they visited Clifton some time later at Bellevue Hospital, and it was all they could do to keep from busting out laughing at the sight of the sorry son of a bitch.

“What?” Jimmy said, moving to the side of Clifton’s bed. “You ain’t gonna shake hands?”

Clifton had the look of someone too doped up to recognize faces, but his eyes quickly widened at the sound of Jimmy Kahn’s voice. As he turned to Jimmy, his lips began to tremble.

“You look like shit, Stump,” Mickey said, leaning against the wall by the door. With his left hand, he reached over and locked the door. “Smells bad in here, too.”

“Uh …” Clifton tried to speak.

“We’re back, just like we promised,” Jimmy told him. “Now—you gonna let us know where you’re keeping the money, or do we have to make another withdrawal?”

Clifton’s eyes went glassy. His dried, peelings lips were working, but no sound was coming out of his mouth. Jimmy reached out and squeezed Clifton’s bandaged stump. Clifton grimaced in pain, his eyes pressed shut and squirting tears, his teeth clenched and bared.

“This is gonna be a slow and painful process, Stump,” Jimmy nearly whispered, his lips just a few inches from Clifton’s ear. “I can tell. Your buddy Corcoran’s already rotting in a dump somewhere. Be smarter than him, and tell us where you’re keeping the stash.”

“I swear …” he managed between breaths, “I don’t—
know
—anything about … the …
money …”

“You’re gonna have a hard time lying to us without a tongue, Stump,” Mickey said from against the wall.

Clifton started to weep.
“Fuck”
he groaned. “Oh, God …” Teeth chattering in his head, he sobered up as best he could and stared at Jimmy with dead eyes. “Corcoran’s been printing … extra bills … selling them with some guy … Patrick Nolan …”

“Patty Nolan?” Mickey said. They’d worked some deals together in the past.

“Corcoran’s been moving it around the city,” Clifton continued, his face still twisted in pain, “and Nolan’s been going to … Florida … Boston … fuck, I don’t know.” He took a deep breath, and his eyelids fluttered. For a moment, Mickey thought Corcoran might pass out.

“Where’s Nolan now?” Jimmy asked, and looked over to Mickey. Mickey just shrugged and folded his arms.

“Don’t know,” Clifton croaked.

“You have any of the money? You know where it is?”

“Nolan has it.”

“Son of a bitch,” Mickey mumbled from across the room.

“I’m a fair guy,” Jimmy said, releasing Clifton’s injured wrist. “We’ll come back when you’re feeling better. Meanwhile, you better get in touch with Nolan, get him to bring you the counterfeit.”

But Douglas Clifton would never get in touch with Patrick Nolan.

The next morning, he would throw himself out a window …

Now, still nursing the same drink at the Cloverleaf, Mickey felt his migraine intensifying with the memory of those events. What a goddamn mess. And now with both Clifton and Corcoran dead, they had no way of finding Patrick Nolan. They’d checked most of Nolan’s haunts, asked a number of his friends about his whereabouts, but no one knew where he was. When John Esposito showed up, they started moving the money again. But Jimmy was becoming aggravated and distrustful by the whole situation—the counterfeit money was now only a reminder of how they’d been screwed by Corcoran, Clifton, and Nolan—and he wanted nothing more than to move beyond the entire ordeal. Screwed or not, they were making money off Esposito and that was all that mattered to Mickey.

Behind him, the Cloverleaf’s door opened and a gust of cold air entered. Craning his head around, Mickey saw Jimmy Kahn step into the bar, his nose red and his lips chapped. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and checkered sport jacket, and his hair was greased back into a ducktail.

“You ready to go?” Jimmy said.

“Wait a while. Have a drink.”

“No time for drinks. Come on.”

Reluctantly, Mickey followed Jimmy to the street and hopped into the passenger seat of Jimmy’s Cadillac. They drove most of the way in silence.

“How come we’re meeting with these guys so early?” he asked Jimmy after growing bored with flipping the dial on the radio.

“This is when they wanted to meet,” Jimmy said. He turned and looked Mickey over. “You could have put on some clean clothes.”

“These
are
clean. Besides,” he added, “I ain’t tryin’ to impress nobody. Especially some friggin’ wop. I don’t see why we’re wastin’ our time with these grease-balls. I don’t trust ‘em for shit.”

“We wanna spread out of the Kitchen, make some real money, these are the go-to guys.”

“Fuck ‘em. They’re afraid of us. Why the hell should we work with ‘em when we can just run ‘em off?”

Jimmy frowned. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“I’m serious.”

“Just keep your mouth shut, and let me do the talking.”

They pulled up outside a fancy Italian restaurant on Canal Street—all red brick and tinted glass, royal blue awning, candles flickering on the other side of the windows. In the car, Jimmy checked his gun, then slid it back inside his jacket. Mickey did not mind Jimmy’s lofty career aspirations—they had helped them get
this
far—but he did not understand why his partner had such an infatuation with the Italians. To Mickey, they were relics, throw-backs to a forgotten time, dinosaurs in an evolutionary pool. Their operations were overburdened and convoluted, their reach wide but unimpressive. In fact, he and Jimmy had done more throughout the West Side in just a few years than the mob had been able to accomplish in roughly a decade. They were an old breed trying to operate in a new society. Why Jimmy Kahn thought they were so important, Mickey did not know.

Inside, the restaurant was quiet, gloomy, and mildly populated. The walls were brick and decorated with wreaths of garlic and shelves of canned goods, the labels striped in red, white, and green. Dean Martin was piped through speakers suspended in the rafters.