THUGLIT Issue One (8 page)

His big friend still stood there, breathing heavy and swaying while he tried to stare Quinn down. And Quinn kept on ignoring him.

Lady M smiled at the sound of the champagne filling her glass. “So how’s about tellin’ me what brings out Doyle’s Black Hand into my humble abode this fine evening?”

“Business. We need to talk, Mimi.”

“So talk!” Lady M threw open her arms in a grand gesture. “We’re all friends here, ain’t we boys?” She looked at Rizzo. “Carmine knows all about our kind of business, don’t you Carmine?” She looked at the two boys in tuxedoes. “And these dapper gentlemen here…”

The big boy in the tux cut her off, “…don’t know who the fuck you are, mister. We were having a damned swell party for ourselves before you showed up. So why don’t you do yourself a favor and take it on the heel and toe so we can get back to our good time?”

He shuffled one step too close.

Quinn dropped him with a short left hook to the jaw. The blueblood fell back over his chair and hit the floor head first.

Carmine didn’t move a muscle.

“That ain’t nice, Terry,” Madeline slurred. “That young man just so happens to be Jack Van Dorn of the Fifth Avenue Van Dorns.”

“Then he should’ve been smart enough to keep his goddamned mouth shut. We’ve got business, Mimi. You and me. Alone. Right now.”

Madeline’s fleshy arms flapped as she threw up her hands and motioned for Blondie and Carmine to leave. Carmine moved first, slow and steady as he passed Quinn and out the door.

Blondie got to his feet and seemed to think about helping his friend, but ran out of the room instead. He even closed the door behind him. A nice, polite boy.

Quinn kept standing where he was.

Madeline drained her champagne glass again and filled it for herself. “You happy now, you goddamned animal? And stop callin’ me Mimi in my own joint.”

“It’s Archie’s joint. You and that shitbird husband of yours just run it for him. You’d do well to remember that.”

“Archie Doyle,” Mimi said, drawing out his name. “Joe and me have been runnin’ this dive for three years and ain’t never heard a word of complaint outta him before.”

“That’s because you never stole from him before.”

“Stole?” Mimi lowered her champagne glass very slowly. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought she was genuinely insulted. “Stole?” Her ruddy skin blanched quickly. “We stole? From Archie? Me and Joey? That what he tell you? After all we done for that miserable Irish son of a…”

“Stow the bullshit. Archie’s take from this place has been off every week for the past month and it’s not because business is off. You’re leaking money, Mimi, and that means either you or Joe are getting greedy. Which one of you is it?”

Mimi sat up as straight as she could manage. “Neither me nor Joey ever stole off nobody, especially Archie. We run a gamblin’ joint for Chrissakes! We make plenty off what we take in, even with Archie gettin’ his cut.”

“The take says different.” He remembered Doyle’s instructions. “If it’s not you, it’s got to be Joey. Where is he?”

“How the hell should I know,” she said. “I ain’t seen him for three whole days, the bum. Never could rely on that lousy bastard for nothin’.”

“That’s too bad. That just leaves you, unless someone else in this place was in on the skim with you. And the quicker you start talking, the easier this is going to be. For both of us.”

Mimi shook a long, crooked finger at him. “Let me ask you somethin’, tough guy. In all of this big thinkin’ Archie’s been doin’, did the grand man himself ever ask why we’d steal from him? Now? After all these years,
now
we get greedy?”

“People change,” he said. “Crazy notions pop into their heads out of nowhere. Notions like maybe they ought to jump ship and join up with Rothmann’s bunch.”

“P
shaw,” she said with a boozy wa
ve. “That’s crazy talk.”

“Not really.” He nodded over at the chair where Carmine Rizzo had been sitting. “You having one of Rothmann’s top boys in here tonight doesn’t look too good.”

Mimi’s face became all lines and shadows. “First you call me a thief, then you call me a traitor. You sure know how to make a girl sore. You…”

“Quit stalling. I know damned well you’ve got the money you owe Archie with you right here and now. Just hand it over and Archie promises he’ll forgive the whole thing for old time’s sake. But if you keep lying to me, and I have to tear this place apart looking for it, things will get real ugly real fast.”

He heard a floorboard creak behind him just before he heard the door open. He had plenty of time to go for his gun, but didn’t.

Archie had already told him no gunplay.

Quinn heard the hammer of a .38 being cocked behind him. The same kind of gun he knew Carmine Rizzo used.

“You’re goddamned right it’s gonna get ugly,” Carmine said. “Starting with you.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Mimi shrieked from the couch. “Put that damned thing away before he takes it from you.”

Quinn turned just enough to let Carmine see his grin. “Listen to the lady, stupid. You’re not going to use it anyhow.”

“No kidding?” Carmine said. “What makes you so goddamned sure?”

“Because shooting me is going to make your life more complicated than it already is. Especially when you have to explain to Rothmann why you shot me. And what you were doing here in the first place.”

“Bullshit. Rothmann knows I’m here.”

“Bullshit,” Quinn repeated. “Rothmann would never let you muscle in on one of Archie’s gambling dens. He knows better than to risk a war over a hellhole like this. But you?” He laughed. “You’re just greedy enough to think you could get away with it. Dumb enough, too.”

Carm
ine didn’t laugh. “For a washed-
up pug, you’ve got some imagination.”

“Nah, just a good pair of eyes.” He motioned to the unconscious Van Dorn punk on the floor. “You brought those two fat cats in the tuxes here tonight, didn’t you? Sold them on a can’t-miss way to buy themselves a piece of the action. For just a grand or so apiece, they’d get a cut of this place, plus the satisfaction of screwing over Archie Doyle in the process. Any smart guy would’ve laughed in your face, but a couple of well-heeled dopes like them, well…”

Mimi dropped her glass of champagne. “Jesus Christ, Carmine! How the hell does he know all that?”

“Relax,” Carmine said. “He’s just guessing. He doesn’t know shit.”

“Sure I do.” Quinn looked at Mimi. “People like to talk. And Archie likes to listen.”

Mimi’s eyes went wide. “I…it wasn’t me, Terry. I swear.” She pointed back to Carmine. “It was him! He cooked the whole thing up. Him and that lousy bastard Joey. They lied to me. They…”

Carmine came around Quinn to get a clear shot at Madeline. Quinn yanked Carmine’s gun arm up and hit him with two short rights to the jaw.

Carmine went limp, held up by Quinn holding his left wrist. He took the gun out of his hand and let Carmine drop to the floor.

He opened the cylinder and pocketed the bullets. He tossed the empty .38 on the couch next to Mimi.

She flinched when the gun hit the cushion. She dropped her head into her hands and wept. “Jesus Christ, Terry. Jesus Christ, what am I gonna do now? Don’t kill me. Please don’t…”

“Knock it off. Just tell me where’s the money you owe Archie?”

“It’s gone,” she wailed. “We had a couple of great weeks that put us way ahead, so Joey started skimming a little from the extra we earned.”

“Gambling?” Quinn asked.

Madeline nodded. “He found himself into Carmine pretty deep. Soon, the extra we were earning wasn’t enough to cover what we owed, so we cut into the rest of the take. He figured Archie would never miss it.”

“Guess what?” Quinn said. “He did.”

“Carmine told him he’d forgive the debt if he could help us swindle these two rich boys out of a couple of grand. Make them think they were buying a piece of this place.”

“Where’s the money they brought with them?”

Mimi lifted her face from her hands. Her mascara smeared all over her face. “Terry, please. I…”

He kicked the table over. Champagne bottle and glasses flew. “The Van Dorn money, Mimi. Now!”

Slowly, she pulled the briefcase out from under the couch and she set it on her lap. She fumbled with the locks, but got them open. It looked to be about two grand in greenbacks. Just like he’d been told. Enough for the rich kids to buy a piece of the place.

Or at least think they had.

He wondered how long it would’ve been before they got killed in a convenient mugging once they realized Carmine and Joey had fooled them.

Mimi grinned up at him and ran her tongue along the edges of her teeth. “It’s all right here, sugar. Two grand in cold cash. Enough to pay back Archie what we owe him.”

She lowered the lid of the briefcase enough for him to look down her dress.
Her smeared mascara gave her a m
ean, desperate look. “Enough for you and me to blow town and have ourselves some
real
fun somewhere. What do you say?”

Quinn shut the case and yanked it off her lap. The Van Dorn kid groaned as he began to stir on the floor.

“I’d say you’re going to have a couple of angry playmates when they wake up in a few minutes.”

Mimi sat back on the couch and folded her arms across her chest. Modesty had returned. “What am I supposed to tell them when they do?”

“That the deal is off and you’ll pay them back with your own money. Tell them this is still Doyle’s place and if they don’t like it, they’ll have to answer to Archie. And me.”

“That’s swell,” Mimi said. “Just swell. But who’s gonna tell Joey? Somebody’s gonna have to tell that crazy son of a bitch what happened and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be me. He’ll beat the hell outta me for this.”

He locked the briefcase. “No he won’t.”

“Yeah?” Mimi said. “How do you know?”

He smiled as he opened the door. “Trust me.”

*****

He shut the door behind him as he went out through the crowd of gamblers. If any of them had heard the commotion in the office, none of them let on. They were too busy poring over the tables, looking for a way to chisel in on the action.

The blonde boy in the tuxedo was nowhere in sight. Probably back with Mummy and
Dad
dy up on
Fifth Avenue
or wherever that type holed up.

He wondered if the stupid bastard would ever realize that Quinn had actually saved his life.

Otis was back at his piano, pawing out an old Jolson number on the ivories. Quinn made sure he saw him drop another twenty in his tip jar. He patted the piano as he passed by. “Safe and sound, Otis. I’m a man of my word.”

“Night’s still young,” Otis called after him.

*****

Quinn’s fatigue returned as
he walked to an all-night drug
store right around the corner and called Archie from the payphone in the back.

Archie came on the line quick, “How’d it go, kid?”

“I got the cash the swells were going to kick in for a share of the place. Two grand, just like Joey told us.”

“Good. Any bloodshed?”

“Not much, boss. You told me to go easy, so I did.”

Doyle didn’t sound convinced. “Terry…”

“I had to knock the Van Dorn brat around and I stopped Carmine from shooting Mimi. They’re banged up but alive, I promise.”

“What about that bastard Rizzo,” Doyle said. “Where’d you park his
Plymouth
?”

“Right across the street from the place, just like you wanted. I made sure I left the keys in the car for the cops to find.”

“Good. I’ll call our friend and tip him off about Joey’s body being in Carmine’s trunk.” Quinn knew their friend was Andrew Carmichael, Commissioner of the New York Police Department. “If they get there fast enough, maybe they’ll nab Carmine in Mimi’s place. The Van Dorn punk too. Give them back-stabbing bastards somethin’ to chew on.”

Quinn hadn’t slept in two whole nights and was too tired to care anymore. He had Archie’s money and that’s what mattered. “You know best, boss.”

“Goddamned right, kid,” Archie laughed. “Goddamned right. Now get some sleep. You earned it.”

Quinn hung up the phone and let Archie make his calls. He squeezed out of the phone booth and ordered a coffee from the counte
rman. It was late-night coffee—
lu
kewarm and bitter
—but it was better than no coffee at all. It had enough of a kick to keep him from falling asleep in the cab on the way home.

He played the whole thing out in his mind while he sipped his coffee. He had to hand it to Archie. They didn’t call him The Duke for nothing; he always knew just what to do. Once he found out about the skim, he had Quinn pick up Joey and lean on him until he cracked.

He’d thought Joey dying like that had complicated things, but not Archie. Once Joey spilled about the scheme to team up with Carmine Rizzo, Archie figured out a way to put Joey to work for him one last time. He’d prove more useful in death than he’d ever been in life.