A Bloody Business

by Dylan Struzan

  Polly’s girl takes Charlie by the arm and maneuvers him into a waiting car. Harry is at the wheel. He drives Charlie to a two-bedroom with a balcony and a view of Central Park. Vito and Harry carry Charlie to the bedroom where Polly’s girl gets him out of his clothes and into pajamas and then into bed. The doctor checks Charlie’s vital signs. Charlie is stable. The doctor hits him with a syringe full of morphine. Charlie goes out like a light.

  Meyer looks at the angry slash on his neck and the gash on his face, both stitched neatly closed. He looks at the doctor.

  “How long does it take to die from a cut throat?”

  The doctor says, “Minutes. He’s fine. Somebody didn’t know what they were doing, or Charlie was able to fight them off, but I’d guess the former. If they’d cut the carotid artery he’d be dead. Charlie would have been unconscious in about three minutes and dead a couple of minutes later. His cut is superficial. They missed the trachea, too. That’s a good thing.”

  “Don’t look superficial,” Vito says as he tosses a newspaper to Meyer. “Page twenty-three.”

  Meyer reads the news and shakes his head. Charlie’s beating lands on page 23 of the Times. That’s not so bad. What rankles Meyer is the fact that Charlie is officially identified as part of the criminal underworld. It is an unfortunate turn of events for Charlie’s anonymity, something Meyer was counting on as they make their moves with regard to the old Dons.

  Harry brings coffee, and while they’re gulping it, Willie Moretti stops by. He tells Meyer about Maranzano’s new armor-plated Cadillac complete with a machine gun mount in the back seat. Frank Costello stops by. He tells Meyer that the reform vote is dividing between two candidates and that the split is weakening LaGuardia’s chances for a win.

  “Gentleman Jimmy will owe me,” Costello says.

  Polly Adler phones to see if Charlie would like another girl. Joe Adonis brings a brochure from the White Star Line just in case Charlie needs a nice, long sea voyage. Vito puts in a call to Lindy’s for dinner.

  “Steak and lobster,” Vito says, “and whatever else you got. You know what Charlie likes better than I do. I’ll be down to pick it up.”

  Charlie sleeps straight through dinner and into the next morning. Meyer sleeps on the couch. The doctor takes the second bedroom and sets up his supplies. By morning, Vito is back resurrecting his role as head cook. Harry makes the coffee.

  “You look like shit,” Charlie says, groaning his way through the living room.

  “You’re no Valentino,” Meyer says. “Who did it?”

  Charlie says, “A couple of mick cops. They gave me a helluva time, I’ll tell you that.” He looks at the nurse. “Honey, can you cook? Can you whip up some scrambled eggs? Maybe a little toast?”

  “Sure, Charlie,” the girl says and heads into the kitchen where Vito is already fixing breakfast.

  Charlie says, “What did I miss?”

  “Willie Moretti,” Meyer says.

  “What did he want?”

  Vito pops two slices of bread into the chrome toaster on the counter and musters a plate of bacon and eggs. The smell of breakfast wafts through the apartment.

  “The papers said you tried to bribe a cop with fifty bucks in exchange for a taxi,” Vito says, handing Charlie an oversized plate.

  Charlie tries to smile but the gash on his face won’t let him. “I guess I did.”

  “They said you were picked up on Fiftieth Street and Sixth Avenue by three guys with guns who threw you in the back of a limousine,” Vito says.

  “They say a lot of shit,” Charlie says.

  Meyer says, “From the looks of it, they intended to kill you.”

  Charlie says, “They said they were looking for Jack Diamond. He’s on the lam. Everybody knows that. They accused me of being in a big drug deal with him. Trumped-up bullshit. Jack Diamond is a convenient excuse.”

  Meyer runs a few theories through his mind. Diamond’s shootout at the Hotsy Totsy Club caused a ripple to run through the police department. You can’t involve fifty innocent people and expect the law to twiddle their thumbs in public. But that had nothing to do with Charlie.

  “The cops were Irish?”

  “Yeah, so?” Charlie says.

  “Isn’t it kind of strange that Jack Diamond is Irish and the cops were Irish? They know where Diamond is,” Meyer says.

  “Like I said, bullshit,” Charlie says.

  “You’re lucky as hell,” Meyer says.

  “Is that what you call it?” Charlie says.

  “These guys missed everything vital.”

  “I guess they ain’t been to medical school,” Charlie says.

  Vito says, “Guys that been in the war know how to do it. I spent some time with a guy who was on the battlefield in Europe. You gotta pull the head back and cut deep below the Adam’s apple, but you gotta be sure you run your knife clear from one side of the neck to the other. That’s the way it’s done. Lucky you were tackled by rookies.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie says. “That’s encouraging.”

  “Ain’t nothing,” Vito says. “The guy told me that cutting a guy’s throat ain’t the greatest way to kill somebody anyway. I know a guy, a cabbie, had his throat cut. He’s fine.”

  Charlie says, “If they’d a wanted me dead, they’d a shot me. There was nobody around. These guys beat me hard. I don’t remember much after that except wandering around and holding my neck to stop the bleeding.”

  Vito says, “How far was it spurtin’?”

  Charlie wrinkles his forehead in disbelief.

  “How the hell do I know?” he says.

  Meyer says, “Can you identify the guys, Charlie? Could you pick them out in a lineup?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlie says. “They jumped me from behind and beat me up pretty good.”

  Meyer says, “The Irish like to drink. Sooner or later, something will slip out. Alert our Irish friends and see what turns up.”

  “McManus has a brother in the P.D.,” Charlie says. “They owe Jimmy Hines. Put Costello on it.”

  Harry says, “There’s one lucky son of a bitch, George McManus. The only thing the cops can prove so far is that Rothstein’s overcoat was in George’s room at the Park Central on the night Rothstein was murdered.”

  “You know who was in the room with McManus the night Rothstein was killed, don’t ya?” Charlie says. “McManus’ bagman was there and two of George’s brothers, Frank and Tom.”

  Frank works in the Children’s Court system. Tom is a retired Detective Sergeant. If that wasn’t enough clout, George’s father was a highly respected Inspector. Retired detectives don’t need anyone poking into the particulars of the night Rothstein was shot. Neither do the men in blue. Maybe that explains the lack of evidence.

  Meyer says, “Jimmy Alo is tight with the Irish.”

  “That’s right,” Charlie says. “See what he can find out. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll get a little fresh air.”

  Charlie steps out onto the balcony. Birds hustle winter provisions. Pigeons wander the trails like panhandlers. A cool breeze sweeps through the apartment. The doctor emerges from his room. Vito nods toward the terrace.

  “Mr. Luciano,” the doctor says. “You have a mild concussion. You should take it easy and let your brain settle back to normal. Not to be a killjoy but you might refrain from too much activity during sex.”

  Charlie looks back at Polly’s so-called nurse and says, “Thanks, Doc, but I don’t think you gotta worry about that right now. All I want is a good night’s sleep.”

  The doctor leaves a bottle of sedatives on Charlie’s night-stand before heading back to the hospital. Meyer steps out onto the balcony.

  Meyer says, “It could be that somebody wants to get you off the street.”

  “What for?” Charlie says.

  “I’m working on that. Joe the Boss is making moves in Brooklyn. It’s possible that some politician wants to neutralize him and tried to do that by taking you out of the picture.”
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  “I don’t know,” Charlie says, barely more than a whisper.

  Meyer says, “Things will fall into place as we go. Get some rest.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Let Slip the Dogs of War

  OCTOBER 24, 1929

  The alarm on the brass and Bakelite clock that sits on the nightstand next to Charlie Luciano’s ear buzzes loudly. Charlie rolls over and silences the clock. The buzzing has stopped but his ears still ring. He rolls his aching body to the edge of the bed and lets his feet drop to the floor. He sits slumped over, head in hands, struggling to get his thoughts into today’s game. The face of the clock shows it’s two minutes past six. Charlie stiffens and rises.

  An early-morning chill fills the room. Charlie pads across the red Chinese rug and closes the window, gently. Already Fifth and Madison Avenues swarm with clean-shaven, starched, determined businessmen. In the distance, Broadway’s neon signs loom like hanging gray ghosts, reminding anyone who cares to look up that Manhattan is a city of the night. Nobody looks up. The Madison Avenue types focus instead on the gaping hole at Fifth and 34th where the Waldorf-Astoria once stood. The old Victorian has been flattened and hauled away amidst promises of steel girders and limestone walls destined to rise 1250 feet straight up to the clouds. The proposed Empire State Building will out-reach the Woolworth Building by almost 500 feet. Al Smith and the construction committee fiddle with the harebrained idea of putting a dirigible port on the top of the building.

  Charlie draws the curtains to muffle the noise below and block the intrusion of the rising sun. His head still pounds from the paddywaxing he took two weeks ago. His face remains tender. In exactly one month he will be thirty-two years old, middle-aged, running out of time to make his mark. He strolls across the room to turn on the radio, then sees that the clock shows 6:15. Charlie heads for a shower.

  The image in the mirror is still something to lament. Black and blue bruises have given way to a sickish green, a color not dissimilar to the minty green of the sink. Charlie turns the hot-water faucet and lathers his face for a close shave. Until the stitches heal, shaving is strictly a personal profession.

  He runs the hot water in the shower, grateful for the steam that fogs the mirror. He steps in and lets the hot water beat against the tense muscles of his neck. For a moment, he forgets about Frank Costello and their proposed meeting at this ungodly hour.

  The clock shows 6:35. Meaning Frank Costello is at the front desk waiting for the doorman to ring him through. Maybe he already rang once, while Charlie was showering. He towels dry. Costello will just have to wait.

  “Green,” Charlie says to the face behind the fog. “I look like some kinda goddamn leprechaun.”

  He pushes the flesh around his limp eye. The knife that cut him went deep, cut something of consequence. Fifty-five stitches will never change that fact. He lets go of the swollen flesh. The droop returns. He slips into a pair of navy slacks and a starched white shirt.

  The doorman rings the apartment.

  “Send him up,” Charlie says and sits in the chrome-plated metal-and-leather lounge chair.

  The Murray Hill apartment is everything the ad promised and yet not so much that a man like Joe the Boss would feel threatened by his underling’s success. Simple Art Deco design. He’d told the decorator to keep it simple. The bookcase at the end of the room holds exactly two books, one of them the copy of The Prince that Meyer gave him, and which Charlie hasn’t touched since peeling off the brown paper wrapping.

  Costello knocks at the door. He removes his fedora in a gesture of respect. Costello is a man of routine, pressed and buttoned down for the day’s work, never late for an appointment. He steps into Charlie’s apartment.

  The cook hits the living room bearing a silver tray just as Frank Costello sits down. She pours two cups of coffee and leaves the men to their conversation.

  “What did you find out?” Charlie says, handing a cup to Costello.

  “You won’t like it,” Costello says. “Everybody’s stickin’ to the story pretty much the way you heard it. I talked to a lot of guys and they all have the same thing to say.”

  Costello has risen through Tammany’s ranks, trained personally by the great Tim Sullivan, so he seemed the logical choice to find out about the cops that beat Charlie. The paddywaxing, which is another word for an Irish beating, went too far. There must be something more than graft or information on drug trafficking or even the search for a guy like Jack Diamond.

  Charlie listens, emotionless, as Costello tells him everything Detective Sergeant McManus was willing to share, everything the Irish cops had let slip in locker rooms and over pints of Guinness.

  “The cops see you moving up the ladder,” Costello says. “There’s somethin’ in the air. The cops are being pushed to crack down on drug dealers. You got power in the city and that makes everybody nervous. That’s why they grabbed you after Rothstein was knocked off. They got their eye on you.”

  Days after Rothstein’s death, Charlie and a couple of his guys were picked up for questioning. That was before Charlie’s paddywaxing. It was before Jimmy Hines arranged George McManus’ fix, before McManus was arrested for Rothstein’s murder and sent to the tombs to await his trial, before the pistol that flew out of the Park Central window was traced to St. Louis, before any real evidence had been neatly eradicated, before Arnold’s wife and mistress began fighting over the disposition of his estate, and before Frank Costello came up with the campaign strategy that paved the way for Gentleman Jimmy Walker to keep his seat as Mayor of New York City, a valuable position that allowed Tammany to continue running its political organization the way it had always run things, by the scruff of the neck.

  Charlie says, “That’s all they tell you?”

  “I don’t think McManus knows the whole truth even if he was willin’ to talk.”

  Charlie says, “We ain’t takin’ nobody into our confidence either. Anybody wants to stick their nose where it don’t belong, you tell ’em that the police were looking for Jack Diamond and got a little overzealous. Got that?”

  Costello nods, pulls on his hat, and heads out. The Plaza Hotel’s barber is waiting.

  Charlie pours another cup of coffee and watches from his window as Costello blends into the Madison Avenue crowd. The cook sets out breakfast on the dining room table. Charlie ignores it. After weeks of dining alone, he is ready for a change, green face and all. He pulls on a suit jacket. His dark brown fedora sits low on his forehead. Charlie flips up the collar of his jacket and makes his way downstairs and out into the swarm. He has in mind a little diner near Times Square where working stiffs eat.

  The diner throbs. Eager wage earners jam into every open space. They shovel hash and eggs using crisp toast and forks. They guzzle pots of hot coffee. Charlie spots a place at the counter and squeezes his way through the crowd.

  “The special,” he says, “and a cuppa Joe.”

  The hash slinger never looks up, never notices the green face. He scribbles the order across a white slip of paper that he then impales on the spindle in the pass-through. The short-order cook grabs the paper and goes to work, more hash, more eggs, crisp slices of bacon.

  The chatter in the diner is familiar and soothing, idle chitchat that fills the room with a humanness that Charlie finds comforting. People complain. Working conditions have not improved since the days Charlie hunted for a legitimate job. He studies those sitting numbly over breakfast awaiting the inevitable, another miserable day at a job they hate, and thanks his lucky stars that he has the backbone to rebel.

  The hash slinger slops coffee into a clean cup, butters two slices of toast, flops it onto a hot plate next to a pair of staring yellow eggs on a little mountain of potatoes and beef, and delivers it all to Charlie, still with no eye contact, which is the whole idea of this place. Total anonymity.

  Charlie jabs at the yellow orbs sitting atop the hash. The soft yolk spills down the side of the mountain. He shovels hash and eggs onto toast and regret
s having sent Costello to do a man’s job.

  He imagines Costello in the Plaza, looking in the barber’s mirror, satisfied with his haircut and manicure, making his way to the hotel restaurant where he’ll sip coffee from a gold-rimmed cup and nibble delicate toast triangles spread thick with marmalade and a line of men will quietly wait to see him, each taking his turn to ask for a favor or present a sure-fire business opportunity. Costello will see them all, one by one.

  Charlie drains the last of the coffee and makes his way to the nearest public phone. He drops a nickel in the slot and dials the number of the one man he trusts to keep a level head and a secret.

  “Three twelve here,” he says. “Meet me in ten minutes.”

  ‘312’ is Charlie’s code, the numbers that correspond to the letters of the alphabet that are his initials. C = 3. L = 12. 312. It comes in handy when the phone might be bugged or someone might be listening and he must get through to his contact because it is important.

  Ten minutes later, Charlie and Meyer Lansky meet up a block from the Claridge Hotel.

  Meyer says, “You’re up early.”

  Charlie says, “Frank Costello.”

  Meyer raises his eyebrows.

  “I gotta get things off my chest,” Charlie says. “This is for the four of us. You and Benny, and I called Joe A. He’s got a right to hear what I say. That’s it for now.”

  They press through the morning crowd. The doorman at the Claridge greets them with a smile. Benny is at his desk when they walk through the door of their suite.

  “Whose funeral?” Benny says, sweeping a pile of papers into a drawer.

  “Mine,” Charlie says. “Give Joe A. a call, will ya? Tell him to leave the broad he’s with and get his ass over here. I think he’s at the Plaza.”

  Charlie drops into one of the leather club chairs.

  Benny says, “Big business, huh?”

  Charlie says, “Who’s in the back?”

  “Nobody…yet. Just us weasels,” Benny says. He pulls a Colt 1911A from his desk drawer. “Best goddamn example of self-loading stopping power the U.S. Army ever made. Whoever the cocksucker is, I’m happy to introduce him to John Moses Browning’s rod. He’ll be eating lunch with the devil.”