Prohibition

by Terrence McCauley

  Quinn knew a whore’s word was damned thin. Lots of people kept guns around. But it was the solid lead he had. “And she’s sure she saw this same guy shoot Fatty last night?”

  Chi Chi nodded. “She see his face clearly as he pull the trigger. She say he was wearing a hat, but he has a scar on his face she know from anywheres. She is certain. Absolutemente.”

  The bookie slowly leaned back in his chair. A proud man. “How’s that for informations, eh?”

  Quinn wasn’t entirely sold, but he was interested. “She mention this to anyone else?”

  The bookie tucked his fingers into his red vest and grinned. “Just to her Uncle Chi Chi. She call last night after Fatty was shot, very hysterical. She afraid maybe Zito saw her and might shoot her too to keep her quiet. So I invite her over to my place – just to calm her down and, maybe, you know...”

  “You’re a real gentleman, Cheech. What time did she get to your place?”

  “A little before midnight, I think, but it’s hard to say because when she got there we...”

  Quinn drove his fingers back into the bookie’s leg, “You were too busy laying pipe to this bar frau instead of letting me know? The bastard’s probably three states away by now!”

  “He no skip town!” Chi Chi squealed as he tried to pry Quinn’s fingers from his leg. “No one know who he is or what he look like! Why run?”

  Quinn released the leg with a shove and tried to calm down. All that bullshit with Shapiro wouldn’t happened if Chi Chi had told him this hours ago. But then he realized he probably wouldn’t have talked to Johnny the Kid and heard more about Simon Wallace. Maybe there was no harm after all. If Zito was still in town.

  He tried soothing the bookie’s busted ego. “You’re a good boy, Chi Chi. Sorry I got rough, but this thing with Fatty’s been tough.”

  The bookie kept massaging his wounded leg. “You really gotta do something about those damned tempers of yours. Find Jesus in your heart, maybe.”

  Quinn laughed, really laughed, for the first time all day. “Let’s worry about finding one mystery man at a time.” He dug a wad of twenties out of his pocket, peeled off five of them and slapped them in the bookie’s hand. “Now, let’s get this twist of yours on the phone and see if she remembers where Zito hangs his hat.”

  IT TOOK Chi-Chi a good dose of begging and threatening before the girl gave up the address.

  Zito lived on Ninth Street and First Avenue, a tenement neighborhood teeming with immigrants. Italians, Germans, Jews, Greeks and a few Micks right off the boat sprinkled in for good measure. It was the kind of neighborhood where a four story dump could house over a hundred people - and often did. The street was teeming with life, lined with pushcart vendors and customers haggling for apples, clothing, rugs, fish, fresh killed chickens, and hand rolled cigars.

  They made it a point not to look at the large man in the black overcoat as he moved through the crowded street. They didn’t see him walk up the stoop and enter the building, either. This was the kind of neighborhood where curiosity got you killed and everyone had plenty of troubles of their own.

  It was Quinn’s kind of neighborhood.

  The rats in the stairwell didn’t give an inch as he walked up the four flights to Zito’s place. Top floor. Tenement Penthouse suite.

  The lock on Zito’s door was the typical flimsy hunk of metal found on most tenement doors. Quinn figured a pro would’ve put a better piece of hardware on his door. Maybe Zito thought a better lock would draw attention. Or maybe the whore was lying about this guy.

  Quinn didn’t have the luxury of maybes. There was only one way to find out.

  He put his ear against the door and listened. All he heard was some faint snoring.

  Good. Sleepers were easier to sneak up on.

  He checked the hall for any bystanders, then pulled his .45. He put his shoulder against the door and pushed. Slow. Steady pressure.

  The wood creaked, then the lock snapped. He tensed for the sound of metal hitting the floor. Nothing. He listened for the snoring to stop. It didn’t.

  Quinn opened the door and slid inside the apartment. A floorboard creaked, but Zito kept snoring away. Quinn closed the door with a quiet click and took a moment to get his bearings.

  A torn, yellowed shade tried in vain to block out the morning sun. An old painting of a three-mast ship hung crooked on the wall by the window, faded and blackened. The wall paper was yellowed like the window shade and peeling. One leg of the bureau was crooked and the whole piece was warped.

  Quinn could tell Zito wasn’t much of a decorator, but he was a music fan. A brand new RCA radio and Victrola cabinet stood prominently in the corner of the room. The shiny, new cherry wood finish was in stark contrast to its surroundings. Zito must’ve had a big payday to drop coin on a new music box. Maybe Chi-Chi’s whore had been right about this guy after all.

  The snoring grew loud again as Quinn’s eyes adjusted to the weak light. The rest of the room looked like the apartment of a man who’d just come home from a hard day’s work – if that work involved gunplay.

  Dark clothes and a cap were tossed over the back of the chair near the door. That matched the description of what people saw the shooter wearing as he ran out of Ames’. Quinn spotted a gun cleaning kit on a table with grease covered cleaning rags balled up next to it.

  Quinn’s saw a naked man asleep on a Murphy bed near the window. He figured this must be Carmine Zito. He watched the gunman sleep for a while. If this really was Zito, all the descriptions he’d heard about him were wrong.

  He was about thirty five or forty. Average height and build. Black curly hair and a good head start on a two-day growth. A long scar ran down the left side of his face from his jaw to his hairline. Just the way Chi Chi’s whore said.

  To Quinn, Zito looked like any of the millions of other men who went to work in the slaughterhouses, grocery stores and fish markets in New York City every morning. He didn’t look like the kind of man who killed for money. But the best ones never did. The ability to blend in was probably Zito’s greatest weapon.

  Blending in had never been an option for Quinn.

  Quinn saw Zito was sleeping flat on his back, naked, slack-jawed and snoring deeply. Normally Quinn would’ve just wasted the guy and toss the room for clues. Keeping him alive could complicate things. Fatty’s shooting was already complicated enough.

  But Quinn needed answers, not corpses. He should at least question the bastard, find out who hired him and why. He could always kill him later.

  Quinn saw Zito’s left hand was tucked beneath the pillow, probably wrapped around a gun, or at least right next to one. Quinn slept the same way.

  He couldn’t grab the gun without reaching over Zito. That would put him in a vulnerable spot if the man woke up.

  Quinn had to make the gun come to him. He holstered his .45 again. Time to wake up Sleeping Beauty.

  Quinn drove a fist down hard into Zito’s stomach. The sleeping man jackknifed up in bed, bellowing, hugging his aching belly with both arms. Quinn grabbed him by the back of the neck with his right hand and jerked him forward as he stabbed beneath the pillow with his left.

  He pulled out a .22 revolver - the same kind of slug Archie had pulled out of Fatty the night before. Quinn flipped the gun butt-side-out and brained Zito on the back of the head with it. The gunman’s list of ailments was growing fast.

  Quinn toed one of the kitchen chairs to the side of the bed and sat down. Zito cradled his head and gut and whimpered. The poor bastard had just gotten himself yanked out of dreamland by a gut punch and a pistol whipping. It wasn’t exactly breakfast in bed, but it was all Quinn had on the menu that morning.

  Zito rubbed his head and gut at the same time. “Who the hell are you?” “The last guy on earth you’ll ever see unless you’re smart enough to tell me what I want to know.”

  Zito squinted at him. “Wait a minute...I know you.” His eyes opened

  wider. “Christ, you’re Terry Quinn, ain’t
you?”

  Quinn kept Zito’s .22 leveled at him while he fished out his cigarette

  case, selected a Lucky and lit it with one hand. “You know me?”

  “I know what you done to Charlie Murphy,” Zito said. “And what you done John Calabrese up in the Bronx.”

  Quinn let out a long stream of smoke through his nose. “Some of my best work.”

  Zito’s eyes stayed wide. “What the hell do you want with me, mister?”

  “You shot Fatty Corcoran, dimwit,” Quinn accused. “What did you expect? A dozen roses?”

  Quinn watched Zito forget all about his sore head and gut. His eyes went vacant, then darted around the room. His mouth started quivering and his hands started to shake.

  Zito stammered. “Th...that fat man in Ames’ was Fatty Corcoran?” “As if you didn’t know.”

  “Jesus,” Zito whispered. He inched to the far side of the bed, away from Quinn. The trembling got worse. “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Listen, mister, you gotta believe me. I didn’t mean to...”

  “You didn’t mean to what? You didn’t mean to shoot him or you didn’t mean to leave him alive? Which is it?”

  Zito popped sweat. “I...I didn’t mean to shoot Fatty Corcoran.” He fidgeted with the sheet like a little kid who’d just pissed the bed. Quinn wondered if he had. “I...I mean I shot him, yeah, but I didn’t mean to shoot him.” He ran his hand nervously over his unruly hair. “Fatty Fucking Corcoran? Oh, sweet Jesus, what did I do?”

  Zito’s whimpering surprised Quinn. He held back giving Zito another slap to steady him down. He’d seen a lot of liars act this way before he’d killed them, but something about Zito’s act rang genuine. He decided to switch tactics. Keep the guinea off balance.

  “Take it easy,” Quinn said. “If I’d wanted you dead, you would’ve woke up that way.” He tossed his cigarete case on the bed. His lighter followed.

  The .22 stayed level.

  Zito looked at the case, then at Quinn. He slowly reached for the cigarettes with an unsteady hand.

  “That’s better,” Quinn approved. “No sense in getting too nervous, Carmine. You and me are just a couple of guys chewing the fat is all. So just lay back, relax and tell me everything from the beginning. Who hired you to kill Fatty?”

  Zito was shaking bad now, worse than before. Quinn wondered if he was going into shock. Zito barely got the cigarette in his mouth. He fumbled with the lighter. But Quinn wasn’t dumb enough to fall for that old trick. He saw how it could play out: reach over to give him a light and Zito makes a play for the gun. Fuck him if he can’t light it himself.

  Zito gave up trying to light it and tossed cigarette and lighter aside. “What’s the use? You ain’t gonna believe me anyhow. You’ll just plug me

  anyway. Christ!”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Who hired you to shoot Fatty?”

  “Nobody,” Zito quickly waived his hands. “I...I mean I used to pull jobs for the O’Bannion boys in Chicago, the Kansas City combine and so on. I get on a train, do the job, get paid and come back. But that kinda work’s been slow lately, and I ate into most of what I had squirreled away for a rainy day. I was getting pretty desperate...”

  “My heart bleeds. Get to the fucking point.”

  Zito took a deep breath and began again. “A couple of days ago, I woke up and found a paper bag on the floor at the foot of my bed. Somebody must’ve climbed down the fire escape and tossed it in the window while I was sleeping. I opened it up and found a thousand bucks in tens and twenties in there with a note card inside.”

  Quinn hadn’t been buying the story until then. “A note? What kind of note?”

  “See for yourself,” Zito said, pointing quickly over to the RCA cabinet.

  “I put it in there with the record player after I read it.”

  Quinn looked over at the cabinet. It still looked too formal for a dump like this. Just as Quinn knew there was a gun under that pillow, he figured Zito probably had one or two firearms stashed in other places in the apartment as well. “Anything in there I should know about?”

  “I got a .45 stashed next to the player. Just in case.”

  Quinn slowly got out of his chair. He kept the .22 trained on Zito’s chest. He peeked behind the cabinet. No extra wires coming out of it. It didn’t look rigged or booby trapped.

  Quinn opened the lid slowly. He found the .45 nestled against the turntable, just like Zito said. He also saw a small white envelope about the size of a calling card next to it. He pocketed Zito’s .45 and took the note back to his chair. He pulled the card out of the envelope with one hand.

  The other still held the .22 on Zito.

  The handwriting on the card was impressively neat. It read:

  I have it on good authority that you are a man who knows how to solve problems. I have a problem that requires solving of a permanent nature. Please accept this one thousand dollars as a retainer for your services. Do a good job, and you shall receive twice this amount afterward.

  Regrettably, it will be impossible to give you much advanced notice of when I may need you, and for what purpose. I shall give you all the notice I can. Please remain in your apartment each evening for the next three days so I will know how to find you.

  You have a reputation for discretion, Mr. Zito. Please, keep it that way.

  Talk soon,

  Me.

  Quinn re-read the note. The tone was fancy and stiff. He couldn’t understand why anyone would write down anything like this in the first place. “Any idea on who sent this?”

  Zito shook his head. “Half the people who hire me can’t hardly read, much less write. I don’t exactly advertise, either, so I don’t know how they found me. Normally, I’d be steamed about someone sneaking into my place while I slept, but a thousand bucks does a lot to water down my temper, especially these days.”

  Quinn pocketed the note. “So, you get the note and the money. Then what?”

  “I waited, just like he told me to,” Zito said. “A grand is more money than I’ve seen in one place in a long time. But I wanted to be ready so that when the guy came back, I could grab him and find out how he found me.

  Then yesterday, around five or so, someone bangs on my door. By the time I get over there, there was nobody in the hallway. Just a sack laying against my door. When I open it up, it has another grand in it and another note.” Zito took another note card from the table next to his Murphy bed and handed it to Quinn. “Here. Read it for yourself.”

  The handwriting was completely different: bold, blocky letters. It read:

  ames pool hall, tonight, 11:00 PM. get there early. give $500 to vinny ceretti at the bar. we know you know who he is. make sure he gets all the money or you don’t get the rest of yours. when vinnie leaves, kill the fat man playing pool. we’ll be watching.

  Quinn re read the note. Two notes, two different people. No way of telling why or who wrote them. No sense in wasting time trying to figure it out yet.

  “You knew Ceretti?” Quinn asked. “How’d they know that?”

  Zito shrugged. “I don’t know. We wasn’t pals or nothing. I just knew

  him from around. You know how it is.”

  It made sense to Quinn. Ceretti was always sniffing around, looking to scrounge up a buck. He scurried a broad path. “What did you do next?” “I showed up early,” Zito continued. “I waited until Johnny the Kid started playing pool. I spotted Ceretti, stood behind him so he couldn’t see me. Ceretti’s a rat and he woulda given me up in five seconds flat after the shooting if he saw me. I gave him the money, told him to scram. I shot the fat guy playing pool, just like the note told me to do. It was too crowded for a head shot, so I got in close and shot him as best I could. If I knew the guy was that fat, I woulda brought the .45 instead to do the job right. But I’d been paid to do a job and I went to work with what I had.” Zito caught himself and added: “Shit, I...I mean, in this case, I’m glad I didn’t have the .45 because...”

  “Skip it. You mean to tell
me you didn’t recognize Fatty when you saw him?”

  “Sure, I know who he is, but I never saw him before. If I’d known who it was, I never would’ve done the job. And I sure as hell wouldn’t still be here if I did.”

  Quinn sat quiet for a while. He watched Zito fidget as he ran through the gunman’s story in his mind.

  The whole damned thing was so ridiculous, it just might be true. The note. The small caliber weapon he brought to do the job. Things weren’t adding up to a hoax. If Zito knew who he’d hit, he would’ve run. Why take the chance writing the notes himself? Quinn could’ve just as easily killed him and found them when he tossed the room after.

  Things were looking up for Mr. Zito. “So, you shoot Fatty with the pop gun, get downstairs and take off. Then what?”

  Zito shrugged. “I...I came back here and someone had thrown another bag of money through my window. Two g’s this time, just like they promised. No note. A lot of it was in singles. I didn’t get the chance to count it, but I’m sure it’s close to two grand. I put the money under the bed with the first thousand they gave me and went to sleep. Next thing I know, you’re giving me the wake up call.”

  Quinn still had one question. “What did you do with Johnny the Kid?” “Nothing. What would I bother with him for?”

  Quinn saw Zito was telling the truth. Again. “You said the money they gave you is under the bed?”

  “Almost three grand, except for the five hundred I gave Ceretti.”

  “Show me.” Quinn cocked back the hammer on the .22. “And do it real slow.”

  “With the beatin’ you gave me, slow’s the only speed I got.”

  He creaked off the bed, cradling his gut. The naked man kept his other arm away from his body and in full view. “I’ll lift the bed up with my leg, nice and easy. When the bed comes up, you’ll see a shotgun on top of the bag. I’m not going anywhere near it, so don’t get nervous.”

  Zito slipped his foot under the bed and eased it up. The springs caught and pulled it back into the wall with a loud snap. A large duffel bag and a .12 gauge lay on the floor, just as Zito had said. The Italian backed up against his RCA cabinet, as far away from the shotgun as he could possibly go in the tiny room.