Quinn spotted Sanders down front, just to the right side of center ring
on the aisle. His normal spot.
He spotted two goons he didn’t recognize guarding the entrance to
Sanders’ section. He figured they must be the last two shooters from the Kansas City squad. Sanders must’ve held them back in case some of Doyle’s boys blamed him for Archie’s death. The goons eyeballed everyone who passed by and had their backs to the ring. Quinn bet they were looking for him.
Quinn ducked down two sections before Sanders’, then cut across through the row. Everyone recognized him and gladly moved for Terry Quinn. Sanders’ goons kept facing the wrong way and never saw a thing.
He saw Sanders holding court with several low-lifes, the kind who were always looking to hitch their wagons to the next big thing. Sanders was the biggest thing going and the creeps were all over him, laughing too loud at Sanders’ mumbled punch lines.
Quinn stood in the aisle a couple of rows behind Sanders’ seat. He kept his hands in his overcoat pockets. He was wide enough to almost fill the aisle and blocked the view of people behind him. But no one heckled him to sit down.
Because you didn’t heckle Terry Quinn. ‘Evening, Frank.”
The flunkies’ craned their necks back to see Quinn. Their phony smiles faded. Their laughter choked off.
Sanders kept his eyes on the ring and took a drag. “Hello, Terry. You missed a good undercard.”
Quinn looked down at the five flunkies. “Beat it.”
They scurried out of their seats and fled up the stairs. Quinn lowered himself into a seat in the row just behind Sanders. “Nice crew you had there, Frank. Real stand up boys, just like you.”
The two Kansas City goons ran down and flanked Quinn. “Want us to take care of this, Frank?”
Sanders kept watching the fight and waved them back. “Nothing to worry about, boys. I’ll call for you if I need you.”
They went back up to their spots. This time they’d be facing Quinn and the ring.
That’s just what Quinn wanted.
Sanders said, “You’ve got a lot of balls coming here tonight, Terry.”
“Balls got nothing to do with it. I’m paying proper respect to the new boss of the Doyle mob.”
“I know you won’t believe it, but I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”
“Of course not. Because Archie’s the type to roll over and let you take over.”
“Nothing to joke about, Terry. The way he’s been lately? All that nonsense about going legit in a few years? Puttin’ Al Smith in the White House? I half think he wanted this to happen but was too thick to stand down. Too thick or too proud.”
“And now he’s dead, and you’re not.”
“Go ahead. Sneer if you want to.” Sanders flicked his ash into the aisle. “You’ve been around for five fuckin’ years. I’ve known the guy for over forty. I loved Archie like a brother. I knew everything there was to know about the man. His balls got us where we are, but his ego was starting to cost us.”
“Bullshit.”
“Keep saying that, kid. You just might start believing it. Everything’s
going to hell. Speakeasies goin’ belly up, the law’s cracking down and the politicians are biting the hand what feeds them. And what does Archie do? He pushes Al for another shot at the White House. It was time for him to go and you know it. All he needed was a little shove is all.”
“You shove hard, Frankie.”
Sanders pointed a crooked finger at him. “None of this had to happen. Fatty gettin’ shot was just supposed to be a warning. That’s why Zito only used a .22. Archie was supposed to head upstate and leave me in charge. Then Ira and I move on Rothman and Ira’s in charge over there. We box Archie out and that’s that. No bloodshed. No one dies. But when Archie wouldn’t leave, the whole fuckin’ thing went sideways.”
“You’ve got big dreams, Frank. Growing here and in Kansas City. Your friends out there tell you to hire Zito?”
Sanders laughed a nasty laugh. “Fatty told you about that, eh? They gave me ideas, but they didn’t know what I was planning. Wallace picked Zito and made the initial cash drop. I paid him the rest out of what I had on hand in the cab stand.”
Sanders stopped laughing. “You know, Fatty better watch his step, too or he’ll catch one in the head next time. And not from Zito. From that choice Kansas City beef I got watching me up there.”
“Hell, I’ve been killing them all week. Archie nailed one just before he died.”
“I’m not surprised. Archie was the toughest bastard I ever knew. If he’d only just been smart enough to let me grow when I asked, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“One thing’s still bugging me. Where does Wallace fit into all of this?”
“What do you care?” Sanders asked. “You’re gonna be dead soon anyway.”
Quinn smiled. “Everyone dies sometimes, Ace. When’s Ira Shapiro’s turn?”
For the first time since Quinn sat down, Sanders turned to look up at him. “You know, you never were as dumb as you were supposed to be.”
“It’s because I’m beautiful. How long does Ira have? It can’t be long because you didn’t go through all this nonsense to share the spotlight with anyone.”
Sanders shrugged. “We’re being seen as heroes. The two men who helped avert a war on the streets of the city.”
“Make sure they spell your name right on the plaque. So, when’s Ira’s departure date?”
Sanders went back to watching the fight. “About fifteen minutes from now. I got a dame dressed up as a nurse to inject him with an empty needle. Archie would’ve been impressed.”
“Get him before he gets you and with an arena full of witnesses to say you were here.”
“Like I said, Archie would’ve been impressed.”
Quinn let Sanders watch the fight for a bit. It was a bad fight, just a
couple of middleweights pawing at each other, afraid to throw. Then, he asked, “When do I get mine?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Sanders said. “Wallace wants you done quick. But you’ve been loyal to Archie for years and deserve the chance to get away clean. So I’m giving you a choice: blow town tonight and never look back. Or, you’ll be dead before sunrise.”
Quinn leaned forward and spoke into Sanders’ ear. “Even if I’m dead by sunrise, I’ll still out live you, fucko.”
“And here I was, thinking you was a smart kid.” Sanders kept his eyes on the fight and raised his hand to beckon the two goons. “Damned shame.” “If you’re not waving for your two friends from Kansas City, you’ll be waiving a long time. They’re dead.”
Sanders jerked around in his seat and looked up the aisle, then all over the arena.
Quinn didn’t have to look. He knew they were dead.
“The biggest trouble with hiring a guy like Carmine Zito is that it’s tough to keep an eye out for a guy when you don’t know what he looks like. It’s even worse when he’s real good at not being noticed.
Sanders was on his feet now, his eyes wild. “Bullshit.”
Quinn grinned. “Keep saying that, kid, and you might start believing it. Zito doesn’t like being used and he thinks you used him to shoot Fatty. You probably didn’t think I’d find him, but I did. You probably figured I’d kill him if I found him.” Quinn shook his head. “But I didn’t. He doesn’t like you very much, Frank. And he’s going to kill you. Here. Tonight. And you’ll never see it coming because you don’t know what he looks like.”
Sanders kept looking at the crowd, his head moving like a chicken pecking at birdseed. Thousands of men of various shapes and sizes. Some talking to each other. Some screaming at the fighters in the ring. None of them looked like a hired killer.
The good ones never do.
Quinn loved every moment of it. “All those faces and any one of them might be Zito. But he’ll introduce himself to you soon enough, Frank. When he sticks a knife into your belly.”
&n
bsp; Sanders scrambled into the aisle and ran up the stairs.
Quinn touched the brim of his hat and yelled after him. “Give my regards to Shapiro and Rothman.”
Quinn watched Sanders hobble up the aisle, frantically looking around him for his assassin. He barged through a row of fans cheering the fight and stepped on dozens of feet, knocking men and little kids out of his way.
Quinn lost sight of him when he got to the far side of the section and bolted up some stairs.
Quinn found an untouched bag of popcorn left behind by one of Sanders’ stooges. He sat back and began to watch the fight. It was the first thing he’d eaten all day. In a couple of days, actually. He was always amazed at how danger could kill an appetite.
Both fighters flinched when a woman’s blood curdling scream pierced the hum of the crowd, followed by calls of ‘Murder! Murder!’
The spectators jumped to their feet and looked toward where the screaming was coming from. Some people started to leave, but most stayed where they were.
Quinn stood slowly and walked up the aisle. By the time he got to the top of the hallway, he recognized a cop who was running past him. “Hey, Murphy. What’s all the commotion about?”
“Someone just knifed Frank Sanders on his way out of the building, slit his belly wide open,” the young officer said. “Two other clowns were just found with their throats cut in the bathroom. I never seen so much blood in my life.”
“Anyone see who did it?” Quinn asked.
“Nah, the bastard ran off into the crowd. But we’ll find him, I promise you.”
Quinn doubted it.
He made his way over to a phone booth and called Wendell Bixby. After a couple of minutes, the newspaper’s secretary got him on the line. “Hey, Terry. Howard Rothman and Archie Doyle, both R.I.P. Sorry for your loss. Care to give me the scoop on who’s next?”
“You get an address on Simon Wallace?”
Quinn heard Bixby fumbling threw his notepad. “He’s a real difficult
guy to pin down. I talked to a couple of doormen at some of the places he’s gone. Two of them said he’s bragged about how he’s got a suite at the Plaza when he’s drunk a couple of times, but ...”
Quinn hung up the phone. Doyle had people at the Plaza. Finding the room number wouldn’t be hard.
Rothman was dead. Sanders was dead. Shapiro was probably dead by now, too.
But Simon Wallace was alive.
And Quinn was going to do something about that.
THE DOORMAN at the Plaza was into Fatty Corcoran for five bills. Quinn told him the debt was forgiven if he told him where Wallace lived. The doorman kicked loose in record time: Suite 1001 but Wallace always had a guard posted in the hall outside.
Quinn had seen the bodyguard. He wasn’t worried.
Still, it paid to be safe. Quinn had the elevator boy take him up to the eleventh floor, then he walked down one flight of stairs to the tenth floor. Quinn drew his .45 and paused at the door on the tenth floor. He listened for voices, footfalls, anything. Nothing.
Quinn eased the door open slow. He was lucky it didn’t creak or make any noise. He took a long, slow look down the hallway.
The same stocky longshoreman Wallace had brought with him to the Lounge. He was sound asleep in front of a pair of white double doors at the end of the hallway. Wallace’s suite: 1001. An empty tray of food was on the floor at his feet. An open newspaper at his side.
Quinn liked double doors. They popped right open if you hit them hard enough.
He had an idea.
Quinn stepped into the hallway and let the door close behind him with a quiet click. He kept his gun down as moved toward the sleeping guard. As he got closer, Quinn saw the ‘Please, Do Not Disturb’ sign dangling from the brass doorknob of the double doors.
Someone was about to be very disappointed.
Quinn dropped the .45 into his overcoat pocket. He backhanded the sleeping man off the chair. Quinn picked him up off the floor and drove his knee into his stomach twice. He grabbed him by the back of the pants and collar and whipped him around, throwing him through the middle of the double doors. They splintered wide open.
Quinn pulled his gun from his pocket as he walked through the shattered doorway. He walked on the unconscious bodyguard and into the entrance hall of the suite.
Simon Wallace was on a bed with red silk sheets and pillows. He had two naked black girls with him. Thy looked a few years shy of eighteen. They were screaming as they tumbled off the bed onto the floor together, holding each other to hide their nakedness.
Wallace glared out at Quinn from the bed; the red silk sheet barely covered his pale, thin body. His brown hair was mussed. His face was flushed. He looked nothing like the powered, coifed dude who had strode into the Lounge a few days before.
Quinn knew hate when he saw it. He was seeing it now.
Quinn pointed the gun right at him. “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
Wallace didn’t say a word. His dark little eyes quivered beneath his brow.
Then he threw his head back and laughed a long, deep belly laugh not unlike the laugh Rothman had given in Doyle’s office. But this laugh was deep and genuine.
At least it made the black girls on the floor stop screaming.
Wallace laughed until he collapsed back into the sea of red pillows. He clapped his hands like a fat kid at a birthday party. Except Wallace was neither fat or a kid.
“Bravo, Terry Quinn, bravo, ” Wallace wiped the tears from his eyes. “You really have exceeded all of my expectations.” He motioned down at the two naked black girls on the floor. “This doesn’t involve them, does it?”
The girls looked up at Quinn hopefully. Quinn said, “Get going.”
The girls grabbed up whatever clothes they could find on the floor and
pressed it to themselves as they ran from the room. Quinn didn’t watch them go. He kept his gun and his eyes on Wallace instead.
“You’re sense of timing is really extraordinary,” Wallace sighed. “You barged in here just as things were beginning to get interesting.”
Quinn didn’t care about his love life. “Why did you help Sanders kill Archie Doyle and Howard Rothman?”
Wallace laughed again. “Enough of the small talk, eh? Ah, poor, poor boy. A guard dog that’s lost its master is the saddest canine of all. You know, if you weren’t pointing that gun at my head, I might be inclined to pity you.”
“Stick pity up your ass. Why did you help Sanders and Shapiro kill Doyle and Rothman?”
“I haven’t helped anyone kill anyone. They did it all themselves. All I did was push them in the right direction. I was their muse, if you will.”
He slowly stretched for a large gold cigarette box on his nightstand. Quinn fired. The box disintegrated, sending cigarettes everywhere.
Wallace yanked back his hand and pinned himself back against the headboard. “For Christ’s sake! I was just getting a cigarette!”
Cigarettes from the box had scattered all over the floor and the sheets. “Answer my question or you catch the next one in the belly.”
“Of course,” Wallace threw up his hands. “You’re cross. And why shouldn’t you be? After all, Archie Doyle is dead and that’s put you in a bad mood.”
“I’m getting real tired of asking this. Why did...”
Wallace surprised him by actually interrupting him. “This is your biggest failing,
Terry. Your inflexibility. It’s what drove poor Sean Baker away you know. He never thought anything he did was good enough for you or Archie. He looked up to you, you know. Much the way I believe Johnny looked up to Ira. Both so young and eager to please, but slow to think. And so easy to turn.”
Quinn fired a round into the headboard about an inch away from Wallace’s skull.
Wallace flinched, but not like before. “I wouldn’t do that again if I were you. I might panic and do something stupid, like lunge at your gun.” He folded his arms across his pale, bare chest. “You’d kil
l me, of course, but then you’d never get an answer to that one precious question that’s been gnawing at you: my involvement in this tawdry melodrama of yours.”
Quinn didn’t know how to handle Wallace. Most guys he went up against either fought back or cowered. Wallace did neither. He just threw words at him. “So?” Quinn said. “Start talking.”
“And miss witnessing such a rare occurrence of your powers of deductive reasoning being brought to bear?” Wallace shook his head. “I’ve rather enjoyed your transformation from button man to detective. I’d like to see how far you got. You go first.”
“You’re in no position to bargain.”
“And neither are you,” Wallace laced his fingers behind his head. “Now, give me your idea of what happened or I keep my mouth shut.”
Quinn didn’t like following Wallace’s lead. But the little bastard was right. He had to know where Wallace fit into all of this. He had to know how far the rot went so he could cut it out.
“Sanders and Shapiro wanted to take over, so they hired you to help them do it. You arranged Fatty getting shot by Zito and helped them hire those Kansas City chopper squads to hit Archie and Rothman. Ira was closer to Rothman every day than Sanders was to Archie, so you flipped Baker to turn traitor. Sanders and Shapiro take over and everyone lives happily ever after.”
Wallace shook his head in admiration. “You pieced together more than I thought you would. Sanders underestimated you and so did Shapiro. I made the mistake of listening to them.” He smiled. “I probably should’ve killed you first.”
“I wish you’d tried.”
“There’s only one thing wrong with your hypothesis. You believe that I worked for Shapiro and Sanders. Not so. They worked for me.”
Quinn’s eyes narrowed. That didn’t make sense. “What?”
“Of course. I have lots of people who work for me in New York City. Shapiro, Sanders, Baker. Even Detective James Halloran of the New York Police Department. Or Big Jim as you call him. He’s one of my best employees.” He looked over Quinn’s right shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Jim?”
Quinn felt the cold gun metal press into the back of his neck.
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