by Michael Mayo
That time in the warehouse stretched out in an acid combination of boredom and fear. It ended when another guy came in from the hallway and the six bohunks sat up straight. It was Luther, Klapprott’s number one thug, the big shit that I’d gone a round with in the cellar of my speak. He looked nasty and happy to see me, tied down as I was. The moment I saw him, I realized it was likely that I’d die in that warehouse. That sobered me. I tried not to let them see it, though if they’d looked, they would have seen sweat on my forehead. Luther had small bandages on his nose and hand, and he held his left shoulder stiffly. He barked some kind of order, and the other six stood up. He was carrying a red leather case with a leather handle. It sounded heavy when he set it on the table beside me. I glanced at him through half-closed eyes like I was still goofy.
Luther said something to the youngest of the thugs and pointed at me. The kid looked confused and worried. Luther backhanded me across the chops. I moaned and drooled blood.
The kid stood in front of me and haltingly said, “You will say to us what is the money.”
I stayed stupid and moaned again. Another guy came around from somewhere behind me and threw a bucket of water right in my face, half of it going down my throat. My eyes sprang open and I coughed, and they knew I was back among the living.
The kid said again, “You will say to us what is the money.”
There was some more back and forth in German, and finally one of the older guys challenged Luther. Seemed to me there was some question as to who was really in charge. It ended when the older guy said to me, “Where is the money? Tell us and this will be over.” It came out something like “Ver ist duh moony?” He went on, “If you do not tell us what you know, Luther will cause you great pain.”
As he was asking it, I was thinking that if I told them where I thought the money was and I was right, then they’d get it, then come back and kill me. If I was wrong, they’d come back and pound me some more.
Something about what he’d said in English caused a lot more talk in German with most of them chiming in. While they were yakking away, I caught some movement behind them and saw someone peek out of the hallway, someone with a soup strainer mustache. Arch Malloy, maybe. Whoever it was, he ducked back so quickly I couldn’t tell anything more about him. I tried like hell to convince myself it was Malloy.
I knew I couldn’t play dopey anymore, but I didn’t have to say anything. I spat blood on the floor and stared at the older guy. He didn’t like it.
Luther shoved him aside, gave me an open-handed smack, ripped my tie off, and tore open my shirt. He took off his coat, revealing a big shoulder holster with a broom-handle Mauser under his arm. He clapped a clammy hand across my throat to hold me still and hit me hard in the stomach. It knocked the wind out of me, and I sprayed his face with blood. He cursed and smacked me again, then he went for his red case. He barked more orders.
The older guy said, “He has a device, a—” He stopped, searching for a word. “A machine that explodes dynamite. It is an electrical.”
Luther was screwing two long wire leads to terminals on a box that was just bigger than his fists. It had a T-shaped handle on top. Luther said something more, something the older guy didn’t like, and held out the wires. The older guy took them unhappily. Luther kept talking and indicated that he should hold them to my chest. As the older guy took a hesitant step toward me, Luther gave the handle a sharp twist. The guy froze with a grimace on his face, yelled, and threw up his hands. That jerked one of the wires off the detonator—if that’s what it was. Luther laughed like hell. So did some of the others.
The older guy was steamed and ripped into Luther with a rush of German. I couldn’t understand a word, but I knew “Go fuck yourself” was part of it. The two of them stood chest-to-chest for a short moment until the older guy broke it off and went up the steps to the hallway and out. Luther said something nasty to his back and looked to the others for support. Most of them nodded in agreement. Whatever they were saying, I didn’t like it.
I liked it less when Luther turned back to me. He took off his coat, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves. He reconnected the wire to the detonator and tried to get one of the others to take the wires. They laughed and backed off.
Luther called the first kid over again, and he went back to his broken English. “You will say to us what is the money.”
I shifted my feet a little to get them underneath me and sat up. Luther was glad, I think, that I didn’t answer. He rushed right up into my face, trying to make me flinch back. When he got close, I jerked forward. I couldn’t stand, but my hands had enough play under the friction tape to stretch to his belt. I grabbed it and pulled. He lurched into me. Recalling what Connie did, I went for the closest vulnerable spot and bit down as hard as I could on his nose.
He howled. I bit down harder and ground my teeth and twisted my neck. Somebody started shooting.
I wish I could tell you I remember details like the savage taste of his blood, but I don’t. I remember how great it felt to hear the gunshots. If the other Nazi thugs had guns, they’d show them off, and these guys didn’t. That meant whoever was shooting was on my side. And when Luther rolled off me, there they were—Arch Malloy and Mercer Weeks.
Malloy fired twice at the ceiling, and most of the Kraut thugs, led by Luther, ran to the back of the warehouse. Mercer Weeks came down the steps to where I was. Four of the biggest guys fanned out in front of him, ignoring Malloy.
I’ve never seen anybody do what Mercer Weeks did then. Too experienced to hit a guy with a bare fist, he worked with knucks on one hand and a length of pipe in the other and those heavy brogans on his feet. He was long and rangy, but somehow he made himself compact. I watched him cut down three guys, sliding through the brawl like smoke. I never saw the pipe raised. I never saw the fist cocked. Three of those big beefy guys went down in less time than I can say it. The fourth ran.
Weeks pulled out a folding knife, sliced through the tape, and said, “You sure find your way into a hell of a lot of trouble, Quinn.”
Weeks said he’d been following me in his car since I left Jacob’s apartment early that morning. By then, we were upstairs from the speak in the kitchen of the Cruzon Grill. Vittorio did a good lunch business and didn’t want us to take up a prime table. Besides, the way I’d been beat up and drenched and had my shirt torn, I’d scare the paying customers. So they made room for us in a corner of the busy kitchen. I had a ham sandwich and coffee. Weeks and Malloy had rib steaks, fries, and beer. A good lunch was the least I could do for a couple of guys who’d saved my ass.
As Weeks made his way through the meal, he told me the guy in the brown suit and glasses had been waiting for me when I got in the cab outside. Actually, Weeks spotted the guy and his partner behind us when we went up to the East Side from the speak. On the way back downtown, Weeks followed them following me to the diner in Times Square. After that, when I got on the el, he guessed that I was heading home and beat me back to the Chelsea. He was there to see the two of them sneak up to the wrought-iron balcony and break in through the window. Weeks didn’t know anything about the other guys who picked the lock and came in from the hall, but he did see the brown suit come hustling back out of the window a minute or so later. He waited in his car through the ambulance and Ellis and the cops and finally, a couple of hours later, the arrival of Klapprott in his Caddy Phaeton. Then he was behind us on our little drive down toward Battery Park and, it shames me to admit, he was witness to my humiliating Mickey Finn.
Here’s where it started to get interesting. Weeks saw them drop me at the warehouse, and he watched the guys who were working there clear out. When the first of the Kraut thugs showed up, Weeks decided to call the speak to find out if they knew what I was up to. Frenchy answered and said he’d just got off the line with an unnamed party who told them he was holding me and would trade me for the fifty thousand dollars that was hidden in the ce
llar. Frenchy had two hours to deliver the money. Frenchy and Weeks talked it over and came to the conclusion that the whole thing could be a trick to get them out of the speak. Remember, neither Frenchy nor Weeks knew who Klapprott was. Not then. They’d seen him, but Frenchy hadn’t heard his voice and Weeks didn’t know his name. Weeks told Frenchy where I was, and Malloy volunteered to help while Frenchy and Fat Joe stayed at the speak.
After Weeks had gone through that for me, Malloy piped in, “Describe this Klapprott character.”
“About forty,” I said, “natty dresser, blond, pale eyes, carries a Malacca cane. Both times I’ve seen him, he was wearing calfskin gloves.”
Malloy nodded. “He’s a partner, a ‘silent’ partner they said, in the group of Germans that own the warehouses. He’s been around now and again.”
“Ever see him with a big lug, name of Luther? He’s a lush, and he doesn’t have a nose. Well, he did until about an hour ago.”
“Most of the guys who worked there were big, and they were all Krauts—not that I hold that against a man. And as I told you, it was not completely out of the ordinary for the management to tell every man jack of us to vacate the premises for an hour, and I mean that day or night. You see, those three warehouses are about as busy at night as they are during the day. It’s true that I’ve not worked at any other warehouses, and I didn’t work at that one for very long, but it struck me as odd. And something else that struck me was that there seems to be an unusually large number of small items. You think of a warehouse as a place that holds vast numbers of this, that, and whatever, but Number 115 isn’t nearly as large as Number 117 and Number 120, and I seldom saw items that couldn’t be handled by one man or two at most.
“So it’s good that I’m done with the place, assuming, that is, I am once again employed.”
Having just pulled my ass out of the wringer, he chose a good time to bring up the subject. I said, “Come in around four thirty. Frenchy will show you the ropes. And you’d best bring the Luger.”
I turned to Weeks and said, “Mercer, let’s talk in my office.”
Downstairs, I found a note from Marie Therese on my desk. It said, Anna wants you to know she is at the Lombardy, Suite 512. I could tell she had been pissed off when she wrote it. I sat down and worried that I was walking around in a torn shirt and blood-stained suit. The idea of changing clothes again—for the second time that early in the day—really pissed me off. The ruin of a good suit by a couple of Kraut asswipes pissed me off even more.
Mercer Weeks spread out on the divan, pulled his works out of his pocket, and rolled a smoke. “Curious, isn’t it,” he said, “that this fellow Klapprott thinks you’ve got his money.”
“His story is that it’s an inheritance that was stolen from some kid who wants to donate it to this outfit Klapprott runs, the Free Society of Teutonia. They’ve got something to do with the Nazis over in Germany.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“The guys that were working me over—the guys that you and Malloy took care of—they were Krauts. All I know is they think I’ve got their money, and Jacob thinks I’ve got his money. That’s one part of all this, right? But there’s something else you’re interested in and for that, I’m the man you want to talk to.”
Weeks looked baffled. I turned around to the safe behind the desk and dialed the combination. The package was on top. I took it out and put it on the edge of my desk close to him. “I think this is yours.”
He shot me a suspicious look through the smoke and touched the open flap of the cardboard box like it might explode.
I said, “You can see that the wrong address is on the label. I don’t know how long it was at the post office before Mr. Smiles brought it in. That was day before yesterday.”
He took out one of the ledgers, and when he saw what it was, all the color drained out of his face.
“Sweet Jesus, Benny’s books.” He put down the ledger and took out everything else in the box. It was nothing but books. He riffled through the pages and the loose sheets of paper inside. When he looked up at me again, his voice was hoarse and hard. “What do you know about these, Quinn?”
“Nothing. Until last night, when Jacob told me the story about Benny being snatched, I didn’t even know he kept books like these. I didn’t know what the hell they were when I opened the box, much less that they had anything to do with you. The Chicago address, the stuff about paper napkins, I don’t know what it is. Do you?”
Weeks sagged back on the divan, and his face softened but only for a second. Then he said, “OK, this means there is a chance that Benny is still alive. After all these months, I don’t know how the hell that could be, but maybe he is. And that’s what’s important to me and Jacob. We need Benny more than we need the money.”
That much I’d figured out already. It didn’t take a genius. “Maybe I’ve got a line on the money, too, I can’t say. Hell, I really can’t say anything. None of this makes a damn bit of sense. Can you and Jacob trust me?”
He smoked and thought for a long time before he said anything else. “I guess we’ve got to. You’ve been straight with us so far. You insulted Jacob, but maybe he had it coming, and that’s not important, anyway. Benny is important, you got that? Our operation is nothing without him, and you’re going to see that he comes back.”
“Weeks, I can’t …”
Ignoring me, he gathered up the books and the box and went to the door. He stopped and turned around before he left. “Jacob needs to know about these right away, but we’ll be keeping an eye on you. Don’t fuck this up.”
His seriousness was not lost on me. But the first thing I needed to do was to find out if the money was where I thought it was. After that, well, we’d see.
And let me take one second here to say something else. In the years that have passed, the things that happened in the warehouse that morning have become famous. All right, a little bit famous among the low-life thugs in a few disreputable neighborhoods, and I need to set things straight.
According to some versions of the story, I bit Luther’s nose completely off and spit it out. That could be true. In all the excitement, I honestly don’t remember. But other people, a lot of other people, say that I bit Luther’s nose off and swallowed it. That’s not true. Not at all. I’d remember if I ate it. Yes, my face and mouth were bloody, but that was because they’d been slapping me around. So, for the record, I did not eat his nose.
Having something like that in your reputation isn’t flattering, but it does cause some guys to be careful when they’re around you, and that can be useful.
Chapter Twelve
After Weeks left, I bent too close to shut the safe and noticed the dirty ten-spot and the key with the brass tag. Three Fingers had been in last night and said he wanted it, but he vamoosed before I could get it. With all the business about Jacob the Wise, I’d forgot about Three Fingers. But now I had an idea about what it might be, so I slipped it into my vest pocket and locked up.
I found Fat Joe sitting at my table reading my newspapers and smoking a cigar. I said, “That piece you keep in the coat closet, I need it.”
He didn’t look up from the paper. “Suppose I was to have a fucking emergency.”
“This is a fucking emergency.”
He grumbled some more, went to the coat closet, and came back with something hidden in his massive mitt. He passed a little Smith with a two-inch barrel to me under the table. I put it in my coat pocket and told him to tell Frenchy to bring his truck when he came in. We might be needing it later. Before I left, I said, “Come to think of it, we could have more fucking emergencies. Best be prepared.”
Back at the Chelsea, I found that my room was still a wreck, so I grabbed a clean shirt and another suit, a navy three-piece, and went up to the room on the fifth floor. Connie was still there. She’d showered and the room was sweet with the perfume of her soaps o
r whatever. She wore a navy blue skirt and matching coat over a white blouse. She looked great. She took one look at me and said, “Jesus wept and shat, somebody beat you up again? Sit down.” The speak was having a terrible influence on her.
She still had the tape and bandages and set to work on my mug for the second time, and she was none too gentle about it because she was mad at me. “What’s going on, Jimmy? I want you to tell me the truth. Don’t give me the soft soap with some story about an old girlfriend. You owe me that.”
I explained that Klapprott had the idea that I was holding fifty thousand dollars that belonged to him. He tried to snatch me to get Frenchy to fork it over, but his thug Luther had different ideas and was working me over when Mercer Weeks and Malloy came to the rescue of my sorry ass.
“I have no idea why he thinks this money is his or how he found out that I had anything to do with it. Hell, I don’t even know why I’m involved, but you’re right, I owe you that.”
I remembered what Jacob had said about trying to persuade Signora Sophia or Anna or whoever the hell she was to deliver the ransom for Benny. I am asking you as an honorable man. If you agree to do this, I will be in your debt. You can ask anything of me. Anything. Weeks is my witness.
