by Michael Mayo
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s a machine pistol. Has a fully automatic setting. You’ll be able to match the bullets, and you’re going to find that Betcherman was in this up to his eyebrows with Luther.”
“Yeah,” Ellis said. “He was in that Teutonia Society. We didn’t have to dig very deep to get that.”
“OK, then, one of the Saengers from the Chicago chapter learned that some money had been sent to a Jimmy Quinn in New York. He came here with a bunch of brothers. Anna told me there were six of them. They’ve got funny names. One of them was called No-no. He was the explosives expert. Some of them made the mistake of getting in touch with Betcherman and Luther, who agreed to throw in with them. One guy blows himself up. Luther and Betcherman take care of the other one in the warehouse. Then Luther cuts Betcherman out of the picture.”
Ellis said, “We know there was one Saenger in your room at the Chelsea. One of the dead men might be a Saenger, too.”
“Right, the one who came in from the hall. The one who busted through the window was a Kraut.”
“Where does Klapprott fit in?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think he’s not really the big cheese he made himself out to be. Luther here didn’t seem to pay him much mind.”
The big Kraut knew we were talking about him, but it was hard to tell how much he understood or what he was thinking with all that blood on his face.
“That leaves this one.” I nodded to the dead thug on the floor. “I shot him.”
Ellis said he was sure it was self-defense and told me again to go upstairs. As it turned out, the department did bang-up work on the rest of it. There were only a few short notices buried in the back pages about the swift arrest that was made in the case of the slain detective, and they made no mention of anything else. Luther was convicted and sent to Sing Sing, where somebody stabbed him.
As the elevator door opened, Ellis said, “That blonde, what’s her name?”
“Anna.”
“Is she really married to that guy?”
I shrugged.
“But you and her …”
“Yeah.”
“She’s something.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
In the Cloud Club, Frenchy had elected to lubricate the proceedings with a round of Martinis.
Jacob knocked his back but was still sounding pretty steamed at Anna. “What the hell do you mean she’s my daughter?”
The old woman, the baby in question, and Pauley Domo were at a four-top near the back. I think he’d realized that the only chance he had of getting anything now was by laying low.
Anna was sitting in my chair. The kid was beside her. She ignored Jacob’s question. She said, “These two boxes are what’s left of the ransom ten months later. I know you’re wondering why I packed it like this. Maybe it was a little crazy, but it worked. Cash attracts attention. A lot of cash attracts a lot of attention. I wanted it to look like something else, and I used what I had at hand.”
“I guess that makes sense. Anyway, it’s here now. I’ll take care of it.” Jacob was comfortable on a barstool, drink in hand, back against the bar. He grinned around the Havana.
“No.” Anna’s voice stayed level. She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t arguing. “I did exactly what I said I’d do. I did what you and Mercer asked me to do. I delivered the money. Those guys killed Benny, then they killed each other. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“I still don’t understand what you’re talking about. We all agree. This is my money.”
“Have you forgotten what you said that night? I think it was just about the last words you spoke before I drove away. You remember, I know you do, I can see it in your face.”
I could see it, too. Jacob took a drink, rattled his ice, messed with his cigar, and mumbled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Think about it. The last note said, ‘Send the Woman.’ I knew it wasn’t kosher. So did you, but you didn’t have any other choice, so you made me a promise, ‘as an honorable man’—your words, Jacob. You said that if I did this thing for you, you would be in my debt and I could ask anything of you. Anything. Mercer was your witness.”
She turned to him, “Isn’t that right, Mercer?”
It was his turn to bob and weave. “We said a lot of things that night. We had to get Benny back.”
She stood and stepped up to the bar. She got right in front of Jacob, her face level with his. I saw that she was barefoot. I guess her shoes were somewhere down on Lex. “That’s right and I did my part. I took that money, and I tried to get Benny back, and I was locked up for ten months, ten months, because of it. And now it’s time for you, as an honorable man, to live up to your word. You said I could ask anything of you. I ask for this money.”
Jacob tapped his glass. Frenchy filled it. Jacob pondered the gin for a long time. Then he shook his head.
“I cannot do that. You don’t understand. Ever since we lost Benny and the money, we’re fighting just to stay even. If I can put this back into the system, we’ll be fine, I know we will, but without it, the way things are going, a year from now Schultz will take over my operation. I can’t let that happen. I won’t. This is my work. This is my life.”
He got up and slapped the top back on the first box. “Weeks is right. We said a lot of things that night. I don’t remember them all. You say that Benny really is dead and that breaks my heart, because he was so important to me. He was my son, my true son.”
Jacob was making excuses, but there was truth to what he was saying.
“You’ve got to understand, I can’t let you have it. I need this.”
“You promised that—”
“No!” He spun around to face her. “There’s nothing more to say. This is my money. I’m taking it. Weeks, get the boxes.”
As Mercer Weeks stacked the crates, Anna turned and glanced at me. I nodded so that she was the only one who could see it. But Connie caught it, and maybe Marie Therese, too.
Weeks held the two boxes like they weighed nothing. At the elevator, Jacob turned back to Anna and started to say something but just stood there.
As the elevator doors opened, Pauley Domo jumped up and said, “Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t supposed to be happening.”
Anna cut him off, “Shut up, Pauley. We’re leaving. Help Nana. Eddy, don’t hurt him.”
She slipped into her long black coat and as she was leaving said, “See you around, Jimmy. Thanks for nothing.”
After they were gone, we loaded up our cases of gin. My guys were asking all sorts of questions, and I didn’t have any answers.
Back at the speak, we unloaded and they set about cleaning up Vittorio’s kitchen. I went down to the cellar. The other two crates were where we left them. I wrestled them out and loaded them into the dumbwaiter. Back upstairs, I found Connie waiting on the divan in my office. There was a cheese sandwich on my desk. She was working on a sandwich of her own and had a glass of beer. I sat at the desk and wolfed mine down.
When she’d finished she said, “Are you going to go with her? Joseph says you’re going to sell this place to Herr Klapprott and take off with Anna or Soph, whatever her name is.”
“Fat Joe doesn’t know shit from Shinola, pardon my French. I’m not interested in selling. I’m not interested in leaving. What about you? Are you going back to California?”
“I don’t know. Nothing that’s happened since I left home has been what I thought it was going to be, and then there’s you and all this, and today has been stranger than anything else. We saw a couple of fights and went for a walk. We visited a neat place. Then we made mud pies with money and it ended with me holding a gun on a guy. What more could a girl ask for?”
I’d missed the part about the gun, but I guess it had been a busy day, and I could see that she might
be having second thoughts.
“When you put it that way, it sounds different, but I hope to high hell we don’t have another one like it.”
She laughed and picked up the empty plates and glass. On her way out she said, “Do you want to know about the money, I mean the box we started to separate?”
I said we’d see to that tomorrow.
Sometime before dawn Marie Therese came into my office and said they were finished. “I expect you’ll want me to leave the front door unlocked for her,” she said, sounding snippy and pissed.
I told her to leave it as it was and followed her out the back door with Frenchy and Connie. I held the gate open as Frenchy drove through. Before she climbed up into the cab, Connie turned back, grabbed me by the neck, and gave me a hard kiss. She pushed away quickly and said, “Thanks for everything, Jimmy.” She might have been saying good-bye, I couldn’t tell.
Back inside, Fat Joe and Arch Malloy were waiting for me in the bar. Fat Joe asked for the short Smith. I told him I was going to need it for a while longer.
He snorted. “Hell, she’s coming here and you’re going to give her the fucking money. What a sap.” He shook his head in disgust and left.
Ain’t it the truth.
Malloy said, “You should know there’s been a town car parked on the street for the past half hour. Driver and two people in the back, maybe more. Is there anything else you’ll be needing me for, and what time do you want me to report this evening? Some of the fine points of my employment have yet to be defined.”
We settled on eight o’clock. I went behind the bar and poured a couple of greasecutters.
After a toast to nothing in particular, he said, “We’ve not known each other very long, but these have been eventful days, so I don’t think you’ll mind my making an observation about the young lady we met up there.”
I shook my head.
“I’ll venture that you and she have a long and uneven relationship.”
“That’s a fair way of putting it.”
We drank. After a time he said, “I’ve known women like that, two of them, and I was not able to hold on to either of them. I believe that is part of their nature and allure. We’re blessed to enjoy them while we can. Someday, you must tell me about her.”
I agreed to do that. He left by the front door. Anna knocked moments later and hurried inside as soon as I unlocked it.
She’d brushed her hair, fixed her makeup, and found some high heels. The red dress was still ripped at the shoulder. She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me as hard as she could. She was shivering, and when she pulled back she brushed tears off her cheeks. This time, she wasn’t working on me. She was close to wrung out.
I poured another whiskey. She drank and said, “I guess I was naive to think Jacob would keep his word. He should have, goddammit, he owed me.”
“Yes, he did.”
She gave me a sharp, sudden look. “The rest of it’s here, isn’t it?” She sounded hopeful and almost angry. “You’re not going to try to keep it.”
“Yes, it’s here. It’s your money. Maybe I’m putting my head in a noose taking what Jacob thinks is his. Maybe the next time I see Mercer Weeks, he won’t be so accommodating.”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
“No, I didn’t think so, but before we go any farther, I want to be sure that I understand how we got here and why. Let me start. You can correct the things I get wrong.”
“All right,” she said, sounding skeptical and suspicious.
“First, you had to come back here for the little girl and your grandmother. And you knew that once you were in the city, there was a fair chance you’d run across Jacob and Weeks, so you decided you could use some help, and that was me. Why?”
“Because we were always square with each other. That night in the Taft Suite, it was nice. Yeah, I enjoyed it, too, but you know what was more important? Remember that night we ran into that crazy angry guy and you shot him? That stayed with me. Then later, when I came here with Jacob and saw Jimmy Quinn’s Place, I knew you’d turned out all right.”
She may have been buttering me up, but I didn’t mind.
“And when that crazy half-breed had me chained up, I remembered what it was like with you, that spring when we went out to all those funny places, that was one of the best times of my life, maybe the best, but you don’t want me to get all sappy.”
“And if everything had worked out perfectly, you’d have cooked up some Jimmy Quinn identification for some other guy to use at Railway Express.”
She shook her head. “No, I was going to take care of it myself. I bought Jimena Quinn papers in Chicago. That’s probably where the Saengers spotted me.”
“And some of the Saengers and Pauley went after it for themselves, and we know what happened to them. And that brings us back to you and Mercer Weeks.”
“What do you mean, me and Mercer?”
“Come on, Anna, up there in your suite, I could tell there’s something between you. At first I thought you’d been two-timing Jacob with him, but that’s not it.”
“Mercer and I have an understanding, leave it at that. Let’s get back to the money. Is it here, the other two boxes?”
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you bring them earlier?”
“A hunch, I guess. When you told me about the talk you had about delivering the money in Glenwood Springs, you made a point about Jacob saying you could ask anything of him. I figured you’d use it if he balked at letting you have it.”
Hesitant, she agreed.
“Did you really think he’d let you have it? I didn’t. Hell, I knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t lying up there. That money is his business. It was bad enough when word got out that he’d paid a fat ransom for Benny and got nothing for his trouble. If anybody found out that he had a chance to get the money back and let it get away, he’d go under in a month.”
“I didn’t think of it that way,” she said.
“But you say that I have nothing to worry about with him and Mercer. Why’s that?”
“I told you, Mercer and I have an arrangement.”
She was starting to piss me off. “Then straighten out something else. You’ve told some pretty wild stories, some of them true, I guess. For instance, I will buy that while you were at that resort in Glenwood Springs, the half-breed spotted you and decided that he had to have you. That makes sense to me.
“And I’ll buy that he had a place set up to keep a woman locked up all for himself.”
She didn’t say anything.
“But I don’t buy that that he and his ‘gang’ just happened to have everything else in place for a professionally planned kidnapping when Benny happened by. It doesn’t wash. ”
“How would I know what they had planned?” She tried to sound unconcerned.
“Can it, Anna. There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it?”
Now she was getting pissed. “How to tell it?” she said. “How to tell it … OK, I know there are some people who thought that Benny and I cooked this up to run off together.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they were half-right.”
I waited for her to explain. When she didn’t, I said, “I don’t get it.”
“Benny wanted to run off, but not with me. It was him and Mercer.”
“You mean …”
“Yeah, they’re a couple of crumpets.”
It took a while for the idea to sink in. Benny and Mercer … son of a gun. I’ve got to admit, it was something I’d never have thought. I mean, Benny was no he-man tough guy, but he wasn’t what you’d call a pouf, either. And Mercer was the last guy anybody would make for lavender. Sure, there were plenty of guys down in the Village who were pretty open about who they were, but that was the Village. You couldn’t get awa
y with it in the rackets.
Anna said, “I knew they were fey the moment I clapped eyes on them. I think they knew I was in onto their secret, and maybe it’s why Benny decided they had to get away from Jacob.”
She said that after I left them in her suite at the Lombardy the night before, she and Mercer had a talk. Mercer didn’t tell her everything, but she could fill in the details easily enough.
It was Benny’s idea for them to take off, and I guess when I think about what it must have been like for them, I can see why. They couldn’t let anybody they worked with know what was going on, and it must have been hard as hell for them to find a time and place to be alone together. Must have been a tough act to keep up every day.
Still, Mercer would have lived with the situation but Benny said no. They could go west to California, change their names, and start new lives in a place where they’d be left alone. They both knew that was a pipe dream drawn from the sweetest opium fumes. But then Jacob started talking about a western vacation. That’s when Benny came up with a half-formed idea. When Jacob told him where he and the Signora wanted to go and insisted that Benny and Weeks accompany them, it took shape.
Benny asked if Mercer knew anybody in Colorado who could provide a hideout. Mercer said it had been more than ten years since he’d set foot in the state.
But surely he knew somebody who’s still in the business and might know somebody else.
Well, yeah, said Mercer, and he gave Benny the name of the guy who’d handled the local arrangements in Denver for the mint job.
It took several stacks of nickels and long distance calls made from phone booths late at night before Benny found what he needed. The guy Mercer suggested couldn’t help, but he knew another guy who might know somebody. Four connections later, Benny was talking to a guy who said that sure he could help. Benny said he needed somebody for a simple job, a job that wasn’t even illegal, but he needed somebody who’d keep his mouth shut, somebody who was not too tight with the local crooks.
For the job itself, all this guy had to do was pick up another guy late at night near the Hotel Colorado, take him to a safe place to hide for a week or so. He also had to keep an eye on the hotel during the day, deliver a note or two, and then lead another guy to the hideout. Some people might be asking questions later, but there was no chance that the cops would be involved. Could it be any easier?
