Corruption City

by Horace McCoy

  After tedious examination of mug pictures of well-known strong-arm men, especially those who were known to be allied or sympathetic with Nemo Crespi, Manizates had picked out the photographs of one Jimmy Kchop as the leader of the group which had worked him over and wrecked his business. Jimmy Kchop had a record a yard long, dating from the rum-running days. A complaint was made and he was arrested and charged with assault and battery, breach of the peace, disorderly conduct, trespass and attempted extortion, and then was promptly bailed out.

  Jimmy Kchop never came to trial. There was nobody to press charges. It seemed that the plaintiff, Manizates, had gone to Canada, and never returned.

  “But this stuff’s no good,” John said. “It’s over twenty years old.”

  “If we’re going to have any luck with Mr. Crespi, we’ll have to go back a piece,” Cicero said. “Back before he started making himself look legitimate. Why don’t we talk to Manizates?”

  “Well, I’m new at this,” John said, “but I’ll make you a small bet that we never find Manizates.”

  The telephone rang unexpectedly. They were all startled. Cicero answered it and then held it out to Amanda. “For you,” he said.

  Instinctively, Amanda glanced at her watch. It was two-ten in the morning. She knew who was calling. She turned her back on the men. “Mother? ... No. Well, we’re having this meeting ... I know. I know it’s two o’clock in the morning, I know that ... Well, I think it’s important, and I think it’s earthshaking, if that’s the term you care to use ... Yes, Mother. Yes. I’ll see you when I see you ... Yes, good night.”

  It was 3:34 the same morning. Coat and tie off, John was sitting at the desk, copying some names on a slip of paper. Amanda was sitting beside the desk in a leather chair, her shoes off, an almost empty brandy snifter in her hand. Cicero had gone to bed. A bottle of cognac, one-third empty, was on a silver tray on the desk.

  “Listen to this,” John was saying. He started to read from a paper in his hand and then stopped and poured some cognac in his glass. He flipped it down his throat.

  “My!” Amanda said. “You do that all the time?”

  “I’m sorry to offend your Vassar training,” he said.

  “Columbia,” she said.

  “Columbia, then. Listen to this: Harry Arbiloff, Joseph Maury, Edward Sibley, Herman Veider, Elmer Walters, Donald Beecher, Jelmo Bossard, Jack Coleman, C. M. Conner and S. Lumpkin. And Manizates, of course. We’ll get ’em all in here come the crack of dawn.”

  “And Ackerman, that investigator,” she said. “Him, too.”

  “Yes, him, too. Well, one for the road and I’ll take you home.”

  She stood up and held out her glass and he poured some cognac. He poured another for himself. They toasted silently.

  “The way you drink cognac,” she said. “It’s barbaric.”

  “Don’t let a thin veneer of legal intellect fool you,” he said. “I’m just reverting to type. I’m an old Caroline Street boy myself.”

  Her eyes flashed. Caroline Street was where her mother had come from. “Is that supposed to be a crack?” she said.

  “No. No crack.”

  “I’m sorry you don’t approve of me,” she said, sipping the cognac

  “I do approve of you. I approve of you most heartily. I think you’re a hell of a dame and I think you wear a hell of a perfume. Now finish your drink.”

  He moved to the door and picked up his coat from the davenport. She followed him, holding out her drink. “You finish it,” she said in a throaty voice.

  He looked past the drink at her. Her face was pale and full of emotion. He took the snifter and gulped the drink. Then he dropped both his coat and the glass on the davenport. He flicked off the wall switch and the room was suddenly dark except for a shaft of light from the hall shining through the half-open door.

  He took her in his arms and kicked the door shut ...

  A few minutes after seven o’clock the next morning John was at his desk when Amanda walked in. They stared at each other.

  She said, “You didn’t get very much sleep.”

  He said, “Neither did you.”

  He got up and took her in his arms. He kissed her possessively. Then she said, “I couldn’t sleep. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

  He smiled softly. “Well, that makes me smarter than you. I knew it was useless, so I didn’t even try. Look,” he said abruptly, releasing her from his arms, “here’s a list of names that I’m sending the boys after today.”

  He went back to the desk.

  Amanda watched him. This wasn’t the way she wanted it, but she knew that this was the way it had to be. John Conroy was not going to be pulled out of the world he had selected for himself ...

  Nemo Crespi said into the phone, “wait a minute, Eamon. Let Roy copy ’em.” He said to Roy Ackerman, “Take ’em down,” and handed him the phone.

  Ackerman took the phone and sat down at the table. “Go ahead, Eamon,” he said, and started copying down the names as Igo Grodzka held the sheet of paper to keep it from slipping under the pencil. All of them watched Ackerman write down the names, and the more he wrote the blanker the looks on their faces got. When he was finished, he hung up and smiled at Nemo.

  Nemo said, “Who are they? They mean anything to you?”

  “Are you kidding?” Ackerman said. “It’s like an old valentine. Next thing this guy’ll be doing is digging in the graveyard.”

  He wrote his own name on the list, ceremoniously. Nemo stared at him. “Conroy’s picking me up, too,” Ackerman said. “The son-of-a-bitch, he tries it I’ll kill him.”

  “Why? Who are these people?” Nemo said.

  “You’re getting old,” Ackerman said. “Your memory ain’t what it used to be. Have you forgotten the first time we met?”

  Nemo remembered. He had been taking over the produce business. And he had found out that a young investigator for the district attorney’s office, whose name was Roy Ackerman, had been shaking down some of the little bookies around town. Roy Ackerman liked a fast buck and it didn’t take long for that kind of news to flash through the underworld.

  “That is going a long way back,” Nemo said.

  “What a laugh,” Igo said. “Him thinking he’s going to talk to Manizates.”

  “Some of the guys on this list ain’t even in business no more,” Ackerman said.

  “Call the Association,” Nemo said to Ackerman. “Find out who is still in business. We got to talk to ’em before Conroy does.”

  “This bastard’s getting to be a pest,” Ackerman said.

  “I had the answer to that,” Igo said. “But everybody laughed.”

  “I didn’t laugh,” Ackerman said, waiting for an answer from the girl at the switchboard in the Fruit and Produce Distributors’ Association.

  “Shut up,” Nemo said. “Killing’s against the law.”

  Because of their experience in leg work, Ansel and Eimick had been given the chore of digging into the Manizates mess. But Mike Conroy had been sent after Ackerman. He went down to Lavorno Street, cursing under his breath, and hoping and praying that his luck would hold out a little longer. In the five hundred block he saw Roy Ackerman on the other side of the street and yelled at him, then crossed over.

  “So?” Ackerman said.

  “So I got a paper for you,” Mike said. “Hold out your hand.”

  “Paper, paper. Look, how long’s this gonna take?”

  “I don’t know, Roy. I’ll make it as fast as I can, like always.” Mike handed Ackerman the subpoena.

  “You know something?” Ackerman said. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this one damn bit.”

  “Got to go along with the crowd, Roy. You know that. You’re one of the boys. So we go along with it. By the way, got your gun on you? Better let me have it.”

  “Oh, crap,” Ackerman said. “Here, take the damn thing.”

  It was a snub-nosed .38, a belly gun.

  Mike dropped it in his jacket pocket.


  Seven men sat in chairs around the room. Six of them sat side by side in a striking illustration of the herd instinct, and Roy Ackerman sat some distance away. His face was dark with controlled fury. Two uniformed cops were sitting just inside the door, facing the group. John stood in the center of the room holding a sheet of paper. Amanda stood beside him. Mike stood at the door that led into the hall, lounging against it. His right hand was in his coat pocket, and his attitude and position were those of a country store loafer—but not his reflexes. They were stretched thin. He didn’t trust Roy Ackerman.

  “S. Lumpkin,” John called out.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jelmo Bossard.”

  “I’m here.”

  Roy Ackerman scraped his feet. “How long’s this gonna take?” he asked truculently.

  “No talking,” John said. He looked back at the list. “Joseph Maury?”

  “Present.”

  A match flared—Roy Ackerman lit a cigarette.

  “You see that sign?” John asked.

  Ackerman didn’t reply. He took a long whiff of the cigarette.

  “It says no smoking,” John said.

  Ackerman took another drag, and then flipped the cigarette at John with his index finger. The cigarette arced past him to the floor.

  “Step on that, Tom,” John said to one of the cops. Sergeant Tom Timberlake got up and put his big foot down on the cigarette.

  John walked over to Ackerman and slapped him out of the chair.

  Ackerman couldn’t have been more surprised if the roof had caved in on him. The fury in his face was no longer controlled, but he picked himself up and sat down.

  Amanda was astonished. She had had glimpses before of John’s inner toughness, but never of his capacity for brutality when needed.

  “E. Sibley,” John went on as if nothing had happened.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Harry Arbiloff—”

  “Here.”

  “Jack Coleman—”

  “I’m here.”

  John looked at Ackerman. “No need to call your name, Ackerman. You’re here, too.” He turned to the cops. “In case these other guys can’t read,” he said, “no smoking, no talking. And don’t worry about losing your badges—”

  He walked out with Amanda through the inner door. Mike followed.

  “When do we talk to them?” Amanda asked.

  “Not till we hear from Ansel and Eimick,” John. said.

  “No telling when that’ll be.”

  “I know,” he said.

  They went into the office. The closet door was open and John went in. It was a big closet and on a small table in the corner was a tape recorder that Van Pelt and Kessel were fooling with. Kessel had on earphones, “How is it?” John asked.

  “Fine,” Van Pelt said.

  A little before three o’clock Ansel and Eimick came in with an old woman. She was small and fragile and she wore a black shawl over her gray hair. She was Mrs. Stefan Manizates.

  Just inside the door Ansel and Eimick paused with her and let her look around. They did this very deliberately. They were watching for reactions. Mrs. Manizates looked around the room. She had no reaction to Roy Ackerman, they noted, but she did react to the swarthy man, Bossard, and to the man who wore the red necktie, Sibley.

  They took her back to the office and introduced her to the staff. Then John motioned to Kessel to turn on the tape recorder and he apologized for the inconvenience he had caused her and assured her that the State would do all in its power to make her comfortable.

  “It is no inconvenience to come,” Mrs. Manizates said. “I am glad to do so. I have prayed long ...” She knew what this was all about, she said. Many years ago her husband, Stefan Manizates, had been murdered.

  Reading from the old report, John reminded her that he supposedly had gone to Canada. Mrs. Manizates said that he did go to Canada. She took out an old and folded letter and handed it to John. It was postmarked Montreal and the date was March 19th, 1932. It was addressed to Mrs. Stefan Manizates, 30 Tollgate Road, and the letter paper, like the envelope, was plain and, John noted, untraceable. The letter was written in Italian.

  “I don’t read Italian,” John said.

  “I do,” Cicero said. He took the letter. “May I?” he asked Mrs. Manizates.

  She nodded.

  Cicero read, interpreting, “Dear Maria. I am now in Montreal on business. I am feeling fine. I will go from here to Quebec. I will send you some money soon. Love, Stefan.”

  “I never heard no more,” Mrs. Manizates said.

  “When did you begin to think he wasn’t coming back?”

  “Two weeks. Three weeks.”

  “Did you do anything about it? Did you go to the police?”

  She shrugged. “He was gone. They could not help. I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of whom?”

  She shrugged. “Unione Siciliana.”

  “But you’re not afraid of the Unione Siciliana now.”

  “Now I am old woman. Now I have nothing to live for. Scrub floors. Scrub floors. America, she is great land. I am very proud when we become citizens. Not like old country—you raise crop and Duke take half. Here you raise crop and no Duke take half. Nemo Crespi take whole thing. America great land—for banditti.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to fight, Mrs. Manizates—”

  “With tin sword and paper hat like little boy playing game? You need muscles. You need bullets—”

  “We have laws, Mrs. Manizates,” Amanda said.

  The old lady merely glanced at her.

  “You said Nemo Crespi took the whole thing. How do you know it was Crespi?”

  She shrugged. “I know.”

  “Did you ever see him? Did you ever see any of his men? Jimmy Kchop. Do you know that name?”

  Cicero showed her a mug picture of Jimmy Kchop taken around 1930. He explained that this was the Jimmy Kchop her husband had charged with assault and battery, attempted extortion.

  “No,” she said.

  She saw them exchanging glances and she smiled. “I am not afraid. But I do not know him.”

  “Do you know any of the men sitting outside?”

  She said yes. “Jelmo Bossard and Edward Sibley.”

  “Get ’em,” John said.

  Mike and Eimick brought them in. They stood awkwardly, their hats in their hands. They admitted knowing Mrs. Manizates, but said they had not seen her in some years. They also admitted that at one time, years ago when they were independent merchants, their stalls had been smashed. Young boys. Hoodlums. Nothing serious.

  “And after that you decided to join Nemo Crespi’s association?”

  “It had its advantages,” Bossard said.

  “Who got you to join?”

  They said nobody. They had volunteered.

  This was substantially the story that Lumpkin, Maury, Arbiloff and Coleman told. There was nothing to do but let them go. Ansel and Eimick left with Mrs. Manizates.

  “Bring in Ackerman,” John said to his father.

  When Ackerman came in he was livid with rage.

  “Sit down,” John said.

  “It’s okay if I smoke, ain’t it?” Ackerman asked.

  “You cannot,” John said.

  Ackerman whirled on Mike Conroy. “I’m not going to stand for any more of this monkey business, Mike—”

  “Sit down, Roy,” Mike said.

  Ackerman opened his mouth to say something and then he closed it fast. Mike still had his hand in his right-hand coat pocket, still carelessly. It had been there all the time. He had his fingers around that .38 belly gun and Ackerman knew it and he also knew that if he said what he had started to say, he would not live long enough to get the first few words out of his mouth. Mike would let him have it with his own gun right in the gut. There was no kidding about it—this was for keeps.

  Chapter Four

  “ALL RIGHT, ACKERMAN,” JOHN said. “We’ve got some dope on you here, but there are a
few gaps we want you to fill in for us. You’re listed as a salesman working for the Caledonia Company, whisky importers, owned by Nemo Crespi, and you’ve got a twenty-four room summer house at Malin Head, a forty-unit apartment house on Kinross Street, a speedboat and two automobiles—which is pretty nice going for a guy who never sold a case of whisky in his life. As a matter of fact, that’s pretty nice going for a guy who does sell whisky.”

  Ackerman’s eyes didn’t even flicker. “It’s all on my income tax report,” he said. “You go read it.”

  John nodded. “Sure, you bet. But what we specifically got you in here for—this time—is to tell us about the Manizates case.”

  “Never heard of it,” Ackerman said.

  “We held this out to refresh your memory,” Cicero said. He handed Ackerman the 1932 report he had filed when he had been an investigator on the district attorney’s staff. Ackerman glanced at it, confirming for himself its authenticity.

  “Maybe so,” he said. “I handled a lot of cases then. Twenty a day sometimes. That was a long time ago.”

  “March of nineteen thirty-two,” John said. “March twelfth. On March fourteenth you got a leave of absence. You were gone two weeks. Did you like Canada?”

  “Canada?”

  “You and Jimmy Kchop went to Canada. You took Manizates to Canada and murdered him.”

  Ackerman laughed. Then he looked at Mike as if the whole thing were childish. “You gonna kill a guy, you kill him. Why go way off to Canada?”

  “Maybe your technique wasn’t perfected then. You and Nemo didn’t have Eamon Harrigan in your corner then.”

  “I never went to Canada. I don’t know what happened to Manizates. I never heard of Jimmy Kchop.”

  “You killed him, too, didn’t you?”

  “Nuts,” Ackerman said.

  “He left town about the same time you and Manizates did. Nobody’s seen him since.”

  “It’s a big town. People come, people go.”

  “On March twenty-eighth you resigned from the D.A.’s staff. You went to work for Nemo Crespi the same day.”

  “The second day. The first day we talked terms.”

  “Selling whisky?”

  “I didn’t sell whisky then.”