Hell's Gate

by Richard E. Crabbe

  “Hey. Doin’ better?” Mike said. He got a groan in reply. “We’ll get you some help soon. Listen, I need a lamp. Where can I find a lamp?”

  Without looking up, the man raised a hand, pointed toward the stern, mumbling something. The only words Mike caught were aft hatch. He went quickly, taking a detour to the rail and calling down to the sergeant.

  “I’m shot in the leg,” the sergeant called back. “Can’t climb up. Purdy’s pretty bad, too. Don’t know. He’s unconscious.”

  “Hang on,” Mike called back. I think maybe we got ’em.” He turned back to the deck with its maze of shadows and went where he thought an aft hatch should be. He saw a lantern hanging on a mast. He saw the hatch half open, its cover slid to one side. Mike crouched as a flash erupted from the hatch with the crack of a pistol. From somewhere to his left another barked. He felt a bullet pass his face as he rolled for cover. More shots followed and he saw a shadow emerging from the hatch, firing as it rose. Mike brought the Colt up. The Colt cracked three or four times, so fast he couldn’t be sure. A shotgun boomed behind him, another pistol too. Hard shoes pounded the deck. The man in the hatch was down, hands hanging, motionless. More shots from the running patrolmen. Return fire from behind the mast. The Colt came ’round, banging and bucking so he wasn’t sure where the shots were going. The slide clanged open when the last bullet left the muzzle. He reached for his revolver, but it was over.

  Mike got up and approached the man in the hatch. With one foot he pushed at the body, keeping the revolver ready. He bent and grabbed a handful of hair, pulling the head back. It was the Oysterman, with a black hole where his left eye had been.

  “This one’s still alive,” one of the patrolmen called, standing over the other body. Mike let the Oysterman’s head bounce on the hatch. He straightened up quickly and as he did it seemed as if all the blood had run out of his head. His knees buckled and the deck started to spin. He took a step, but stumbled and fell to his knees. He didn’t think he’d been shot, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  “You all right?” one cop called.

  “Yeah,” Mike heard himself say. “Tripped on somethin’.” He shook his head and felt himself for any wounds. He took a couple of deep breaths and his head seemed to clear a little, enough so he set one foot on the deck and, after another pause, hauled himself to his feet. Tom had warned him that no amount of training could make this go away entirely. Though Mike had learned everything he could teach, Tom could never train away the shock of being shot at, or of taking a life.

  Mike took another breath and made his way to where the cops stood. They both looked pale gray in the darkness and their eyes were as big as saucers. They were breathing hard and one grasped a length of rigging for support. Mike looked down at the man on the deck.

  “Smilin’ Jack,” Mike grunted. Jack O’Banion had earned the nickname when he got fish-hooked in a brawl at a rat pit many years before. The scar curved up his cheek, pulling his lips into a ghastly semblance of a smile. Nobody ever called him Smilin’ Jack to his face, nobody who wanted to live, but he was leaking all over the deck now and in no condition to do anything about it. Mike knelt beside him. He could hear the sucking chest wound bubble.

  “You ain’t got long, Jack,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” Jack wheezed back, his hand coming up, darting toward Mike’s side. Mike slapped it away, sending a knife skittering across the deck.

  “You miserable shit!” Mike pulled his hand back and stood, looking at a stinging cut near the wrist. He shook the hand, flicking blood. “I’d fucking kill you for that if you weren’t dead already, you piece o’ shit!”

  “Must be dead, I can’t gut a half-cent pig like you.”

  Mike wrapped his hand in a kerchief, feeling the lightness return to his head as he did. He stepped back beside Smilin’ Jack and stood on his hand.

  “Agh, me hand! Get off, goddamn you!”

  “Oh, is that your hand, Jack,” Mike said without lifting his foot. “You won’t need it where you’re goin’.” He ground down with his heel and O’Banion let out a gasp. He tried to punch at Mike’s leg with the other arm, but he only flailed weakly. “Now, do yourself a favor before I cut you up so bad your own mother wouldn’t know you. Where’s that knife?” he said to one of the patrolmen.

  “But—”

  “But nothin’,” Mike said with an icy look. “Get the fuckin’ knife.”

  The man fetched it for him. Mike bent low over Jack, his face only a foot away. He put the tip of the blade under O’Banion’s left eye. “Tell me who set this up? Who’s getting a percentage? I know this wasn’t just you. One o’ the fuckin’ bosses are in on it, Jack. This ain’t your style.”

  Jack said nothing. He closed that eye and tried to turn his head away. Mike poked the blade, drawing a small stream of blood from the lower lid. “This can be as painful as you like, Jack,” he said.

  “Don’ cut,” was all Jack managed. He was weakening as they watched, the eyelids beginning to flutter.

  “Then who was it? Goddamn it, one fuckin’ good deed before you die!” Smilin’ Jack coughed, spraying blood, but Mike hardly flinched.

  “Tell me an’ you’ll get a proper funeral, a big hearse an’ everything, flowers, the works.” He’d heard how vain Jack was and thought a good send-off might appeal to him. Apparently it did because O’Banion said one word before he passed. Half gasped, it was a word for sure, but Mike didn’t get to ask its meaning. He stood, the knife loose in his bloodied hand, his hair wild, and his skin pasty white. The two patrolmen looked at each other. Mike almost told them that he hadn’t been about to cut O’Banion’s eye out, but he stopped himself. “Did he say bottle or was it bottler? Could have been boodle too, now that I think about it. Don’t make sense, but that’s what it sounded like to me.”

  “Bottler,” one patrolman cut in. “Definite it was bottler, whatever the fuck that means.”

  “Bottle,” the other patrolman said. “I heard bottle for sure. The rest was just him gurglin’.”

  Mike looked down on Smilin’ Jack. “Never said a straight word in his life from what I hear. Why start now?” He looked around the shadowed deck. “C’mon, we’ve got work to do.”

  2

  “THAT WAS WONDERFUL, Harry,” Ginny said in her best dreamy voice. “You were so strong tonight. Have you been taking one of those tonics?”

  Harry smiled as he put on his shoes, quite pleased with himself.

  “Well, whatever it was, you just wore me out.” She rolled over and got up on her knees, hugging Harry, if that was his true name, as he tied his laces. It was close to six A.M. and Ginny Caldwell wanted nothing more than to push this paunchy, pale banker out of her bed. But she knew her trade and what the house required. Harry turned and kissed her with an appreciative, “Mmm.”

  “You’ll be back next week, won’t you?” she asked as if she’d be counting the days.

  “Oh, I’ll be back,” he said. “Don’t I always?”

  He did. Ginny could have set a clock by him. She stroked his neck where it bulged over his collar. “You do,” Ginny said with a forced, but convincing smile.

  Harry left her a generous tip, though Ginny didn’t count it till the door was closed. She smiled for real as she pushed the bills into a high-topped boot under her bed. It was getting full again. She’d have to stop at the bank this week and make another deposit. Ginny was one of the more popular girls in the house and the money was starting to add up. If she’d been working for a pimp, or in one of the hundreds of low-class houses, she’d never have seen a tenth of the money she earned, but Miss Gertie was different, allowing her girls a healthier cut. Ginny figured she’d have nearly six hundred now and she’d only started saving a couple of months before. That was one thing she had Harry to thank for. The banker had given her some prudent advice along with his greenbacks. For all of the year before that, ever since her family threw her out, she’d spent every dime, but not anymore. Clothes, hats, shoes, and a bowl of opium
now and then had left her flamboyantly dressed, forgetful when she needed to be, and broke most of the time. Now she had something put by, and maybe in another year or so, enough to open her own shop, not a whorehouse, but a proper shop.

  She poured some water into a washbasin, soaped her hands clean, and splashed some water on her face, which she rubbed dry with a washcloth. She listened to Rachel in the next room, moaning like it was the best fuck of her life, which of course it was. Here every time was.

  Ginny got dressed and went down the back stairs to the kitchen, where the two cooks worked constantly, supplying meals for the girls and their clients whenever they wanted. The smell of pancakes and maple syrup put her in mind of home. For a moment she imagined she was still a child and it was her mother who was clattering pans and plates, filling the house with wonderful smells. She was the last one up as always and her father and brothers were hunched over their plates already, eating as if the cakes might walk off if they didn’t hurry.

  “Have a good fuck, Ginny? It was the banker, wasn’t it? He likes the screamers.”

  Ginny blinked at the three girls around the big, plain table in the kitchen, all in various states of undress. Tousled hair, cigarettes, and smudged makeup were the look of the morning. Ginny knew she didn’t look much better.

  “If he gave you the money he gives me you’d be screaming, too,” she said. She grabbed a plate from a stack near the sink.

  “Hard to get excited about that little thing of his,” a girl named Eunice said. The other two agreed, laughing and slurping coffee.

  “I’ve seen bigger pizzles on Chinamen,” a girl said as she laughed.

  “You haven’t really, have you?” the third girl said with a look on her face like she’d swallowed something sour. Fucking a Chinaman was worse even than working in a black-and-tan or walking the streets. Only the shanty Irish seemed willing to marry them, and damned few at that.

  “Figure of speakin’,” the other replied with a dismissive wave of her cigarette.

  There was a long moment of silence, punctuated by clattering plates in the sink. Ginny couldn’t contain herself and finally burst out laughing, nearly spilling the coffee she was pouring. “It’s true,” she said. “I saw it in The Farmer’s Almanac,” which set off gales of laughter, and for a moment Ginny forgot her mother’s kitchen.

  “Where’s that cop o’ yours?” one of the girls asked when they had run down to giggles. “Haven’t seen him ’round the last few days.”

  “Yeah. He was a real regular, too,” Eunice said with a sideways glance at the others. “I’ve heard you with him. You sing a different tune when he’s in your bed.” She looked at Ginny with a narrowed eye. “Those’re the worst, the good ones. Rip your heart out, you let ’em.” The others went silent. Ginny shrugged as she buttered her pancakes.

  “He’s a sporting man,” she said as the butter ran in little rivers off her pancake mountain. “A regular subscriber to the Weekly Rake, that one. He’s like a dog that has to pee on every hydrant.” She nodded toward one of the other girls. “He took you to the masked ball last year, right? And you’ve had him more than once yourself, Eunice,” Ginny pointed out. “We all have.”

  This was true, but for months now it had been only Ginny he’d asked for. He’d either wait for her or leave if she was otherwise engaged. They all knew it.

  Rachel came down then, rubbing her ass, which was by popular consent the finest in the house. Nobody filled a bustle like her, a talent she’d made pay handsomely.

  “Good God, I thought he’d never spend.”

  “I thought you sounded a bit off,” Ginny said, happy to have a distraction from their uncomfortable topic.

  Eunice got up with a concerned look. “Come have a rest. I’ll get you some coffee,” she said. She held a chair as Rachel eased into it then went about getting her coffee and a cinnamon roll. The girls watched her as they chatted. Eunice and Rachel were the only “real” Sapphos of the house. Though most of them had put on sapphic shows for private parties at one time or another, they were the only ones who seemed to enjoy it.

  “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Eunice asked when she set the coffee and roll on the table. “I’ll have him dusted up for you if you want.” Eunice’s brother was the bouncer and all-round insurer of the girls’ well-being. He was as adept at splitting lips as he was at escorting the girls on the Ladies’ Mile.

  “Hell, no! Don’t do that. Sonofabitch is my best customer,” Rachel said, looking alarmed. “Don’t you even say anything to Kevin, either. That gorilla would break his legs just for exercise.”

  Eunice calmed Rachel as Ginny’s mind wandered. Her mother’s kitchen had never been like this, though her brothers would have liked it a sight better than she did. To her it was now just business, not much different than swapping gossip over the counter at Wolke’s General Store back home. The gossip had been very different, it was true. Sex was never mentioned except in whispers, winks, and giggles. Innocence and purity were the words she and her girlfriends had been supposed to live by. Sex was something the beasts did in the barnyard and impure thoughts were rounded up every Sunday and drowned in a flood of “Hail Marys.”

  There were no Hail Marys in this house. The brothel was two houses really, adjoining brownstones on West Forty-fourth. They were run by a porcelain-skinned German woman that the girls all called Miss Gertie, though Ginny didn’t think that was her real name. The story was that she’d come up in the trade in the ’eighties, working for the famous Mary Braddock in her houses in the West Twenties. They said that Gertie ran the house, but Mary still collected rent, an ultimately more profitable and far safer form of income, and not uncommon for the very few who’d managed to get out of the business with a whole skin. Miss Gertie, prosperous, full-figured, and respectably middle aged, ran the place as if she were its queen. She was solicitous of the girls, keeping them well fed and healthy. A doctor visited weekly and anyone who didn’t care for herself or for her room was warned once, then shown the door if it continued. It was perhaps the finest house in the city, the girls elegant downstairs and wanton upstairs.

  Ginny stopped her daydreaming when Kevin ambled into the kitchen, a copy of the Trib under one arm.

  “Mornin,’ ladies,” he said on his way to the coffeepot. Some mornings Kevin looked even worse than the girls. Dealing with the sports could be a rough business, not that he had much trouble with the swells that made up most of their clientele. It was keeping the riffraff away from the door that could be a problem. Still, this morning he seemed almost fresh.

  “No troubles, eh, Kev?” Eunice said.

  “Nah. Easy night,” he replied as he sat, slapping the paper down in front of him. He smiled at Ginny. He’d been sweet on her for months. Ginny smiled back absently. She’d always made him pay, not because he wasn’t easy on the eye, but because there was no spark. He was good enough company though, and a man who knew how to work a woman’s body for all that was in it.

  She stared, suddenly riveted, not by Kevin, but by the Trib. She grabbed at it from across the table, spinning it around before her and snapping it open. TERRIBLE SHOOT-OUT IN THE HARBOR, the headline ran. HERO DETECTIVE THWARTS HOOKERS. ONE HARBOR PATROLMAN DEAD, TWO BADLY INJURED. Under the headline, which ran three columns, was a picture of the steamer Warrior Prince. Beside that was a photo of Mike Braddock.

  “Hey,” Eunice said, looking over her shoulder, “ain’t that your cop?”

  3

  IT WAS LATE in the afternoon when Ginny heard that Mike Braddock was downstairs asking for her. She’d been asleep. She put on the white corset that she knew he liked, pushing up her breasts while checking herself in the mirror. Her best black stockings were snapped to the white garters and she threw a Chinese silk robe over her shoulders as she left her room, tying it loosely as she went down. It showed her legs almost up to the thigh. She didn’t bother with panties.

  As she went down the front stairs she imagined all sorts of things to say, but when she saw hi
m and how he looked she abandoned them all.

  “I read what happened,” she said, putting her arm through his. “I want to know everything.”

  Mike just smiled and nodded. He’d told the story all night long and into the afternoon, to his captain, to reporters, to other detectives, and to the captain of the harbor patrol, who had wanted to hear it over and over again. This was the one place he knew he wouldn’t be judged. It was Ginny’s true talent, though she didn’t seem to realize it. Hers was the ear of a priest without the moralizing, the worldliness of a bartender without the advice. She drew her robe closed as Mike followed her to her room.

  “Do you want anything,” she asked, “a drink or something?”

  “No, thanks,” Mike said as she closed her door behind them. “I can’t stay too long,” he added, not taking off his jacket as he usually did. He felt her arms come around him from behind, felt her breasts on his back and breath in his ear. She hugged him and kissed his neck.

  “You stay as long as you like. I’m just glad you’re here.”

  Mike turned around in her arms and buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent. His hands didn’t go to her ass as they always did. They encircled her, lingering at the small of her back. “Do you think I’m a hero?” he asked, pulling back so he could look into her eyes.

  “The papers say so.”

  “The papers don’t know shit,” he said, breaking their embrace. He took off his jacket then and hung it on the back of the door. Ginny noticed for the first time that it was stained a deep red-brown on the sleeves and back. He unbuckled the shoulder holster and hung it too, the heavy Colt banging against the door. Mike shuffled to the bed and bounced on the edge, his legs seeming to give out. He started to take off his shoes, but couldn’t seem to untie the laces, so Ginny took them off for him.