Hell's Gate

by Richard E. Crabbe

  “You see this marble? Italian Carrara, the best! There is only one place in the world with marble like this. And the wood; it is mahogany from Honduras. This chair it is French, maybe sixteenth century.”

  “Early seventeenth, actually,” Marm said with a satisfied smile as she returned with Tom. Their conference seemed to have mellowed her, and any sense of tension had disappeared.

  “You always had an eye for the best, Marm.”

  “I just keep what I like. Trouble is I like everything. It can be an ugly world outside, Tommy. I bring a little beauty into my place. I see it like I’m just taking care of them for a while. They’re not mine in a way. The beautiful things, they outlast us all. They always do. I’m just enjoying them for my time until it’s somebody else’s turn.”

  “You’ve become a philosopher in your old age,” Tom said in a way that was somewhere between a joke and a compliment. “But you still drive a hard bargain. Now you wanna tell the boys here what you told me?”

  She took a deep breath and pursed her lips so the top one nearly touched her sagging nose. “First thing is be careful. I don’t know him myself. Gambling never was my vice, but I heard of him and … things. He got his nickname from the old days when he started brewing his own stuff. Still does, some say. They say he cooks up everything from knockout drops to that swill they sell in the dives, them block-an’-fall places. Make ya go blind ya drink too much of it. Got benzene, cocaine, an’ god-knows-what-else in it. Anyway, he’s with the Five Pointers. Pays Kelly a healthy cut. He runs a stuss game. Not sure where exactly. Think it’s somewhere around Suffolk Street. A real profitable game and as crooked as they come. What he mighta had to do with Smilin’ Jack I couldn’t say. Anybody’s guess. Which brings me to the other thing.”

  “What other thing?” Mike asked, looking up from a little pad he was scribbling on.

  “Kid Twist.”

  12

  IT WAS A tiny room, dark and musty, but Ginny was glad to have it.

  She’d searched all day, walking till her feet ached in her thin leather boots. With hopeful ignorance, Ginny worked her way through the places she couldn’t afford, getting a quick and brutal lesson in Manhattan real estate. She’d lowered her sights as the day wore on, the neighborhoods growing less and less fashionable, the rooms smaller, the light nonexistent, the grime thicker.

  Her emotions ran at random as if someone else was controlling them, pulling levers and flipping switches at an antic pace. But mostly she worried, worried that she wouldn’t find a room at all, worried about Mike and if she would ever see him again, worried about how she’d support herself, find a job, buy clothes, eat. The thought of Mike left an empty, sinking feeling in her middle. She could only imagine what Miss Gertie might say about the circumstances of her leaving. What would Mike think if he knew she’d cracked a customer’s head with a pitcher? She didn’t like to imagine that. Her only chance was to somehow find him and tell him her side of the story. Maybe then she’d have a chance, maybe.

  The shadows had crept across the avenues and were crawling up the west-facing walls when she had finally found rest. It was a room in a tenement apartment above a millinery shop. Ginny knew when she happened across the ROOM TO LET sign in the window that she’d find shelter there. Shops like that had a reputation; smoke shops, too. There were often willing girls working behind the counter, stacking shelves or making no pretense at all. Store owners often turned more profit on that than on their legitimate businesses. It wasn’t that Ginny wanted to work that way again. She simply knew that it was at a place like this that she’d find a level of acceptance she wouldn’t elsewhere, coupled with a veneer of respectability that suited her situation.

  The woman who owned the shop knew she was a whore. Ginny could see it in her eyes when she walked through the door, felt their quick appraisal, running head to toe, and the way they’d narrowed until Ginny explained she was interested in renting the room. They exchanged pleasantries as if she was an ordinary working girl, dragging a pathetic carpetbag door to door before the terrors of the night closed in. They built up an illusion of respectability between them, Ginny with a story of coming to the city to find work, the shopkeeper with an air of knowing acceptance. The woman even went so far as to say she allowed no loose women to let her rooms above the shop, an assertion that Ginny said had her hearty approval.

  Ginny paid what the woman asked, handing her the crisp bills she’d gotten at the bank that morning. A week’s deposit and a week in advance; eight dollars in wide, green notes. When the door closed behind her new landlord, Ginny was consumed by darkness, relieved only by the transom window above the door. She lay on the iron bed, felt the springs digging into her back, heard them creak when she moved, and thought she’d never heard or felt anything so wonderful. Though her stomach echoed like an empty barrel, Ginny would not rise. She closed her eyes, erasing the walls that she could almost reach out and touch, the single dresser with the missing drawer knobs, the painted chair with the badly repaired leg and a cracking coat of paint, the wallpaper blackened by years of lamp wick, tobacco, and cooking smoke. Sleep crept into her room, lifting her like a feather.

  13

  “IF MANDELBAUM, SHE is right, Kid Twist will have men watching the game,” Primo said after Tom had dropped them on the corner of Rivington and Ludlow.

  “If we find the game and the Bottler,” Mike added, “we’re gonna have to be careful. But we’re careful guys, right?”

  “Right. Careful guys is what we are. But we maybe have stumbled into the nest of hornets, no? Kelly owns the Bottler, but Kid Twist is how you say, wanting to get his toe in the doorway. We are maybe putting ourselves between—”

  “I know,” Mike said. “If Marm is right, then the Twist has already started to make his move on the game. The Five Pointers on one side, the Eastmans on the other, and the Bottler is right in the middle of it.”

  “And us,” Primo added.

  “Yeah. We could find ourselves in a real sea of shit. They’ll have Tammany backing them and guys like Devery and who knows how many others in the precincts who’re on their payroll or too scared to help.”

  “We are not quitting, no?”

  Mike looked at Primo. He wanted Primo’s true feelings without any pressure one way or another. Mike wasn’t even certain of what he wanted to do himself, how far he was willing to take this investigation. There was no point trying to pressure Primo into anything he wasn’t sure of himself.

  “We don’t have to quit,” Mike said at last, “not yet anyhow. Let’s see how far it goes. Okay?”

  “That is good. My mother, she told me she knew a woman once, in Sicily, I think, she was so frightened of snakes she would not go in the garden.”

  “Huh?”

  “It is like a proverb, see,” Primo said, “the woman, she let her fear keep her away from the beauty of the garden. It is how you say, ironic, no?”

  * * *

  They spent the better part of the day canvassing the neighborhood where Marm had said the Bottler ran his game. It was slow going. They tried posing as a couple of farm machinery salesmen, down from Albany on a business trip and looking for some sport. It didn’t work very well.

  They tried store owners first, stopping at random, talking to grocers, saloon keepers, haberdashers, shoe salesmen, vendors on the streets. The streets were lined with them, choking the pavement, one after the other, so that wagons could hardly squeeze by, spilling over the sidewalks too, pedestrians sometimes going single file to get around. Mostly they got suspicious looks and not much more. Only one or two admitted to even hearing of somebody called the Bottler. None would say where he was.

  “This place, it stinks worse than the horseshit,” Primo said.

  “Yeah, and there’s loads o’ that,” Mike grunted. Indeed, street cleaning in that neighborhood was a sometimes thing. “Listen, I don’t think you should say anything to the next guy. It’s the accent. Not too many Italian farm equipment salesmen from Albany, I guess.�
��

  “Maybe I can be somebody else. Like maybe I make the gelato and you are my partner.”

  “Gelato?”

  “How you say…” Primo said, searching for the words, “ice creams.”

  “Right. We’re a couple of ice cream guys.” Mike smirked. “That’ll fool ’em. What the hell, try it. We can’t do any worse than we are now.”

  The next store they entered was a combination soda fountain, candy store, and tobacco shop, its narrow confines stacked to the ceiling with boxes of cigars and the new craze, cigarettes, while the little fountain was covered with bins and big glass jars of jawbreakers, licorice, jelly beans, rock candy, and chocolates. Leaning across the counter as they came in was a patrolman. He had the man behind the counter by the shirtfront and was talking to him in a low growl. Mike couldn’t make out what the cop was saying, but the man clearly did. Whatever it was scared the hell out of him, judging by the sweat beading on his forehead.

  The cop’s head snapped around when Mike and Primo came in, his eyes narrowing. He let go of the man’s shirt, but relaxed and gave them a knowing grin. “An’ what’re two boys from the detective bureau doin’ on my beat, I’m wonderin’,” he said, pushing his blue helmet back on his head. The man behind the counter took up a wet rag and began swabbing the red marble countertop.

  “Detectives? We are no detectives.” Primo said, smiling. “We are from Albany.” He elbowed Mike in the ribs at his little joke.

  The cop laughed, but he didn’t look amused. “An’ a fuckin’ dago, greaseball detective at that,” he said. “What the hell’s the force comin’ to?”

  Without another word, Primo rushed the cop. The helmet went flying behind the counter as the cop stumbled backward against a stool.

  “Primo!” Mike shouted. “What the hell?”

  Primo landed two, three punches in quick succession. The cop’s nose was bloodied in seconds. He flailed about, trying to ward off the blows and struggled to pull out his club. The store owner scurried into a back room. Mike managed to get a hand on Primo’s shoulder and pull him off the man for just a second. Primo was cursing in Italian. The only word Mike understood was greaseball. The cop was tough though, and he took the opportunity to swing his club, clipping Primo across the forehead. His follow-through hit Mike’s hand with a distinct crack. Mike shouted in pain. Primo stood holding his head with a stunned look on his face. The cop stopped and wiped his bloody nose on a sleeve. Mike’s hand sent bolts of pain up his arm. He cursed and shook it as if he might somehow loosen the hurt. “Sonofabitch! You broke my hand!” Without thinking, Mike shot out a side kick, catching the cop hard in the middle, crumpling him like a rag doll against the counter. The man slumped to the floor, groaning weakly. One hand fumbled at his belt for his pistol. Primo saw and kicked the man again. Primo didn’t stop until the cop rolled onto the floor and lay still.

  “Primo, stop! Enough. For chrissake, don’t kill the bastard!” Mike shouted.

  Primo spat on the cop, but stopped the kicking.

  “I no like that word greaseball,” Primo said, huffing and out of breath.

  “Jesus!” Mike said. “I’ll remember that. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  Primo checked the man’s pulse. “No.” Grinning in a guilty, almost apologetic way, he added, “It is his lucky day, no?”

  They picked the cop up and propped him against the counter.

  “He no look so good,” Primo said. “Maybe we should get him to a hospital. What you think?”

  “I think he’s alive. Beyond that, I don’t much give a shit,” Mike said. His hand was already starting to swell and turning an angry shade of blue.

  The cop was coming to. He groaned and suddenly vomited on himself.

  “Maybe it is no so good if we stay,” Primo said. Mike shrugged. “You might be right. He’ll be okay. Hey!” he called toward the back of the store. “Hey, you got a phone here?”

  “No,” a voice said from the back.

  “Listen, I’m leaving a dollar on the counter,” Mike said. “Go to the nearest phone and call somebody for him. Okay?”

  “Sure. I can do that,” the owner said, sticking his head out of a doorway.

  “Thanks. And you didn’t get a look at either of us, did you,” Mike added.

  “Nope,” the man said, not even looking at them directly. “Go on, get going.”

  “You need a doctor,” Primo told Mike, looking at his hand as they walked down the street. “Get the bones how you say … set in a bandage.”

  “Yeah, a cast. Fuck!” Mike was reluctant to give it up for the day, but his hand was throbbing and it hurt like the devil just to move his fingers. Primo hadn’t complained, but he had a knot on his head the size of an egg. “How’s your head?”

  “Feels like somebody does not like me so much,” Primo said. “How you learn to kick like that? I never saw a man kick like that.”

  “My dad, he taught me. It’s something he learned from the Chinese. He took lessons from an old guy in Chinatown years back. They call it kung fu.” Mike hesitated a moment, then said, “The other day, when we met for the first time, I called you a wop.” He looked closely at Primo. “You didn’t kick the hell outa me. How come? I mean what’s the difference? Wop, greaseball, dago, they’re all the same.”

  Primo smiled. “The difference,” he said, “is in the eye and the tongue. You say wop, but I see you no mean wop. That bastard, he say greaseball and he means it.”

  * * *

  They were heading toward the nearest hospital when Mike said, “You know that cop might show up in the hospital pretty soon, too. Could get a little awkward.”

  “Awkward. Like he maybe shoots us, right?”

  “Something like that. Let’s find a doctor instead.”

  About two hours later Mike had a cast on his left hand. The doctor confirmed that at least one bone had been broken, but immobilized two fingers just to be certain. The cast felt heavy and huge, and the hand still throbbed despite a healthy dose of laudanum.

  Mike called in from a nearby firehouse, the closest place that had a phone, reporting to his captain and coming up with a semiplausible tale of a suspect that got away. He was told to take the rest of the day, but to report in the morning. Primo headed back to the station house. A mere lump on the head wasn’t going to buy him any time.

  Mike was glad to take the afternoon off. The laudanum had him feeling fuzzy and tired. He threw himself on his bed when he got to his apartment near Madison Square Park. Not long after he was asleep, or more accurately in a drugged and hazy version of sleep where visions of Primo’s stomping feet kept flickering through his head like a bad nickelodeon show. The afternoon faded into a gray evening as the sun sank into a pastel New Jersey sky, and real sleep took over.

  When he woke it was to the sound of a bell. For a moment Mike imagined that it rang every time Primo kicked the cop. Mike shook the vision off as he staggered into the kitchen and lifted the telephone earpiece off its cradle.

  “You okay?” Primo asked without saying hello.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Going home now. I have no telephone there, so I call from here.”

  “Thanks. Get some rest. See you in the morning. Six?”

  “Sure. There was a cop beat up bad by a couple gangsters they say, over on Grand. He is in hospital. They are looking for those guys.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mike said, the sleep swept away like smoke in a high wind. “They’re likely to talk to some of the same people we did.”

  “You mean those farm equipment salesmen from Albany?”

  “Yeah, those guys,” Mike agreed. “Some coincidence.”

  “Those guys might be in real trouble. That cop, he is hurt pretty bad,” Primo said. “The captain says we should help, maybe go see this cop, get his story.”

  Mike grunted into the mouthpiece on the wall. He didn’t know what to say to that idea. He was silent for some seconds. “We should talk about that in the morning I guess,” he said eventua
lly.

  “Yes,” Primo agreed. “We should sleep on it, like they say.”

  “Right. See you at six.” Mike hung up the earpiece slowly. For a moment he considered calling Tom, but rejected the idea. He’d handle this with Primo. If their partnership had ever been in doubt before, it was no longer, at least not for Mike.

  Thinking of partners reminded him of Ginny. Mike hadn’t had a lot of time to really think through his feelings for her over the last couple of days. Things had been moving too fast for that. He was determined to stick to his decision and not let their day at Pastor’s lead him deeper than he wanted to go. But he couldn’t deny the thoughts that kept sneaking into his head. He’d see a pretty girl and think of Ginny, see a dress in a shop window and imagine how she’d look in it. And he could not stop thinking about her body; the flaring curve of her ass when she was on her knees, head buried in a pillow, the way her breasts swayed above him when she was on top, the way the soft down of tiny hairs on her belly glowed in the gaslight. And there was her way with him; the way she looked at him and wanted to know how he felt about things, the way she listened when he told her, the way she seemed to keep a special part of herself just for him.

  He decided he should go to see her, and went down the hall to the bathroom, a luxury that had sealed his decision to rent the place. He got himself cleaned, shaved, combed, and out the door in twenty minutes with a fresh suit of clothes and spit-shined shoes, an amazing feat for a man with a cast on his hand. He found himself whistling as he walked uptown, the cares of gangs and bottlers, stomped cops and broken bones, fading to the corners of his consciousness like a twisted opium dream.

  The first thing Mike noticed when he entered the brothel was the bouquet of flowers he’d sent Ginny. They were in a vase in the hallway by the front door. They were a little wilted, the vibrant colors faded and browning at the edges. The next thing he noticed was the way the girls in the parlor looked at him. He saw that Kevin, the bouncer, wore the same expression. None of them would meet his eye, yet they tried their best to make it appear that nothing was wrong.