Hell's Gate

by Richard E. Crabbe

  The door exploded above his head, blowing outward, something hitting the top of his head and knocking him backward to the floor. A second explosion tore through a little lower than the first and the door flew open. A dark form filled it and Primo fired three times, amazed that the revolver was still in his hand.

  “Merde!” the shooter cried, dropping a sawed-off shotgun and staggering into the hall. Primo watched from his knees, uncertain if he should fire again. The toilet door opened behind him and he started to turn, but the crashing of the man’s body snapped his head back. He heard steps behind him and turned too late. He was struck on the arm and shoulder and side. Twisting away, he fell on his back again and kicked at a pair of legs, giving him the time to raise the revolver and fire. In the muzzle flash, Primo had a brief impression of an open-mouthed snarl and bad teeth, framed by a thick, black mustache. Primo fired again and the man toppled upon him, the knife blade glinting in the dim light.

  27

  THE TELEPHONE WAS ringing and wouldn’t stop. Its raucous bell sounded as if it were miles away though it was just down the hall in the kitchen. It barely broke through Mike’s sleep-fogged brain at first and for some time it seemed the ringing was only a dream. It could have been ringing for ten minutes or ten seconds, he couldn’t say which. It stopped finally and he rolled over, rubbing his eyes and fumbling for his pocket watch on the table beside the bed. “Four thirty, for chrissake!” Mike rose and stumbled to the kitchen, figuring he’d try the operator and see if she could tell him who might have called. His hand was reaching for the earpiece when the brass bell started clattering again, making him jump. He grabbed the earpiece and put his mouth to the speaker.

  “Detective Braddock,” a tinny voice said in his ear. “I have—” His front door shook on its hinges as someone hammered on the other side. Mike took a couple of steps away from the door as his sleep-muddled brain tried to focus. He dropped the phone and ran back to his bedroom, fumbling for his automatic hanging from the bedpost in his shoulder holster. The banging got louder, shaking the walls and vibrating through his naked feet. “Mike! Mike!” he heard outside as he jacked a bullet into the chamber. “Mike, open up!”

  He went back to the kitchen, keeping the pistol ready. “Who’s there?”

  “Mike, it’s me. Open up!”

  The voice sounded strange, yet he knew who it was.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah. Open up for chrissake.”

  Mike unbolted the door and Tom pushed his way in.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah, of course. What the hell’s going on?”

  “You’re sure? What’s the gun for?”

  “For the asshole who was knocking my door down at four thirty in the fucking morning.”

  Tom looked about the kitchen as if needing confirmation.

  “Get dressed. It’s Primo.”

  * * *

  The Oldsmobile raced across town, not even slowing at intersections. There was no traffic save for delivery wagons. The streets glistened with the early morning damp. Tom had the speeder pressed as far as it would go and the little single cylinder engine thumped with an urgency Mike had never thought possible. The wind in his face was like a gallon of coffee, though it was what Tom was telling him that had his nerves jangling.

  “They found him about one o’clock!” Tom shouted over the rush of the wind. “A dead guy right on top of him, bullets through the neck and sternum, another dead on the stairs.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “Not sure. A shotgun blast grazed his head.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Yeah, he was lucky. Should’ve cut him in half. Stabbed four times, too. The dead guy who fell on him pinned his arm to the floor. A fucking bloodbath.”

  “Anybody call his wife? Damn it! I forgot. He said she doesn’t have a telephone wherever she is,” Mike said, “and I don’t know where she’s in hiding except somewhere north of the city.”

  “Yeah, well, he had his reasons for being careful.”

  “He hardly talked about it,” Mike said. “It was almost like a joke.”

  “No joke now,” Tom said as the tires bounced over some rough pavement. The Olds whipped back and forth like a Coney Island ride as Tom fought to steady it, the oversprung suspension bucking and the tiller whipping side-to-side. He let up on the speeder and brought it under control, giving Mike a guilty grin. “She likes to wag her tail now and again.”

  “Let’s just try to make it to the hospital in one piece, okay?”

  * * *

  There were cops everywhere when they arrived—by the front door smoking cigarettes, in the lobby trading war stories, and in the hall outside Primo’s room, talking in whispers. Mike had been prepared for them. What he wasn’t prepared for was the priest.

  “In Nomini Patros et Fili et Spiritos Sancti,” the clergyman droned as he touched Primo’s bandaged forehead with a drop of holy water. They stood quietly as the priest finished the last rites.

  “He’s not…” Mike said to the priest when he was done.

  “No, no, son. Just a precaution,” he said in a most unreassuring murmur. Mike mumbled his thanks before shuffling to Primo’s bedside.

  “I don’t know, Dad. He looks bad. Primo, buddy, squeeze my hand if you can hear me, okay? Mike leaned close and almost growled in Primo’s ear. “C’mon, you wop bastard, squeeze my hand.”

  Primo opened his eyes just enough to see Mike’s face and gripped him back as hard as he could. “Irish shit,” he croaked.

  * * *

  Mike and Tom sat by the bed as the dawn filtered in. They talked in low tones. They spoke of Primo’s family and how to find them if he didn’t live. The cops disappeared a little before six A.M. They had to report back to their precincts for their shift change. Tom and Mike said their good-byes one by one until they were the last left and the hall outside was no longer filled with murmured conversation and shuffling feet. Finally they too got up to leave, pressing Primo’s hand and speaking to him as if he were deaf. He didn’t open his eyes this time, just raised a finger.

  “He’ll be okay,” Tom said as they brushed past a white-coated orderly, wheeling a cart.

  “Hope so. I was just getting used to his shitty sense of humor,” Mike replied. “Gonna be hard without him.”

  “Yeah. You’ll need another partner,” Tom said. “Maybe—” He stopped before finishing his thought. He was looking at the polished floor in an odd way. Mike followed his gaze. A pair of dirty footprints ran past. He turned to look back, following the tracks to the orderly’s feet. The man was almost at Primo’s door and cast a dark glance over his shoulder. He hesitated when he saw they were watching, stopping his hand as it reached for the doorknob.

  “Hey, buddy,” Mike called, starting back down the hall. “Can I talk to you a minute?” The man turned his back on them, wheeling his cart with a quickened step. “Hey! Hold up! I wanna talk to you!” Mike shouted. A second face peered around the far corner, where it met another hallway. A hand seemed to signal to the orderly and the face disappeared. Mike put a hand on the butt of his Colt. Tom did the same. They both walked faster. “Stay right there! Keep your hands where I can see them!” Mike thundered as he thumbed the safety on the Colt.

  But the man turned fast and something sparkled in his hand, like a Fourth of July firecracker yet twenty times the size.

  A pistol cracked in Mike’s ear. The orderly doubled over. Tom fired again. A tremendous explosion erased the man from sight, enveloping him in a ball of fire. Tom and Mike dropped to the floor as a jagged hail of glass and tile spattered around them.

  “Jesus Christ! You okay?” Mike called out as the air cleared.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Tom said as he rolled to his knees. He was bleeding from a half dozen cuts to his head and hands. “Hell, I don’t know.” He sounded dazed and far away.

  Mike realized that his ears were ringing like sirens. He looked at the smoking ruin down the hall, the walls and ceiling so spl
ashed with blood it appeared they’d been painted, the man’s shoes, yards away, with his feet still in them, and again, this time through the haze, he saw the face peering around the corner. It disappeared and was followed by the sound of running feet.

  “Stop!” Mike shouted.

  Tom was on his feet, hands on his knees. “You see that guy?” he said as he started forward.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, breaking into an uncertain run. “We’re gonna lose him, we don’t get moving.” They passed Primo’s door, hanging on one hinge, the glass jagged and gaping like the mouth of a shark. “Primo, you okay?” He got a lifted hand in reply. “We’ll be back,” he called as he ran after Tom, sprinting against a tide of nurses, doctors, patients, and orderlies, shouting, “Police! Out of the way!” Mike followed Tom to the stairs, which they took in leaps and tumbles. Bursting into the early morning sun, they squinted up and down First Avenue, but saw no one.

  “You sure he came this way?” Mike asked between breaths. He wiped his forehead at what he thought was sweat, but the hand came away bloody.

  “I saw him duck into that stair,” Tom said, looking back at the hospital. “I was sure he was below us.” They were near the front gate. “You check up the block, I’ll go down.”

  He turned, but Mike stopped him. There was a man walking toward them with both hands on his middle. Even at a half block away they could see him stagger. He croaked something at them and they ran to him.

  “Ice wagon,” he said in a reedy voice, his hands red at his belly. “Got my horse.”

  Tom spotted a white-coated doctor and shouted for help, waving his arms. “What wagon? Where?” Mike asked. Looking up the block, he saw a man on a horse with no saddle, the remains of a harness dangling. An ice wagon sat at the curb nearby. “There he is!”

  He started to run, but Tom stopped him. “Never catch him on foot. C’mon.” He ran in the opposite direction, all the while shouting for the doctor. Mike took off after him with a last worried look at the blood pooling at the iceman’s feet.

  The Oldsmobile started with a quick turn of the crank and Tom was behind the tiller before Mike could climb aboard. The horse and rider were three blocks ahead, disappearing around the corner of Thirty-fourth Street by the time the Olds got moving, the single cylinder hammering hard. They passed wagons and carriages at an alarming rate and the turn was coming up fast. Tom braced himself, leaning into it, one hand on the tiller, the other on the seat rail. He looked wild and ragged, hair flying, blood running from his cuts and into his paper collar. They skittered through the turn, the thin tires screeching and slipping. Tom stayed at full throttle and when they were through and running straight again, he was grinning like a crocodile. He and Mike exchanged a look. He hunkered forward, willing the little car on.

  The rider was closer now. His horse, not accustomed to anything beyond a trot would not stay at a gallop for more than a short distance despite the man’s flogging.

  “We got this bastard” Mike shouted as they started to climb toward Fourth Avenue. Slowly they closed the gap, whittling it to no more than a hundred yards as they neared Lexington. The rider hadn’t looked back, probably figuring it unlikely he was even followed, much less caught at the rate he was moving. The horse had slowed to a jog as it climbed the hill, passing the corner, going straight on toward Fourth. The Olds slowed too, but not as much, its momentum carrying it forward. Mike had his Colt out, though the distance was still too great for it to be of any use. The rider saw them then, glancing over his shoulder almost casually before booting the animal into a run. Still the Olds closed, the engine grinding away the distance with each thump of its cylinder. Mike shouted for the rider to stop as the gap narrowed to fifty yards. He threw a wide-eyed glare over his shoulder as he bent low over the nag’s mane. Mike tried holding the pistol on him, but the bouncing of the Olds had the sights waving like a kite in a storm. “Not yet!” Tom shouted. There were pedestrians at the corner of Fourth, businessmen off to work, a woman pushing a pram. Some were crossing the street, unaware of the horse and automobile bearing down on them. The horseman didn’t slow, riding as if to continue straight on Thirty-fourth, but at the last instant with people shouting and running for safety, he turned south, hooves flailing at the pavement, slipping, clattering, but somehow keeping horse and rider aloft. Tom and Mike braced for the turn a moment later, leaning to the left like sailors in a racing yacht, hanging over the side. Tom put the tiller over, fighting it as the tires screamed and hopped sideways. Faces in the crowd flew by, mouths open, cursing, shouting.

  The road was not wide enough. They were going sideways into the curb. Tom yanked the tiller the other way and took the curb at an angle, bounding onto the sidewalk and so close to the side of a building that Mike could not understand how they didn’t hit it.

  The rider was now more than a block ahead, running hard downhill toward Thirty-second, widening the gap. The Olds careened back onto the pavement. Tom pressed the speeder hard, trying to regain their lost momentum. The rider was almost at Thirty-second Street and rode into the turn as hard as his ice wagon horse would go. Again Tom and Mike braced for the turn. But they were going downhill and had gained at least another five miles an hour by the time they hit the corner. Tom fought to slow the Olds, hands and feet dancing at the controls, one hand hard on the brake handle. They slowed, but not enough. The Olds tilted as it reached the apex of the turn, rising up on two wheels before hitting the curb.

  Mike felt them going over, the sidewalk hitting his shoulder and head and knees, felt Tom crash on top of him. They rolled into a wall in a tangle of arms and legs. Mike was on his feet before he knew it or even considered what his injuries might be. He tried to focus on the rider, now nearly two blocks away and disappearing fast, but his head was spinning and he fell against the wall and slipped to the sidewalk. Tom groaned at his side, holding one arm and bleeding from somewhere.

  “You okay?” was all Mike could manage.

  “I look okay?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck it,” Tom said and got up, wincing as he set his feet under him. “C’mon, let’s get this car up.” A crowd had gathered, angry shouts and curses ringing them. “Police,” Tom growled at them. “Out of the way!” He grabbed a crumpled fender at the front and Mike the one at the rear, his head still wobbling about on his shoulders in a most unsettling manner. “On three,” Tom said.

  It took two tries to get the Olds on her wheels, but then it became clear that the little red car would go no farther. Two flat tires spread like pancake batter under her.

  “Shit!” Tom kicked at a fender and leaned heavily against the car, then turned and slid to the sidewalk.

  “Dad?”

  “A little light-headed is all. I’ll be okay” Tom said in a fuzzy voice. “Where’s all this blood coming from?” He wiped at his eyes and smeared his face with it.

  “Your head’s bleeding. Hand too, I think.” Mike was leaning on the fender now himself, trying to sort out where he hurt the most. No one in the crowd offered to help, though most had at least stopped cursing them. There were distant shouts and heads turning. Mike couldn’t see what the commotion was. He climbed unsteadily atop the Olds, standing on the seat. “Something’s happened. There’s a crowd over by Broadway.”

  Tom got to his feet, gritting his teeth. “Let’s go.”

  He and Mike hobbled west. Tom found a handkerchief and wiped at his face.

  “Sorry about the Oldsmobile,” Mike said, doing his best not to grimace as he walked.

  “Me too, but I’ll be damned if that wasn’t fun!”

  “Oh, Christ, if that’s your idea of fun—”

  He didn’t finish. The crowd ahead had grown and high-pitched screams echoed down the block at them.

  “Let’s get moving,” Tom said, breaking into a jog. They ran the last two blocks, parting the crowd, and shouting, “Police!” There was a patrolman on the scene already, but there wasn’t much he could do. A woman was screaming repeatedly, the crie
s ripping from her throat with steam-whistle intensity. Others tried to calm her with no success. The ice horse was down, struggling and screaming, two legs broken, bones protruding, a deep gash in its side. A streetcar was stopped, blood pooling in its wake, bits of flesh and clothes in a short trail to the body. Behind the streetcar lay the man they’d chased, cut diagonally in half from crotch to shoulder.

  28

  “YOU’RE SURE THEY were cops,” Paul Kelly said, looking closely at McManus. They were in a back room at the New Brighton Dance Hall, Kelly’s headquarters.

  “Saw a badge on one of ’em.”

  “Badges aren’t that hard to come by. Could be they were Pinkertons or something like that.”

  Jack held up his left hand, wrapped in a fresh cast. “T’ings was dicey, Paul. Could’n be sure, not a hun’ed percent.” Kelly sat back, considering the situation. He was not a believer in chance or coincidence. For a man like Kelly such inconveniences as coincidence or lack of information could not be allowed to get in the way.

  “Truth is, Jack, that Big Tim had some protection arranged for our friend, Mister Saturn. No matter if it was Pinkertons or detectives or goddamn Daybreak Boys.”

  “Daybreak Boys? Paul, them mugs been gone fer years. I don’—”

  “I was making a fucking point, Jack. Anyway, the point is that Big Tim is protecting that fuck Saturn. He’s the ticket into the goddamn steamship racket, so naturally he’d want to protect his stupid ass.” Kelly wanted to find out what the Bottler had going that he hadn’t told him about. Kelly figured it for smuggling. He knew the Bottler’s style and that would fit him like an old suit. What bothered him was the Bottler’s trying to keep it quiet. That wasn’t to be tolerated. He’d have to be confronted and he’d have to cut Kelly in if he wanted to stay healthy. But Kelly wanted that boat for his own reasons now that he knew there was a possibility of getting a piece of it. There was gambling, prizefighting outside the three-mile limit, and smuggling of his own to be done. “You say you stomped him pretty good before the cavalry arrived, right?”