Hell's Gate

by Richard E. Crabbe

  “Shake the tree and see what falls out,” he wrote.

  Tom nodded. “Listen, we’ll find out who did this to you and we’ll go put some fucking holes in him, right?” He stuck his hand out and they shook as if it were a business deal.

  Mike got something for his pain and some broth for dinner, which Ginny insisted on spooning into him. He tried to tell her he still had two good hands, but it wasn’t worth the effort, and he liked the attention anyway.

  “You’re getting thinner already,” she said. “And you need to get every bit of this into you. I talked to the nurse and tomorrow they’re going to try giving you some mashed vegetables.” Although the prospect of baby food wasn’t too appealing, Mike’s stomach had spent most of the last couple days growling at him. He was sure that anything more substantial than broth would be welcome. “Inny,” he said between spoonfuls.

  “What?”

  Mike wiped a dribble of soup from his bandaged chin. “Thank you.” Mike put his legs over the side of the bed and stood. Ginny moved back, surprised. He wasn’t as dizzy as he’d been in the afternoon. Mary had a hand out, ready to catch him, but Tom said from the foot of the bed “He’s okay. You still got two good legs, right, Mikey?”

  Mike put a thumb up and walked to Ginny, who stood amazed, the soup bowl forgotten in her hands. He took it from her and placed it on the nightstand, turned back, and without a word encircled her in his arms and pulled her close. Ginny held him and her tears started to soak the bandages on his face. Tom and Mary smiled and started for the door. “The best medicine he’s ever had,” Mike heard Tom say in the hallway.

  Mike caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror over the washstand. He frowned at his reflection. “Omb?” He pantomimed combing his hair and Ginny produced one. His hair hadn’t been washed in days and still had some dried blood in it. Frustrated with raking his head with little result, he took the pitcher from the washstand, bent over the bowl, and poured some water over his head. Ginny dried Mike off and slicked his hair back, parting it carefully. A minute later they emerged from his room, walking slowly down the hall. Mike had his pad with him. On it he’d written, “Someone I want you to meet.”

  “So, this is the famous Ginny,” Primo said, putting out his good hand. “Now I can see why you search for her.” Ginny blushed and Mike did too under his bandages.

  After a few minutes spent getting acquainted, Ginny busied herself in rearranging the masses of flowers in Primo’s room, pulling the wilted ones and checking water. Mike and Primo began to speak of the possible third man and if it was Jack McManus or one of the many other Jacks they could think of. They talked about getting out of the hospital. Ginny told Mike that his room at his parents’ house was all ready. But he shook his head. “My home.” He held out a hand. “With you.”

  Ginny’s breath was taken away. She had never imagined that possibility, not so soon. But there it was, the culmination of everything she’d wished for, sitting on the side of a hospital bed. She dropped the wilted flowers and came to him. They clung to each other for a long time. Primo swiped at his eyes and nodded his approval.

  Dinner came and Mike and Ginny went back to his room with a promise to return. When Tom and Mary returned they found Mike and Primo arm in arm, walking in the hall with Ginny a step behind. “Well, look at you two,” Mary said, hugging them both. “This is a sight for sore eyes.”

  “We have lots of sore between us,” Primo said, “but my eyes are fine.”

  43

  LATER THAT EVENING, Tom was banging on a door in a fleabag hotel just off the Bowery, where the rumble of the El was enough to stir a cup of coffee and the two-legged tenants were badly outnumbered by the four-and six-legged varieties. His driver, Pete Riordan, had told him about the man he’d seen with Ginny at the Triangle factory, a man he recognized from his days on the force, a pimp he’d arrested years before and whose name finally came to him.

  “Go away,” a man’s voice called from somewhere inside.

  “Police, Carl. Open up! I need to ask you a couple questions!” Tom shouted through the door.

  “Fer da love o’ Christ, I answered all da goddamn questions—” Carl opened the door at midsentence and never got to finish. The heel of Tom’s hand shot through the gap and broke his nose. He stumbled back and fell at the foot of the bed, where one of his whores lay. She sat up when Tom came in. She was naked, but made no attempt to cover up and she didn’t shout like Carl, who was holding his nose as if it might fall off.

  “Hands where I can see ’em if you don’t mind, ma’am.”

  The whore gave a little smile and put her hands on her breasts, massaging the nipples. “This okay?”

  Tom grinned. “Just fine. Keep ’em there.” Carl tried to get up, but Tom stomped on one leg and he stayed put.

  “You broke my fucking nose!”

  “Could be worse, Carl,” Tom said. “Hell, I ain’t even mad at you yet.” He glanced at the whore, who hadn’t stopped kneading her breasts and seemed to be enjoying the show. “You listening?” he asked Carl, who’d started moaning. “Virginia Caldwell, was she working for you?”

  “No! Okay? She wasn’t workin’ fer me. Would’ve if I had more time ta work on ’er. But I ain’t no grabber, see, no white slaver or nothin’. My girls love me. I don’ need ta work ’em over or nothin.”

  “Okay. I get the picture. Where’d you meet Miss Caldwell?”

  “Triangle factory,” Carl said. “Place is full o’ girls workin’ like dogs. Lots o’ mugs work da place, steerers, grabbers, you name it. Me, I like da easy way. Everybody happy, makin’ money.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real prince, Carl,” Tom said, making the woman giggle. “You okay, ma’am?” he said to her in such a way as to make it clear that she could leave with him and escape Carl if she chose.

  Her eyes clouded for an instant before she picked up her chin and said, “Carl’s good to me.”

  * * *

  Ginny visited Esther that evening after leaving Mike. She’d promised to visit as soon as she left Mike. Esther had talked about her children so often that Ginny almost felt she knew them. They were every bit as endearing as Esther’s words had made them out to be. Esther’s children, Emily and Josh, came running into the room and hugged her. They’d been playing and doing homework in their bedroom. Emily was a bright and cheerful child of eleven. Josh, who was just finishing kindergarten, seemed to spend most of his time knocking things over and running into walls.

  “How you feelin,’ Ginny,” Esther said. “You look like a million bucks! Toin aroun’ fer me,” she commanded, admiring her new dress. Esther clucked her admiration, but noticed something off in Ginny. Maybe it was her smile or perhaps the way she’d held her hand to her waist as she turned. “But you’re down a bit honey, right? Somethin’ not right?”

  Ginny shrugged off Esther’s question and launched into how Mike was making amazing progress, how he’d started walking stairs, and by that night had actually run up a flight just to show her he could. But Esther could see there was worry in Ginny’s voice.

  “Ain’t that something?” she said. “Ain’t it wonderful what that modern medicine can do? But you gotta not worry so,” Esther said with a look of concern. Esther bustled about the kitchen, lighting the stove and putting a kettle of water on top. Ginny let her buzz without moving. An inexplicable worry had crept into her consciousness earlier in the day and would not let her go. Like a leech, it sucked at her happiness, feeding her doubts. Ginny was so consumed by it that she could hardly put her fears into words, but Esther had no such trouble.

  “This thing, it’s about the best thing ever ain’t it, sweetie? I mean dreamin’ about this is all you’ve been doin’ an’ now when you got it, it’s like maybe it’s too real to last, huh?” Ginny shrugged. That was close to how she felt, but not quite it. “Afraid of losin’ him? Afraid when he’s better he won’t need ya?”

  “Maybe,” Ginny allowed. Everything had been so good, so perfect these last days; Mike r
ecovering so quickly, Mary treating her like a daughter. It couldn’t last she reasoned. Nothing that good could.

  “Maybe,” Esther said with a cluck of her tongue. “Da woild is full o’ maybes, sweetie. Every day ya got a ton of ’em, an’ ya neva know which way they’ll go. Your Mike, I got a feelin’ he’s no maybe.”

  44

  MIKE WAS MOVED out of his private room and into a ward where beds lined the walls and men with every kind of malady except the contagious sorts were laid out in white like so many headstones in a cemetery. The place stank of unwashed chamber pots. Medicines, elixirs, tonics, and poultices competed with the aroma of general human decay. It was supposed to be a ward for those on the mend, but it doubled as a place for the dying, and it did nothing to heal Mike. Ginny’s visits seemed to strengthen him more than any amount of food, rest, or medical prodding.

  * * *

  Tom stopped by that morning. He didn’t tell Mike what he’d found out about Ginny and Carl Woertz. He doubted he’d ever have to. It was enough that he knew and could help Ginny if the subject of Carl ever came up. She was almost part of the family now, although it amazed Tom that he’d begun to think of her that way. But he could see how Mike was when she was there, how she cared for him, and how Mary felt about her. It was enough.

  “You know, when I was at the morgue with Saturn, I took one of the Bottler’s shoes, and—” Tom started to tell Mike, putting his thoughts about Ginny to the back of his mind.

  “His shoes?”

  “Yeah, shoes. They were old ones that had been resoled. I thought I’d ask around and see if I could find out where they’d been done.”

  “Why bother?” Mike wrote. “He’s dead as last year’s herring, right?”

  “Oh, sure, dead as dead can be, but I wanted to check because his face was all shot to hell; hard to identify him.” Tom held up a hand, stopping Mike from interrupting. “I know, I know, there were witnesses. But it never hurts to be certain. Anyway, I went to a couple of shoemakers in the neighborhood, and I came across the one who did the repair. Now here’s the interesting thing. He said it was for a guy named Mahoney; Dabney Mahoney.”

  “Huh? That’s not the Bottler’s real name, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Mahoney was an errand boy for the Bottler maybe?”

  “Possible, sure.”

  “But the other possibility is…”

  “I know, I know … highly unlikely. Just odd is all,” Tom said.

  * * *

  Mike improved remarkably over the next couple of days. His wounds were healing well and he was told he should try to speak a little at least three times a day. He had been doing that and more with Ginny. In fact they spoke constantly, though often not in words.

  One day, when they’d gone outside to sit on a bench at the back of the hospital overlooking the river, Mike remembered about the Slocum tickets. “You know, I have these passes for a day cruise.”

  “A steamship? Where does it go?”

  “Not sure really,” he answered. “Who cares? It’d just be wonderful to spend a day with you. Would you like that?”

  “That’s funny because Esther, my friend from the factory, she told me yesterday that she was going on a cruise. Some ship called the Slocum. It was arranged by her church, an outing to Long Island.”

  “When?” Mike asked. “My passes, are for any time I want this season, so we could go if you’d like?”

  “Of course, I’d like that, silly. I think it’s for the fifteenth, just a few days from now. But will you be well enough by then?”

  “I think I’ll manage,” Mike said. He was really starting to chafe at being cooped up in the hospital anyway.

  “Would you buy me an ice cream? I’ll do anything for an ice cream you know,” she said this with more than a suggestion of her old self and worried immediately that she’d seemed too wanton, so she added with a whisper, “but only for you, Mike.”

  Mike said nothing for a handful of heartbeats, then turned to her and said, “You are who you are, Gin. I loved you then and I love you now. There’s no burying of the old you, not between us.” He laughed and added, “I can’t have you getting too proper now, can I?”

  Ginny squeezed his hand and breathed in the salty river breeze. She looked back at the hospital. “You don’t suppose there’s an empty room in there somewhere?”

  Mike smiled wickedly under his bandages. “I do suppose you’re right. Shall we find one?”

  * * *

  Primo arrived on the ward the following day. “So, this is what we get for feeling better, eh? They throw us in this shithole,” Primo said as a nurse wheeled him in. He was well enough to walk, but they didn’t want him to tax himself. Mike chuckled. “Welcome to your new shithole, partner.”

  “Makes me want to get stabbed again,” Primo said, looking around the room with a sour face.

  “Makes me want to get the fuck outa here,” Mike shot back, finding he could now pronounce the letters with hard sounds like t and k more easily, though there was still pain in doing it. “At least you look better,” Mike said, for the first time noticing that Primo, once he’d been deposited by the nurse, was walking without holding on to things.

  “Better than a couple days ago, not so good as I wanna be.”

  “Yeah,” Mike agreed. “Not that good.” His tongue hurt, even though he was taking his time and pronouncing slowly like the doctor told him.

  “You look better, too,” Primo told him. “Your Ginny, eh? She is your medicine.”

  * * *

  Another day crept by, the sun crawling across the floor of the ward with mind-numbing slowness, the moon stealing between the beds at night like a ghostly nurse. The next morning, Mike was doing push-ups beside his bed and running the stairs. Primo too was healing well, but more slowly. The wound in his back had gone deep and still felt like it might tear if he tried to do too much. Still, he was able to walk the corridors and climb the stairs with relative ease.

  “You’ll go home tomorrow,” Primo said. “I heard a nurse talking. She said it sad, like she did not want to see you go.”

  “Sure,” Mike said, knowing Primo’s bullshit when he heard it. “You going to see your wife when you get out?”

  “I have been thinking a lot about that and I think maybe I will take the chance,” Primo said softly. “The Black Hand, they work in the small groups. The ones I killed, the ones you killed, that is most of them. There are others yes, but they are not together. They will not be so bold now. They go crawl back under the rock,” he said with a snaky motion of the hand.

  Mike nodded. “That’s good because you need a woman bad.” He grinned. “God, your wife is in trouble! You’ll have her belly out to here in no time.”

  “That would not be so bad a thing, I think, and if the Virgin Mother is good to us, it will be Micaele if it is a boy and Margherita if it is a girl child.”

  “Michael, huh?”

  “Sì, Micaele, after the best man I know.”

  Mike didn’t know what to say. His tongue seemed to have swollen again so that it filled his mouth completely. “That might be the greatest honor I ever had,” Mike said. “I mean it.”

  “What?” Primo said, raising his eyebrows.

  “I mean, that’s really wonderful, you know, having a child named after me, it’s…”

  “It is my father I’m talk about, you asshole,” Primo said. “You think I name my child after Irish shitheads?”

  “Okay, okay, You don’t have to be nasty about it. After I saved your wop ass I just thought…”

  “What? What you think?” Primo said, but he could not hide the sparkle in his eye.

  Mike caught it and stopped to think. “Hey! Your father’s name is Paolo. You told me that yourself.”

  Primo started to chuckle, then burst out laughing. “Maybe you are not such a shithead after all. Micaele is a good name I think, no?”

  * * *

  The first thing Mike did when he left the hospital the nex
t afternoon was go to the firearms district on Chambers, west of Broadway, where giant, wooden pistols and rifles hung over shop windows and gunsmiths catered to wealthy sporting clients, for whom $500 was a trifling price for a good bird gun. Tom had given Mike one of his old pistols, a .32 Smith & Wesson with a two-inch barrel, a “belly gun,” suitable for distances of an arm’s length and not much more. It made a bulge in Mike’s pocket as he shopped for a new Colt. He eventually found an automatic in a shop that also had an entirely new kind of pistol, imported from Germany, a Luger. It was a thoroughly modern weapon and very tempting to Mike even though the price was greater than for the Colt. But he put it down after he’d tried its feel, remembering how well the Colt had served him.

  “You’re that detective,” the store clerk said, looking at the now small bandages on either side of Mike’s face. “You killed those two men.” Mike didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing at all. “I understand Roosevelt himself sent you a bully telegram.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “He shares my views on getting shot at.” Mike had the telegram in his back pocket, having almost left it at the hospital in his haste to get gone. Though it had been just more than two weeks, it had seemed like forever.

  “I’ll give you ten percent off on that Colt,” the clerk said, “if you don’t mind me using your name in my next ad. The automatics are catching on. They’re the next big thing in pistols and as far as I know, you’re the first to use one on anything but a target. Come to think of it, you’re the same detective from that shoot-out in the harbor back a month or two, right?”

  Mike bought a new leather shoulder holster too and put the Colt in it before he left, its bulk feeling odd under his arm.

  “Thanks for shopping with us,” the clerk chirped as he left.

  “Oh, yeah. I shoot any more bad guys and I’ll expect twenty percent off.”

  Though he wasn’t expected at headquarters, he went anyway, sitting at his desk and feeling like a phantom once the tide of backslapping and handshaking had ebbed. He started to pick through the mess that blotted out the top, reports, file folders, envelopes. They seemed to have lost their meaning in the last two weeks and he read the words on them as if they were in some foreign language.