Everybody Goes to Jimmy's (14 page)

Weeks sagged back on the divan, and his face softened but only for a second. Then he said, “OK, this means there is a chance that Benny is still alive. After all these months, I don't know how the hell that could be, but maybe he is. And that's what's important to me and Jacob. We need Benny more than we need the money.”

That much I'd figured out already. It didn't take a genius. “Maybe I've got a line on the money, too, I can't say. Hell, I really can't say anything. None of this makes a damn bit of sense. Can you and Jacob trust me?”

He smoked and thought for a long time before he said anything else. “I guess we've got to. You've been straight with us so far. You insulted Jacob, but maybe he had it coming, and that's not important, anyway. Benny is important, you got that? Our operation is nothing without him, and you're going to see that he comes back.”

“Weeks, I can't …”

Ignoring me, he gathered up the books and the box and went to the door. He stopped and turned around before he left. “Jacob needs to know about these right away, but we'll be keeping an eye on you. Don't fuck this up.”

His seriousness was not lost on me. But the first thing I needed to do was to find out if the money was where I thought it was. After that, well, we'd see.

And let me take one second here to say something else. In the years that have passed, the things that happened in the warehouse that morning have become famous. All right, a little bit famous among the low-life thugs in a few disreputable neighborhoods, and I need to set things straight.

According to some versions of the story, I bit Luther's nose completely off and spit it out. That could be true. In all the excitement, I honestly don't remember. But other people, a lot of other people, say that I bit Luther's nose off and swallowed it. That's not true. Not at all. I'd remember if I ate it. Yes, my face and mouth were bloody, but that was because they'd been slapping me around. So, for the record, I did not eat his nose.

Having something like that in your reputation isn't flattering, but it does cause some guys to be careful when they're around you, and that can be useful.

Chapter Twelve

After Weeks left, I bent too close to shut the safe and noticed the dirty ten-spot and the key with the brass tag. Three Fingers had been in last night and said he wanted it, but he vamoosed before I could get it. With all the business about Jacob the Wise, I'd forgot about Three Fingers. But now I had an idea about what it might be, so I slipped it into my vest pocket and locked up.

I found Fat Joe sitting at my table reading my newspapers and smoking a cigar. I said, “That piece you keep in the coat closet, I need it.”

He didn't look up from the paper. “Suppose I was to have a fucking emergency.”

“This is a fucking emergency.”

He grumbled some more, went to the coat closet, and came back with something hidden in his massive mitt. He passed a little Smith with a two-inch barrel to me under the table. I put it in my coat pocket and told him to tell Frenchy to bring his truck when he came in. We might be needing it later. Before I left, I said, “Come to think of it, we could have more fucking emergencies. Best be prepared.”

Back at the Chelsea, I found that my room was still a wreck, so I grabbed a clean shirt and another suit, a navy three-piece, and went up to the room on the fifth floor. Connie was still there. She'd showered and the room was sweet with the perfume of her soaps or whatever. She wore a navy blue skirt and matching coat over a white blouse. She looked great. She took one look at me and said, “Jesus wept and shat, somebody beat you up again? Sit down.” The speak was having a terrible influence on her.

She still had the tape and bandages and set to work on my mug for the second time, and she was none too gentle about it because she was mad at me. “What's going on, Jimmy? I want you to tell me the truth. Don't give me the soft soap with some story about an old girlfriend. You owe me that.”

I explained that Klapprott had the idea that I was holding fifty thousand dollars that belonged to him. He tried to snatch me to get Frenchy to fork it over, but his thug Luther had different ideas and was working me over when Mercer Weeks and Malloy came to the rescue of my sorry ass.

“I have no idea why he thinks this money is his or how he found out that I had anything to do with it. Hell, I don't even know why I'm involved, but you're right, I owe you that.”

I remembered what Jacob had said about trying to persuade Signora Sophia or Anna or whoever the hell she was to deliver the ransom for Benny.
I am asking you as an honorable man. If you agree to do this, I will be in your debt. You can ask anything of me. Anything. Weeks is my witness.

“If you think it's time to catch the train back to California, I'll buy the ticket and help you pack. You see, this isn't over, and it's probably going to get nastier. I'm tired of people following me and pounding on me and knowing more about what's going on than I do. If this money everybody talks about really exists, then maybe I've got a line on where it is. That's the next step.”

“Fine,” she said with a smile. “I'll help.”

I spent another five minutes explaining why I had to do this by myself. It did no good. Hell, I might as well admit it. I've always been attracted to strong-willed women, and I've seldom been able to get them to do what I want them to do. A contradiction that comes with the territory, I guess.

When I went to change clothes, I saw that the light gray suit was ruined, and that pissed me off even more. I was down to my skivvies before I noticed that Connie was directing her complete attention to something outside the window. My near-naked condition made her blush. If I'd been more of a gentleman, I guess I'd have gone into the bathroom or something, but it was too late for that.

“OK,” I said, tying my tie, “I expect there's going to be somebody outside watching for me, and they'll follow us. We'll let them, and then we'll shake them. After we've done that, we'll find out if I'm right about the location of the loot.”

I checked the straps on the brace, opened the gun to make sure there was an empty chamber under the hammer, and put on my coat. I looked pretty good as long as you didn't notice my face.

“Without being obvious about it,” I said, “you're going to be on the lookout for this guy or these guys that will try to follow us.”

“Where are we going?”

“We'll start uptown.” On the way out, we stopped at my room, and I got some cash from the lockbox in my closet and stopped again at the front desk to use the phone. I called the speak.

“Frenchy,” I said. “Got some business to take care of, so I'll be late getting in. … Connie's with me. … No, it doesn't mean that. …” She rolled her eyes. “Did Fat Joe tell you about the truck? Good …. No, I'll tell you later, I don't know yet. Bye.”

Outside on the street, I hailed a cab. As we were getting in, Connie said, “There are two guys watching us. No … one guy and maybe a kid.”

“Workmen's clothes? Caps?”

“Yes, they're getting into a car.”

The cabbie said, “Where to, Mac?”

“Plaza Hotel, around back on Fifty-Eighth Street, and there's a guy following us.” I turned to Connie. “In what? What kind of car?”

“I couldn't tell. It's black.”

The cabbie checked the mirror and said, “Yeah, I've got him.”

“There's an extra buck in it for you if you lose him.” I held up a bill, and he hit the gas.

If I was halfway right in what I was thinking, these guys were from out of town. They didn't have a chance of keeping up with a well-trained native. We had a wild ride up Sixth Avenue, bouncing around the back seat. The hack juked through the traffic just like I used to on foot, leaving a chorus of angry horns in our dust. Connie was sure we were going to die and grabbed me and held on as tight as she could. I thought that was pretty nice.

My idea had been that if we couldn't shake the tail before we got to the rear entrance to the hotel, we'd get out, go through to the lobby, and slip the bell captain a bill to jump the cab line before another car could get around the block. But that wasn't going to be necessary, so I told the cabbie to take us back to East Thirty-Fourth Street, and we wouldn't need the speed demon act.

“What act?” he said and hit the gas.

At Thirty-Fourth Street, I gave him a tip that doubled the fare, and he roared off. Connie asked what we were doing.

I put my arm around her shoulder and said, “First, we're going to go around the block to make sure nobody else is following us.” We ambled and turned around three or four times until I was sure we were on our own.

“OK,” I said. “Over the past few days, I've heard a lot of stories—knocking over the Denver Mint, kidnapping a bootlegger, a trip out West, a stolen inheritance. I don't know how true those stories are, but for now, let's assume that there's something behind them, right?”

She nodded reluctantly, probably thinking I was a little nuts, but I didn't mind. It was a nice afternoon on the cool side. I was walking with a pretty girl and, for the moment, nobody was trying to beat me up.

“Now, we've got Jacob and Weeks saying that they forked over a hundred grand for Benny. I believe that. I believe it because they've got the money and because Benny is that important to their business.

“And I've got Anna, this old girlfriend who's not really an old girlfriend, saying that she sent seventy-five thousand dollars to me from Toledo. In four boxes, by the way. For now, we won't try to figure out why she would do something as crazy as that. But why would she lie about it? She didn't ask for a loan. In fact, she seems to be pretty well set up. I don't think she was trying to impress me, so again, let's assume it's true. There's probably a connection between the two stories, but, for now, we won't worry about that either. Instead, we're going to think about how she did it. How did she send four boxes from Toledo to New York?

Connie shrugged her shoulders. “Post office?”

“Nope. That.” I pointed my stick at the red and white diamond sign above the door of a storefront across the block:

RAILWAY

EXPRESS

AGENCY

You saw their green trucks all over the city. The Railway Express was kind of like the regular mail, but they had to accept anything you could ship on a train. I'd never done any business with them, but I thought they were more secure than the regular mail. Assuming that Anna wasn't traveling by car and she wanted to keep a large number of bank notes safe, shipping them by train was maybe her best bet.

Connie and I went inside and had to wait on line for one of three clerks. It didn't take long.

When we got to the counter, I asked a tired, bored-looking guy if he had anything for Jimmy Quinn.

He moseyed back to a set of accordion files on a shelf and went to the
Q
section. He came back with several sheets of smudgy gray carbon paper stapled together. I could see a big square block stamped across the front:
HOLD FOR
with my name written beneath it.

“Sign here. Need to see your ID,” he said, passing a form across the counter.

I showed him my driver's license, the only official paper I carried, and scrawled my name.

“What is it?” I asked.

He looked at the bottom of the sheets and spoke slowly, sounding out the first word. “Yampah Hot Springs Mineral Water. Four crates.”

“Where's it from?”

“Denver.”

“Can you deliver it to an address here in the city tonight?”

He shook his head. “Tomorrow, day after more likely.”

A sign on the wall behind him said they were open until nine. “We'll pick it up later,” I said as he handed me the carbons.

“Take these to the desk around he corner.”

“One more thing. Do you have any storage lockers for rent?”

He shook his head. “Closest are at Penn Station, and you might try the new bus terminals. I hear they got 'em too.”

As we left, I thought for the first time that those crates might really be stuffed with cash. Damn, I could take Frenchy's truck and load it up and drive away a rich man, maybe with Anna, maybe with Connie, maybe by myself. I know that a lot of guys have had such ideas and given in when they've had the opportunity. Maybe some of them even got away with it, but I knew better, and it wasn't really a serious temptation, just a wild hair that could get me in a lot of trouble.

Connie was thinking the same thing. She had a bright dreamy look in her eyes, and I could almost see cartoon dollar signs floating overhead. She sobered up pretty quick and said, “Do you think those crates really do have money in them?”

“We'll find out soon enough, but there's another matter we've got to take care of.”

I explained about Three Fingers. She said, “Yeah, I saw him at your table.”

“Yeah, that guy. He gave me a ten-spot to hold something for him for twenty-four hours. It's a key with a tag and a number. Might open one of those lockers you can rent for an hour or a day. I think it would be good to know what it is.”

We walked a few long blocks west on Thirty-Fourth Street, then down to Thirty-Third and the big stone building that took up the whole block. We crossed Seventh and went through the doors to the wide staircase that led down to the main concourse. Connie grabbed my arm tight, and as we went down the stairs, she held back, surprised and a little scared at the size of the place. She'd only been in the city for a few months. We hadn't stepped out very often because we were working so hard. With the ridiculously cheap prices we charged for the good booze we sold, the joint was open just about every hour that we thought we could sell a drink. If we decided to close for a Sunday, I mostly went to the movies or walked or slept in. I knew Marie Therese had shown Connie around, but that day with me was her first look at Penn Station. From the outside it was a massive spread of granite walls and columns. Inside, it was glass and girders and streaming afternoon sunlight. It almost made you dizzy because it was so big, but then you got swallowed up in the tides of people hurrying to catch trains, and if you didn't move as fast as they did, you were in the way, and they'd knock you down and not look back.

Connie made me stop on the stairs while she drank it all up.

“Wow,” she whispered.

The truth is, I walked or drove past it every week, but I didn't go into the place very often myself, and I had to agree. It was worth a
wow
.

They'd moved the information booth to the center of the main level since the last time I'd been there. Once we found it, they told us there were three places where we could rent storage lockers. One of them was at the Pennsylvania Motor Coach line, right there in the station. The keys there didn't match the one back in my vest pocket. Neither did the other two. Back at the booth, they came up with a list of the other bus stations. There were nine more. The truth is, I didn't know from buses. The whole idea of a bus that would take you from, say, Chicago to New York was new. I'd seen them around in the streets, but I'd never been on one.

Most of the bus companies were within a few blocks, so we didn't need taxi or trolley. We just started with the closest and worked our way out. As we were leaving the station, I got a strong sense of somebody watching us. I stopped and turned around at the top of the Seventh Avenue stairs, and there below me was a huge open area filled with people who were paying no attention to us. Connie asked what was wrong. I told her, and she said she felt it too. We stood there staring down for a minute or so, maybe longer, but we were wrong. Nobody was following us. Not then.

The closest terminal was owned by an outfit called Nevin. It was right across the street. There was a second Nevin terminal a block away on Thirty-First near Sixth. No lockers at either. They did have lockers at the Herald Square Terminal and the Public Service Terminal near the library, but they weren't the right kind. We had a short slog over to Forty-Second Street.