Everybody Goes to Jimmy's (19 page)

Chapter Seventeen

While Anna and Weeks and I had been yakking away, Nana had decided to take a powder with the kid. She left a hand-scrawled note that didn't even look like writing to me.

Anna pointed out the words: Worry Not We See Paul Baby Need You Husband.

It made no sense to me. Anna translated. She said that despite everything they'd done together, Nana thought that she, Anna, was still Pauley Domo's wife and should be obedient and respectful to him.

“I told her he was dead,” she said, “and when the son of a bitch learned about the money, he tracked her down.”

“How'd he find out about the money?”

“The Saengers. He's practically another brother. That crazy old woman, I do not understand her. For years, she's afraid to touch a telephone. Now she's calling Pauley, she's calling Jacob, she wants me to give the money to the church. Jesus Christ, why did she do this
now
?”

It was strange, watching her then, half-focused on the money, half on the kid.

“All right,” she said out loud to herself, “she's safe enough with Nana.” Then she turned to me. “Where's the money?”

Weeks demanded the same thing, and that did it. I'd had enough. As you've figured out, I am an even-tempered, good-humored guy. Unless provoked, I don't set out to make trouble or anger people. Bad for business, bad on general principle. But by that time that night, I'd heard so many crazy stories and been bombed and punched and shot at and Mickey Finned, and lied to and threatened and had two of my best suits ruined that I was well pissed off.

I stood up, grabbed my hat, and said to her, “Where's your kid?” and to Weeks, “Where's Jacob? Why don't you two straighten out whatever it is that you're not telling me. Find Jacob and meet me in a couple of hours at 405 Lex, top floors, and we'll work this out.” They didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Like I said, there was hardly a moment when each of the three of us completely understood the other two.

I went back downstairs, had the doorman hail a cab, and went back to the speak.

Fat Joe unlocked the front door. He had a sawed-off double barrel in his big mitt.

He said, “You took your sweet time. It's been a fucking parade out there.”

“Anybody you know?”

“The fat fucking Kraut who was in the other night with the gent. He's been driving and walking by. Got a fucking big bandage on his nose. Malloy says there's action in the alley.”

“Anybody try to get in?”

“Only regulars. Read the fucking sign and went away.”

“OK, we're going to move the stuff later. It's probably going to get rough. Expect you'll be able to shoot somebody.”

Fat Joe smiled. I went to the back door.

Malloy had made himself comfortable on the landing with a couple of barstools. He sat on one and had a drink and his Luger on the other. He was reading a book.

“Good evening, sir,” he said when he saw me. “I hope you don't mind my borrowing one of the books from your office. Even with the savages circling our outpost, it gets boring.” He'd taken Will Durant's
The Story of Philosophy
, and it looked like he'd made it farther than I had.

“Not to worry. What's going on outside?”

“This being my first night on the job, it's not really my place to say, but this does seem to be an uncommonly busy alley. Couple of times I've heard guys rattling the gate and trying to climb over it. Can't tell how many of them. When they hear me open the door, they fly on winged feet.”

“Fine. In a couple of hours we're going to move the money. Be ready.”

The kitchen was a mess. There were wax shavings and dirty towels and pans of milky water all over the worktable. Somebody had strung up lengths of cotton string like clotheslines. Wet dripping tens and twenties were paper-clipped to the string. All four of the boxes had been opened, but it looked like they'd only been working on the first one. The oilcloth had been peeled back on the other three, revealing more solid brownish wax.

Marie Therese said that it took too long to scrape away the stuff with knives. That's where the shavings came from. They put the block in a big wash pan, boiled up a pot of water, and poured it slowly over the block. That softened it up enough for them to pry loose the first six inches or so and work with those bills, the ones that were hanging up to dry.

I asked what the count was, and Frenchy answered too quickly, “Two hundred and sixty dollars, with that much more in the pan. Now that we've got the block cut down, it will fit in the oven and we can melt it. Marie Therese thinks we should keep it down to two hundred and fifty degrees. Don't want the wax to catch fire.”

I told them not to bother with it. “There's still some question as to who's got the most legitimate claim on this nasty stuff, but since Jacob the Wise is one of the interested parties, we're going to move it out of here and let them settle things. Like I said earlier, none of you signed on for anything like this.” I was looking at Connie when I said it. “And I think it's likely that somebody's not going to be happy at the way this turns out. Any of you want to stay here and get ready to open tomorrow night, you're being smart.”

Everybody said no. Connie was the most bright-eyed and excited of the bunch.

“All right, then, I've got to make some calls. Shut the boxes back up and take them back to the cellar. And let's spruce up a little. We're going to take all this up to the Cloud Club, where the interested parties will make their case. We should have the joint to ourselves, but if somebody questions us, we need to look like we belong there. “And could somebody make me a sandwich, a
real
sandwich? I'm starving.”

Back in my office, I called Ellis's precinct and asked for him. The sergeant who answered said he was busy. I told him who I was—he knew me—and said it was really important for Ellis to talk to me. I had information on two cases he was working.

Connie came in with a ham and swiss on rye, a glass of milk, and a thermos of coffee. She was the most wonderful woman in the world.

The most wonderful woman in the world stretched out on my divan and said, “I guess all this got started when we were here the other night, when the bomb went off.”

I nodded while I chewed.

“But,” she said, getting to her point, “it really started when you met that woman, your ‘old girlfriend.'”

“That was five, six, seven years ago, I don't remember exactly and it's not important. She and I …” I stopped. What were Anna and me?

“She's Jacob's mistress. Or she was. She's got a kid who's about three years old, I think. And she's got a husband, the guy who was part of all the commotion at the bus station this afternoon.”

Connie sat up quick. “Three Fingers is her husband? That's what Marie Therese calls him, says he gives her the heebie-jeebies. He's been in for the past three nights, nursing beers, acting strange but not doing quite enough for Fat Joe to throw him out. What's he got to do with this?”

“It's a really involved story. What it comes down to, I think, is that this is money Jacob paid to get Benny Numbers back after he was snatched out West. Three Fingers seems to think it's his. So do a lot of other guys.”

Connie asked if I knew why the cash had been sealed up like that, and I admitted that I did.

“That's another involved, crazy story. Crazy as hell. When there's time, I'll tell you all about it, but here's what it comes down to: Anna, my ‘old girlfriend,' delivered the money, and she was held captive in the mountains by some kind of hermit. She thinks he saw her in this little town where she and Jacob were staying and he became—what's the word—obsessed with her and decided to lock her up for his own. Does that sound possible to you?”

Connie seemed to pull inside herself on the sofa, knees and feet together, arms clasped around her chest. “Oh yes, it's possible. It's … never mind. Believe me, it could happen.”

I thought she had another story to tell, but she didn't say anything more about it. That night wasn't the time. She said they needed her in the kitchen.

I guess I'd believed Anna from the beginning. She lied to me with things she didn't say and things she left out, like a husband in the Tombs, but I didn't doubt what she said about the months in the cabin. She didn't make that up. I still wasn't sure why she sent the money and the books to me, and what she was holding back about Benny, but I thought the story about the half-breed was true, because the girl who'd challenged me to race in the street would have done just what she did. She'd be patient, she'd think it through, and when she got the chance, she'd kill him.

As for me, I think it was while I was sitting there by myself that I finally understood just how important the speak had become to me. It was my place, our place. I may have lived at the Chelsea, but this was home. And I knew that Marie Therese and Frenchy thought of it as home, too. Connie hadn't been there long enough for me to know what she thought, and nobody knew what Fat Joe thought. I just realized then that I needed the place, and as long as I could hold onto it, I wouldn't sell out.

It was a little after eleven when Ellis called back. I asked if he'd set it up for us to get back into the Cloud Club.

He said, “Yeah, I know one of the supervisors on the janitorial crew. He'll help us out, but what the hell's going on? Why the Cloud Club?”

“For the same reason you took me there, to impress people,” I said. Actually, I didn't really know what I was doing, but it seemed likely that things would get rough, and I didn't want anybody shooting up my place. Didn't want to clean up either.

“The situation has changed a little. And I'm not sure it really makes a difference, but now I am certain that this money everybody is so interested in is Weiss's ransom for Benny Numbers.”

“How did it get here?”

“I can't tell you that. Not now, maybe later. As near as I can tell, it has nothing to do with Betcherman's killing. Sure, he was looking for it when he got killed, but Jacob didn't rob a bank to get it. He just did what he does every day, and you're not interested in that.”

“So, the money is clean, that's what you're saying.”

“Wellll … Yes, it's clean. Jacob and another interested party are going to join us at the Cloud Club. Our friend Herr Klapprott has his guys keeping an eye on my place, so they'll follow us. He'll bring along his number one thug, a guy named Luther who killed Betcherman.”

“You know this?”

“Yes, I do.”

“How will I find him?”

“That's easy. First, he's going to be coming after me, and second, he's wearing a big bandage where his nose ought to be.”

I finished my coffee, checked to see that I hadn't left any of my sandwich on my shirt or tie, and went back down to the cellar. I collected Malloy along the way.

The rest of them were waiting with the four crates. Marie Therese and Connie had dolled up. Connie was wearing a man's duster to hide the gun she was carrying. The gents, even Fat Joe, had put on ties. He and Malloy started to load the crates onto the hand truck until I told them to wait.

I knew guys had been watching us when we brought the stuff down from the Railway Express office. Maybe they'd been close enough to see that we had four crates. So we'd have to take four crates back uptown, but they didn't have to be the same four crates.

It had been years since we'd used the storage space behind the false wall, and it took me a while to find the spring latch. When the door popped open, it smelled even more strongly of raw excavated dirt than the rest of the cellar. I told Frenchy and Fat Joe to stow the third and fourth crates of Yampah Hot Springs Mineral Water inside and took two wooden boxes of Gordon's Gin from inventory. I was probably being too cautious, but if anybody had been watching carefully, they'd see that we had four wooden crates on the bed of the truck, and all six of us were along for the ride. Nobody was staying behind to guard anything. I can't say that I had any sort of plan in mind. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I figured that splitting up the money couldn't hurt.

As we took the crates up to the truck, Fat Joe said to Malloy, “Sometimes he ain't as fucking stupid as he looks.”

Chapter Eighteen

Fat Joe and Malloy stayed on the bed of the truck as Frenchy eased out into the alley and I locked the gate. Connie squeezed into the cab with Frenchy and Marie Therese. Since she was more comfortable with rifles and long guns, Fat Joe gave her the riot gun he'd carried that afternoon. It was loaded with birdshot, but I hoped like hell that she didn't have to use it. That thing really made a mess. Marie Therese had the little Spanish .25 automatic she always carried in her purse. Fat Joe pulled me up and I sat on a crate of money.

As we drove toward the streetlights, it seemed that everyone on the sidewalk was paying extra attention to us. I told myself that was just nerves, that it was odd for people to see three guys riding on the back of a truck on Third Avenue in the middle of the night, and that nobody was really paying attention. Right. About then I heard the rumble of a V-8 and saw the big bright headlights coming up behind us, and there was Klapprott's Phaeton pulling up alongside. He was smiling in the back seat as he touched the brim of his hat with a gloved hand. Luther wasn't with him. I think it was the same driver who'd been in the car that morning.

The Cadillac stayed even or ahead of us until Frenchy turned on Forty-Third Street and then went into the service entrance. I got down and banged on a metal door. A guy in coveralls with the name
FRANKIE
stitched on the chest answered. I told him Ellis sent us. He pointed us toward the hall that led to the lobby. Frenchy asked if it was OK to leave the truck there. I gave Frankie a buck, and he said he'd watch it.

While the guys unloaded the stuff, I asked Frankie if he had a phone line to the Cloud Club. He said that he did, and I gave him a five to let us know when anybody else showed up.

Nothing had changed on the sixty-sixth floor. I still couldn't get over how small the place was. Sure, they'd done a great job with the fancy ceilings, and the bar had a gentlemen's club feeling, but the selling point of the place was the elevation and the view, and the windows weren't that big. Maybe it meant enough to the members that they were up there above it all and the rest of us unwashed hoi polloi weren't bothering them.

Not that I was really worried about such things that night. Like I said, I didn't really have a plan, so first I had to figure out how we'd spread out and where we'd set up the dirty loot. Seemed to make sense to me that we act like we actually worked there. That meant Fat Joe stayed at the door. Frenchy and Marie Therese were behind the bar. Connie took the little coatroom and found the telephone switchboard there. We put the cases of Gordon's on the floor and the two boxes of waxed cash on the bar. Frenchy pried open the first box again, and we left the chunks of wax that they'd separated on top of the bar. Malloy and I went up to the top floor of the restaurant and checked to see where the doors were, which ones were locked, and where they led.

The stairs and elevators were in the center. We couldn't find any doors on the exterior walls, but there were odd-shaped little closets and cabinets, some locked. We also found buckets and wet spots on the floor from all the leaks in those weird windows, I guess. They made the footing treacherous in places. Malloy and I took the stairs up through the kitchen to the observatory. Not much light was coming through the narrow triangular windows. Malloy found the switch and turned on the screwy fixtures that looked like planets and stars. Again, there didn't appear to be anyplace a guy could hide up there, but some of the windows could be opened.

I was ready to leave when Malloy said he wanted to look around.

“You know, we came up on one elevator to the fifty-seventh floor, I believe it was, and we took another to this overweening farrago they call their Cloud Club—‘Cloud Club' my bleeding ass—but if we are to be having visitors who might wish us harm, I'd like to know more about the floors directly below us, particularly the one with the gargoylian eagles at the corners.”

It was a good idea, but with my leg it would take too long to get down the stairs. “OK,” I said, “make it snappy.”

He zipped down the stairs.

Gargoylian
—what the hell was that?

Back in the Cloud Club, Connie said, “Frankie called. There's a guy on his way up.”

There was no place I could sit where I could watch everything, so I took a four-top in a corner where I could see the bar and one set of elevators. Fat Joe was watching the elevators and stairs on the other side. I took out the little Smith and checked the load. Like me, Fat Joe kept an empty chamber. I cocked the pistol to put a round under the hammer and laid it on the table close to my hand. It was in plain sight. Just wanted to let everyone know that I was taking this seriously. It's been my experience that a pistol in a holster or a pocket makes a damn poor defensive weapon.

I heard the elevator working and felt the vibration of it through the soles of my shoes. It stopped, the doors opened, and Fat Joe grunted. Johann Klapprott, cool as you please, strolled around the corner. Fat Joe patted him down and said he was clean. The German glanced at the pistol and a tiny smile lifted the corner of his mouth. He checked his hat and Malacca with Connie and nodded to Frenchy and Marie Therese, taking an extra moment to check out the crate and yellow oilcloth. He turned to me and said, “May I join you?”

I nodded to the empty chair. He sat, glanced at the crates again, and said, “First, I must apologize for what went on this morning. I was told by the party that responsibility had been transferred to the Chicago organization and I was to introduce you to them. I had no idea that Luther intended to do you harm, and I am reconsidering my association with them.”

“And you had nothing to do with dosing the coffee.”

He shrugged as if it meant nothing. “A simple precaution, but not, I understand, an effective one. I advised against it, but the people from Chicago insisted. Do you suppose they stock Steinhäger in this establishment?”

“Try the Gordon's.” I nodded to Frenchy. He poured gin over ice in a short glass and brought it over. I wasn't buying Klapprott's story and the way he was making nice, but I figured it was good to have him right there where I could see him.

Klapprott sipped, crossed his legs, and leaned back. “The young man who claims to be the rightful owner or, I suppose, inheritor of the money in question will be here soon. I have seen—” He stopped and appeared worried. “What is that object?” waving toward the messy waxy oilcloth.

“If your young fellow can explain that, it'll go a long way toward supporting his claim, but I doubt that Justice Schilling or Justice Saenger will be joining us.”

“Is that Klapprott?” I hadn't heard or seen Ellis approach, but there he was by the bar. He handed over his hat and overcoat to Connie and sat with us. I gave Fat Joe the high sign, and he poured another gin for the detective.

I made the introductions. “Johann Klapprott, Detective William Ellis. Ellis, Klapprott.” They didn't shake hands. Ellis didn't waste any time.

“What is your connection to the 115 warehouse on the wharf off South Street?”

“My firm represents the owners, Herr Schmidt and Herr Watts, in matters involving real estate and investments.”

“What do you or they know about two murders that took place there Tuesday night?”

“Nothing.” Klapprott was unruffled. “I do know that my clients own those properties, but even if they are suspected of any involvement in the incident, my firm does not handle criminal cases.”

About then it came to me that nobody had called to say that Ellis was on his way up. I interrupted and asked if he came in through the Forty-Third Street entrance and saw Frankie downstairs. Before he could answer, the elevator doors opened.

Jacob the Wise and Mercer Weeks walked in.

It was a strange moment, seeing how the four of them reacted to one another.

You had Weeks and Ellis, a strong-arm enforcer and a cop. As I saw it, they did the same job on opposite sides of the street. The few times I'd seen them in my place at the same time, they avoided each other without making a point of it, and I had the idea they respected each other.

With Weiss and Klapprott, it was the opposite. The German's back stiffened and his normally bemused expression twisted into naked contempt. Jacob Weiss read it right away. He was looking at a guy who hated Jews and didn't care who knew it. You could tell they'd be after each other soon enough.

Jacob was wearing a decent suit, and he had a big Havana fired up. Weeks cased the room quickly, establishing where everybody was. He noted the pistol on the table in front of me and took a longer look at the crate on the bar. He and Jacob went over to it. While Weeks read the Railway Express label, Jacob picked up one of the wads of waxy bills. You could tell it was money if you were looking for it. After a few seconds he put it down, frowning around the cigar and sniffing at his fingers. He cleaned them off with his pocket square and muttered, “What the hell is this?”

“That's what we're here to establish,” I said. Then I asked Connie, “Have you heard anything from Frankie downstairs?”

She shook her head. I asked Ellis again if he'd seen Frankie. He said no. I heard fast footsteps on the stairs, and Malloy, breathing hard, ran into the room. He had his Luger out.

“We have company,” he said between breaths, “a lot of company.”

Malloy had gone down four or five floors, where they had normal offices. He didn't see anybody working in any of them. At that hour, all of them were dark. But he heard somebody, at least two groups of guys.

The first were men's voices close and distinct. They were on the far side of a corner and Malloy ducked into a men's room. He heard at least two guys who'd taken the elevator up to the fifty-seventh but didn't understand where they were and couldn't figure how to get to the other elevator. They were arguing about what to do, and it sounded to him like they'd decided to take the stairs, if they could find them. Then they shut up because they and Malloy heard somebody else. Mind you, Malloy didn't actually see any of these guys, but that didn't matter.

The second group got off the elevator, and even though one of them was trying to quiet the others, Malloy could hear enough.

“They're Krauts,” he said, “and I'm certain they're some of the same schnitzel-eaters who frequented the 115 warehouse late on the moonless nights, the same ones who set upon Mr. Quinn this morning.”

His voice chilly, Klapprott said that they might be his colleagues. I asked how they knew to come to the Chrysler Building.

He shrugged. “Who can say? They have been talking to people on the telephone at my office all afternoon and evening.”

Jacob the Wise snorted. “This guy says it's his dough?”

“No, I am simply here to warn Mr. Quinn that my former associates mean him harm.”

Jacob turned back to the bar and said to nobody in particular: “What the hell did you do to my money?”

I said, “Is it your money? How do you know?”

Weeks said, “Label says it came from Denver. That's enough for us.”

I heard the elevator doors on the other side open, and there was some commotion. A few seconds later, Fat Joe shoved two guys into the room.

I'd seen one of them a couple of days before on street level when he followed me up Lexington from my place. It was the gaunt guy in the gray canvas jacket and black cap. The other one looked a lot like him and was also wearing tradesman's clothes. I was pretty sure their last name was Saenger. They took one look at Ellis and saw that he was a cop right away.

I said to Ellis, “I think you're gonna find these two are related to the guy you've got at Bellevue, the guy who broke into my room. They might also have something to do with the dead guy who set the bomb.”

They started squawking that they didn't know anything about breaking and entering or bombs. Ellis cut them off and demanded to see identification. Each of them handed over a thin wallet. Ellis went through their pockets and found several others. He sat them down at a two-top.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

They looked at each other, trying to figure out what they could get away with. Finally, the one who'd followed me said that Pauley Domo told them to come there. He said he had a job and offered each of them twenty bucks. All they had to do was carry some boxes.

They were interrupted by a ringing telephone in the coat closet. Connie answered, listened for a moment, and said, “It's Frankie from downstairs. He says there's a guy, an old woman, and a baby on the way up.”

Klapprott leaned back and laughed. “This really is becoming quite a production. I can't wait to see what happens next.”

“Ain't it the truth,” I said.

We heard the next batch before we saw them. I guess they were one floor below us, and there were enough of them that they split up. The first ones came out of the stairwell, the second from the elevator. They rushed into the room together and stopped. There were six of them, and I don't think they expected to be outnumbered. Luther was in the lead, and he looked worse than he had the last time I saw him. He had a square gauze bandage stained rusty-red with dried blood in the middle of his mug. It was held in place with a big
X
of adhesive tape. His eyes were dark and swollen, and he gulped air through his mouth like a fish. The rest of them looked to be some of the guys who worked me over in the warehouse.

By then, the little place was far too warm and crowded. I slipped my knucks onto my left hand.

Like the Saengers, Luther made Ellis for a cop PDQ and ducked back between two of his fellow thugs. He went for the stairs with the detective close behind. His thug pals tried to stop Ellis. Mercer Weeks waded in to assist him, and things got lively.

From where I sat, it looked like a couple of the Germans turned tail and three stayed to fight. Neither Mercer nor Ellis messed around, and two guys went face-down in the first seconds. They were brawlers, not professionals. The third guy charged down the stairs with Detective Ellis right behind. Mercer Weeks went back beside his boss. I looked over at the two-top and saw that the Saengers had taken the opportunity to make a quiet departure.