Operation Underworld (46 page)
“I’m Scottish, not Irish.” Doc twisted the knife deeper into the agent and Johnson opened his mouth as if to yell in agony, but nothing came out. “And it’s called a kilt.”
Releasing his grip on Doc, who crumpled to the deck in a painful heap, Johnson stumbled backwards, struggling to remove the long, slender knife from his ribs. Glancing up, mouth still open in disbelief, the last thing he saw was the surrealistic sight of Mancino and two policemen, moving across the slippery deck, back-lit by a police boat spotlight.
He stumbled back, still fumbling for the knife, tripped over the mangled fantail safety gate, rolled off the fantail and disappeared into the white foam of the wake. The wake instantly turned pink, and tatters of shredded clothing churned to the surface, mixing with the remnants of the money floating off the deck.
Louie ran over to Doc and surveyed his wounds.
“Doc! You okay?”
“Call Lennox Hill, will ya? See if they still got my room.” Louie looked back at the jetsom in the wake.
“I‘ll have the mixed green salad with extra tomatoes!”
“You’re a sick son-of-a-bitch, Louie.” Doc’s eyes slid closed and his head dropped back onto the wet deck.
The large white wake continued to arc across the harbour back towards Manhattan and back to Pier One, as the first snowfall of the season, which came in the form of a blizzard, began to show signs of letting up.
Doc didn’t mind Monday mornings, especially this Monday. It was nine-thirty, a lovely young nurse who’d give Veronica Lake a run for her money had served him breakfast, he was still in bed and he was offered pain medicine on request. To top it all off, his favorite switchboard operator was en route to pick him up.
Rumours floated through the nurses’ station that Doc was to have a press conference with LaGuardia, as soon as he was well enough. In addition, he had the pleasure of telling the head nurse that he was too tired to take the long distance call from Tampa which had come in an hour before.
“Well! Look at you! Mr. High and Mighty!” Doc was sitting up in bed reading the newspaper, amused by the much embellished accounts of the ‘Staten Island Ferry Hero’. He looked up to see Nikki standing in the doorway. She was dressed to the nines and had turned heads from the lobby all the way to Doc’s room.
“I’m sorry, did you make an appointment with my secretary?” Doc asked in a mock executive voice. Nikki slowly sashayed over to the bedside, one hand on hip the other holding her black clutch.
“You have a secretary? What a coincidence. I’m currently unemployed and dropped by to talk to you about a possible position!”
“What position would you prefer, Ma’am?”
“Well, naturally I would be looking to work my way to the top as soon as possible.”
“So, you want to be on top? In an executive sense, I mean.”
Nikki pretended to ponder the question. “That would depend on who’s under me. You understand?”
Doc lost his composure, laughed out loud and grabbed Nikki, pulling her into the clean, crisp sheets of the hospital bed.
“Ow! God… darn it! This fu…freakin’ arm!”
“Getting old, cowboy?”
“It ain’t the years, sweetheart, it’s the mileage.”
Hugging him, Nikki looked into his eyes. “You sure
Hugging him, Nikki looked into his eyes. “You sure it’s okay to leave here? The doctor told me at least a week,” she asked suspiciously.
“That head nurse makes Boss Tweed look like the Pope, and I’d rather watch a Singing Randy movie than eat hospital food for one more day!”
“You have lost weight. Mrs Paluso is gonna have a field day with you!”
“Can’t wait to meet the lovely lady!”
“So what are you tryin’ ta say?”
“It’s the end of the third reel. Point me towards the sunset!”
Nikki got up off the bed and crossed the room to help him pack.
“You fit all your stuff in this little bag?” she asked, holding up Doc’s YMCA bag.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“We need to go shopping!”
“God help me.” Doc closed his eyes and dropped his head.
“What?”
“I forgot about that part of it.”
“Very funny. Get your ass up!” She began to put his toiletries into the bag.
“I got a phone call from Shirley this morning.”
“Shirley? Where the hell is she?”
“Connecticut. She eloped.”
“Eloped? Jesus! And we’ve been worried sick about her all this time! Did she have anything to say?” Doc asked as he struggled into his trousers.
“Yeah. Wanted to know if she’d missed anything.”
Twenty minutes later, Doc McKeowen and Nikki Cole were riding up the West Side Drive in the back of a Yellow Sunshine cab, headed for Mercer Street, and an indeterminate period of rest and relaxation.
Louie was in his glory. For the first time in the six months he’d been with Doc, he was in charge of the office.
He occupied himself with menial tasks, basking in the comfort of actually belonging to the small firm, and thinking how proud Doris was that morning as she packed him an extra package of Yankee Doodles cup cakes in his lunch.
“McKeweon and Mancino, Private Detective Agency?” the postman enquired as the sign painter was putting the finishing touches on the big eyeball in the middle of the glass panel.
The sign painter gave him a ‘What‘s the matter, you illiterate?’ look and continued to paint.
As Louie was cleaning up the files from Johnson and his goons’ redecorating party, there was a knock at the door. Louie walked over, opened it and was confronted by the elderly man in a US Post Office uniform. He was holding a carton in one hand and a slip of paper in the other.
“Doc McKeowen?”
Louie smiled to himself, reached into the breast pocket of his new three piece suit and produced one of the treasury department leather bifolds. He held it up and let it flop open in front of the postman. It contained a photo ID and a brand new Private Investigator’s licence personally issued earlier that morning by the Deputy Mayor. Louie Mancino, Licensed Private Investigator.
“Louie Mancino, Private Dick. What can I do for you?”
“I’m not supposed to give this ta nobody but a guy named McKeowen.”
“It’s okay. I’m his partner. I’ll sign for it if ya want. Doc’s in the hospital, he got shot up. Maybe you seen it in the papers?”
“Yeah. That’s how I knew it was time to deliver this package.”
“What is it?”
“Beats me. Ira give me the ticket a few weeks back. Says if somethin’ should happen ta him, I was ta get it outta classified storage and get it ta some Mickey named McKeowen.”
“I promise ya, he’ll get it.” The mail man was unsure of what to do. “Look, you can call Norma if ya like. She’ll vouch for me.” He was reassured by Norma’s name, gave the box to Louie and left.
Louie set the box on Doc’s desk, trying not to succumb to the temptation of opening it. He signed reports, sorted files and swept some more, all the while glancing at the carton. He dusted, dreamt and finally decided.
Carefully opening the mysterious package, Louie knitted his brow, then held his breath as he looked inside. His mouth dropped open and he fell back into the chair.
Neatly stacked in denominational order, was twenty-two thousand dollars in cash.
Harry would later verify that the notes were real, and that the serial numbers were the originals for the counterfeit bills they discovered last week.
For the last forty-five minutes, methods of transport of every shape and description had been arriving in front of the main gate, depositing pressmen, police and memebers of the public onto the planks of Pier 88 along Luxury Liner Row, just off 49th Street. It was utter chaos.
Normandie’s charred hull had long since been removed and moored in her berth and scheduled to depart for Naples in two hours and forty minutes, was the eloquent but ageing luxury liner, Laura Keene.
From stem to stern she was surrounded by longshoremen brandishing various tools of the trade such as bailing hooks, ’J’bars and skiff hooks. They stood shoulder to shoulder behind a rank of US Coast Guard sailors armed with white billy clubs. As an added precaution, LaGuardia had ordered the pier to be canvassed with city cops. Lucky would have more protection than any United States president.
The only people, without exception, who were permitted to board the beautiful vessel via her single gangplank, were those who the Chief Stevedore decided were legitimate ticket holders. For fear of trouble, the crew members had been ordered to report the night before.
“Fuckin’ Sicily! Whatta shit hole! I’ll be back here before the end of the year. Have everything ready.” Lucky directed his comments to Socks Lanza, who was sitting directly across from him in the black Chrysler limousine as they pulled off Bank Street onto the pier.
“Whatever happened with that treasury agent, wanted to get in on the ground floor with us?” he asked.
“Was gonna come up from DC so we could see what he had. Never showed for the meet.”
“Fuck him. There’s plenty’a others where he came from. Keep things ready, you’ll hear from me in a coupl’a months.”
As the limousine turned off Bank Street and drove onto the dock, past the
No Vehicles Beyond This Point
sign, the longshoremen forcibly parted the mob of reporters and rubber-neckers.
Lanza was compelled to yell over the din of the crowd as they got out of the car.
“Hey, Charlie!”
“Yeah?”
“How does it feel to be a star?”
With his topcoat draped over his shoulders, he made his way to the gangplank escorted by six of Lanza’s union men, while ten federal officials, representatives of various agencies, rushed to meet him but were not allowed to come in contact. As soon as his foot touched the deck of the Laura Keene, the Feds considered their duty done, and disapeared. Despite the fact his deportation was ordered by the US government, Lucky was determined to disallow them to play a part in the actual execution of the order.
Although he had no idea what he would have done had trouble broken out, the Captain of the liner considered it his duty to be there when his famous guest came aboard, and so stood by symbolically at the top of the gangplank.
The reporters were unable to accept the fact that they were not going to get to grill Lucky and so pushed forward and shouted questions at him, even after he was out of sight. When this tactic failed, they turned back on the government bureaucrat standing to the side of the ramp, on the inside of the human cordon.
“We were told by Immigration there was gonna be a press conference with Lucky!” one reporter yelled out, receiving jeers of support from his colleagues crowded around the entrance, unable to cross the triple picket line. Formal notices had been sent to the press by INS that Lucky would give a press conference. Unfortunately, no one at INS had told Lucky.
The lanky INS officer now stood erect on the gangplank, behind the army of longshoremen, and adjusted his glasses as he responded to the agitated demands of the press corps.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, in an attempt to placate the angry mob. He made his way up the ramp and vanished into the passageways of the ship, only to return a few minutes later, physically escorted by two of Lucky’s torpedoes back to the top of the gangplank.
“Ahh… Mr Luciano has changed his mind and declines to speak to the press at this time.”
“Give us a break! Your office released an official memo yesterday saying he would talk to us if we showed up!”
“This wouldn’t be a political ploy to show us what a good job you’re doin’after we criticised you for lack of criminal deportations during the war, would it, Francis?” one reporter shouted out.
“Well? How ’bout it, ya schmuck!”
The government official made a lame attempt at self-defence. “Mr Luciano just wants to relax in his modest accommodation and is looking forward to seeing his homeland.”
The reporters had little alternative but to mill around the dock and speculate.
“What the hell is all the mystery? It ain’t like his deportation wasn’t in the papers for the last two weeks!” one of the frustrated pressmen said to a colleague.