A Beer Is Enough for That

Gunshots filled the restaurant like shattered glass. One shot. Two. Three.

A rapid burst of bullets, gunfire and screams tangled together into pure pandemonium.

Inside the narrow dining room the reports slammed like a blunt instrument against the walls. To the diners waiting for lunch it was the roar of a battlefield they had never known—pure terror.

"Aaaaaah!"

Tables overturned. Chairs scraped and toppled. The restaurant turned into an open gate of hell as patrons stampeded for the exits.

"Kieran! We have to run—what the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hell are you doing?!"

Brandon seized my arm, face pale with shock. I didn't move.

The shooting had already stopped, and the shooters' next move was obvious.

The last of the customers poured out. Two men in coats and hats pulled low—the ones who had started it—followed them into the street.

Who had they pulled the trigger on?

As Salvatore passed me our eyes met. His gaze was as flat as if he had just brushed past a stranger on the sidewalk. Then something shifted—eyes narrowing, the corners lifting.

The bastard was smiling.

He looked forward again and vanished into the crowd behind the first man.

"Brother…?"

I ignored Brandon and pushed back into the restaurant.

Smoke and cordite mixed with the lingering scent of wine and steak into something strange and metallic.

Farther in, where Salvatore's party had been seated, the floor staff and kitchen crew stood frozen, not knowing what to do.

I slipped past them and looked.

Three bodies still sitting where they had been shot. Blood was splashed around them like thrown spaghetti sauce, the iron tang of it tangled with the smell of the food.

"Hurry, call the police!" "What about the food?" "What kind of lunatic would eat in this mess?!"

Here they were. The living still needed feeding more than the dead, didn't they? I could have eaten.

Unfortunately the place was closed for the day.

Brandon and I collected our coats and stepped out just as the police arrived. There were plenty of witnesses; no need for us to stick around for questioning.

"Kieran, those shooters just now. You know them, don't you? You warned me about them before things got ugly."

"I don't know them, brother. And forget what you just saw. Pretending you know anything only brings trouble."

"Huh? Oh. Right."

He was jumpy, but at least he had enough sense to listen.

We moved to another restaurant and never brought the shooting up again.

"Anyway, what were we talking about earlier? Something about Pierce."

"Right—we got cut off. I told him that instead of wasting time screwing around in Chicago he might as well ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠come work with us."

"And?"

"I'm asking your permission first. That's why I'm telling you."

If a family wanted to join on their own, there was no reason to refuse. Still, I needed a clear read on Pierce's character.

He had been a waiter at a Chicago college, scraping together tuition and living money, and had gotten tangled up in a Mickey Finn case.

The real question was how deep he had been involved. If he had simply been used and then arrested, he would only be dead weight in a gang.

"What was Pierce charged with?"

Brandon let out a long sigh first.

A good sign.

"The drug makers were a married couple. He bought product from those lunatics and sold it to the other waiters. Said he made two hundred dollars off it."

Good. That was the minimum I expected.

"He passes."

"Huh?"

"Bring Pierce in. I have a job ready for him."

After the meal, on the way back to the office, I kept turning over the restaurant shooting—Salvatore turned gunman.

Killers and victims were all Italian.

Same as the gambling-house shooting Leo had mentioned a few days earlier. Italian gangs were pointing guns at each other one after another.

What the hell was going on?

The last time I had seen Salvatore was right before the sniper hit on Five Points Gang boss Izzy Joe—when he had been standing with Frankie Yale.

The question now was who Salvatore was fighting.

Internal feud or collision between rival factions? My knowledge from the previous life gave me nothing solid.

The longer I lived here the clearer it became: the mafia stories in books, movies, and dramas were a scrambled mess of accuracy and chronology.

They were useful for the big events and major players, but the finer details were almost impossible to pin down.

And Salvatore had deliberately warned me about the shooting. As if to show he was not my enemy—at least not yet.

It wasn't admiration or affection.

Had he found some use for me?

That would be exactly like him.

A basement salon on Canal Street.

Two men entered and a staffer locked the door behind them. Before opening hours the place held only the three of them.

They tossed coats and hats onto chairs and lit cigarettes first. When the staffer offered a light, one of the men waved him off.

"Go keep watch outside."

"Got it, Vito."

Once the man was gone, Vito narrowed his eyes at Salvatore—the one who had coolly opened the door to the private room and pulled the trigger in the restaurant.

"Why the hell did you do that in the restaurant? What if that kid runs to the cops?"

"If he were that kind of guy he'd already be dead. He's watched people get murdered more than once and still eats well and sleeps fine."

"So you trust him? An Oriental, of all people? Oh, mamma mia."

Vito looked ready to lose his mind, pinching his fingers into a little flower bud and staring at the ceiling. Salvatore gave a short laugh and tossed the next line out casually.

"We don't know yet, but later on he'll be useful."

"Based on what?"

"He's got a real head for business. Put his mother—a sweatshop worker—out front and built a company from nothing."

And the sales were solid, too. At first people had laughed it off as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠women's underwear; then word came that they had moved from a Forsyth Street tenement into a proper townhouse.

"That's not all. Vito, if you'd met the kid face to face you would've felt it—he's no ordinary type."

"I doubt it. What's so special? Sure, he's tall and built solid—not the kind you usually see in Chinatown."

"That's not it."

Salvatore's mind went back to the first time he had run into Kieran.

It must have been the day they were shaking down Meyer Lansky's crew in an alley.

The kid had been dragged in by chance, and he had been nothing like the Orientals Salvatore had met before.

"He wasn't afraid of us at all. Calm. Even watching the whole thing like he had time to spare."

It had pissed Salvatore off enough that he threw a punch.

"And the bastard caught it."

"Caught it? Not just dodged?!"

Mamma mia.

Vito made the flower-bud gesture with his fingers again, unable to believe it.

Vito was pure Neapolitan, only five years in America. On top of that he had spent the last year in prison on a gun charge, so he knew nothing about Kieran.

"Anyway, the kid's outside and inside don't match. From the first meeting he gave me a bad feeling."

"If he gives you a bad feeling, just kill him."

Salvatore stared at him like he was an idiot.

"And what does that get us? You kill him because he pisses you off—what's left?"

"At least you feel better."

"That's what a beer is for. His value isn't that."

Once, Arnold Rothstein—the great gambler of the Tenderloin—had said this about Kieran:

Forget that he's Oriental. A seventeen-year-old becomes Big Tom Foley's bodyguard. Then he puts two anarchists who came to kill Foley down with clean shots. Can you believe it?

Rothstein's assessment hadn't stopped there.

A gunman who can also run a business is half-god. And that kid showed the signs. You see his eyes when he was under me for a while? Looked like 'If you've got nothing left to teach me, I'm gone.' And sure enough, not even a month later he walked without a second thought. Kid's impossible to read.

Vito rubbed his chin, thinking hard.

"So the great Arnold Rothstein really said that."

"My gut says the same. Kill that bastard now and you'll regret it later."

Salvatore exhaled a stream of smoke. He pointed at the haze spreading through the room.

"When this crazy shooting between our own people is finished, whose crew we end up under—and what rank we hold—will decide our fate. If you don't like that…"

If you didn't want your fate left in someone else's hands, you had to make your own openings and use them.

That opening was not far off.

Salvatore waved a hand.

The smoke cleared, revealing the bottles lined behind the counter. While he stared at them, Vito muttered under his breath.

"Orientals, Jews… at this rate we'll end up dragging in the Irish next. Worrying."

Unlike Salvatore, Vito was pure Italian and wanted nothing to do with other blood. The Jews he meant were Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel's crew. They, too, were already preparing hard for the future.

They had even formed a gang recently.

What was the name again…

At the same hour, raindrops began to fall one by one from the sky outside the salon.

On Rutgers Street, the southern tip of the LES, a man squatted in an alley scribbling furiously in a ledger.

Even as the ink bled on the wet paper he wrote down "five dollars and ten cents."

The ledger listed every name and amount Siegel was currently squeezing. And then—

"Motherfucker! You thought I was a kid you could laugh at?! Die, you son of a bitch!"

Twelve-year-old Siegel held a gun in one hand and a length of pipe in the other. He was straddling a pedestrian already on the ground, pounding the pipe into the man's chest like he was keeping time.

The more blood flew, the wilder Siegel became.

When the rain thickened, Meyer finally pulled him off.

"Collection's done. Let's go."

"Okay!"

They left the bleeding man where he lay and slipped out of the alley, meeting Irving who had been watching the entrance.

They were the newly formed LES gang: the Bugs and Meyer Mob.

"One more score before we head up?"

"Going up that way?"

"No, no. That's Essex Street. You step into that territory and it gets messy. The Union might even step in personally."

"Damn Union!"

At Lansky's words Siegel pouted and fingered the gun inside his coat.

They called themselves the lords of the LES, yet never showed their faces—just ran units from the shadows. Cowards.

That was how Siegel pictured the Union.

"The Union boss is definitely a chicken. Hiding at home, just giving orders."

"Someone said it might even be a woman."

"I heard it was some half-dead old man."

"Whoever it is—we mind our own business."

Meyer wiped rain from his face as he spoke.

What mattered right now was grinding out money. To seize the opportunity of Prohibition when it finally hit,

you needed a thick bankroll first.

Meyer Lansky's sharp eyes swept over the passersby and the street vendors.

The morning after the restaurant shooting.

We reached the twin buildings. Hazel headed for the basement; I started for the second-floor office.

Then I spotted someone lingering near the secret passage entrance in the side alley.

"Hazel, go on ahead."

"Okay. See you later."

Hazel went down to the still-empty basement workshop. I kept my presence as quiet as possible and stepped into the alley.

I recognized the back of the man's head by the clothes alone.

"What are you doing here?"

Raymond jumped, coughed, and turned around.

"Don't get the wrong idea. I was just curious, looking around."

"Things that slow these days? End of the year—should be busy."

"Oh, I'm busy. Barely time to breathe."

If he was that busy, why was he prowling here? Old Pinkerton curiosity kicking in, maybe.

"So what exactly are you curious about?"

"The identities of the people who use this passage—including you. Time to be honest, don't you think? Same with Editor Ida. This building has too many odd things."

"And if you found out—then what?"

Raymond lit his clay pipe.

He drew deep, blew out smoke, and shrugged.

"Solve one mystery and the mind settles a little. Honestly, you didn't make me deputy editor just for a business magazine, did you?"

I had a fair idea why Raymond was poking around the building's structure.

Before I left for Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Ida had told me the magazine staff had started asking pointed questions about the company's ownership and the building itself.

Especially the ex-Pinkertons—they had that look like they were going to dig up at least one secret no matter what.

Raymond had been prowling so he would have something to tell them.

"Fine. I'll settle your curiosity."

I took out the key and unlocked the iron ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠door that connected to the secret passage behind the building.

I led him up the stairs into the second-floor office. He tapped the walls, reconstructing the layout in his head, and nodded.

"Accessible from either side, left or right. A space built into the middle of the second floor. Connects up and down too?"

"Now that you know the secret, if word gets out people will look at you first, Raymond."

"I'm tighter-lipped than I look. You know that."

His eyes drifted around the office and settled on the blackboard. He seemed to be trying to reconstruct the half-erased writing—impossible.

When we first built The Ledger as a business magazine, Raymond had brought three former Pinkerton colleagues into the company. Using their intelligence, surveillance, and investigative skills as reporters had been an easy yes from me.

"Truth is, with the kind of work we used to do, we're more interested in other things than business reporting. This isn't the Pinkertons, but those habits don't die. Same for me."

I understood. A Pinkerton detective's main work had been bodyguarding, bounty hunting, union-busting, shaking down businessmen, blackmail—plenty of excitement.

"So playing real journalist is starting to bore you."

"You could say that. I've been getting a little restless myself."

I had been waiting for those exact words.

Why did I care so much about gathering information? To take the hole-riddled, fragmented knowledge from my previous life and stitch it into something accurate.

Especially what was happening inside the LES right now.

"Find out why the Italian gangs are killing each other, Raymond."

"The gambling house and the restaurant shootings?"

I nodded. Raymond's eyes lit up.

"This investigation—Editor Ida will sign off on it?"

"Of course."

He could throw every Pinkerton colleague he had at it for all I cared.

What I needed was quality intelligence.