If Something Happens to Me, I Might Come Looking for You

As I recovered the knife, the pressed imprint of the blade stood out clearly on the man's cheek. He rubbed at it, staring at me with a hardened expression. Just then—

"Excuse me a moment."

Al Capone dropped into the seat beside the man. The waiter shot me a quick glance, took the sandwich order, and headed for the kitchen.

The two across from me kept looking my way. I ignored them and went back to carving my steak.

Never mind the ones trying to stare me down.

I speared a piece with my fork and sliced through the meat with the knife.

Only when I finally brought a bite toward my mouth did I pull the mask down to my chin. Al Capone spoke to me at once.

"Have we met before?"

It had been about a year and a half since I'd gone to Coney Island back in July of 1917.

Al Capone remembered me. Hard to forget getting grabbed and thrown to the ground, after all.

I chewed the meat slowly and gave a small nod.

"Probably."

"Yeah. It was you."

Al Capone fixed me with a fierce look. Hearing my voice must have dragged the memory back up.

"I'll be damned. That hungry, are you? How about it—want a bite?"

"I won't refuse."

This bastard's lost his mind.

To my surprise, the man across from me stretched his fork toward my plate again. Watching my reaction carefully, like testing thin ice, he speared one of the pieces I'd already cut.

I was still weighing whether to pin his hand with the knife when he popped the meat into his mouth and asked,

"Come over from Chinatown?"

"LES. You?"

"Chelsea."

He sipped at the soup in front of him this time.

"You come to Jersey City for work?"

"Why? Offering me a job?"

"No reason I couldn't. I'm not in the habit of eating free meat."

"Funny way to start a fight."

He snorted at that.

"I've seen my share of cocky Chinamen. Flash a few bucks, strut around in a clean suit, put away a steak like they own the place. Looking at you now, though, you're a little different."

The chair scraped back.

Having stolen a bite of my meat and drained the soup clean, the man stood. Before he left, he handed me a card.

Bars, saloons, and gambling dens often took names like Gold, Silver, or Nickel—plain signals that this was a place where customers drank and threw money around. Silverman confirmed that The Silver Dollar was a saloon. Judging by the name of the place and his own, he was almost certainly the owner.

"It's a name that carries some weight in Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen. Means I can take care of a job for you, if it comes to that."

He looked to be in his mid-thirties—about Tanner Smith's age.

"If you need work, come find me."

Silverman shrugged into his coat and walked out without so much as a glance at Al Capone—or any Italian, for that matter.

Once it was just the two of us, Al Capone smirked at me.

"Popular guy."

"Seems that way. At least I don't have to worry about a job."

"Still cocky as ever. But home's LES?"

"Why? You know it well?"

"Sure. Worked out of LES for a while. So what are you doing in Jersey City? Looking to move on somewhere else?"

"Just some business to handle."

The waiter brought Capone's sandwich.

He took a huge bite and kept talking.

"You're a gangster too, aren't you?"

"That how I look?"

"People give off a certain air. The guy who just handed you his card picked up on it. Far as I can tell, you're no different from me."

I shook my head hard, rejecting that outright.

"I'm nothing like you. Nobody's hunting me."

"······."

Capone stopped chewing. His eyes swept the room as if searching for something.

"What, need a knife?"

I flipped the handle of my steak knife—still slick with grease and sauce—and offered it toward him.

"Fuck. You still think you can take me?"

"Want to find out, grab it."

Capone glanced from the knife to me and back; the corner of his mouth twitched.

Then he narrowed his eyes.

"Don't tell me you were waiting for me here."

"Who do you think you are? I'm not that free. I heard about you by chance, so relax. And I've got nothing to do with the White Hand."

I nodded at his sandwich, telling him to eat in peace. Capone hesitated a moment, then studied my face.

"You're mixed, aren't you?"

"Irish. Korean."

"Korean? That's a real country?"

"Where are you from?"

"Naples, Italy."

"That's a real ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠place?"

Capone let out a short breath and tried another question.

"Which outfit you with?"

"You wouldn't know it even if I told you."

"Street gang, then. Where?"

"Allen Street."

"Isn't that the whorehouse strip? Can't be easy."

If ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you weren't already in a name outfit, most kids my age started in a street gang. Commit enough crimes, catch a big shot's eye, and you got put to work on their rackets. Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Salvatore—they'd all come up through the street units of the Five Points Gang.

"Name?"

"Knox."

"I'm Al Capone. If anything happens to me here, I might come looking for you. I always settle scores."

"You don't trust people much."

"Trust the wrong person in this life and you end up dead. Right?"

"Not wrong."

Capone checked his watch, shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth, stood, and pulled on his coat.

"I've got a feeling we'll meet again. Hope it isn't as enemies. See you around."

He jammed his hat down, left twenty cents on the table, and walked out of the restaurant.

I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠finished my own meal and laid a dollar on the table.

Steak and eggs: sixty-five cents. The waitress who pocketed the thirty-five-cent tip beamed at me.

"Come again, sir!"

Outside the restaurant, snowflakes had begun drifting down one by one.

"Hurry up. We'll miss the train at this rate."

"That's because you were taking your time. You could've eaten in Chicago—why order steak here?"

"Our Charlie wanted some, didn't he? Right?"

The man smiled down at the child in the woman's arms. The little family hurried on through the falling snow.

Husband with a heavy trunk, wife carrying the baby. Capone had rushed out of the restaurant for the same reason—the Chicago train was about to leave, just like for that family.

Anthony was building power on Chicago's West Side, while Capone's main ground was the South Side and part of the West.

In the original history, Capone moved to Chicago at the invitation of his mentor, Johnny Torrio.

Right now Johnny Torrio was underboss of the Chicago Italian outfit—the man who would play the decisive role in Capone becoming boss.

Either way, Anthony and Capone wouldn't collide early on.

What I wanted was for Capone to stay inside the predictable lanes of the original timeline. Fewer variables that way.

The next morning, ten o'clock.

I woke in the motel, packed at once, and went downstairs. I bought a paper from the newsstand and headed straight for the pier.

While I waited for the motorboat Tanner had sent, I opened the Jersey Journal.

I had staged the whole thing to look as though Goo Goo Knox had died a glorious death avenging his men against the Italian gang.

Judging by the article, the police investigation was heading exactly where I wanted it.

Chug-chug-chug.

A motorboat approached the pier—the same captain who had brought me here two days earlier.

"Business go well?"

"Thanks to you."

The captain eyed the newspaper in my hand and clucked his tongue.

"Jersey City was pure chaos yesterday. You heard?"

"Just read it in the paper."

"Manhattan papers are full of it too. Word is it ties back to whiskey smuggling—so now the port checks are only going to get tighter."

The paper carried related pieces as well.

Yesterday's bloodbath had driven Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City into a fury.

His first move would be to choke off every gang activity linked to contraband. It would start with iron-fisted control of the docks.

"It'll be mostly for show, but smuggling runs are going to be rough for a while."

The captain used his motorboat to move contraband from Manhattan to Jersey City, so the whole affair hit him hard.

I found myself wondering what kind of goods a boat that small could carry.

"Cigarettes? Dope? What do you handle?"

"Both. The real money's in the dope, of course."

New York Harbor was the largest, busiest international port in America. Every overseas ship had to pass through it, making it the main gateway for smugglers bringing narcotics into the country.

Jersey City, in turn, was the vital logistics hub linked to the great inland rail terminals. Dope that came into New York Harbor fanned out across the American interior through Jersey City. Swap liquor for narcotics and the distribution route stayed exactly the same.

I reached Chelsea Piers and went looking for Tanner Smith. In broad daylight he was already drinking with union committee chairmen in his office.

"Well, look who it is."

The moment he saw me, Tanner shifted us into a small back room.

"You raised holy hell in Jersey City."

"You already knew what I was doing."

"Didn't figure on this scale. Seventeen dead. This one's going to drag on. The Jersey City mayor won't sit still."

Like the captain, Tanner was worried about Mayor Hague's response.

"Drinking in the middle of the day, though. Aren't you a little too free?"

What was a labor slugger's real job?

Stirring up trouble between workers and management, manufacturing chaos and riots for profit. Yet every time I saw Tanner he looked thoroughly at ease.

"You can't strike forever. Once you've wrung a concession out of them, sometimes you have to lie low and play nice."

"What kind of concession?"

"Wage talks. Five cents an hour more starting in March."

After the war the economy had turned shaky; workers' pay couldn't keep pace with soaring prices.

Dockworkers, organized around the ILA, had finally forced management into a five-cent raise.

ILA Vice President Paul Kelly, Tanner Smith, and Dopey Benny Fein had done most of the heavy lifting.

Paul Kelly for the Italian majority on the docks, Tanner Smith for the Irish, Dopey Benny Fein for the Jews. The three of them divided the work and kept the strikes under tight control.

"So we don't need to get rid of Paul Kelly for a while."

Tanner wrinkled his nose at that.

"These days I'm more worried Kelly's the one who'll get thrown out. He's under fire inside and outside the ILA."

On the surface the ones threatening Kelly were other ILA officers. They were hammering him for partnering with gangs like Tanner and Dopey Benny Fein—and pointing to the fact that Kelly himself was Five Points—to drive him from his seat.

"Think about it. When has the ILA ever refused to work with gangs? So why the sudden purity now?"

"Why?"

"Management that hated the new deal bought off the ILA brass. The bastards who are supposed to fight for the workers are taking the bosses' side."

Tanner's voice rose with anger. I half-agreed but still shook my head.

"That's not the whole story."

"Oh? What else?"

"The Italian outfits."

The ILA existed to protect New York longshoremen. As an officer, Paul Kelly controlled the workers and wielded real influence.

But Paul Kelly—founding boss of Manhattan's strongest gang, the Five Points—had been losing ground as the outfit itself declined.

Tanner saw Kelly's seat threatened by internal ILA politics and tangled power plays. I saw something more.

"The Italian gangs never liked Kelly handing control of the docks over to you and Dopey Benny Fein."

That control had once meant the traditional rackets of the labor market—nothing more.

This year the picture changed.

"Any of them with brains are already preparing for Prohibition. And they've figured out how important dock control is going to be."

"So they pull Kelly down and put in an ILA man who suits them?"

"That's what I would do."

Even a faded Paul Kelly had ruled the LES longer than the Sicilians or Neapolitans. Under him, giants like Frankie Yale had grown up; future powers—Salvatore, Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Meyer Lansky—had all passed through the Five Points.

"They put up with him while his influence was still strong. How long do you think they'll keep watching?"

When the lion weakens, the hyenas close in. The fall of a man who had defined an era was entirely predictable.

The same went for Tanner and Dopey Benny Fein.

"We're only getting started. If either of you gets hit, we're finished. Stay sharp. This is no time for daytime drinking."

"······."

Suddenly sober, Tanner gulped down water in big swallows.