You Didn't Even Test It?
Tenement house rooftop.
Cory, his face swollen and bruised, explained the situation through his puffy mouth.
"I only just found out myself. Apparently Tanner Boss getting shot that time was because of internal conflict too."
The gunshot wound to the thigh I'd seen at Coney Island.
He hadn't mentioned it, so I hadn't asked. I'd simply written it off as fallout from trying to open a saloon.
But listening to him now, the Marginals' internal strife had been born of Tanner Smith's ambiguous stance. He'd claimed retirement while sticking his hands into every decision, yet never truly taken the reins of the Marginals.
And the decisive cause, more than anything, had been me.
"A few days ago Gavin told the Hell's Kitchen kids you were the new boss. That hit hard, I guess."
Tanner had peeled the Marginals' new blood away and attached them to me. The old guard, already resentful of that, had heard the uncomfortable rumor.
"Suddenly they summoned us and asked who the boss was. Naturally I said you. That's why I got the beating."
They hadn't dared touch the ones about to enlist, so they'd worked over Cory and the other eight instead. The marks on his face were the evidence.
"If Patrick hadn't shown up, I might've been beaten to death."
Patrick, true to his place as Tanner's right hand, still stood by him.
I asked Cory who had raised the banner of revolt. The only name I recognized was Oliver Wilkinson—a man in his mid-twenties, a full head taller than me, whom I'd met when he came along for the physical.
"Around eighty have lined up behind Oliver. The ones still with Tanner Boss are..."
Fifty or so. Nearly half of them newbies who already held dual membership in the Union. The rest were men in their thirties who had ridden with Tanner for years, like Patrick.
"Patrick told me not to say anything to the boss, but how could I? You need to know how things are turning."
"Good work, Cory."
If members had been beaten, proper revenge had to follow. The whole mess was tangled, though; I needed to straighten it out first.
"Where's Tanner right now?"
After parting with Cory I reached the Tenderloin gambling den. Events had piled up; as of today I meant to quit. I had never planned to stay long, and I had already gotten a solid feel for what a place like this was.
What mattered to me was recruiting men capable of running one.
"You're quitting?"
"Something's come up that I have to handle."
"Then you should."
Rothstein himself had kept telling me not to linger here, to go out and learn the world and grow ambition. His reaction was therefore calm.
"Tom Foley's favor aside, once you've worked with me the relationship continues."
"I'll be counting on you in the future as well."
"Before long I may have a job for you. Don't pretend you don't know me when that day comes."
"If it's something I can do, I will."
Rothstein's brow creased faintly.
"That isn't the answer I want. I wasn't asking you to choose."
"You don't care for men who don't think for themselves, do you?"
Rothstein gave a short snort of a smile and held out ten dollars.
"Slick way of changing the subject. You've worked hard. Buy your family some meat."
"Thank you."
As of today my short stretch at The Big Bankroll was finished. On the way out I ran into Meyer and Irving; both wore expressions of pure incomprehension.
"You just kicked away a real opportunity."
"You should've at least stuck it out until Rothstein gave you something important."
Good or bad, in cramped Manhattan I would cross paths with Rothstein countless times.
"This isn't the end. Anyway—see you around."
I left the Tenderloin and reached Chelsea around eight in the evening.
Near Pier 25 on the waterfront. Scarf pulled up, I stepped into a shabby saloon. The place was thick with acrid cigarette smoke and held only four tables. Tanner occupied one of them.
I dragged a chair over and sat. Tanner, flushed with drink, stared at me with unfocused eyes.
"Who talked?"
"Does it matter?"
"It does. These days the brats don't listen to me."
"You said you'd retired."
"That was my mistake. I should've just kept leading them myself. Damn it."
He knocked back the whiskey in one swallow and set the glass down hard. First time I'd ever seen him like this.
"Disappointed?"
"Not especially."
"I started a gang when I was your age. Me and Oney Madden of the Gophers ran wild through Hell's Kitchen like a pair of lunatics, then one night over drinks we bet on who could build the bigger outfit."
That was how it began, but neither of them finished well. Oney Madden went to prison on a charge of solicitation of murder and the Gophers fell apart. Tanner himself was locked up for shooting at a cop; the moment he got out he declared retirement and walked away from the gang.
"I should've left clean back then."
A moment ago he'd been saying he never should have left. His words wandered. I took it as proof of how deep his attachment to the gang still ran.
"But honestly I was scared. Every kid I'd run with ended badly. So I figured I'd just do whatever I felt like."
He had taken refuge in that half-hearted stance—retired yet still meddling, never truly building anything.
"If I hadn't met you it would've just ended that way. Then everything changed overnight. I thought you could do what I never could."
The problem was that in the process Tanner had frozen out the old Marginals members. Men like Oliver—young, hot-blooded, ambitious—had demanded he hand over full control of the Marginals.
"In other words, they want me gone..."
He gulped more whiskey; the look in his eyes sharpened.
"You won't just sit still either, right?"
"Cory's face was swollen like a balloon. You think the Union holds together if we let that slide?"
"Revenge is the heart of unity. I meant to settle this first, but my own indecision made it worse."
That, too, might have been because of me. Tanner had clung to the Marginals because without them he felt like an empty shell. He was so human.
"You know what marks an old-fashioned gang that can't keep up with the times?"
"What?"
"They still follow the old ways."
A perfect example was the crude, simple method they used to choose the next boss.
"In short, they beat each other's brains out one-on-one and hand everything to the winner."
It wasn't limited to succession; rival gangs had settled things the same way before.
"Classic case—the old Lower East Side gang bosses who settled it with a boxing match."
Back then the Five Points ruled the west side of the Lower East Side around Bowery Street, the Eastmans the east. The flashpoint was Bowery Street itself, the border, and both sides had bled each other dry over it. The fighting between the two great gangs grew so fierce that Tammany Hall finally stepped in to mediate. They told the gangs to stop shooting and settle it cleanly—boss versus boss—in a boxing match.
Absurd as it sounded, boxing was the most popular sport of the age and considered the fairest contest; no one raised an objection.
"On the day of the fight they used a referee and full boxing rules. I watched it myself."
Winner took the neutral ground and the war ended. Both bosses agreed and stepped into the ring. Paul Kelly of the Five Points, a professional boxer; Monk Eastman of the Eastmans, legendary for street fighting. Their bout ended in a draw. With no decision, the war simply resumed. That was 1905—twelve years ago.
Tanner was dredging it up because he had a scheme to hand the Marginals over to me cleanly.
"Most of the boys don't even know who you are. You're Oriental, you're young, you're tall but you look like a string bean. Who's going to accept you?"
"...So you're going to set the stage and tell me to fight for it."
"Clean, isn't it? If you've got the confidence, it's the best way to absorb the Marginals whole."
His eyes glittered again with the old sharpness and cunning.
More than that, I wanted to know how firm his decision was.
"You've made up your mind to give me the Marginals?"
"Not even a flicker of doubt you'll lose, huh."
"You think I'll lose?"
"Hmm... Anyway, the only thing I was debating was the method. I've meant to give them to you for a while."
"Good. I'll keep a seat open for you, Tanner."
"A seat?"
"As consigliere."
Mafia adviser—consigliere. Tanner, who still hadn't quite grasped what that meant, tilted his head.
"Sounds like you're putting me out to pasture."
"Opposite. You'll be part of the gang's history. Plenty of work for you too."
Only then did Tanner smile, satisfied.
"While you're here, have a drink."
"Got any cola?"
I drank with Tanner until dawn, then caught the first streetcar back to the Lower East Side. I walked Hester Street and entered a tenement on Forsyth. No different from where I lived. Paint peeled from the walls in patches; I climbed the filthy old stairs to the roof.
Someone had already claimed the space. A man huddled against the wall.
"Lenny Goldstein?"
Lenny looked up, checked his wristwatch, then slowly rose.
"You're thirty minutes early."
"Better than late."
He stepped close, eyes burning.
"Can you get me out?"
"If a few conditions line up."
"...Go ahead and say them."
I gave him the same problem McManus of The Big Bankroll had posed. Meyer and Marcello had given different answers; I wanted Lenny's.
His face twisted in disbelief, then he answered almost instantly.
"4.73 percent."
"Annoying. How does everyone get it wrong?"
"How can that be wrong?"
"One said 21.6, another 10.8."
Lenny snorted.
"21.6 is what you get if you count every other spade. 10.8 is what you get if you ignore the jacks the other players already hold. Hypergeometric distribution—or just random-draw probability—is the right model for a gambling table."
I had no idea what that meant, but Lenny had casually and instantly diagnosed the sources of the wrong answers. One thing Meyer had taught me: if McManus, who hired him, already knew the correct answer, why keep Meyer as a dealer? Even a cheat had to look confident. Lenny showed promise. Right or wrong, he was absolutely sure of himself.
"I'm opening a gambling den soon. I need you."
"That's just switching prisons."
"It's different. The treatment will be different, and you'll have freedom. Depending on ability, more than that."
"For example?"
"Show me what you can do first, then we'll talk."
Lenny was no pushover. He took my own words and flipped them into a counter-offer.
"Get me out and I'll work your den. You show me ability too."
"Of course. But first you have to decide. You know this doesn't end with just pulling you out."
The reason Lenny had never escaped was that the Italians held his family hostage. Extracting one body wasn't the problem. Unless Pacifico, the operator of the den, was finished, the whole thing was useless.
"So what do I have to do?"
"First tell me the layout I haven't mapped yet."
I handed him pen and paper. Lenny began sketching the gambling den. The stairway connected to the boss's office was, as expected, a secret passage for staff.
"Total headcount?"
"Fourteen besides the five dealers. The other dealers are in the same boat as me."
I pulled a smoke grenade from my bag and held it out.
"Midnight tonight. Pull this pin and within ten seconds the basement will be full of smoke."
"And then?"
"Take the dealers and come out the customer entrance."
I laid out the detailed plan and we were about to part when he asked:
"This smoke grenade... it actually works, right?"
"I'll test it. If it's a dud I'll tell you before midnight. I've got another one just like it."
"Te—you didn't even test it?"
"That's why I'm saying I'll try it, and if it fails I'll cancel the plan and let you know first."
"How do you... this is my life on the line."
"Mine too. You think this is a joke?"
I left Lenny and went home. Mother was at the factory, Liam at school, Roa at Mrs. Mary's—no one home. I stretched out on the bed for a while.
When I woke it was five in the afternoon.
"Day and night swapped."
I stretched, looked in the mirror. I'd put on a little flesh since the beginning, but I still looked like a string bean. Needed more meat.
I packed my bag and went out. Destination: Hester Street. I headed for the gambling den run by the Sicilian outfit where Marcello worked as a dealer.
The place I work? It's a half-basement with one little window.
Window open, then?
Still summer, and with the cigarette smoke—unless it's raining they leave it open. Doesn't do a damn bit of good, though.
Through the maze of twisted alleys I reached the half-basement den Marcello had described. At dusk, after making sure no one was around, I took out the smoke grenade.
Time to test whether it really went off.
And thin out a few competitors before I opened my own place.
I pulled the pin and slipped it through the window.