Hard Night's Work
Salvatore Lucania and Dominic Mileno were both Sicilian-born.
The moment they met, they launched into Italian, so I couldn't make out a word of it.
While I kept my attention on them, River Grey was studying the crates. He questioned Carly the way a mentor tests a pupil.
"What do those boxes look like to you?"
"Hell, it's written right on the box, ain't it? Twelve-year Johnnie Walker Black Label."
"You can read that? Kid's got good eyes."
A bottle of quality scotch retailed for two or three dollars. A twelve-year Johnnie Walker Black Label carried a premium and sold for four or five. Then the Great War had driven whiskey prices sky-high; these days they were going for as much as seven dollars a bottle.
River Grey asked Carly again.
"Looks like they hit a transport truck. How many bottles you figure they hauled?"
"I've loaded crates till my shoulders damn near dislocated, haven't I? Twelve bottles to a case, Model T truck takes forty cases—so how many bottles is that?"
"…So how many?"
Suddenly neither of them said a word.
Don't tell me they can't do the math.
"Four hundred eighty."
Carly nodded at my answer.
"About that, yeah. But look—they've stacked more than fifty cases over there. Seems like they hit two trucks."
"Then that settles it. They jumped the trucks right after loading at the docks, or hit them just as they reached the wholesaler's warehouse."
"What's it matter? The point is they hit two. Anyway."
Carly looked over the boat and shook his head.
"If we load everything in that warehouse, this boat's gonna sink."
"Don't go insulting the customer, you little shit. What did I say the max load was?"
"Five tons."
"Then it's plenty. As long as there aren't any guns…"
Salvatore didn't come back for well over half an hour. Mileno and his two men were still inside the warehouse counting stock.
This was the moment.
I was about to step off the boat when two unfamiliar men approached Mileno's warehouse.
They struck up a conversation at once.
River Grey caught me by the back and held me fast.
"Port officials."
I dropped back into place and flattened myself behind the gunwale.
We watched, heads barely raised, as Mileno handed the officials an envelope.
River clicked his tongue and muttered to me.
"Bribe. Actually works in our favor. Once they've collected, they won't be coming back to the warehouse tonight."
"How much do they usually take?"
"Ten to twenty percent of the deal. But that's if they're greasing a full customs clearance. For just using a warehouse to stash contraband, it's lower."
Call it five dollars a bottle, roughly nine hundred bottles—forty-five hundred dollars.
Even ten percent of that was a fortune.
It equaled a year of wages for most working men.
With that kind of money sliding into your pocket just for looking the other way, who in their right mind would keep both eyes open and try to make an arrest?
"The ones who come down in person are the small fry. The higher-ups expect you to go to them—and they take a bigger cut."
No wonder the place was crawling with crooked officials. The system practically demanded it.
Once the officials finished collecting and moved off, we studied the surroundings carefully and climbed down from the boat.
It was past ten at night, but under the bright lights some crews were still hard at work.
At least the warehouses on either side of Mileno's were shut tight, so the stretch was relatively quiet.
I followed the waterfront and took hold of a handcart one of our men had left waiting. Hunched over like a hunchback, I pushed it toward Mileno's warehouse. The closer I drew, the clearer their voices became.
"…Stupid bastards. They knock over two whole trucks and dump the work on us."
"There's too much whiskey. Moving this much is gonna be a job all by itself."
"Focus on finding that son of a bitch first. We can deal with the whiskey later."
"What about Salvatore's cut?"
"I'll cover that out of my own pocket."
With that much cash, they could have simply bought the printing plates. Why betray a partner?
My guess was they wanted sole control of the plates and meant to erase Rosenthal to keep the secret. Their own talk confirmed it.
The moment Rosenthal's name came up, their voices rose.
"Killing Kate was the worst mistake we made."
"The crazy bitch bit me down there. How the hell was I supposed to take that!?"
"Then why pull that stupid stunt in the first place, you idiot? What if Rosenthal goes off the rails and hands the plates over to some gang?"
"That's why I said we find him fast!"
As the argument flared, Mileno snapped at them.
"All of you shut up. The only place Rosenthal can turn for help is the Marginals. And those people aren't right in the head right now."
He claimed the new boss who'd taken Tanner's place was making a fool of himself by expanding territory outside Hell's Kitchen.
From an outsider's view, that was a fair assessment. For all I knew, some of my own men might be thinking the same thing.
"Wrap this up and let's move. We find that bastard tonight even if we have to stay up till dawn."
"I've got a few places in mind. We'll start there."
They seemed about finished tidying the warehouse.
I pushed the handcart straight inside.
"Who the hell are you? What are you doing in here?"
"Delivery."
"What deliv—"
The muzzle that had been hidden in the cart swung up and leveled at them. The silenced barrel spat fire.
Pssh. Pssh.
Every pull of the trigger lit the warehouse like a flash of lightning.
By the time three men were down, I heard many footsteps approaching the warehouse—our people, who had been scattered nearby.
One of them wheeled up three long wooden crates, coffin-shaped, and set them on the cart.
"Clean it up."
Thirty men had gathered. We were ready to get to work when one of the bodies on the floor still twitched.
"This one's still breathing."
"Just gag him."
Mileno was alive. We stuffed paper from the warehouse into his mouth and shoved him into one of the long crates.
By the time the three boxes were ready, the boat had drawn up at the pier directly in front of us—River Grey's little fishing boat, shifted only two berths over.
Once she was fully docked, we loaded the crates with the bodies first.
"If you rush, people get suspicious. Take it easy."
We washed the blood from the floor with water, then went over it again with dry rags until no trace remained.
River Grey and Carly collected heavy stones from along the waterfront and carried them aboard—weights to keep the crates from floating once they went into the river.
A short while later the real loading began. Eighty cases of whiskey went on, along with various other crates whose contents we didn't bother to identify.
In the middle of the work, other dockhands walked past the warehouse.
"You've all been working hard on the night shift."
"Gotta eat, don't we? Looks like you fellows are done."
Hamilton, one of our men who used to work these docks, answered with easy swagger.
"Nothing to envy. We're back before sunrise."
"Oof, that's rough. Grab a little sleep while you can, then."
"Take care."
The brazen warehouse raid was finished in roughly an hour.
The boat cast off, and the rest of the crew headed for the underground headquarters in Hell's Kitchen.
I stayed behind alone and walked through the empty warehouse.
Cut ropes, torn wrapping paper, scraps of old cloth.
Everything left on the floor reeked of a midnight flight.
For the finishing touch I shut the door and locked it tight with the key I had taken from Mileno's pocket.
The warehouse on the Clinton Cove waterfront in Hell's Kitchen.
The first-floor jewelry shop and third-floor pawnshop on West 21st Street.
All three places had been cleaned out with equal thoroughness.
We replaced every cut lock with a new one, so unless someone actually looked inside, there was no way to know anything had happened.
The goods taken from Mileno that night did not go to Rosenthal's warehouse. They went to Warehouse 7 on Pier 88 in Hell's Kitchen—the Marginals' private storage that had once held cargo off the Newtown Creek.
Estimated value of the haul: sixty thousand dollars.
The cash Corey pulled from the pawnshop safe came to twenty-five thousand.
I spread five thousand of it among the men.
Four days after the job.
In the second-floor office of the Allen Twin Building I put my heads together with Tanner, who had come in from Coney Island.
It had been nearly two months since we'd last met.
As he listened to everything that had happened, Tanner's face ran through every expression imaginable.
When he heard how Rosenthal had hidden the printing plates, he finally exploded.
"That dumb son of a bitch—he gets greedy over a few plates and turns the whole thing into this mess? I was the one who introduced him to Kate! He swore he'd take responsibility for her to the end! What the hell did he do!?"
I had never seen Tanner this angry.
In the old days they said he was hot-blooded, violent, and reckless—and for a moment he looked exactly like that man again.
"So where is Rosenthal now?"
"He went to the police station. Right now he's at the Allen Twin Building."
"The—the station? He went on his own!?"
"I sent him."
Unless he planned to hide for the rest of his life, he had to face the investigation into Kate's murder.
Aside from the plates, all Rosenthal needed to do was tell the truth as it stood: that Mileno had shot him, and while he was running, his girlfriend had been murdered by the same man.
That way Mileno would be treated as a fugitive, not a missing person—the same as Jacob, who had killed Rosie Hertz.
I wasn't worried about Rosenthal turning on me either.
There was no body of Mileno, and without evidence his word alone meant nothing.
"That's also why we moved the goods here instead of to Rosenthal's warehouse."
"Fair enough. Who could trust that bastard? So how are the cops taking it?"
The plan had worked perfectly.
The police raided Mileno's warehouse, jewelry shop, and pawnshop and found them empty. They named him the prime suspect in Kate's murder and put out a warrant. Unless those crates floated up out of the Hudson, no one was ever going to catch Dominic Mileno.
Which meant there was no need to dump the stolen goods in a hurry. We could sell them off when the time was right.
"By the way—do you know any fence who can replace Rosenthal?"
Tanner understood what I was after. He rubbed his forehead and shook his head.
"We've always moved everything through Rosenthal. I trust the others even less. This is my problem too, so leave it to me."
"All right."
"Oh—and the printing plates? What happened to them?"
I took the heavy plates out of the drawer.
Tanner turned them over with open curiosity.
Each set consisted of three plates: the face of a two-dollar bill, the reverse, and the unique serial-number plate.
"So if you print with these, you get real money?"
"Paper stock, ink—the technique takes real skill."
I pulled a crisp two-dollar bill from my wallet and handed it to him. He compared it to the plates, then suddenly his eyes went wide.
"Don't tell me you've already printed counterfeits!? Hey, this is serious. The Secret Service tracks this stuff. Those bastards are relentless."
"You think having the plates makes counterfeiting easy?"
I hadn't been testing him, but his reaction told me clearly that he had never known about the plates.
Reliable old Tanner.
"Then what's with this bill? The serial numbers match."
"Of course they do—they were printed from the same plates. And that bill came out of Rosie Hertz's safe."
It also matched the notes Lenny Goldstein had brought in from the gambling den not long ago.
"So everything ties back to the counterfeits. Amazing. What are you going to do with the plates, then?"
"There's a use for them later. Until then, they stay well hidden."
"Just don't get caught. Secret Service boys are dangerous as hell. Get snared by them and your life's finished."
The talk soon turned to the Gunsmith.
When I mentioned the old man pointing a gun, Tanner's brow furrowed.
"I've known Rosenthal since he was a kid, so I know how close those two were. Still… that was a hell of a mistake for the old man. What's he going to do now?"
"Hard to say. Things won't be the way they were."
"Once trust cracks, it takes time. He knows that too."
Silence settled for a moment. Tanner was the one who had connected me with both Rosenthal and the Gunsmith.
That was why he looked so uneasy.
"Anyway—when does the Coney Island bar open?"
"Next Saturday."
"Harvard Inn still doing well?"
"Place is always packed. Oh, and a few days ago one of the staff got handsy with a customer and a fight broke out. Left a nice long knife scar across the guy's face."
Tanner smirked and drew a finger down his left cheek. That was when Marcus knocked on the office door.
"Been a while, Tanner!"
"You been keeping well?"
After a brief greeting, Marcus turned a meaningful look on me.
"I finally found their headquarters."
"Busy lives we lead. Me, I need to have a serious talk with Rosenthal downstairs."
Tanner shook his head and stood. He glanced around the office, then took the nightstick hanging on the coat rack.
"Borrowing this for a bit. Might snap it."
"Doesn't matter. Use it however you like."
Once Tanner had left, Marcus swallowed hard and asked,
"Why would a nightstick snap?"
"How should I know? Anyway—you found their hideout?"
"I found out who the bosses are, too."
Marcus scribbled notes as he explained.
Luger, boss of the Orchard Street gang.
Fiore and Lombardi, the two bosses on Allen Street.
Those three had just become our new targets.
After giving me the exact locations, Marcus left the office.
Not long afterward someone else knocked.
"It's Ida, Boss."
Tomorrow was the grand opening of the boutique.
Ida wore a faint smile as we went down to the first-floor shop together.
Leo, who had been arranging lingerie, froze the instant he saw her. His lips barely moved.
"Wow…"
The women helping him with the displays also looked Ida over with open interest. They were staff on loan from my mother's company.
I introduced Ida as the manager and we walked the store together.
In a single week the place had been filled with furniture, fixtures, and display cases. The clean, upscale interior deliberately echoed the high-end department-store shops of my previous life, and everyone who saw it couldn't help but admire it.
Ida's reaction, however, was a soulless "wow." The air went out of the room.
Leo, who had meant his "wow" with his whole heart, trailed after her trying to win her favor.
"This is Leo Kruger. You'll be working with him."
"Nice to meet you, Leo."
It was all wasted effort.
Her heart was already dead, after all—or so Hazel had put it.
I was quietly clicking my tongue at the sight of Leo grinning ear to ear when the shop door slammed open and three hard-faced men stormed in.
"Get the owner out here!"
Allen Street gangsters.
They hadn't collected protection money in a month; they'd been patient longer than I expected.
But demanding it before we even opened? No business ethics at all.
"Who's the boss!?"
Ida looked at me. I nodded, and she stepped forward with unhurried calm.
"Is there a problem?"
The gangsters paused when they saw her, their eyes raking her up and down.
Lust filled their gazes at once.
"Oh-ho. You're the owner?"
"I'm the manager. Unfortunately the owner isn't in right now."
"When's he com—"
—Aaaagh!
A strange sound cut through the air. Everyone in the shop turned their heads. The gangsters did the same.
One of them frowned and muttered,
"Thought I just heard a scream. What was that?"
What else? That was Tanner working Rosenthal over.
Don't worry about us. Worry about the screams your own bosses are going to make.
I'll be paying them a visit tonight.