The Boss Will Really Do That
Bowery Street was one of the oldest streets in New York.
Workers and the destitute clustered there, living in squalor where robberies, assaults, and swindles happened as routinely as the sun rose. Gangs rose and fell in endless succession, and that cycle of birth and death was the street’s unbroken history.
Late at night the streetlamps cast their thin glow while cheap saloons peddling ten-cent beer and whiskey added their own dirty light. Boarding houses that let a man sleep for a dime stood out like bruises. Those who didn’t even have a dime squatted on the sidewalks, smoking or rolled tight in thin blankets against the cold.
This stretch was still part of the Lower East Side, so the sight was familiar enough to me. Cory, walking at my side, felt the same. He lived in Hell’s Kitchen, a sinkhole every bit as rotten, and the street didn’t feel foreign to him either. If anything, he understood these people better than I did.
“When you’re broke, there’s really no way out. I was right there once. Bastard landlord threw us out over two weeks’ rent.”
At least it was spring. If it had been a winter night like this, Cory said with a bitter twist of the mouth, one of his parents or his little brother would have frozen to death on the street.
“Back then digging through trash cans was the job. Miserable as hell. But I was a kid—I didn’t even know how miserable it was.”
“Depressing. Drop it.”
“Anyway, I wanted to get rich so bad. Figured the only way to eat was to have a skill.”
So he learned lock-picking. Practiced until he was the best at it, he said.
“Lately I’ve got a good feeling. Stick with the Boss and I figure I’ll end up rich. Plenty of chances to put the skill to work too.”
“You figure? Faith’s lacking, Cory. Even Santa only brings presents to the ones who believe.”
“I believe in you, Boss. Naturally.”
He said it with zero soul and changed the subject.
“But Boss, when you walk around alone late at night, don’t people mess with you a lot? This hour in Hell’s Kitchen you never go alone.”
“What, two of us make you nervous?”
“No way. You don’t even have to step in. I’ll finish them with my own—”
Right then a knot of men blocking the street locked eyes on us.
“Shit. This mouth of mine.”
Cory slowed to a crawl. I shoved him forward like he was a turtle.
“Go finish them, Cory.”
“…Maybe we should just turn around.”
“A man walks straight, Cory.”
“Look at their numbers. Five. Five of them.”
“Numbers mean nothing. Break through.”
Cory steeled himself, fingers twitching, and moved. As the distance closed the men reacted first.
“Scarves down, you little shits.”
“These fucking punks—eyes soft already?”
They ringed us. Cory slipped a blackjack out of his coat and looped the strap around his wrist.
“Whoa, you gonna hit us with that?”
“Kid’s got guts. Bet he can’t even land a swing with it.”
Cory was small. Three or four years older than me, yet short enough that people sometimes took me for the older brother. A blackjack is like a short club, pocket-sized. In his hand it looked anything but threatening. The punks laughed at him.
“Funny, is it?”
Cory exploded forward and smashed the blackjack across one man’s face. That ended the jokes; knives and iron pipes came out. While Cory swung like a mad bull I joined in. Before they could set their grips I hooked ankles, dropped them, and kicked faces.
Thud. Thud!
I put them down; Cory finished them. Once they were all rolling on the pavement we beat them with whatever clubs we held, blood spraying, boots stamping. The fight was one-sided and over almost before it started.
“Laugh now, you bastards.”
“Ghk—”
Cory started going through the groaning men’s pockets. Street vagrants watched from the shadows; only after we finished and walked off did they slink in like hyenas, carefully checking the bodies and rooting through the clothes.
Cory caught his breath as we left that scene behind.
“Boss, maybe I should switch from the blackjack.”
“Why?”
“Everybody laughs.”
“They laugh if you carry a long one too. Stick with what feels natural.”
We cut left into an alley. At the far end sat Kaplan’s hideout. An iron door leading underground was locked. Cory dug two slim picks from his bag, worked the keyhole, and the lock opened in seconds.
“In this line you’re the best, Cory.”
“Gotta be good at something.”
“You fought well just now too. You earn your keep better than anyone. Have some confidence.”
Cory wiped his nose and smiled.
He pocketed the lock. We eased the iron door open onto pure black. I lit a lantern and we stepped inside.
Clank.
I bolted the door from within, and we began the real search for the secret safe Alma had told us about.
The air was dead and reeked of basement mildew. Poker cards and whiskey bottles littered the table—evidence the cops had hit the place hard. Cigarette butts and half-burned scraps covered the floor.
A single locked door stood in the roughly seven-hundred-square-foot cellar.
“Pain in the ass every way possible.”
While Cory picked the lock I checked the room for any hidden mechanisms like the ones in my own office. Nothing showed.
Click.
Cory opened the door. Desk, drawers, cabinet—Kaplan’s makeshift office. No safe in sight no matter how hard we looked.
“Boss, that woman must’ve been wrong. Nowhere here a safe could hide.”
Alma had only been guessing from seven-year-old memories. I’d given it fifty-fifty odds myself, but irritation still rose. I was glaring around the room, cursing under my breath, when footsteps approached—more than one or two.
“Lights out.”
We snuffed the lanterns almost together. In total darkness we stood motionless. Multiple sets of feet stopped outside the iron door. Someone noticed the missing lock.
“Tonichi, you didn’t lock it?”
“No way. Day after they hauled you to the station I came back and locked it for sure… wait.”
The man yanked the handle hard.
“What the—? It’s locked from the inside.”
“Means somebody’s in there.”
Bang. Bang.
“Robert? Yanick? Open up if you’re in there.”
“Those bastards drinking and sleeping it off?”
“They don’t sleep that heavy.”
When pounding brought no answer they tried force—kicking, shouldering the door. The racket drew a shout from somewhere nearby.
“What the fuck! Got a problem, come say it!”
“The ones who just yelled—want me to go find them?”
“Shut up and get the door open. Somebody’s definitely inside.”
“Anybody got a hacksaw?”
“I do.”
Who the hell walks around with a hacksaw?
Soon metal teeth rasped. They were feeding the blade through the crack to cut the latch.
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
In the dark Cory moved. He quietly shut the office door and bolted it from inside.
Will that even slow them once they’re in?
I felt for the cold steel cabinet, ready to hide inside. Our hands met.
“The Boss doesn’t hide. You go in, Cory.”
Leaving his awe behind, I ducked under the desk. At least I’d brought the pistol—and the suppressor. Crouched beneath the desk I fitted the suppressor by feel alone. Then I realized the rug under me stretched beneath both desk and cabinet.
Something’s under here. I could feel it. If those bastards weren’t sawing I would have checked right then. I was smacking my lips in frustration when—
Thunk.
“Cut.”
Clank.
The iron door swung open. A click, and light flooded the outer cellar. Shadows milled past the office door crack.
“Nobody out here. How’d the door lock itself?”
“There’s one more place to hide.”
Silence, then they crowded the office door. Cheek to the floor I counted dark shapes that looked like feet. Not enough to tell how many.
“If anyone broke in, this is the only place left.”
“Kaplan’s dead anyway. Let’s crack the office too. Place is ours now.”
“Bring the hacksaw.”
Why the hell do they carry a hacksaw?
At the same moment came the sounds I hated hearing: click-click, slide. Pistols being loaded. At least one revolver among them.
What was Cory thinking inside that cabinet, unarmed? From the voices, four at minimum. Drop them all at once and we were fine; one escapee was the problem. The desk was a poor place for that.
I belly-crawled toward the door instead. A long saw blade poked through the crack and began working the latch.
Scritch. Scritch.
Thunk.
Click.
The door opened and light spilled across the cabinet on the far wall. A man stepped in, gun first. I grabbed him and squeezed the trigger in the same motion.
Phut.
The side of his skull blew out. I shoved the falling body outward as a shield while the muzzle tracked every target my eyes found.
Phut. Phut. Phut.
Head, neck, chest—anything that moved got a round. After the last shot I dropped the empty magazine, slammed in a fresh one, and put two more into the man by the door just to be sure.
Phut. Phut.
Two rounds left. I hauled the nearest corpse upright and set it in the doorway like a second shield. No reaction. Four had been the whole crew.
I peeked left and right past the dead man’s head. Clear. No one left to shoot from cover. Simple layout of the cellar had saved us.
I let the body drop and called softly.
“Come out.”
The cabinet creaked open. Cory stuck his pale face out.
“Whoa… Boss…”
“Awe later. Lights out, move the bodies.”
The outer lock was cut. Bodies were the only doorstop left. Unplanned killings, pure chance. This place had been a hideout; ordinary noise shouldn’t draw attention. Still my heart hammered.
We finished the work. I set Cory to stripping valuables while I dragged desk and cabinet aside and peeled back the rug. I’d hoped for a hatch; the floor looked ordinary.
“Annoying as hell.”
I lit the lantern and studied every inch. A seam appeared—a square block about a foot across set flush into the floor.
How did Kaplan lift it? Not even a finger’s width of gap. A knife blade would dig in, but leverage was the problem.
Cory slid up beside me and stared at the block I was eyeing.
“Hidden under the floor, yeah?”
“How’d Kaplan ever get this up?”
“I think I know.”
He vanished into the cabinet and came back with two thin wires, ends bent into fishhooks. Excited, he worked them into the seams.
“Found them in the cabinet, wondered what the hell they were for.”
Click.
“This is it.”
He hooked both sides and lifted. A thin stone slab rose with the wires. We slid it aside. Beneath lay the safe—no dial. The dial had been removed so the slab would sit flush.
“Took it off to keep the plate level.”
“Hide it this deep and you don’t need a combination.”
Again Cory fed the wires into a tiny hole and lifted the lid. Cash filled the interior.
“This bastard was rich.”
Cory started hauling out the bills. The box was deeper than it looked.
“What the—? Gotta be tens of thousands.”
As he pulled, I stuffed the money into bags. Two full attaché cases’ worth of bills, easy.
“Boss, carrying this is gonna be work.”
“Figured. Brought the big one.”
I unrolled a larger canvas bag from inside the smaller one—custom-made by my mother, wide and long like a military duffel but cleaner, more modern than anything the army used in this decade.
How long was I going to keep making only underwear? Hiking packs, school packs, military packs—all of it needed doing.
We poured the cash into the duffel and added Cory’s loot. Replaced the slab, spread the rug, put desk and cabinet back. The room looked exactly as it had when we arrived—minus the corpses.
Three in the morning. We laid the bodies that had blocked the door across the cellar floor and slipped out. Even on the main road we never stopped watching every shadow. Cory kept swiveling his head, duffel on his back, terrified of scavengers. So was I.
“Anyone touches the bag dies.”
From Bowery to the Allen Street twin buildings was only four blocks—close. The dance hall was closed, entrance dark and empty. We reached the office without trouble.
We counted the money the moment we walked in: forty-five thousand dollars.
“Bank must’ve burned him. Why sit on this much cash?”
“Boss, for a guy like Kaplan this is normal. You know what he pulled.”
Even before prison Kaplan and Johnny Spanish had run every racket imaginable. Cory figured there might be more stashes. Looking at the thirty thousand Tanner Smith had paid for Patrick’s bail, it tracked.
“All right, Boss. I’m heading up to the third floor. Gonna crash here.”
“Don’t. Take this home in the morning and rest the whole day.”
I handed him five thousand. He blinked and didn’t reach for it.
“Too much. You don’t have to, Boss.”
“Your fair cut.”
Cory’s family was so poor the army had exempted him. He fed them alone; a real stake was the least I could give.
“Christmas is coming. Buy presents. Eat something good.”
“…Do I have to tell the others?”
“They’ll all be rich soon enough.”
“Honestly, if anybody else said that I’d call them crazy…”
Cory swallowed the catch in his voice and finished.
“But the Boss will really do that.”
That same afternoon I took the money and headed for East Twenty-Sixth Street, where Almar was waiting.