Black Hats (16 page)

Just then, right on cue, Lieutenant Harrigan came strolling through the various sprung doors to the club.

Johnny made introductions. Bat already knew the stocky plainclothesman, whose fleshy face was ravaged with pockmarks and whose bulbous nose had anticipated next Christmas by turning bright red already. His teeth were yellow as fresh corn though not nearly as appetizing, and his eyes were a rheumy bloodshot blue. Appearance aside, Johnny knew the man was as smart as he was venal, which meant plenty smart.

The fourth chair at the little table awaited the bulky plain-clothes lieutenant. His clothing was off the rack but high-grade, a brown topcoat with black lapels, a brown derby, which he politely removed and placed like a centerpiece on the table. His hair was brown and parted in the middle and sprinkled with dandruff.

Harrigan had an affable manner, and started by telling Wyatt he’d read Bat’s article about him in
Human Life
magazine, and was impressed.

“Don’t be,” Wyatt said. “You and I both know what police work is really like.”

“We do at that, we do that.” Harrigan had a gentle brogue, befitting his name, but his voice was rough-edged, possibly from too much cigar smoking. “Do we have any idea who this was, these intruders?”

“On the record,” Johnny asked, “or off?”

“What’s your preference, son?”

“Off.”

“Off it is, then. Who?”

Johnny glanced at Wyatt to speak.

“Some characters from Brooklyn,” Wyatt said. “One is a fat, well-dressed punk named Capone.”

Harrigan’s big head went back, his chin up, like a boxer in a fixed fight presenting his opponent with an option. “Yale’s number-two man. Bartender come up in the world. Them in the know says the boyo’s smart and mean.”

“How mean?”

Harrigan sent his eyes for a trip around the ravaged room; when they returned, the copper smiled yellowly at Wyatt and said, “Imagine this room full of people.”

Wyatt exchanged glances with Johnny, the lieutenant’s words confirming Wyatt’s take on this rough visit having been in part scare tactics.

Bat said, “Capone’s done violence of that kind?”

“Word on the other side of the river is that young Mr. Capone’s pudgy fingers were all over the Sagaman’s Hall Massacre.”

Wyatt asked, “What’s that?”

Harrigan told him. Both Johnny and Bat knew of the brutal White Hand ambush from the newspaper coverage.

“Three dead isn’t much of a massacre,” Wyatt said.

“Boyo’s just gettin’ started,” the copper said genially. “Anyways, St. Valentine’s Day and all, you know how these cheap reporters like to play up such shenanigans.”

“That I do,” Wyatt said, flicking a glance at Bat, who smirked in return.

Johnny felt numb; the blood had gone out of his face, when he said, “A man who would open up with a machine gun, on a hall filled with men and women, why—he’s capable of just about anything.”

“A man,” Bat said, looking across at the fractured pine bar, “who will destroy unopened bottles of real Johnny Walker and Jim Beam?
That
man will do anything….”

“If you don’t mind my asking, son,” Harrigan said, and his smile was so broad the upper gums showed, “does this unfortunate breaking-and-entering, and the attendant harm done you, discourage you in any way?”

“No,” Johnny said. “In fact, I have next week’s envelope upstairs, if you’d like it before you go.”

Wyatt looked briefly at Bat, and Bat at Wyatt.

Harrigan held out his palms. These were hands that had seen honest labor, but not in some time. “My boy, that is generous of you, though I am glad to wait till next Monday, if that is better suited to you.”

“Today’s fine. I’m still in business, Lieutenant Harrigan. This is a minor setback.”

Harrigan’s brow furrowed. “I just hope…my sincerest wish is…well…”

“What?” Johnny asked.

“You have such good friends. Mr. Rothstein. Mr. Luciano, and other Manhattan businessmen.

Everything has been so…peaceful. If they enter into the, uh, fray with our brash Brooklyn friends, the world can become an unfriendly place. I, and my compatriots, might have to become more actively engaged. Could no longer, as the expression goes, turn a blind eye. Do I make myself—”

“Perfectly,” Johnny said. “I’ll handle this matter myself.”

“Wonderful!” Harrigan rose, collecting his derby from the tabletop. “I do need to go through the proverbial paces. File reports and such like. The ‘on the record’ version of this musical comedy.”

“Of course,” Johnny said. “Shall I show you around?”

This took only fifteen minutes—part of which was upstairs, where Johnny saw what Bat had reported, the forced-lock on the back door—and within half an hour of his arrival, Lieutenant Harrigan (his weekly envelope tucked in an inside suitcoat pocket) had taken his leave. The two beat boys were gone, as well.

When he joined Wyatt and Bat again at the little table amid the rubble, Wyatt said, “We’ve been talking.”

“And?”

Bat said, “Clearly what Yale is interested in is your liquor supply.”

“Okay,” Johnny said. “And?”

“And,” Wyatt said, “he’ll likely be watching when you go to replenish it—which is one reason why he broke every bottle in the joint, right now. To force that.”

“He sent Capone searching,” Bat said, sitting forward, “to see if your liquor supply is on the premises.”

“It isn’t,” Johnny said.

“He’s determined as much,” Wyatt said. “Oh, he could come back and look upstairs; but I think Yale and Capone are smart enough to know that either a storeroom off the club itself, or a hidden one taking up a pantry in the kitchen, would be the best bet.”

“Oh, I have much more of a supply than that,” Johnny said.

“How much?” Wyatt said.

“I told you—five years’ worth, even doing land-office business.”

“Everything but beer,” Bat said.

“Right.” Johnny shrugged. “I’m willing to give Yale that concession, once my current supply runs out. Six months or so.”

Wyatt was studying Johnny. “So where is your five-year supply? You don’t have to be specific.”

“Oh, I trust you, Wyatt!”

“Too early for that. When the time comes, you can say where, exactly. But generally speaking.”

“Generally speaking, specifically speaking—it’s a warehouse. It was part of my winnings in the big game that started this whole shooting match.”

Bat said, “Shooting match indeed.”

Wyatt said, “Yale will be watching this place. Waiting for you to make the next transfer of stock to the club from the warehouse. Once he knows where that warehouse is, you’re done.”

“You make it sound inevitable.”

“It may well be. At best, it’s a tricky proposition.”

Bat sat forward. “Why not cut Yale in? Meet him halfway?”

Johnny sat back. “Are you serious?”

Wyatt said, “Deadly so. This is business. This isn’t about whose cock drags the widest swath in the dirt. This is about money, and surviving to spend it.”

“After the life you’ve led?” Johnny said, wincing. “
That’s
your philosophy?”

“If it wasn’t,” Bat said, “you might be talking to Ike Clanton right now, or maybe Curly Bill Brocious.”

Johnny knew the names; he knew everything a man could know, from books and articles, anyway, about these two old legendary gunfighters. Their blue eyes, scary goddamned blue eyes, were boring in on him as if they were sighting rifles.

Wyatt said, “Start buying your beer from Yale, this week. You’ve got bottles. He can give you barrels of draft. You’ll sell both. It’s good business.”

Bat said, “And offer him a percentage of your liquor sales with an understanding that, when you run out of stuff, you’ll buy from him.”

“Tell him,” Wyatt said, “that these rumors about how you have this endless supply of hooch are just that—rumors, stupid ones. Why, you’ll be ready to do business with him in a year or at most two.”

“But I won’t,” Johnny said.

“He doesn’t know that.” Wyatt’s shrug was expansive. “All of a sudden Frankie Yale and Al Capone are just business expenses.”

“Overhead,” Bat said, “like that red-nose police lieutenant you just greased.”

“Two years from now,” Wyatt said, “Yale may be dead, maybe shot by his ambitious boy, Al.

Two years can be a lifetime in a business like yours.”

“And maybe the swelling his pecker has taken on,” Bat said, “will go down, when he doesn’t think you have five years’ worth of Johnny Walker stowed away someplace, like pirate’s treasure.”

Johnny thought it over.

Then he said, “What do we do?”

“Call Capone,” Wyatt said. “Or better, Frankie Yale. Arrange a meeting where we all sit down together. But someplace public.”

“There’s a dance hall on Coney Island,” Johnny said. “Harvard Inn. Capone tends bar there, they say…and it’s one of Yale’s chief hangouts.”

“Coney Island,” Wyatt said. “Sounds like a good time.”

Nine

BAT MASTERSON HAD ONCE BEEN A REGULAR AT Coney Island, but since back in

’09, when the anti-betting laws closed the three racetracks down, he’d found little to bring him to Brook-lyn’s notorious southernmost peninsula.

Hard to believe this tawdry playground had, within relatively recent memory, been the proud home of fine restaurants and elegant hotels, a haven where the worlds of fashion, theater and sport could meet for a gay old time. Many an afternoon he’d sat on the veranda of one ritzy hotel or another, the Brighton or Oriental or Manhattan Beach, watching the shimmer of sun on foamy blue water and pretty young women in bathing apparel splashing and laughing while he sipped sparkling champagne, as sporting types like himself mingled with the wealthy and well-to-do.

Coney Island had been the scene of so many storied races—the triumph of Salvator over Tenny, and Ballyhoo Bey winning the 1900 Futurity, its jockey Tod Sloan inspiring George M. Cohan to write “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” What days! And some of the best prizefights Bat ever witnessed (which was saying something) were held at Coney Island—for instance, the Jeffries-Corbett twenty-three-rounder, the last great bout before the bluenoses closed in.

And what had they accomplished, when it came to that, the do-gooders? Coney Island had gone from a glittering Garden of Eden to a second-rate Sodom. Cheap trolley fares and the subway extension had sealed that—a nickel ride to a gaudy Nickel Empire, where everything from hot dogs to a roller-coaster ride to a peek at a hootchie cootch cost five cents (well, maybe ten, for the latter).

This was not to say that honky-tonk pleasures for the proletariat hadn’t been a part of Coney Island’s appeal since as long as Bat, or anybody, could remember. For many decades now, several great amusement parks, notably Luna, set the sky on figurative fire every summer night—and, on occasion, the grounds literally so, conflagrations having given Coney Island numerous (if unrequested) fresh starts.

The season proper wouldn’t begin for a month or so, and not every vendor was open as yet, some in obvious stages of sprucing up. Whether stall or pavilion, however, the majority were open for business, particularly on Surf Avenue and, one block over, the rowdy Bowery; taking advantage of good weather was a must for these capitalists, as rainy weekends would inevitably take unwelcome bites out of their official fourteen-week season.

For that matter, a good number of businesses were open year-round—restaurants and dance halls and, even in these “dry” days, certain saloons, notably tonight’s destination, the Harvard Inn.

The Bowery (officially Ocean View Walk, but no one called it that) ran less than a quarter mile, packed with amusement booths and eating joints. This was Saturday night, so even pre-season the promenade was mobbed in the mid-evening noon of electric lights, which were everywhere, even draped overhead, challenging a fellow on stilts striding through, his signboard advertising Nathan’s Nickel Hot Dogs. No verbal pitch emanated from the stilt-walker, who did not attempt to compete with the din of barkers spieling and the swoop-and-rattle and shrieks-and-squeals of roller coasters, or the frequent rifle shots, whistles, gongs, and music, from calliope to jazz band.

Walking along between Bat and Johnny Holliday was young Dixie Douglas, the pretty brunette chorus girl who looked to be about twelve, except for her figure, which appeared to be of age. She wore a green cloche hat and green and white polka-dot dress with white ruffly collar, the skirt just below her knees, where flesh-colored stockings were rolled up; her lips and cheeks were rouged and she had that contradictory combination Bat was seeing in young women these days, of a certain knowing innocence.

Wyatt was on Bat’s other side, and seemed not to notice the ruckus around them, able to ignore the very things that Dixie was reacting to with wide-eyed wonder.

Dixie was supposedly from Des Moines and fairly new to the big city, so perhaps she should be excused for her naive sightseer’s take on the Bowery bedlam. But, hell—surely she’d been to a state fair! You would think she had never seen a shooting gallery or a penny arcade or a waxworks or a freak show or a ring toss (“
Everybody wins! Three for a nickel
!”) (what else?) or had her fortune told or her weight guessed (and it wasn’t just the professionals doing the latter).

And didn’t that cutie’s cute button nose register the stench around them that was making Bat’s eyes all but water? That sickening, ungodly mix of gun powder, Woolworth perfume, frying knishes, human body odor, popping popcorn, corn-on-the-cob, candy apples, and Shetland pony dung?

“Don’t you just love the fresh salt air?” she said, her arm looped in Johnny’s.

Bat traded glances with Wyatt, who lifted his left eyebrow an eighth of an inch.

Wyatt, incidentally, had earlier that day accepted Bat’s gift of a new black Stetson, which he was currently wearing. The brim was not as wide as those the Earp brothers had favored back in Tombstone, but—with that homburg residing atop a bureau in a guest room at Holliday’s—this lanky white-mustached gent in undertaker’s black was recognizably someone who might be (or at least might have been, once upon a time) Wyatt Earp. And anyway, in this crowd, a wider brim would have got the damned thing knocked off.