Bloodline (57 page)

Sofia had been almost at the front door when she realized she had left her purse on the desk. When she went back to get it, she saw Tina’s office door was ajar. From inside, she heard Nilo’s voice. Despite herself, she stopped to listen.

“Come on,” she heard him say. “You know you want to.”

Unable to stop herself, she pushed the door open a little farther and peered inside. She saw Tina and Nilo standing in front of the desk; her husband had his arms around the woman.

Quietly, Sofia walked away.
I’ll get her for this,
she thought.
I’ll get her if it’s the last thing I do.

*   *   *

“
I
F IT WEREN’T FOR THE FACT
that you think some kind of smoked pink fish served on a cement doughnut is a decent breakfast, you would be a perfect wife,” Tommy said.

Rachel, who had been standing in front of the kitchen stove in the small apartment, apparently willing the coffeepot to percolate, came around behind Tommy, slid her hands down into his open shirt, played with his chest, nuzzled his neck, and said, “You really think so?”

“Without a doubt. But I’d really like bacon and eggs once in a while.”

“Bacon comes from pigs and how disgusting is that? Smoked salmon comes from the sea, beautiful clean fish swimming around in the beautiful clean ocean. You’ll thank me when you’re ninety years old.”

“All right. I’ll eat your stupid fish. But this thing it’s on…”

“That’s called a bagel.”

“I know it’s called a bagel. That’s the Jewish word for ‘concrete,’ right?”

She licked his ear and whispered, “It’s the Jewish word for ‘sex.’ See the shape of it? Does it remind you of anything?”

“You’re disgusting,” Tommy said.

“I’m pregnant.”

Tommy rose from his chair as if he had been prodded and spun toward Rachel.

“You sure?” he said with a broad smile.

“Positive. You have bageled this poor little Jewish girl one time too many.”

“Yahoo,” Tommy yipped. “When?”

“I’m going to the doctor today, but I think around the end of the year.”

“Does your father know?”

“I saw him last week and he told me that I looked pregnant. Lev knows everything.”

Tommy thought about that remark as he took the streetcar downtown to the union offices near Greenwich Village. His daughter might think that Lev Mishkin knew everything, but neither Lev nor Tommy had been able to figure out what was going on with the garment makers’ union. Since their success in unionizing the Adelson factory earlier in the year, union organizing activity had ground to a halt.

While Tommy had seen signs that Lepke was trying to strangle the industry through his control of the cutters’ union, Lev had been unperturbed.

“It’s a good chance for us, Tommy,” he said. “Up till now, the owners always figured their choice was between a union or no union. Now they’re going to see that it’s between a union run by that thug Lepke and one run by us. They’ll support us.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.” He paused. “You’ve been doing good work for me. I still have a spot on my payroll if you want it. Lawyer, organizer, whatever you want.”

“No thanks,” Tommy said.

Mishkin fiddled with his cup. He seemed nervous and Tommy said, “Okay, Lev, out with it.”

“It’s about Rachel.”

“She’s pregnant.”

“I know. That’s not it. She wonders about you, Tommy. You don’t take the bar exam and you don’t have a job. You tell her you’ve been living off your savings, but she’s never seen any sign of those savings. You spend most nights out. She thinks you’re involved in something, but she doesn’t know what.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know,” Mishkin said. “I don’t think it was just a coincidence that the police showed up at Adelson’s to arrest the galoots, just before the vote there. Sometimes I wonder how that happened.”

“You think I’m a criminal?”

“I think you’re still a cop,” Mishkin said.

“I wish I were. Then I’d be able to afford this baby.”

“Okay,” Lev said. “We’ll just let it drop.” The two men smiled at each other.

Over the next two weeks, Tommy received regular reports from Mishkin. Harry Birchevsky was having no success in getting workers to sign up to join Mishkin’s union. “Something funny’s going on,” Mishkin said.

Tommy agreed.
Sooner or later, I’m going to find out what it is.

*   *   *

I
N THE AFTERMATH
of the revulsion at Capone’s Valentine’s Day slaughter, New York City cops had gone on a full-scale attack against the bootleggers and other criminals. And Tony Falcone, spurred on by Captain Cochran’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of inside information, was in the middle of it.

He had no illusions. He knew that city hall was still protecting the mobsters and that most of the arrests were routinely tossed out by corrupt courts and prosecutors. But the arrests had, at least, harassment value and let the thugs know that someday, somehow, society would hand them a due bill for their crimes.

The highlight for Tony came after midnight on June 13, when the bodies of Red Cassidy and Simon Walker were found lying on a Midtown street, shot to death. Cassidy was a lower-echelon hoodlum, Walker apparently nothing but an innocent who wandered into the line of fire. Police quickly established that the two men had been shot in the Hotsy Totsy Club, a speakeasy on Broadway near Fifty-fifth Street, which was owned by Legs Diamond, a notorious mob gunman.

Tony took over the investigation. Eight people, both employees at the club and patrons, told police that the two men had been shot in a wild fight by Diamond and his sidekick, Charles Entratta, and that another man who was there and might have been involved was Charlie Luciano.

With unalloyed delight, Tony took a squad of detectives to Luciano’s hotel.

Tony walked up to the tony-hotel clerk.

“I want the key to Thirty-nine-C,” he said.

“I’m sorry. That’s Mr. Ross’s suite. You’ll have to be announced.”

Tony drew out his badge. “His name’s Luciano, not Ross, and he’s a goddamn killer, and this is all the announcement I need,” he said. “Now give me the key or you’re going to jail, too.”

The nervous clerk withdrew a key from a locked box under the desk. Tony waved to one of his men.

“Keep an eye on this guy. Make sure he doesn’t make any phone calls.”

Half a dozen of them got into the elevator and told the uniformed operator to take them to the thirty-ninth floor. When he saw the looks on their faces, the operator said, “Look, I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Just pull this lever. The light tells you when you reach thirty-nine.” Without waiting for a response, the operator fled. Tony sent another of the cops after him, again to insure Luciano got no sudden phone calls.

On the thirty-ninth floor, two Luciano guards were sitting on hard-back chairs in front of the elevator. The police disarmed them before they could react. With three men behind him, Tony quietly unlocked the door to Suite 39-C.

It was quiet inside, although the living room was still brightly lit.

Tony led the men across the thick plush carpets to a side door. From inside they heard sounds.

Quietly, Tony pushed open the door and saw Luciano in bed with a seedy-looking tart, who later gave her name as Nancy Presser. Holding his revolver out in front of him, covering Luciano, he strode inside the bedroom.

When he saw the men come through the door, Luciano sat bolt upright in bed and his hand reached for the drawer of an end table. Then he recognized Tony Falcone. He let his hand drop away from the end table.

“Hell of a time to come visiting,” Luciano said.

“It’s not a visit. You’re under arrest.”

“Any special reason or just the same old horseshit from you?” Luciano asked.

“For murdering Red Cassidy and Simon Walker.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Tell it to the judge,” Tony said. “Get up and get dressed.”

Luciano, naked and slim, slid out of bed and walked without apparent embarrassment toward a closet.

“You’ve gone too far this time, Falcone,” he said. “I’m not going to play games with you anymore.”

“You’re lucky I’m feeling generous,” Tony said. “Some cops might regard that as a threat and charge you with that, too. But I’ll settle for just suspicion of two murders.”

“You’ll settle for nothing,” Luciano snapped, even as he was drawing on a pair of trousers. “I’ll be out before you even finish writing up your report.”

Luciano was as good as his word. A lawyer was waiting for him when Tony brought him to headquarters, and within minutes a judge had been found who freed Luciano on his own recognizance, before he even had to give the police a statement.

As he left the police headquarters, he passed Tony. “You’ll pay,” he said. “You’ll pay.”

Legs Diamond and Charles Entratta seemed to have vanished, and Tony got warrants issued for their arrest, based on the statements of the eight witnesses.

Tony felt strong this time. Even a corrupt legal establishment would have trouble dropping murder charges, especially when there were eight witnesses. Maybe, at last, Luciano was going down.

Then the first witness in the speakeasy killings, the bartender at the Hotsy Totsy Club, was shot to death. The three customers who had given the police statements were also killed over a period of one month. But none of the reports on their killings had linked them to the Hotsy Totsy murders, and by the time Tony stumbled across the reports on their deaths, a week had gone by.

He instantly sent police out to protect the four remaining witnesses, who included the club’s hatcheck girl—the one who had identified Charlie Luciano in the melee.

All four witnesses had vanished.

A week later, Legs Diamond and Charles Entratta returned to town with a story that they had been on vacation out west. Tony had them arrested immediately. The case went to a grand jury three days later, but since all eight witnesses against Luciano and the two other men had died or disappeared, the charges were dropped.

Tony took the news like a personal defeat. That evening, Tommy found him in the family apartment, sitting at the kitchen table, a gallon jug of wine on the table in front of him.

“What are you going to do?” Tommy had asked.

Tony reached into his jacket pocket for the paper he had been carrying for more than six months.

“My retirement papers. I’m filing them tomorrow.”

“Do you really want to do that?” Tommy asked.

Tony poured them both glasses of wine from a gallon jug. “You got any suggestions?”

“Papa, with this Flying Squad, you’re giving the mob fits. If you leave, who’ll take your place?”

“What difference would it make? None of them go to jail anyway.”

“No chance at all if you quit,” Tommy said. “Papa, you told me once that what you did was important. I believed that. I still do. I think you should stay and fight them. Someday, Luciano, all of them, you’ll get them all.”

“Don’t hold your breath waiting,” Tony said disconsolately. “It’s not just the courts, Tommy. I hear rumblings around. I think city hall might come after me.”

“How could they do that?”

“The police commissioner’s in the mob’s pocket. If they want to hang me, they can. They’ll hit me for not protecting those eight witnesses. Or it’ll be because I spent too much money on pencils. Back when I was running that carnival, I met with Masseria and Maranzano’s guys. I’m related to Nilo. By the time they’re done smearing me, I’ll look like the head of the Mafia. My pension’ll be gone. I’ll be lucky I don’t wind up in jail.”

Tommy did not answer and Tony took his silence for disagreement. “Don’t tell me what I
shouldn’t
do unless you can tell me what I
should
do,” he snapped.

“You always told me to do what you think is right,” Tommy said. “Not what you think is easy.” He finished his wine, then stood. “I’ve got to get home. I’ve got a pregnant wife.”

Stung by his son’s attitude, Tony did not file his retirement papers the next day. But his longtime former partner, Tim O’Shaughnessy, did. He was leaving the force at the end of the week, and Anna had insisted that Tony invite O’Shaughnessy to a home-cooked farewell dinner.

“Ten years you worked with that big galoot,” Anna said. “Least we can do is feed him.”

Tommy had brought Rachel, and Mario had shown up for dinner, too, while Tina had telephoned her regrets that she was working at the club and could not attend. Kinnair, the
Daily News
reporter who was O’Shaughnessy’s nephew, had shown up also, and even though Tony was uncomfortable around reporters, as the homemade wine flowed and Caruso records bellowed from the old phonograph everybody wound up having a good time. Tommy found himself sitting with O’Shaughnessy on the windowsill, while everybody else was out in the kitchen gabbing with Rachel about her pregnancy.

“I’m surprised you retired so young,” Tommy said.

“To be a cop today, you got to be crooked or get your ass kicked,” the big Irishman said, slurping noisily from a water glass filled with red wine. “As you very well know. Neither of those appealed much to me. So how’s it with you? Tony worries that you don’t seem ever to want to go to work.”

“I’m just doing a little union work with my father-in-law,” Tommy said. Abruptly, he thought that O’Shaughnessy, who had all kinds of contacts around the town, might have heard something, so he told him about the slowdown in union recruitment.

O’Shaughnessy was no real help and did not, in fact, even seem interested. He nodded and grunted a lot while Tommy talked, but when Tommy mentioned the union organizer Harry Birchevsky O’Shaughnessy’s eyebrows lifted.

“What’s his name?”

“Harry. Harry Birchevsky.”

“Tommy, you didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

Tommy nodded.

“When Nilo was in Dannemora, he was very close with Harry Birchevsky.”

Tommy stared at the big cop, unable to keep the surprise from his face.

“I had a friend up there who let me know what was going on. I wanted to know in case any of it concerned your father,” O’Shaughnessy said. “I remember this Birchevsky’s name. Course, I don’t know if it’s the same man.”