tapped a new keg, the bell was loudly clanged and the beer lovers came running, sometimes from down the street. Best German-style brew in New York City. The walls of the dusty, cavelike bar were decorated with worn-out boxing gloves, frayed ropes from rings, black-and-white photos of old-time boxers going back to John L. Sullivan. He had a bartender, an old Irish lush named Mulrooney, working down at the other end. But Gorland liked to work the bar so he could hear the talk. Good for his bookmaking action, and you never know how it might fit the next grift. When you serve a beer—cock an ear.
The talk at the crowded bar tonight was full of how Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, back from the war with a pocketful of nothing and a big tax debt, was going to defend his world heavyweight title against Billy Conn. And how the retired Jack Johnson, first Negro to win the heavyweight champ title, had died two days before in a car accident. None of which was what Gorland needed to know. But there were a couple of guys here who’d have the skinny on the up-and-comer Neil Steele versus the fading boxing-circuit bum Charlie Wriggles.
Gorland had heard a rumor that Steele might be throwing the fight, and he had a theory about how that information might pay off—way past the usual payoff. Only, Gorland needed more assurance that Steele was taking the fall …
Gorland hated bartending because it was actual physical work. A great grifter should never have to do real work. But he wiped down the bar, made small talk; he served a beer, and cocked an ear.
The jukebox was finishing a rollicking Duke Ellington number, and in the brief interval before it switched over to an Ernie “Bubbles” Whitman big-band cut, Gorland zeroed in on the conversation of the two wise guys in the white ties and pinstripes whispering over their Sambocas. He wiped at an imaginary spill on the bar, edging closer. “But can we count on Steele?” said the one some called Twitchy. He twitched his pencil-thin mustache. “Thinks he’s going to challenge the Bomber next year…”
“So let him challenge; he can lose one fight. He needs the payoff, needs it big,” said the chunkier one of the two, “Snort” Bianchi—with a snort. Bianchi scowled, seeing the bartender hanging around too nearby. “Hey bartender—there’s a broad over there trying to get a drink, how’s about you fuck off and serve ’er!”
“I’m the owner here, gents,” Gorland said, smiling. “You want to come back in here, show some respect for the establishment.” Wasn’t good to let these greasers get the upper hand.
Bianchi frowned but only shrugged.
Gorland leaned closer to the wise guys, adding in a murmur, “Psst. Maybe you better take a powder if these feds are looking for you…” He nodded toward the door where an FBI flatfoot by the name of Voss stood in his gray snap-brim and overcoat, glaring about with his piggish little eyes. He looked about as “undercover” as the Statue of Liberty.
The wise guys slipped out the back way as the federal agent made his way to the bar. He was reaching into his coat when Gorland said, “Don’t bother with the badge, Voss, I remember you.” He didn’t want badges flashed anywhere near him if he could avoid it.
Voss shrugged and dropped his hand. He leaned across the bar so he could be heard over the noise. “Word on the street is, this here’s your joint now.”
“That’s right,” Gorland said evenly. “Lock, stock, and leaky barrels.”
“What you calling yourself now? Gorland still?”
“My name’s Frank Gorland, you know that.”
“That’s not the name you had when we tried to connect you to that interstate bookmaking operation.”
“You wanta see my birth certificate?”
“Our man’s already seen it. Says maybe it was forged.”
“Yeah? But he’s not sure? Not much of an expert, if he doesn’t know for sure.”
Voss snorted. “You got that right … You going to offer me a drink or not?”
Gorland shrugged. Decided not to make a smart remark about drinking on duty. “Bourbon?”
“Good guessin’.”
Gorland poured the G-man a double. “You didn’t come in here to cadge drinks.”
“You got that right too.” He took down a slug, grimaced appreciatively, and went on, “I figure you’re gonna hear stuff in a place like this. You give me something now and then—we might lay off finding out who the hell you really are.”
Gorland chuckled. But he felt a chill. He didn’t want his past poked into. “If I tip you, it’ll be because I’m a good citizen. No other reason. Anything special going on?”
Voss crooked a finger, leaned even farther across the bar. Gorland hesitated—then he leaned close. Voss spoke right in his ear. “You hear anything about some kind of big, secret project happening down at the docks? Maybe bankrolled by Andrew Ryan? North Atlantic project? Millions of bucks flowing out to sea…?”
“Nah,” Gorland said. He hadn’t heard about it—but the millions of bucks and the name Andrew Ryan got his attention. “I hear anything, Voss, I’ll tell you. What kinda deal’s he up to?”
“That’s something we don’t … something you don’t need to know.”
Gorland straightened up. “You’re killing my back, here, with this. Listen, I gotta make it look like … you know.” He’d been seen talking to the fed a little too chummily.
Voss nodded, just slightly. He understood.
“Listen, flatfoot!” Gorland shouted, as the jukebox changed records. “You won’t find out anything from me! Now charge me with something or buzz outta my place!”
Some of the customers laughed; some grinned and nodded. Voss shrugged. “You better watch your step, Gorland!” He turned and walked out. Playing his part.
Only he was going to find out, one of these days, that “Frank Gorland” wasn’t going to play along with anything the feds wanted. He’d feed them some hooey—and find out for himself what Andrew Ryan was up to. That kind of money—must be some way to tap into it …
Especially as this was Frank Gorland’s territory. He was owed.
He didn’t hear anything about Ryan for a couple of days, but one day he heard a drunk blond chippie muttering about “Mr. Fatcat Ryan … goddamn him…” as she frantically waved her empty glass at him.
“Hey wherezmuh drinkie?” demanded the blonde.
“What’ll you have, darlin’?”
“What’ll I have, he sez!” the frowsy blonde slurred, flipping a big, mussed curl out of her eyes. Her eye shadow had run from crying. She was a snub-nosed little thing but might be worth a roll in the hay. Only the last time he’d banged a drunk she’d thrown up all over him. “I’ll have a Scotch if I can’t have my man back,” she sobbed, “that’s what I’ll have! Dead, dead, dead, and no one from that Ryan crew is saying why.”
Gorland tried out his best look of sympathy. “Lost your man, didja? That’ll get you a big one on the house, sweet cakes.” He poured her a double Scotch.
“Hey, spritz some goddamn soda in there, whatya think, I’m a lush ’cause I take a free drink?”
“Soda it is, darlin’, there you go.” He waited as she drank down half of it in one gulp. The sequins were coming off the shoulder straps of her secondhand silver-blue gown, and one of her bosoms was in danger of flopping out of the décolletage. He could see a little tissue sticking up.
“I just want my Irving back,” she said, her head sagging down over the drink. Lucky the song coming on the juke was a Dorsey and Sinatra crooner, soft enough he could make her out. “Jus’ wannim back.” He absentmindedly poured a couple more drinks for the sailors at her side, their white caps cocked rakishly as they argued over bar dice and tossed money at him.
“What became of the unfortunate soul?” Gorland asked, pocketing the money and wiping the bar. “Lost at sea was he?”
She gawped at him. “How’d you know that, you a mind reader?”
Gorland winked. “A little fishy told me.”
She put a finger to one side of her nose and gave him an elaborate wink back. “So you heard about Ryan’s little fun show! My Irving shipped out with hardly a g’bye, said he had to do some kinda diving for them Ryan people. That was where he got his lettuce, see, what they call deep-sea diving. Learned it in the navy salvage. They said it’d be pennies from heaven, just a month at sea doing some kinda underwater buildin’, and—”
“Underwater building? You mean like pylons for a dock?”
“I dunno. But I tell ya, he came back the first time real spooked, wouldn’t talk about it. Said it was much as his life was worth to talk, see? But he tol’ me one thing—” She wagged a finger at him and closed one eye. “Them ships down at dock 17—they’re hidin’ something from the feds, and he was plenty scared about it! What if he was in on somethin’ criminal, not even knowin’, and he took the fall? And then I get a telegram … a little piece of paper … saying he ain’t comin’ back, accident on the job, buried at sea…” Her head wobbled on her neck; her voice was interrupted by hiccupping. “… And that’s the end of my Irving! I’m supposed to jus’ swallow that? Well, I went over to the place that hired him, Seaworthy
Construction they was called—and they threw me out! Treated me like I was some kinda tramp! All I wanted was what was comin’ to me … I came out of South Jersey, and let me tell you, we get what we’re owed ’cause…”
She went on in that vein for a while, losing the Ryan thread. Then a zoot-suiter put a bebop number on the juke and started whooping it up; the noise drowned her out, and pretty soon she was cradling her head on the bar, snoring.
Gorland had one of those intuitions … that this was the door to something big.
His lush bartender came weaving in, and Gorland turned the place over, tossing over his apron, vowing inwardly to fire the bastard first chance. He had a grift to set up …
* * *
First thing Gorland noticed, coming into the sweat-reeking prep room for the fight, was that hangdog look on Steele’s face. Good.
Sitting on the rubdown table getting his gloves laced on by a black trainer, the scarred, barrel-chested boxer looked like his best friend had died and his old lady too. Gorland tucked a fiver into the Negro’s hand and tilted his head toward the door. “I’ll tie his gloves on for ’im, bud…”
The guy took the hint and beat it. Steele was looking Gorland up and down, his expression hinting he’d like to practice his punching right here. Only he didn’t know this was Frank Gorland, what with the disguise. Right now, the man the east side knew as “Frank Gorland” was going by …
“My name’s Lucio Fabrici,” Gorland said, tying Steele’s gloves nice and tight. “Bianchi sent me.”
“Bianchi? What for? I told him not an hour ago it was a done deal.” Steele showed no sign of doubting that he was talking to “Lucio Fabrici,” a mobster working with Bianchi.
“Fabrici” had gone to great lengths for this disguise. The pinstripe suit, the toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth, the spats, the toupee, the thin mustache—a high quality theatrical mustache carefully stuck on with spirit gum. But mostly it was his voice, just the right Little Italy intonation, and that carefully tuned facial expression that said, We’re pals, you and I, unless I have to kill you.
Not hard for him to pull off the character, or almost any character. Running off from the orphanage, he’d taken a job as a stage boy in a vaudeville theater—stuck it out for three years though they paid him in pennies and sausages. He’d slept on a pile of ropes backstage. But it had been worth it. He’d watched the actors, the comics—even a famous Shakespearean type who played half a dozen parts in his one-man show. Young Frank had sucked it all up like a sponge. Makeup, costumes—the works. But what most impressed him was the fact that the people in the audience believed. For a few minutes they believed this laudanum-addicted Welsh actor was Hamlet. That kind of power impressed young Frank. He’d set himself to learn it …
Judging from Steele’s reaction, he’d learned it good. “Look here, Fabrici, if Bianchi’s gonna welsh on my cut … I won’t take it! This is hard enough for me!”
“You ever hear of a triple cross, kid? Bianchi’s changed his mind!” Gorland lowered his voice, glanced to make sure the door was closed. “Bianchi doesn’t want you to throw the fight … we’ve let it out you’re throwing the fight so we can bet the other way! See? You’ll get your cut off the proceeds, and double!”
Steele’s mouth hung open. He jumped to his feet, clapped his gloved hands together. “You mean it? Say, that’s swell! I’ll knock that lug’s socks off!” Someone was pounding on the door. The audience was chanting Steele’s name …
“You do that, Steele—I hear ’em calling you … Get out there and nail him early, first chance! Make it a knockout in the first round!”
Steele was delighted. “Tell Bianchi, I’ll deliver—and how! A KO, first round! Ha!”
* * *
Half an hour later Gorland was at his bookie operation in the basement of the drugstore. Gorland and Garcia, his chief bookie, were in the room behind the betting counters, talking quietly, as Morry took bets at the window. Two or three freight-ship deckhands, judging by their watch caps and tattoos, stood in line to place their bets, passing a flask and yammering.
“I dunno, boss,” Garcia said, scratching his head. Garcia was a chubby second-generation Cuban in a cheap three-piece suit, chomping a cigar that had never been anywhere near Cuba. “I get how knowing about Steele throwing the fight’ll get us
0 Comments