Jimmy the Stick (17 page)

Her mother slapped her cheek with a hard backhand, then got right up in her face. “Don't say that. Don't
ever
say that.”

The slap brought tears to Flora's eyes and she reacted by shoving her mother angrily. The older woman's bad leg gave out on her and she fell, twisting to keep the boy from hitting the ground. He started bawling anyway. Flora didn't care. Ignoring her son, she stood over her mother and screamed, “I'm nothing but a goddamned brood mare for you! Once I'd provided the male heir, nobody wants me around anymore. Well, to hell with you, to hell with him, to hell with all of you.”

She stalked back to the Pierce-Arrow. Cameron Rivers hurried after her and they drove away. Cloninger helped Mrs. Pennyweight to her feet and got her and little Ethan into the backseat of the Duesenberg. She brushed herself off and acted like absolutely nothing had happened. I sat up front with Oh Boy and figured the mother and daughter wouldn't have gotten so mad at each other if there weren't a lot of truth to what they'd said.

Mrs. Pennyweight and the male heir got out at the house. I rode with Oh Boy back to the garage. Like the main house, it was a tall building made of dark timbers and whitewashed walls. The place had been built as a carriage house. Stalls lined one wall, and you could still smell horses. But a concrete floor had been laid down, and riding gear had been replaced by car stuff. Dietz was bent over a motorcycle with a homemade sidecar that looked like it was meant for hauling tools. It was little more than a stout wooden box bolted to the bike with a big wheel on one side. The groundskeeper sat on a short three-legged stool, his .22 rifle against a wall, close at hand.

Oh Boy stopped in the back, right next to a sweet little green Ford coupe. There was virtually no mileage on the odometer and the interior was spotless. If I came into that garage to steal a car, I'd take the Ford over the Duesy any day. It was quicker, newer, and a hell of a lot easier to park.

Dietz was absorbed in cleaning a machine part from the motorcycle in a small can of gasoline. Smoke curled up from the briar clamped between his choppers. Without looking up, he said, “How's little Ethan? We hear you had to take him to the sawbones.”

Oh Boy said he was OK and explained about Flora and the maraschino cherries. Dietz chuckled, set the can of gasoline on a shelf, and stood up. “Our Flora, she's a pip, she is.” He tucked the rifle into the crook of his arm. “Let's have breakfast. Mrs. Conway should have the coffee ready by now.”

He was right. In the kitchen, Connie Nix was fixing a tray with plates, silverware, and a flower. She shot me a quick look before turning away. Mears sat at his usual place at the end of the table nursing a large bowl of oatmeal, with a bottle of aquavit standing beside his coffee. Mrs. Conway's radio was turned low.

She poured two mugs and said, “Dietz, wash your hands. You stink of gasoline.” He shuffled off obediently to sink and soap.

She put a mug on the table in front of me. “Mrs. Pennyweight said that little Ethan is going to be fine. I can't imagine what Flora was thinking when she gave him . . .” She shook her head and stopped before she said something she shouldn't in front of me. So she changed the topic.

“Before the commotion this morning, I understand we had more visitors last night. What happened in the ballroom?”

Dietz answered, “Those two overeducated bruisers Teddy Banks and Titus Bullard showed up again, and the woman, what's-her-name, she stayed the night.”

My first sip of coffee was great. The thick-bodied brindle cat appeared from nowhere and pressed against my leg, still staring seriously at the space beneath the stove. When I scratched its neck, it bit me again.

The cook shook her head. “It's not right for a married woman with a child to behave in such a manner, not with trash like them.”

Dietz sat down next to me. “Banks and Bullard are at Dr. Cloninger's place. They required medical attention after they tangled with our gunman here.”

Connie Nix spoke up. “They ganged up on him. I think Mrs. Spencer and Miss Rivers knew it was going to happen.”

So she'd been watching.

“It wasn't that serious. Sorry about the mess, it couldn't be helped. Mrs. Conway, is that salami on the counter? Could you slice a bit into my eggs?” Anything to get them off of the topic of the assholes.

“Salami and eggs? What in the world? . . .”

“Breakfast of champions.”

Dietz said, “That sounds interesting. I'll try 'em, too.” Minutes later, he was wolfing down a plate. Oh Boy had toast and jelly.

As we ate, the guy with the British accent, the same guy I'd heard on the radio that first night, started talking about the Lindbergh case. Mrs. Conway quickly turned up the volume.

“. . . and as we told you, police still deny any contact with the kidnappers. But many within the official investigation suggest otherwise.”

All activity in the kitchen came to a standstill. The men stopped eating, the women stopped working. All five of us focused on the news, curious about the Lindberghs. I realized the same thing was happening all over America—hell, all over the world. Everybody's attention was on this one crime, this one small child, and it was something that had happened just down the road to two people who were as scared as I had been.

After we'd finished, I was still jazzed up so I walked with Oh Boy back to the garage. He asked what had happened in the ballroom.

“The two college men showed up, Titus and Teddy. You know 'em?”

He nodded.

“Sometime back, we threw 'em out of my place. They're still pissed off, and they got a little rowdy. What's the story with those two anyway? The big one, Titus, said that he was a friend of Chink Sherman.”

Oh Boy shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “I don't know nothing about that. I think they was at Spence's wedding, that's all. But since they got kicked out of Yale, something about gambling, we hadn't seen 'em much. It ain't right that Titus came here now, what with Walter being gone and everything.”

“You mean he's sniffing around Flora.” Like Deputy Parker.

“It's good you taught him a lesson. Walter'll be pleased.”

I wondered if Oh Boy was right. Maybe Spence really wanted me to keep his wife in line, and not look after his son. “What the hell's going on, Oh Boy? Two nights in a row, guys showed up and tried to poke me in the nose and somebody acts like they're trying to take the kid. And there's something else I gotta ask you. I've seen and heard a couple of cars, or maybe a car and a truck, both circling the house at night. I think you ran one of them off the road this morning. And late the other night, I swear I saw somebody watching the house from the woods near the lake.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “I dunno, I hadn't seen nothing like that.”

“OK, what's the story with Connie Nix?”

“She's a pip, isn't she, but kind of cold, too. She can remind you of Fanny Moon, huh? You know . . . serious. Sometimes she won't give a fella the time of day but at other times she'll be OK, even pretty nice.”

“How long has she been working here?”

“Let's see . . .” Oh Boy scratched his head. “They hired her right before little Ethan was born. That would make it about a year, I guess.”

We reached the garage and he invited me in to see his place, up a flight of stairs at the back. Oh Boy went ahead while I took the steps more slowly. He was holding open a door by the time I got to the top. “Isn't this swell? Look.”

He had a pine-paneled room with a sofa, a hooked rug, three lamps, a table, a fireplace, and a kitchen area with a hot plate, sink, and icebox. One corner was his bedroom with a mirror and a wardrobe where his clothes were heaped, and a bathroom with a high-backed tub. Oh Boy showed off his empire proudly, his chest puffed out like it was a suite at the Ritz. “Hot and cold running water and everything. I got it lots better than the house staff. I told Spence I couldn't stay in one of those little attic rooms on the third floor, no sirree. Hotter'n hell in the summer, then you freeze your ass off in the winter. Hell, Dietz and me got a place around back, with a grill where we cook steaks and drink beer whenever we feel like it.”

“He lives here too?”

“Downstairs. He had a groundskeeper's house out in the woods, but in the cold weather he stays here. I tell you this is a great place, Jimmy. I hope you decide to stay. Oh boy, wouldn't it be great to have you with me and Spence again. I mean, after all the stuff we done together, did you ever think we'd wind up in a swell joint like this?”

1923

NEW YORK

Oh Boy took over the day-to-day running of the shooting gallery. Spence and I stole cars. We used Mother Moon's connections with the police to figure out which neighborhoods were safe and worked out payoffs with beat cops, desk sergeants, and party bosses. They told us which cars were good for us to take. I assumed that the owners had done something to piss them off, but I never really knew.

As Lansky and Lucania's booze business prospered, they accepted every car and truck Spence and I could provide. Things changed in the fall of 1923. We'd just brought in another Ford half-ton and found Lansky, Siegel, and Lucania looking grim in the garage. Charlie brightened when he saw us. “Jimmy, Walter, you come at the right time. Meyer, what do you think, should we let them in on this deal?”

That was Charlie Lucky, always trying to charm you.

Meyer said, “No need for the soft soap. This is the situation, boys. We know that two trucks full of scotch will be leaving Atlantic City late tonight heading for Philly. We're going to take them.”

Lucky muttered, “We gotta.”

Lansky glared at him. “Yeah, because of Mr. Bigshot here, we're low on cash and product.”

I knew what he was talking about. Charlie was in hot water with a lot of people, including the high-society golf buddies he'd been hanging out with. Since he became one of the city's better-known bootleggers, he was a popular guy for the muckety-mucks to be seen with. But he was also one of the city's better-known dope dealers, and the cops had caught him with a dozen packs of heroin. To keep his ass out of jail, Charlie made a deal. He told them where Chink Sherman's stash was hidden, in a closet in a Mulberry Street basement. This turned into a double good move. The cops let him go while he screwed his biggest competitor. But when word got out about the double-cross, he had to buy two hundred ringside tickets at top dollar for the Dempsey-Firpo fight, and he passed them out to anybody who could help rebuild his reputation.

“Hey, you agreed we had to do it,” he protested now, unembarrassed, still smiling. “And those tickets worked, didn't they?”

“Yeah, they did, and now Charlie's so popular that both Masseria and Maranzano want him.”

Joe “The Boss” Masseria, the guy I'd seen dodging bullets years before, and Salvatore Maranzano both wanted to be the boss of all the Italians in New York. They'd been fighting each other for years and both of them wanted Charlie and his booze business as part of their operation. He had held them off so far, but they wouldn't wait any longer.

“So now he's got both goddamn old bastards mad at us,” Lansky complained, “and it's no coincidence that three of our liquor shipments were hijacked in New Jersey.”

“Four,” said Charlie.

“Four shipments of scotch,” Lansky repeated. “And two of our warehouses were raided by the goddamn feds. We need more whiskey right away.”

“And we know where to get it. It's coming in to Atlantic City tonight.”

They were like an old married couple, finishing each other's sentences. Lansky said they already paid two thousand dollars for the route that two trucks would take to Philadelphia, where the booze would be cut. He and Charlie meant to knock over the shipment before it got there.

Spence piped up, “I know Philly.”

Lansky looked doubtful. “You know the best roads, both to Atlantic City and to Philadelphia?”

Spence said he did. So Lansky handed over a hand-drawn map that showed an unnamed road that ran between Washington Avenue and Cape May Avenue, on the way to Egg Harbor City.

He gave me a notepad, the first one I ever had, actually, and said, “Drive down there. Write down the landmarks and turns, and find a good place where we can stop the trucks. We'll be taking three cars, and we have to drive the trucks back here. I don't want anybody getting lost.”

Lansky gave Spence the keys to a Dodge roadster. We took the Weehawken Ferry into Jersey and he made two wrong turns right away. As Spence got us straightened out, I figured what he was up to and said, “You don't know how to get to Atlantic City.”

“Sure I do,” Spence said. “You go south. There's signs everywhere. We'll figure it out. You just write it down and we'll be fine.” That was Spence for you, never more confident than when he didn't know a damn thing about what he was doing. At least, that's the way he was then.

As it turned out, he was right . . . well, right enough, anyway. There were signs to Atlantic City, but everything changed once we were past Newark. It was the first time I had crossed the Hudson River. The air was hot, still, and dusty, and it looked to me like all of New Jersey was flat and empty. We drove through little towns—West Keyport, Wickatunk Station, Tuckerton—with mostly empty fields between them. I couldn't imagine what people did there. I wrote down careful directions, remembering that we'd be driving back at night, assuming Lansky invited us along. “Go around horse fountain in middle of town square and straight,” I noted. And then, “Turn hard left 1/4 mile past New Gretna church.”

Not counting all the wrong turns and time spent backtracking, it took us almost four hours, mostly on unpaved roads, to find the road on Lansky's map. It was marked with a hand-painted wooden sign that read
EGG HARBOR CITY—3 MILES
, and it wasn't much more than two rutted tracks through a sandy pine forest, so narrow that when two cars approached each other, you had to slow down and pull to the right.