Дэвид Гейтс - Set 'em Up, Joe

“So it didn’t matter that I lost Dunnigan’s money,” I said. “He was going to get it back, with interest.”

“I’m thinking a three-way split,” he said. “A third to the house, a third to the mechanic, a third to the loan sharks.”

“Which loan sharks?” I asked.

“Whichever of Costello’s people Dunnigan is into. He’s got markers out all over town.”

I still didn’t quite understand the sequence of events, but I suppose it didn’t matter. I’d only played a walk-on part.

Others got top billing.

Frank Dunnigan paid for his education. They fished him out of the East River later that same week. It didn’t make sense, not if he were paying down a debt, but maybe it wasn’t the Mafia who dropped him in the drink.

The man from Chicago had gotten on the Lakeshore Limited. There was a stop in Cleveland, and he was found dead in the compartment of his Pullman. Heart attack, or stroke, an unfortunate accident. He was known to have had health problems previously.

The guy from St. Louis died in a colored whorehouse in East St. Louis, just across the river in Illinois, from an overdose of cocaine, but it was covered up for his family’s sake, with the collusion of local authorities. He was a judge, and perhaps his associates were able to call in a final favor.

The mob has a long reach.

O’Donnell had walked away with over thirty thousand, a fair day’s wages. Nobody ever questioned it.

I’d walked away with the shirt on my back, but I’d expected nothing.

The winner had left town without consequence. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars isn’t chump change, if that in fact was his end, and I had no reason to doubt Thin Jim O’Donnell. On the other hand, I didn’t imagine we’d see the man from Elyria in a New York neighborhood anytime in the near future.

Not that he could have found Ohio on a map.