Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

He had met Joe Petrosino once before. Stubby, dark, marked with pox, the Italian cop would be easy to recognize. But he almost never looked so, for his reputation was as a master of many disguises.

Detective Petrosino had a good reputation. The Black Hand’s chief adversary in New York, in all of America, worked out of the Elizabeth Street station in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, Mulberry Bend. For years he’d been trying to destroy the notorious Italian crime organization.

“Sir.” The old man, dilapidated hat now plunked on his head, had followed Dutch into the saloon.

Dutch sighed. “Twice in five minutes is greedy, Grandpa.”

“I agree.”

The vitality in the voice made Dutch look again. On closer inspection, Dutch realized that the old man wasn’t so old and that the rags he wore covered a rugged physique.

Dutch grinned. “All right, Petrosino, I’m impressed. But why the playacting? You don’t need a disguise to talk to me.”

Petrosino looked around. “You never know. The Black Hand is everywhere. Little Italy. Up in the woods past 100th Street, on the East Side. Why not right on the Ladies Mile with the rich Episcopalians?”

“What?” the squat man behind the bar called to them.

“Two beers,” Dutch replied.

“Grappa,” Petrosino said.

“One beer, one grappa,” Dutch said.

“No grappa, this ain’t no wop house. What I got is a jug of dago red.”

Petrosino nodded, Dutch said, “Okay.”

“I’m not showing off with this getup,” Petrosino said.

“I just came from the Hudson River docks on 23rd Street watching them unload a ship. The Black Hand is stealing some of those shipping companies blind, but I haven’t been able to catch them at it. What can I tell you?”

Dutch drank his beer. “Do you hear about unusual knifings?”

Petrosino didn’t react. “When I pose a question like that to a suspect, it usually means I’m more interested than I want to let on.”

“If you’re that transparent,” Tonneman said, “I would suggest you don’t pose your questions like that.”

“All right. You have your secrets, I have mine.” He rotated the tumbler of wine on the table. “The Black Hand has those who take care of any who cross them. I hear one wields a fine stiletto.”

“I must say, you Italians talk real pretty at times.”

The two smiled goodnaturedly at each other.

“We must have more of these talks in the future,”

Petrosino said. “Who knows what one might know that could facilitate the other?”

The Sicilian sun was warm and good. The young girl had smooth olive skin and big tits. With moist fingers she peeled the grapes and fed them to him. He savored the tart flesh.

Suddenly the grapes were stones. The pain drove him awake.

Marie was always with him, singing a sweet sad love song, promising her tender kiss.

Tony seized the bottle of grappa on the floor next to his bed and filled his mouth with the coarse brandy, then clutched his jaw in agony. He swallowed, took another drink, guiding it away from the left side of his mouth.

He poured tepid water from pitcher to basin and tried to shave. The only place he could stand the feel of the blade was under his chin. He would let his beard grow.

The nick on his throat didn’t bother him, though it was most unlike him, for he was a perfectionist. He knew that only a little pressure and the artery would feel the blade. Death would come in minutes. And for his suicide, he would burn in hell.

He laughed. “What makes you think you won’t burn anyway?” he asked the image of his father in the mirror.

Dressed, he brushed his suit with the damp cloth and reached for the hand organ near the wall. He hesitated. No. Not today. Today he needed to move fast, unencumbered.

One final swallow of grappa. He was going among the micks. That meant he’d have to subsist on watery beer or tasteless whiskey. He would have to be wary because he didn’t look like them and he didn’t talk like them. They would consider him the enemy.

The Harp on Bleecker Street was the fifth mick bar he’d been to. This hole in the wall was near the precinct, where he knew the cops came for the free lunch served with the drinks. He stood at the end of the bar listening.

Next to him was a mick with breath as foul as the dead goat beard on his ugly face. He was running at the mouth about his friend Mulroony and the windfall he’d found in a vacant lot, a nugget of gold. A gold tooth, no less.

Everyone clustered round the goat, some actually drooling.

The goat pushed through the group to relieve himself out back, then returned and lurched along the bar drinking the dregs from glasses. He bumped against Tony, who did not move away. The goat gave him a bleary, pale-blue stare.

“Tim Noonan’s the name. You can call me Wingy.”

“Tell me about Mulroony and I’ll buy you a beer.”

A shrewd glint came into Wingy’s clouded eyes. “I’m fair thirsty. A thirst only whiskey can quench.”

“Beer.”

Wingy sighed. “Beer ’tis, then.”

Tony raised a hand.

Jimmy Callahan took Tony’s measure. Not many Eytalian’s found their way into The Harp. This one’s skin was a funny red, though he was dressed clean and neat. But why wasn’t he with his own kind? What did he want?

Tony didn’t like the scrutiny. “Beer for him, whiskey for me.”

“Now is that fair?” Wingy whined. “I ask you, Jimmy, is that fair?”

The drinks served and paid for, Jimmy Callahan stood off to the side watching as he rolled himself a Bull Durham.

Jimmy didn’t trust dagos. He’d never met one worth a fiddler’s fart.

Wingy slurped beer, Tony sipped whiskey. “If you tell me slow,” Tony said, “I’ll finish my whiskey. If you tell me fast, I’ll leave it for you.”

“What you want to know?” Wingy spoke quickly, but biting each word.

“Mulroony.”

“Mulroony the priest, or Mulroony the cop?”

“The cop.”

“Lost his ma recently. Very tragic.” Wingy crossed himself. “Hail Mary, Mother of God-”

“The longer I wait, the less you get.” Tony took a hearty sip of the whiskey.

Wingy’s face screwed up as if to blubber. “You don’t want to do that, mister. My friend Aloysius Rafferty, the famous bricklayer and stevedore-he seen Mulroony tearing after a bunch of young punks right before he found that dead whore in the empty lot a couple of weeks ago.”

“Where can I find Mulroony?”

Wingy nodded many times. “Him and his wife live with his ma, God rest her soul. She ran a rooming house somewhere on the Bowery.”

From the variety of signs on walls and in windows along the Bowery, there were far too many rooming houses. He would have to sweat to find Mulroony.

The saloons beckoned. Which one didn’t matter. He opened a door and stepped inside to shouting and laughter. An Irish place, by their lumpy potato heads and the stink of cabbage and pig feet.

Irishmen loved to drink and talk and talk and drink and drink. They were braggarts. He preferred to drink alone, left to his own thoughts.

It was dark and dank, the smell of beer and hard-boiled eggs potent. The men sitting around tables or standing at the bar stopped talking to stare at him.

He didn’t waste his time by asking for grappa. “You have red wine?”

“This is McSorley’s. Beer and ale.” The tone was unpleasant. “We don’t serve wine.”

“Or dagos!” a customer yelled.

Then, as others repeated the phrase, a firehouse gong went off behind the bar.

The organ grinder flicked his thumbnail on the edge of his top front teeth, spat on the sawdust floor, and left to loud jeers.

He didn’t want to deal with another mick saloon. He renewed his quest. Two blocks north his luck changed. On the wall, inviting him, was the sign: MRS. MULROONY-ROOMS.