D. MacHale - The Never War

“You said there was going to be a war here at the hotel,” I jumped in. “What’s up with that?”

Gunny sat down in one of the easy chairs and let out a tired breath. Spader and I sat across from him on the same couch Spader had toppled over on the gangsters.

“You ever hear of a thing called Prohibition?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that when the government outlawed booze?”

“Exactly,” said Gunny. “No wine, no beer, no whiskey, no nothin’. From 1920 until they gave up on it in 1933. It was all against the law, unless you knew where to go. Most people knew where to go.”

“Speakeasies, right?” I asked.

“Speak easy?” asked Spader. “I’m losing you two.”

D. J. MacHale

The Never War

“A lot of people got rich during Prohibition,” Gunny continued. “Some did it making booze-they called it bootlegging. Others sold it in secret clubs called speakeasies; still others shipped it here, there, and everywhere right under the noses of the police. It was all very illegal. It made a lot of gangsters rich and put a lot of others behind bars. Put a lot of them six feet under dirt, too.”

“What’s that got to do with us?” I asked.

“There was a gang,” Gunny continued. “Operated on the Upper East Side here. They had it all covered-bootlegging, shipping, even ran a couple of speakeasies. Made a lot of money for the two bosses. One of ‘em was a gentleman named Maximilian Rose.”

“The big guy with the fancy suit we met outside?” I asked.

“One and the same,” answered Gunny.

“Who was the other boss?” asked Spader.

“Fellow named Winn Farrow.”

Spader and I shot each other a look. “That’s who those gangsters were working for!” I shouted. “Farrow and Rose are partners?”

“Theywerepartners,” Gunny answered. “Long time ago. As I heard it, Rose was the smart one. He knew Prohibition wouldn’t last forever, so he started investing his money into other businesses. Some legal, some not. He got his fingers into all kinds of criminal activities like gambling and smuggling and even art theft. When Prohibition ended, he didn’t miss a beat. Just kept going on making money.”

“What about Farrow?” asked Spader.

“He was just as crooked, but not as smart. He didn’t have the same style as Rose. Let’s say he was rough around the edges.”

“So he was a dumb thug,” I said.

“Pretty much,” agreed Gunny. “He spent his money fast as he made it. When Prohibition went away, he had nothing to show for it. Rose didn’t have any use for him, so they split up. Way I heard it, Farrow didn’t like that much. Now the two are what you might call enemies.”

“What’s Farrow doing now?” I asked.

“He’s got his own gang that operates out of an old meatpacking plant downtown. They’re a bad bunch. They’ll slit your throat just to get your wallet. It’s pretty much all they’re good at.”

“So while Max Rose is hanging out in a fancy penthouse uptown,” I said, “his old partner, Winn Farrow, is struggling to get by downtown.”

“That about sums it up,” Gunny said. “And that’s why I’m getting nervous. If Winn Farrow is sending his goons up here to make trouble, and they start falling out of windows, we might find ourselves in the middle of a gang war. People die in gang wars. We may have just seen the first.”

“It’s worse than that,” I added. “Saint Dane has gotta be in this equation somewhere.”

“Take it another step, mates,” Spader jumped in. “What do these two gangs have to do with setting off this tum-tigger you call World War Two?”

“There’s one thing we can say for certain,” I added. “Whatever Saint Dane’s got in mind for First Earth, I think we’re sitting right in the middle of it.” ”So what do we do?” asked Spader. “Just sit around waiting for more wogglies to show up with guns, looking for us?”

“I have an idea,” said Gunny. “You two have jobs now. Once people get to know you, you can come and go as you please. You might even get closer to Max Rose and his boys. He’s got a whole penthouse up there, with people coming and going all the time. There’s a lot you can learn just by doing your job in a place like this.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Tomorrow we go to work.”

And that’s how we began our careers as bellhops at the Manhattan Tower Hotel. Our goal was to learn as much about Max Rose and his gangster buddies as we could. We were going undercover. No problem, right?

Yeah, right.

Early the next morning Spader and I put on our spiffy uniforms and reported to Gunny in the lobby of the hotel. Our first duty was to get haircuts. Gunny brought us to the hotel barbershop where Spader and I sat side by side in big, padded leather chairs that spun around. I knew we were in trouble when the barbers didn’t start with scissors. They went right for the electric sheers. Gulp. With Gunny behind us smiling, Spader and I got buzzed. We didn’t end up with Marine cuts or anything drastic like that, but our hair ended up so short, it wasn’t even worth brushing.

The barbers put some kind of goop in our hair that smelled like lemons. It gave us both a slicked-back kind of look that may have been perfect for 1937, but felt greasy and awful. Mental note to self: Wash hair often.

Now that we were all cleaned up and presentable, we went to work. Gunny was right. The job wasn’t all that hard. We had to meet guests when they arrived at the hotel and bring their luggage up to their rooms. When they checked out, we’d pick up their luggage and bring it down to the lobby. It was pretty much a no-brainer. The main thing was to be polite and not break anything.

We ate our meals in the big, noisy kitchen with the other bellhops and soon became accepted as regular staff people. That was key because it meant we could pretty much go wherever we wanted in the hotel. Nobody questioned us. The only tricky thing was going back to our room. We didn’t want Dewey to start wondering why we always got off on the sixth floor. So at the end of our shift we always climbed the stairs instead of taking the elevator. What a pain.

I could tell you guys more about what it was like to be a bellhop, but that’s not the important part of the story. What mattered was figuring out the connection between the gangsters and Saint Dane. That meant we had to watch Maximilian Rose. Easier said than done. He always had these gorilla-look-alike bodyguards surrounding him and we couldn’t let them catch us spying on their boss. They might take us out into the alley and rub us out, or whatever it was the old-time gangsters did to people they didn’t like. So we had to be careful. Luckily there were three of us, so we could take turns and hopefully not be too obvious.

Rose lived in the penthouse on the thirtieth floor of the hotel. He didn’t leave very often. That’s because he had a lot of enemies and liked to stay where it was safe. He had tons of visitors though. I guess that’s how he did his business. People would come to him. Dewey told me stories about the odd assortment of goons he brought up to the thirtieth floor. What a strange and scary way to live.

Since Rose didn’t go out much, we didn’t see him much. Mostly all we could do was check out his visitors to try and figure out what he might be up to. But I’m no detective, and it’s not like these guys were walking around with big signs saying “Friend of Saint Dane” or anything. They all looked like average guys. Okay, they looked like averagegangsterguys, but you get the idea.

That is, except for one man. His name was Mr. Zell. I knew this because whenever he showed up, he had to pick up the lobby phone and call the penthouse to announce that he was there. Mr. Zell had a style that stood out from Rose’s other visitors. His hair was blond and shiny and greased straight back. He always wore these perfect, gray suits that looked real expensive, like they were made for him. His eyes were sharp and always darting around, checking out the room. But he wasn’t nervous. Just the opposite. He was real confident. I think he looked around because he always wanted to know exactly what was going on and who was watching him. The word would be “observant.” I had to be extra careful not to be observed by Mr. Zell.