NEW YORK
NOVEMBER 7, 1928
I have never been so goddamn miserable and sorry for myself as I was in the days after A. R. was shot. My knee swelled up like a water balloon and wouldn’t support me at all. I was still wallowing in pain and confusion when Fanny and Dr. Ricardo came into my room. The doc looked shaky, like he was overdue for a smoke. Fanny looked serious, but then she almost always did.
I twisted around on the bed, reaching for the crutches Ricardo had sold me.
Fanny said, “She’s dead,” and I knew what she meant. Mother Moon had stopped frequenting her opium parlor and had taken to the pipe almost every day in her room. We could tell she wasn’t her normal self, even if we didn’t really mention it to each other.
Ricardo said, “It was a cancer. You can get a real doctor to check it if you want, but I’ve seen it before.”
I swung my legs over carefully and sat up using the crutches. The bitterness, self-pity, and anger were as strong as they’d been, and the news of Mother Moon’s death did nothing to change that.
Fanny said, “Jacobson told me she had him draw up a will, all legal and proper. She left me the building. I’ve got the money she saved for you.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand.”
“The hell you say. It should be four, five times that.” I pulled the notepad out of my coat pocket. “I’ve got a record of every penny I gave her.” I was getting really steamed, but I could tell there was something else. Fanny might not be lying but she wasn’t telling the whole truth. Not that I was either. I hadn’t told anyone about the money I’d been holding back for years, or about hiding A. R.’s last envelope. It was still snug against my ribs, there in my coat pocket, unopened.
“Show me her strongbox.”
We went to Mother Moon’s room. Ricardo had covered her body, and with the heavy drapes closed and all windows shuttered, the room remained thick with fruity opium fumes. Mother Moon lay on her daybed, banked with cushions and swayed by years of use.
Fanny said, “I told Tommy . . . Patrolman O’Brien what happened. He’s sending a car for her.” She stopped, chewing on a fingernail. “Tommy wants me to move in with him, to sell this place, and move in with him. What do you think I should do, Jimmy?”
Fanny was still taller than me. But as Mother Moon’s health declined, she’d treated me more as an equal.
“O’Brien? He’s married.”
She shrugged. “I dunno, he says he loves me. And he’s nice, and he’s gonna leave her. So I think I’m going to sell this place. You know Oh Boy is working for Spence now, don’t you? Yeah, he’s moving to Jersey.”
That surprised and stunned me almost as much as Mother Moon’s death. I stood openmouthed, trying not to fall off my crutches. Dr. Ricardo pulled the strongbox out from under the bed and ignored us.
When I returned to my room, still reeling, I rolled up my pant leg for Ricardo. He was a pale guy who never liked to go outdoors. Some people said he’d been a real doctor once, and others that he was a medical student when he started smoking hop. Didn’t matter much to us. He knew about drugs and injuries and wounds and women’s problems. And he lived in the building.
He said, “Can you stand up?”
When I pushed up from the bed, the knee bent to one side in a way that made both of us sick to see. I sat back down fast.
Dr. Ricardo shook his head and told me to take off my shoe. “See how your heel is bruised all the way around the sides and at the back? You were turning but somehow your foot planted down solid, and your leg twisted too far. When you do that, something’s got to give. In your case, it was your knee. You see, you’ve got these four big ligaments that hold everything together . . . no, it’s three ligaments that hold your knees together, or four, yeah four. . . . Anyway, you broke one of them, tore it right in half.”
“How do I get it fixed?” I asked, knowing what the answer was going to be.
“You can’t fix it. The muscles will grow stronger, and you can get a brace that will keep your leg straight. I know a man in Chinatown who can make one for you. That will help. So will a cane.”
“Will I be able to run?”
“A little, maybe, but not very well.”
It was all I could do not to cry like a damn baby.
I waited until Patrolman O’Brien showed up with the hearse that took Mother Moon away. The mortuary gave him a kickback for every customer he delivered. When he and Fanny left with the body, I went back to Mother’s room and used my duplicate key to open her strongbox. The upper tray held letters, some in Chinese, along with a box of jewelry and folded documents I couldn’t understand. Below this stuff were folded silk scarves, three tins of opium pills, a switchblade, a straight razor, and a collection of small blue glass bottles. All the stuff that Fanny, Ricardo and I had just gone through.
For years, I’d seen Mother Moon put things inside that box, and take things out too. I figured that it had to hold special secrets. It didn’t take long to release the false bottom where I found eight banded stacks of cash.
There was another $2,000 loosely stuffed in a tasseled pillow at the foot of the daybed. Deep inside the fat silk pillow that had fit the small of her back, I found a couple dozen folded pieces of white paper. Each held a stone. Some were clear, some green.
Back in my room, exhausted by the stairs, I collapsed on the bed and opened my own stash of cash that I kept behind a section of loosened baseboard. But such a simple hiding place wouldn’t do any longer. Putting the money I’d taken from Mother Moon’s room in one stack, I clicked open the switchblade to slice open A. R.’s envelope, never returned to its rightful owner. It held more cash, mostly hundred-dollar bills. I counted quickly: $6,772. The money from Mother Moon’s strongbox came to $5,440. Toting up the numbers in my notepad, I found a total of $16,436. Combined with the money from Meyer and A. R. that I’d been holding back from Mother Moon, I had $22,874. Plus the stones in folded paper.
I stared at the bundles of cash and wondered what I would do. It was a complicated question. When Fanny sold the building, where would I live? What would I do with all that money? Where could I keep the cash? What would I do for work? A better man than me might have tried to get Rothstein’s money to his widow or his girlfriend. A better man might have tried to arrange some kind of split with Fanny and Oh Boy and Dr. Ricardo. I didn’t even think about it.
All I knew was that I still had one good leg, $22,874 and twenty-four stones that might be diamonds and emeralds. The world was changing around me, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Mother Moon was dead. Spence was gone. Oh Boy and Fanny were leaving. And A. R. had been killed.
First thing, I got the Detective Special and checked the load. I found a suit that wasn’t too sharp or too shabby. I filled my pockets with the stones and as about half the cash. The rest of the money went into a brown paper bag.
Outside, on crutches with the paper bag under one arm and the pistol in my coat pocket, I tried not to look like I was rushing anywhere. People knew me in that neighborhood, so I told myself that this was just another day and I was just heading out to steal another car. But I knew that now I really had something to lose. It wasn’t A. R.’s money I was carrying anymore—it was mine, and it was all I had in the world.
I walked until the sidewalks got wider and the people were better dressed. Then I hailed a cab to the Harriman National Bank on Fifth Avenue. Mother Moon had never trusted banks, but A. R. kept a safe-deposit box at the Harriman. If the place was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.
I remember feeling enormous relief after I paid for the box, took the key, and locked up the stones and most of the money. As I left the bank, I began to realize how ignorant I was about these things. I knew what a meal cost at a deli, but $22,874 didn’t have any real meaning. It was just a lot of money. I didn’t know what I could do with it, or even what I wanted to do. That’s what I’d have to figure out. The next morning I moved into the Chelsea Hotel.
Two days later I took a cab to Chinatown and swung my crutches down Mott Street. I’d been in the neighborhood often enough that it didn’t seem foreign or particularly exotic. I knew you didn’t steal from Chinese shopkeepers. They saw everything and smacked you on the head as hard as hell if you even thought about putting the pinch on something in their places.
Dr. Ricardo had told me to go to the fifth door past the intersection with Grand Street. The place wasn’t easy to spot behind racks of vegetables, fish, and stuff I couldn’t name. But then there it was, a narrow green door, just two steps below the sidewalk. I fumbled down clumsily, almost toppling over on the stairs. Then I walked down a dim hall with a faint light at the far end. I was sweating despite the cold by the time I reached a second door, and I smelled burning charcoal as I entered.
Inside I found a room with a rough plank floor that opened onto a courtyard bordered by alleys and the backs of neighboring buildings. It had probably been a stable at one time. Harnesses and strangely shaped pieces of metal that might have been weapons were hanging on the wall. All had paper price tags. Outside in the courtyard, a Chinaman worked with hammer and tongs at a circular piece of metal on an anvil by a forge. He was a young guy with a wide face and massive shoulders. He wore a leather apron over a black robe, felt slippers, and some kind of wooden clogs.
He looked at my crutches and said, “What kind of brace do you need?”
I said, “You don’t sound Chinese.”
“I’m Japanese. Who sent you to me? Christiansen?”
I didn’t know that Japs could speak such good English. “No, Ricardo. It’s, uh, my knee.”
He set his tools aside, came inside, and cleared some stuff from a small bench. “Sit down and roll up your pant leg.”
For the next twenty minutes he worked with a tape measure and calipers, and wrote down numbers. When he finished he said, “What kind of brace do you want? I can make one that will keep your knee from buckling for ten dollars. I can make one that will last for years and it will be so light you’ll hardly notice it but that’s a hundred dollars, and I can give you anything in between.” He took a long look at my suit, overcoat, and hat, saying, “I imagine a man in your position will want the best. I also have some canes you might be interested in.”
“I might be. What’s your name?”
He rattled off a mouthful and then said, “But everybody calls me Sam.”
“OK, Sam, here’s fifty bucks to get started. Make me your best, and tell me what you’ve got in the way of sticks.”
Six days later, the brace was ready. It was made of metal, lined with leather, and hinged in the middle, kind of like a small version of what polio victims wore on their legs. Five belts held the thing in place. Sam had me try it on to check the fit, then removed the contraption when I said it felt too tight at the top. He worked with the part that curved across the front of the thigh. When I tried it again, the gizmo felt much better.
“You can’t twist your knee,” Sam told me. “The hinge won’t let you have full flexibility, but the knee won’t pop out the way it does now. Now, for a cane, I recommend one or both of these.”
He handed me two black canes, one with a metal collar near the handle.
“That one is what you probably expect, a sword.”
With a quick twist, the body of the cane unlocked from the pistol grip, slipping off to reveal a mottled blade about two feet long and razor sharp.
Sam said, “Do you have any training with a blade?”
I shook my head. “A little, but with a knife. If I get into a scrape, I prefer my knucks.” I pulled them out of my pocket. “At least, I used to. I don’t know if they’ll do me much good now.”
“Once you’re accustomed to the brace, you’ll be able to use them. I can make you a set that’s better than what you’ve got. Thicker at the top to give your knuckles and fingers more protection. And they won’t hang up in your pocket. Are you interested?”
“You bet.”
“You can do a lot with a regular cane, too, like this one.” The second cane must have been made of denser wood. It was heavier, with a simple curved handle.
“Can you teach me?”
“No, but my father can. Come back tomorrow. Wear old clothes.”
The next day I put on coveralls and walked with the brace and the cane for the first time. The pain was about half as bad as it had been at its worst; the brace didn’t chafe as much as I’d feared. I managed to get up and down the steps to the El all right. None of that changed the fact that I couldn’t run. I was trapped at a turtle’s clumsy pace. In my days of working for Rothstein and Lansky, I’d been Fast Jimmy Quinn. From now on, I’d be Jimmy the Stick.
Inside Sam’s shop I found that the floor had been cleared. Sam said, “Good morning, Jimmy San. Father, your new pupil is here.”
A grouchy-looking old man and a kid entered from a side door. The boy wore short pants, a white shirt, and a tie. The old guy had on a dark-blue robe and carried a short cane. The boy translated. “Grandfather says that the price of a lesson is ten dollars and you’re using the cane wrong. Keep it in your left hand.”
I shifted the stick to my left, watching as the old guy circled me.
“He says the basic rule of fighting with the cane is to strike at the hard places.” The old man’s cane was a blur as he rapped me sharply on the upper arm. “And jab to the soft.” He reversed the cane in his hands and stabbed the tip into the center of my chest. I yelled and took a wild swing that didn’t even come close to the old guy.
So the lessons began.
I went to Sam’s shop every day for two weeks and spent a lot of time on my ass. But I learned. The old man and the boy showed me how to keep my feet apart at shoulder width and my weight balanced over them. They taught me how to use small steps to move forward and side to side. I learned how to break a headlock, to hook an ankle, to use the stick along with my wonderful new knucks. By the time I was finished, I’d shelled out another $150, and it was money well spent. I wasn’t quite as crippled as I had been before.
After that, I worked to strengthen the knee by walking. I walked everywhere in any weather. Sometimes I stayed by the rattling El. Sometimes I followed the lighted subway globes for miles, all the time chewing over the big question. What was I going to do?
I was wandering around brooding late one afternoon when a guy tried to mug me. It was really my fault. I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around me and the cane made me an easy mark. The guy rushed up behind me and shoved me into an alley and slammed me against a wall. I never really got a look at his face. He just grunted “Gimme your wallet” and slapped me open-handed across the face. If I’d been a civilian, that might have shocked me into obedience but in that moment of bright pain, I remembered what I’d been taught.
I grabbed the cane with both hands and jabbed it straight up. The handle caught the guy under his chin and snapped his jaw shut. As he stumbled back clutching his throat, I hit him hard across the temple. He staggered across the alley and thought about coming after me again until he saw that I had the cane up. He ran and, damn, did it ever feel good to see him turn tail.
I was still pleased with myself later when I gimped into Carl Spinoza’s place, sat at the bar, and ordered a celebratory beer.
In the mirror, I could see Carl at a table in the back. He was talking to Vincent Coll and Sammy Spats Spatola. Actually, he was doing more listening than talking, and it looked like he didn’t care for what he was hearing.
Coll and Spatola had gone to work for Dutch Schultz by then, trying to intimidate speaks into buying his crappy beer. If their “salesmanship” didn’t work, they beat up reluctant bar owners. I’d heard they were sticking to the Bronx, where Dutch did most of his business. Nobody said anything about Manhattan.
When they got up to leave, Coll said, “We’ll come back next week. You can tell us then.” Carl looked like he’d eaten something that disagreed with him.
I turned on the barstool, and they saw me for the first time. Spatola paid no attention and there was only the smallest hint of recognition on Coll’s face. It had been five years since Egg Harbor.
“Jimmy Quinn, what the hell are you doing here?” Vinnie finally said, smiling like he was trying to be friendly.
I smiled back just as sincerely. “Having a beer.”
“You still work with the Bug and Meyer mob?”
“Now and then.”
Spatola took another look, and I could tell he remembered who I was. “Guess you ain’t delivering any more messages for Rothstein.” He and Coll snickered at what they thought was a private joke.
After they left, I talked to Carl Spinoza for a long time.
The next day, I went to Lansky’s garage and sat down with him in his office.
He said, “Hell of a thing about A. R,” and we commiserated for a while about him and Mother Moon. Nobody was sure whether Rothstein was shot because he’d welshed on a bet or been in on a heroin deal that went bad. It could have been either. I didn’t say anything about what I had seen.
Lansky nodded at my stick. “I heard you busted your leg. That’s a tough break too.”
“My running days are over but I can still get around. Do you want me to make my deliveries?”
“Sure. It doesn’t matter that you can’t run. Use a car and a driver from now on.”
That’s more or less what I expected him to say. Lansky and I weren’t exactly friends, not like he and Charlie were friends, but we always got along and somehow understood each other. Part of it was because we were both short. We knew what it was like to be the smallest guy in the room and what you had to do to keep the big guys in line. The other part of it was that I never stole from him. Over the years, he had me deliver hundreds of packages of cash, maybe thousands. I have no idea how much money it added up to. But Mother Moon taught me well. There are some people you can steal from and there are some you don’t steal from. I knew the difference, and I knew that nobody ever made a living stealing from Lansky.
“There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I talked to Carl Spinoza last night. He’s ready to sell his place and retire. I’d like to buy it from him.”
Lansky looked skeptical. “Why? I hear he’s losing money.”
“He is. There’s nothing special about his joint, and I’ll change that. I think it could do pretty good if the booze was improved, you know, nothing but the best. I mean if you want a fancy floor show or an expensive dinner and dancing, there are dozens of places right there in the neighborhood and a hundred more uptown. But if word got out that Spinoza’s speak was under new management, serving nothing but the best, straight off the boat . . .”
Lansky nodded. “Yeah, you might have something there.”
“Could I buy direct from you and Charlie?”
He thought before he answered. “Sure, but don’t expect much of a discount. Do you have any idea how much we make when we cut this stuff?”
“Hell, I’m going to charge whatever the market will bear. When can I take my first shipment?”
Thus I came to own a speak.
But first I asked around at some of the jewelers on Canal Street, and I got about eleven grand for some of Mother Moon’s stones. They turned out to be uncut diamonds. I had some membership cards printed that said “Quinn’s Place” even though most people kept calling it Spinoza’s. I talked to cops who patrolled the street, and told them I’d be adding an extra fin to what Carl had been handing over. Of course, they were welcome inside anytime. I wanted them to know I was planning to run a quiet place, just like Carl. So Frenchy, Fat Joe, and I went over the inventory and threw out the worst of the rotgut after we got the first truckload from Lansky. Then we figured out new prices, cut the fare on the old but drinkable stuff, and jacked it up for the new name brands. Funny thing, we wound up keeping King’s Ransom scotch, one of the most heavily doctored brands, because so many guys had developed a taste for the stuff.
I figured I had a decent shot at making a go of it. After all, the standard complaint about neighborhood speaks was “the liquor’s rotten but it’s easy to get to.” This place was less than half a block off Broadway. Everybody knew it.
When Vinnie Coll and Spats Spatola returned, they weren’t happy. That happened the next Monday afternoon. I was at the back table with my newspapers spread out in front of me.
“You still here, Quinn?” Spatola said as they sat down without being asked to. “Where’s Spinoza? We got business to discuss.”
Vinnie’s suit was muddy brown, Spats’s was a big blue-and-white houndstooth pattern. It hurt your eyes to look at them sitting close together.
I put down the paper. “Carl decided to retire. I’m the new owner. What’ll you have? First round’s on the house. Frenchy, bring these gents a couple of Bushmills.”
Smiling, Frenchy brought over three drinks, then busied himself behind the bar. I raised my glass. “Salut.”
Coll tossed back the whiskey and was surprised by it. “Hey, this is the real McCoy.”
“We’re only selling the best.”
“Who’s your supplier?”
“I’m buying direct from Lansky and Luciano.”
Coll said, “We had a deal with Spinoza. He was going to take our beer.”
“I’m sticking with Owney. We’ve got Madden’s No. 1.”
Spatola unbuttoned his coat, leaning back in his chair, letting the coat fall open to show off two big shiny .45s in shoulder holsters. He and Coll grinned at each other.
“You should give our beer a try. That’s what Carl was gonna do.”
“No.”
“You’re not giving us a fair shot. That’s not good business.” Spatola flipped his coat open wider.
“What the hell is this, Vinnie? You think Spats showing off his big guns is gonna scare me into buying your cheap-ass needled beer?”
I picked up the Detective Special I had under the newspapers and pointed it at Spats’s head.
“You’ve got one second to close your coat.” I cocked the pistol. Behind the bar, Frenchy pulled back the hammer on his hog leg.
Coll turned around to find himself looking down the business end of the huge pistol. He said, “Button your coat, Spats.”
“Now,” I said reasonably, “I plan to run a nice quiet place here. You’re welcome to come back as customers; just leave your guns outside. We got the same rules Owney sets at the Cotton Club. No guns, no fighting. Patrolman Norris and Patrolman Cheeks cover this block. They’re outside now, looking after your car. I told them you’d be coming, and I wanted to be sure they know who you were.”
Now, I’ve got to admit, that was a really stupid, show-off move. You don’t pull a gun on a guy to threaten him. You pull a gun on a guy to shoot him. But in those days, Vinnie hadn’t yet gone completely crazy, and if you could get him to pay attention, you could reason with him. He didn’t have anything to gain by shooting me that afternoon, and within weeks he had broken with the Dutchman anyway. He tried to set up his own beer business and started the war that would get him killed.
That was the last time I saw Coll until the night I fingered him to Owney. Spats and I weren’t done with each other yet.