By the end of the third week I could more or less get to my feet, except when I was on my back with Mary Frances. Biedler and McArdle shadowed my doorway, invisible but omnipresent. The only stranger they let through came near the end of my stay. Tanner Smith, my spy in the Dusters. I trusted Tanner but, just in case, both Art and Johnny were there with me.
“Info’s jake. They’ll be at Nash’s tomorrow night.”
“How many guns he got?”
“Five or six. By the time you get there they’ll be too baptized to care. And if they do, they won’t care for long.”
All in all, things were working out just fine. “This is it, boys,” I said. “One last move and then—there’s no more Gophers, no more Dusters, no more Marginals, no more Parlor Mob or O’Briens. There’s just one big West Side gang, and we’re goin’ to be runnin’ it. This ain’t gonna be no nickel outfit no more, breakin’ into railroad cars and rollin’ lushes. We can’t just keep stuffin’ green under our mattresses and hopin’ it’ll grow. We gotta get professional.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” said Tanner. “Meet Frenchy.”
He signaled to Art, who signaled to Johnny, and at that moment I thought maybe I’d been double-crossed by my own boys, a feeling that got graver when I saw what was cornin’ through the door: one of the biggest monkeys I ever seen, six foot six if he was an inch, and plenty of muscle to hold it all up. He was wearing a brown suit with brown shoes and was holding a blue fedora in his massive right paw and I swear to God he was sportin’ yellow socks as well. If he was going to join my gang, the first thing he’d have to do is learn how to dress.
“Please ta meet ya, Mr. Madden,” said the giant, “I’m George DeMange.”
Something about his face looked familiar, the way his forehead pressing down and his jawbone pressing up were fightin’ over the little territory between ’em. Then it hit me: he looked a little like Monk, if Monk had been halfway decent-looking and a hell of a lot bigger.
“His middle name is Jean. Everybody calls him Frenchy,” said Tanner. “Or Big Frenchy.”
“Actually I prefer ‘George,’ ” said the giant.
“He don’t look it, but he’s a whiz with numbers. Cards too. Can tell ya the odds on just about anything.”
I looked him up and down, mostly up. “Prove it. If you take two hundred fifty-four dollars and product it by five, subtract the age of my sainted mother and divide by sixty-four dollars and fifty-five cents and the result is eighteen dollars and ninety-eight cents, then how old’s my ma?”
Without hesitation he said, “Forty-five.”
“And she don’t look a day over it,” said Tanner.
“You made a mistake,” says Frenchy. “The result is eighteen dollars and ninety-seven point seven five three six seven nine three one eight cents. You shouldn’t cheat yourself, whether to the plus or minus. It’s bad for business. You do that too often, the odds turn against you.”
“Can you keep your mouth shut?” I asked Frenchy.
“I’m good at numbers, not extemporizing.”
“Where you from?”
“The Village. Folks from Canada, I think. Maybe France.”
“Drinkin’ man?”
“No more than social.”
“Handy with a gat?”
“Prefer a shotgun. Better odds.” He folded his massive paws in his lap. “Frankly I don’t much like killin’, ’cept when I’m playing poker and even then I just mean symbolical.” He shot a sheepish look around the room. “Hope that ain’t a problem.”
“We got plenty of boys who can handle themselves in a dustup,” I told him. “You mind the business and everything’ll work out fine.”
A look of relief wafted across the big mug’s face. “Gee, thanks, Mr. Madden.”
“Owney.”
That brought back a cloud or two. He shuffled his bulk gracefully. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Madden—I’d prefer to keep things a little more formal. Business, you know.”
“Then call me Owen. How’s that?”
He brightened and nodded and forever after he was “George” to me and I was “Owen” to him. We shook on it and I signaled the boys.
“Art, pick me up here, back entrance, tomorrow night at nine.”
“Why don’t you come with us now, boss?”
I shook my head. “Somebody I got to say good-bye to first.”
They cleared out and I rang the bell for the nurse.
Mary Frances came in, with that look in her eyes that women get when they know you’re going to say good-bye without having the guts to actually say it.
“Thought you might need these.” She wasn’t crying, not even close.
In her arms she carried all my weapons of war, wrapped neatly in a set of hospital towels. Everything I needed to deal with Mr. Doyle was present and accounted for, including a whole extra box of ammo. I coulda kissed her, and I did. “From your sister, May,” she said.
“You’re a real pal, Mary Frances Blackwell.”
She fought back tears hard. “I had a brother once.” She wouldn’t look at me, but instead snapped open Monk’s .38 and started shoveling shells into it, like she’d been doing it all her life, the tears running down her pretty face in earnest now. “Name of Frank Blackwell. Come over on the boat with me, started runnin’ with the Parlors. One night he made the mistake of crashing a Duster dive. Something about a girl. They took him out feet first, lacking his head. I identified him in the morgue by the birthmark on his leg.”
“What can I do?”
She gave the cylinder a vicious spin, checked all the chambers, snapped it shut and handed it over.
“Kill ’em all,” she said.