The first bullets chinked my armored Duesenberg just past Columbus Circle. The shooters picked up my trail as I was coming up Eighth, and slipped in behind me real smooth with the merging traffic. I wasn’t looking for them, but I noticed them soon enough: soon as we cleared the circle, the tommies opened up. This is what I got for being mad and being alone.
Lead kicked up my steel-reinforced boot and ticked off the back window’s bulletproof glass, but bulletproof or no bulletproof, I knew that I was in trouble. It was still almost a hundred blocks to the safety of the Cotton Club, where Frenchy was. We tore up Central Park West, scattering schoolchildren and young mothers as we went.
My Doozy could really run, but even a racing car can only run so fast on Central Park West, so I cut into the park, hoping to open up a lead. The tail car, a big Packard, was almost as fast, and kept up pretty good, blasting away as it came.
I couldn’t believe this was happening, right after Atlantic City. I was trying to drive and figure out who would be dumb enough to try to hit me in broad daylight I didn’t think any of the boys with which I’d just broke bread would welsh so quickly, not even the Dutchman at his craziest, which meant that it must be somebody who wasn’t there, and that pretty much narrowed it down as far as I was concerned, if I lived that long.
I got one of my pistols out of my shoulder holsters, but there was no sense firing until I had a target. The twists and turns of the park drive meant I wasn’t able to put much distance between me and them, and so I decided the only way I was gonna shake ’em was to kill ’em.
We were up high, nearing 110th. My first thought had been to lose them in the park, shoot right out back onto Eighth and outrun them from there, but this plan was getting me nowhere fast, so when I hit the roundabout I took a hard right on 110th and then a left on Lenox, rolling down the passenger’s side window as I sped along. The thing about Lenox is it’s a nice broad boulevard, with plenty of room to maneuver, which I proceeded to do.
We crossed 116th going about eighty miles per hour and just when they thought I was going to floor it, I hit the brakes hard.
That Duesenberg didn’t even squeal as she slowed. Instead it was like the Doozy had stopped cold and the Packard all of a sudden caught up. I could see the surprised look on the driver’s side as we suddenly came starboard to port and I didn’t even have time to think if I recognized him when I shot out his left eye. I have a dim recollection of the bullet crashing out the back of his skull and splatting the window opposite, which distracted the triggerman beside him just enough that, when the dead man slumped over the wheel, I was able to take him out too.
Two shots, two kills; I said a silent prayer for Monk Eastman as the Packard started to swerve out of control. The backseat tommy johnnies got off a few desperate last rounds, then one of them dropped his cannon and leaned over the front seat, scrambling to regain control of the car. I fired at him and must’ve got him in the left shoulder because he flipped over on his side and then the Packard spun out completely, clipped a parked Chevrolet, flipped over twice, careered over the sidewalk and exploded into a storefront, mighta been one of those storefront Jesus joints the Negroes like so much.
Given that there was only two mooks who wasn’t invited to our little beach party, and both of them paddies who sunburned easy, I had pretty much narrowed it down culpritwise. Then I thought over the whole roster of my colleagues and pretty much opened it up again. That was one of the problems with this business: when your enemies are your friends and your friends are your enemies, it’s hard to know which you’d rather have.
The papers the next day said “Four Killed in Harlem Auto Accident,” by which they meant the four white men in the Packard. There was no description of any of the damage, because newspapers didn’t much care about coloreds one way or the other, and that was about it, because I phoned Winchell and got him to squash any further coverage if he knew what was good for him.
I’ll tell you, though, the thing that really put a damper on my day was when I got to the Cotton Club and there was Herman Stark telling me that Vincent Coll had grabbed Big Frenchy and wanted $35,000 for him alive and nothing at all for him dead, and what was I going to do about it?