36

Sing Sing Prison, 1953

“More cigarettes. How thoughtful.”

He pushed the two cartons across the table to Neddy Moran, smiling despite himself at the man’s tone.

“And handin’ ’em over just like that. Without making me dance for ’em like the organ grinder’s monkey,” Moran said, raising his eyebrows.

The big man looked good, Tom thought. There was a mouse under one eye, and a red splotch on his forehead, but he was trimmer and his skin was a better color than Tom remembered. He sat up straight in his chair, and a sense of confidence seemed to radiate from him.

Or maybe, Tom thought, it’s just that he doesn’t give a damn anymore.

“What’dja do to your face?” Tom asked.

“Oh, that?” Ned Moran said, smiling as he touched the mark on his forehead. “That was due to a little run-in with a lathe in the machine shop.”

“But you’re all right now?”

“Sure,” Moran said with a grin. “You should see the lathe.”

He swept the cartons of cigarettes over to himself, with a big right hand that Tom saw was chafed and scabbed over, all along the knuckles.

“I gave up smoking,” he said, as if he were reciting the rosary, “but these’re as good as cash in here.”

“They’re yours, with my gratitude,” Tom said across the bare, scarred little table in the visitors’ room.

“Your gratitude? For what?” Moran scoffed.

“For the way you cared for Claire. The way you took care of her. And for my brother. I didn’t understand that before.”

Moran looked away, embarrassed, and gave a little nod of acknowledgment. “She was a wonderful lady,” he said softly, then cleared his throat. “Your brother can look after himself.”

“That’s what I’m up here for.”

“Really? An’ the whole time I thought this was a familial visit.”

 

The gears had started falling into place the same evening that Hogan told them about Cockeye Dunn in the Dance Hall, and how close he had come to breaking open the whole waterfront. Wondering again, when he remembered that day with Slim and his brother up at Gracie Mansion, about the mysterious visitors and just who they had been, telling his brother he absolutely had to run for mayor again. Shutting Hogan the prosecutor out of City Hall, once they were sure he had nothing he could make stick.

The borough leaders, his brother had said. Sure, Tom could see that. But who else? And whose bidding were they doing?

Thinking about Dunn in the Death House made him think of Sing Sing again, and Neddy Moran up there, and then it had all made sense. Or at least he thought it had. Moran, who had arranged that mysterious meeting of his own, during the war. With “the borough leaders,” of course. And who else?

 

Upstate, the season had begun to turn, the gorgeous fall foliage fading and curling up on itself. The leaves were thin enough on the trees that he could see most of the prison clearly from the platform, including the low, gray wing that was the Dance Hall. Thinking again of the night they’d brought out Pep Strauss and Marty Goldstein, with their shaved heads, in their simple black pants and white shirts. Thinking of Neddy Moran, taking his brother to see Frank Costello, and what he remembered Hogan saying about it: Costello is really more of a politician than a mob boss. A glorified gambler, someone who carries messages for his friends. And one of his friends is Albert Anastasia.

“I wanted to ask you just one more thing,” Tom said carefully. Trying to fight down the fear within himself.

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Moran said cheerfully, smirking back at him across their old table. “Prosecutors have a way of seeing that one thing leads to another, and then another, and another. Until the next thing y’know, they’re putting a rope around your neck.”

“No, no. It’s simple enough,” he said. “It’s just this: you were lying to me about goin’ up to Frank Costello’s apartment that time during the war. Weren’t you?”

“I told you I was there,” Moran said, and sighed wearily. “I told Rudy Halley and the Kefauver boys the same thing, and I would tell them the same thing again today—”

“No—that’s not what I mean.”

Standing shivering on the southeast corner of Columbus Circle, stamping their feet to stay warm. Charlie dressed in his country’s uniform. Walking into the dazzling, art deco lobby of the Century apartments. A life filled with splendor, and all for some thug . . .

“What I mean is, you lied to me about what happened once you went upstairs. You went into that room with him. Didn’t you?”

Ned Moran looked away, tapped his fingers on the tabletop, and glanced longingly at the cartons of cigarettes.

“I dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” he said perfunctorily. “I told you, your brother told me he was goin’ back into the bedroom, to talk about corruption in the shirts contracts. I didn’t go in—”

“Nuts!” Tom told him, bringing his palm down hard on the table in his frustration, the sound echoing through the room. Moran didn’t flinch, of course, just sat looking at him inquisitively with his legs crossed.

Costello more of a politician. Carrying messages for his friends.

“That’s a lie, and you know it,” Tom went on, jabbing a finger at him. “You didn’t take my brother up to see the Prime Minister of the Underworld because he wanted to clean up the great army shirts racket! And even Charlie would’ve known better than to discuss anything with a man like that without bringin’ along at least one witness, one piece of protection, for himself.”

When he was done, Ned Moran looked at him sideways for a long moment. Then his hands moved quickly across to one of the cigarette cartons, his big, powerful hands ripping it open, tearing the label off a pack and getting a smoke lit and in his mouth before Tom could even offer a match. He took a long drag, then sat back in his chair, still studying him.

“All right,” he said at last. “All right, maybe I’m done coverin’ for OK Charlie at last. Maybe there’s one O’Kane, anyway, who wants to know the truth.”

“I do,” Tom told him fiercely, though inside he was dying.

“Mind you, I won’t testify. It wouldn’t do a damned thing for you in court if I did anyway, save to win me another perjury conviction.”

“I know that. All I want is the truth, and I can take it from there.”

What did Costello want?

“Oh, is that all? Just the truth?” Ned Moran laughed—much in the same rueful manner that Hogan had, Tom reflected, when that topic had arisen. “I don’t know the truth, son. I just know what I saw that night.”

“And that is?”

Moran let out a long breath of smoke, then nodded.

“I went into the room with him.”

“I knew it. Who else was there?” Afraid the fear would make his knees tremble.

“There was Costello, of course—the Prime Minister himself. A couple of his boys. That silly peacock, Joey Adonis, who ran his Jersey gamblin’ joints for him. Those mutts, Carmine De Sapio, and his little brother from Hoboken. ‘Three-Finger Brown’—you know, Lucchese?” he listed carefully, then paused before looking Tom straight in the face.

“And?” Tom said.

“And every one of the Democratic Party borough leaders. Save for Ed Flynn of the Bronx, who was off doin’ something for Roosevelt at the time. But all the rest.”

“What did they want?”

“It’s not what they wanted,” Moran said, keeping his eyes on Tom as he stubbed out his cigarette. “It’s what your brother wanted from them.”

“Did he get it?” Tom asked drily, making sure to get the words out one at a time.

“Yeah. They said he could be mayor of New York,” Moran told him, still searching his face for some reaction.

“He didn’t need that,” Tom said fiercely. “He was going to be that anyway! He didn’t need those sons of bitches!”

He could picture it all too readily, to his shame. His brother—dressed in his army general’s uniform—sitting in a straight-backed chair before all those cheap pols and mobsters sprawling over the couch and bed, and the easy chairs in Frank Costello’s bedroom suite. Having to please them. Already half in the bag, on their way to a prizefight or a whorehouse. Judging whether his brother was fit to be mayor . . .

“That’s not what he seemed to think,” Moran said gently. “He told me that day, ‘I’ve got to go see the boys at Frankie Costello’s if I’m gonna be mayor.’ And I told him I didn’t think he should go anywhere near Frankie Costello’s, but he said the boys wanted it, so there he would go.”

“I suppose he thought he needed the money,” Tom said haltingly. “But that was all?”

“What else would there be?” Moran asked him speculatively, blowing up a cloud of smoke in front of his face.

“Was . . . was anything said about . . . Anastasia? Anything at all? About a favor—”

Moran cut him off, laughing bitterly. “Jesus, but you really believed what those idjits with Kefauver were putting out there!” he scoffed. His face open and frank as he waved away the smoke, looking Tom in the eye. “No, nothing got said about Mr. Albert Anastasia. If there had been, I would’ve dragged our boy out by the collar myself, believe you me.”

“Costello was just setting himself up. Making sure he could run his gambling operations again, once the war was over and La Guardia was gone,” Tom said, piecing it together. A backwash of relief starting to seep in around the shame. Oh, Charlie, you are a fool. But no worse . . .

“There wasn’t a whole lot to it,” Moran said, nodding. “We weren’t there more than ten, fifteen minutes. We went in the back bedroom, an’ they sat us down, an’ someone offered your brother a highball, but he said no thanks. Then he told ’em he was running for mayor, and he would like to have their support.”

“He told that . . . that gangster he wanted that?”

“He said . . . he said he would make sure New York was a town they could do business in again,” Moran said, stumbling over the words, looking a little sick to his stomach. “That’s all he said, an’ then they nodded, an’ Frankie Costello said if that was the case, then he had their support.”

Tom felt ill himself. “Their support? What did that mean?”

“He said whatever it took. They’d do whatever it took.”

“And then?” Tom asked.

“And then that was the end of it,” Moran said, flicking out the words like a man trying to get a loose piece of tobacco off his tongue. “Then they all shook hands with him, and they went off to their show, or their fight, or their whores, and we went home to Brooklyn and our families, an’ that was that.”

“He didn’t discuss it with you anymore on the way back? Nothing ever came up about Anastasia?”

“No, and no,” Moran said firmly. “I drove and he sat in the back, as usual, and I don’t know that either of us said a damned thing until I dropped him off. The next day he was off to Washington, and his war, and I don’t know that we ever discussed that night again.”

“I see.”

The two men sat facing each other across the little table, the fallen idol between them. Tom shook his head in disgust, though he felt like laughing at the same time.

“Walking right into it! Not even understanding that the meeting itself was a setup. That they’d have everything they needed over him, just getting him up there to Costello’s.”

“I know.”

“He never gave a damn about gambling, the numbers, any of that,” Tom went on. “He didn’t want his cops bustin’ up the corner dice game, or raidin’ bookies. You remember how he was, always trying to get it legalized?”

“That I do,” Neddy affirmed.

“Ah, Charlie! Jesus, Jesus. He didn’t think it was a crime, so he must’ve figured where’s the harm, some of that money might as well go to his campaign—”

“Now you’re askin’ me for the truth again,” Moran warned. “I can’t say that we ever talked about his reasons. But you know your brother. He can be as clever as a snake, and as innocent as a newborn babe. Sometimes all in the same afternoon.”

“Clairey was right. He finally got ahead of himself.”

Moran crossed himself at the mention of her name, then leaned back and lit up another cigarette.

“So who did have Reles thrown out that window?” Tom asked himself out loud.

“That I can’t tell you. Only about the great cabal in Frankie Costello’s penthouse,” Moran said.

“And that was all?” Tom asked one more time. “That was the whole conversation? Nothing else? No one else was there?”

Neddy put his head back and blew a long funnel of smoke toward the ceiling while he thought about it. He looked around at Tom, started to shake his head—then caught himself.

“Oh, there was one other fellow. That grinnin’ prick with his chest always puffed out. Like Lord Cock Robin—”

“Who?”

“He’s been doin’ a lot of testifyin’ of his own, lately. Before Dewey’s committee on the waterfront. You’d be surprised, the time you have to read the papers around here. You know the man—the one they’re always callin’ ‘Mr. Big.’”