HARRY MADRID STOOD IN THE doorway in a heavy black overcoat that reached almost to his ankles. The broad shoulders were sprinkled with snow. He looked like he had a dandruff problem. He was smiling broadly, his eyes lost in the pouches of gray flesh, a pipe that was too small for the size of him stuck in the corner of his mouth. His hat was pulled down too far, pushing his ears out. Bert Reagan stood behind him sucking on a toothpick. His overcoat was plaid, like a horse blanket. They came in and stomped snow onto the carpet.
“Howya feelin’, Lew?” Harry Madrid looked around, cataloguing the opulence of Terry’s sunken living room and the blond bar with the slatted mirror fanning out behind it, and his face didn’t give away a thing.
“I’m all right.” Cassidy waved his cane in the air, shrugged. He still couldn’t walk properly without it. “You guys selling tickets to the Policemen’s Ball? I’m not dancing much these days and Terry just left for an X ray.”
“You don’t say?” Madrid shook his head. He wasn’t surprised. He probed his bristly ear with a forefinger the size of a cucumber.
“Real sorry to miss him,” Reagan said. He looked out the long row of windows. The apartment buildings across Park were disappearing behind the snow. “Some view.” He leaned toward the glass, looking downtown. He munched on the toothpick like a dog worrying a favorite bone.
“But the fact is we came for you,” Madrid said. “Let’s take a ride. Get you outa this place. Not good to be cooped up. Good for you to get out, put some color in those cheeks.” The skin on his own face, once you got away from the eyes, was drawn so tight he looked like he’d swollen through the collar of his shirt. His cheeks were red from the cold but the closer you got to those eyes the less life you could find.
“Are you serious, Harry?”
“You know me, keed. I’m not much of one for laughs.” He punched Cassidy’s arm softly. “Come on, put your coat on.”
“You guys kidnaping cripples these days? What if I’d rather stay home?”
“Come on, Lew. Don’t be that way. Coupla guys want to talk to you. They’re friendlies, ain’t that right, Bert?”
“Sure they are. A little fresh air can’t hurt, Lew.”
“I don’t think you guys are so friendly. I think I’ll stay here—”
Suddenly Harry Madrid had moved in close, fast like big men can be, and Cassidy felt a vise closing on his arm. Harry Madrid had always been a cop who was good at the heavy work. Now he had Cassidy’s arm pinned and twisted up tight and he was grinning like a Dutch uncle. “Don’t fuck with me, Lew. Never, ever fuck with Harry Madrid.” One jerk and the arm would snap like a twig. “I’ll never fight fair if dirty will do. You got that?” The grin was stretched tight across large worn teeth. At just that moment he looked like something that fed itself by gnawing on carcasses. “You gonna come with us, Lew?”
Cassidy chuckled and shook his head like Bogart in the movies. “Two bashful suitors. What a pair. Sure, sure, I’ll come. But you gotta give me my arm back, Harry.”
They all stood around and laughed like idiots stalling for time while Madrid handed Cassidy’s stick to Reagan and held his chesterfield for him. “Didn’t know Brooks made coats like this so big,” Madrid said.
“They make ’em for big rich guys—”
“Then what are you doin’ in one, Lew?” Madrid laughed.
“You’re a mighty amusing guy, you put your mind to it.”
“That’s what the missus says.” In the elevator Madrid said, “You’re gonna enjoy this, Lew. You’d never guess who wants to talk to you. Never.”
“You can say that again,” Reagan said, making huge wet footprints across the lobby carpet. The doorman nodded to Cassidy. The toothpick was gone from Bert Reagan’s mouth. Cassidy wondered where in the world it had gone.
The Cadillac limousine was black and shiny, like a mammoth beetle in the fresh snowfall. It looked as if it had been built on a hearse chassis and there were heavy curtains on the rear windows. Reagan squeezed his plaid bulk behind the wheel. Harry Madrid held the rear door while Cassidy gingerly climbed into the spacious backseat. The jumps were folded away. Madrid settled in beside him and lit the little pipe again, filling the compartment with cherry-scented smoke. There was little traffic and the snow blotted out all the normal sounds of the city.
“Where does Reagan think he’s going?”
“Just down the street. Nothing complicated. Don’t worry, the horse knows the way.” Madrid chuckled, smoke trickling from his nostrils, dragonlike. He pushed the curtain away from his view. “I was a kid, there were horse and buggies on Park Avenue. Now we’re driving around in a goddamn room. Tell me it’s progress, Lew.” He puffed reflectively, looking at the Christmas-card scene outside. Remembering his childhood. He wasn’t the kind of man who could ever have had a childhood. The thought of Harry Madrid in knee pants, with a mother and father on a buggy ride, took Cassidy by surprise. He’d never thought of Madrid as, strictly speaking, a human being. He was an old-time cop. “Times change, Lew. Now I’m thinking about retiring, few years down the road, go someplace upstate. My wife’s people, y’know. Small-town people. Honest, hard workers.”
“Can’t picture you in a small town, Harry.”
“I could be sheriff, some one-horse, jerkwater place. It’s a thought, ain’t it? Harry Madrid, Sheriff. Die with my boots on. I knew Bat Masterson when he came to New York, after all the Dodge City stuff. Newspaperman he was. He told me the frontier was gone, it was all over. I says, ‘Bat, you’re wrong, you’re all wet. I been on the frontier all my life.’ He looks at me kinda slow, says I don’t know what I’m taking about. I says, ‘New York’s the frontier, the original frontier town, always was, always will be, as long as this country lasts.’ He thought about it, then he nods and says maybe I was right, come to think of it. Well, Lew, I’ve been on the frontier so long I’m beginnin’ to feel like the Marshal of Abilene.” He coughed and wheezed, laughter rambling.
Reagan slid the car to a quivering stop at the private entrance of the Waldorf Towers, around the corner from the main Park Avenue entrance. A man who carried enough gold braid to be in command of a fleet or two somewhere opened the door and they all got out, sucking up the bracing fresh air. Harry Madrid spoke to the doorman. Then they went inside and took an elevator almost to the top, the domain, so far as Cassidy knew, of movie stars, titans of industry, and big-time politicians.
“Bet you never been up here before,” Reagan said.
“Well, you’d lose,” Cassidy said.
“When?” Reagan sounded doubtful.
“Reception for Lindbergh. Somebody figured we’d get along.”
“Lucky Lindy?” Reagan’s mouth was open.
“Himself. And his wife. She’s a looker, Bert. Little dark thing.”
“Yeah, I heard she’s a pip.”
Cassidy waited while Harry Madrid knocked. Today it wasn’t going to be Charles Lindbergh. But who the hell was behind that door?
Tom Dewey was standing alone by the window watching the snow swirling down onto Grand Central Station. He must have been one of the two or three most instantly recognizable men in New York. You couldn’t miss on La Guardia, for one, and DiMaggio, and then there was Tom Dewey, who really did, as he turned around, look like the groom on top of a wedding cake. The aide who ushered them in faded away into the shadowy reaches of the antique-appointed living room and Dewey came toward them with the famous thick black moustache twitching in a convivial politician’s smile. “Mr. Cassidy,” he boomed, the deep rolling voice not at all what you’d expect from a wedding-cake decoration with a Groucho Marx upper lip, “I’m Tom Dewey. I’m mighty glad you could stop by this morning. Come on over here, I’ve got some breakfast for us.” He gave Cassidy a terrifically manly handshake and led them back to a table set for four. “Please, everyone, take a pew, please.”
Cassidy sat down and, while Dewey busied himself with silver chafing dishes of eggs and ham and pitchers of orange juice and coffeepots, he wondered what Dewey could want with him. He knew what everyone knew about Tom Dewey. Five or six years before, he’d put aside a successful law practice and become special prosecutor in the campaign against big-time, organized crime. He was suddenly turned into a crusader for all that was right and good and a man to watch politically. He brushed off all the gangland death threats, threw himself into the fight against the mobsters. And became a public hero. Now he was a clean-cut and fresh-faced thirty-nine and his name kept coming up when people talked about a Republican to run against FDR in 1944. He wasn’t very big but Cassidy sensed the presence, what his father would have called star quality. He looked fit but not quite real. It was that moustache. It looked like you could reach over and knock it into his orange juice. But he was stuck with it. It was his trademark.
“Dig in, boys,” he said, dishing up eggs and ham and pushing the toast rack across white linen deep as the snow outside. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cassidy. I’m a great fan of yours. You had quite a season—I was there the day you hurt your leg.” He brushed a bit of egg from the moustache. “Pearl Harbor. I guess that day will live in infamy for you in more ways than one. How’s your recovery progressing?”
Cassidy nodded, swallowing ham. It was a good breakfast. “I’m all right. Takes a long time for this kind of thing to heal.”
“I’ve read that your football days are over. Is that true?”
“So they tell me.” He sipped hot coffee. Madrid and Reagan were eating like two men afraid they’d never see another egg.
“Tell me, what are your plans? Career-wise, I mean.” Dewey crunched on a piece of toast and left a little fleck of butter in the moustache. Cassidy tried not to look at it.
“I haven’t really thought about it. Something’s bound to turn up.” He shrugged. He was wearing a black and white herringbone jacket and a white shirt open at the neck. He had an eighteen-inch neck so he didn’t wear a tie all that much.
“Well, I wish you’d keep me in mind before you make any commitments elsewhere. I’m going to need some good men from now on, solid men I can depend on absolutely. You may have heard about my possible future in politics.” He smiled. He was all confidence, wore it as comfortably as the blue pinstriped suit. He didn’t care if Cassidy was a straight-ticket Democrat because he’d sized up the football star and decided he was smart, a man who knew the main chance when he saw it. All that came through in the smile. Tom Dewey knew he was the main chance. Cassidy figured it wasn’t worth arguing about. “Well, what you heard is not idle speculation. I’m going to be the next governor of New York—please, just remember that, Mr. Cassidy—and I have the feeling you’re my kind of people.”
“I heard you wanted to be President,” Cassidy said.
“One step at a time,” Dewey said. “I appreciate your candor. You are my kind of people.”
“Is that why we’re all having breakfast together? Maybe Harry and Bert could deliver campaign posters …”
Dewey didn’t miss a beat. He laughed, turned the big smile with the black roof on Madrid and Reagan, who stopped eating long enough to roll on their backs with paws in the air. Dewey’s laugh shattered all the glass in the room and when the echoes rolled away he sat staring at Cassidy until the smile was gone, too.
“You may recall that I made something of a name for myself a few years back, Tom Dewey the Racket Buster.” The way he said it made you think you might as well go back to Venus if you hadn’t heard. “Now I’m back in private practice—”
“Where the publicity’s harder to come by,” Cassidy observed. “You put what’s his name, Luciano, away, right?”
Dewey nodded. “For good, I might add. Judge McCook gave him fifty years. Yes, you see I found his Achilles’ heel—prostitution—and I got him on it. Think of it, fifty years, that’s the same as life, and half a century in Dannemora is half a century of very hard time, indeed. It’ll be 1985 by the time Lucky gets out and by then”—he spread his hands—“neither he nor anyone else will care. Have you ever had cause to visit the facility at Dannemora, Lew?”
“I’m delighted to tell you I haven’t, Tom.”
“It’s an unhappy spot. In winter it’s colder than a well-digger’s heinie, the northern walls are coated with ice. In summer it’s an oven. The cons up there call it Siberia. And I put Luciano in for the rest of his life.” The thought perked up his appetite and he dug back into the eggs and ham.
“That’s great, Tom. Hell of a job you did.” Cassidy pushed his plate away. Bert Reagan, by the sound of it, was still in mid-meal. Madrid was fiddling with his pipe. “But I don’t quite see what all this has to do with me.”
Dewey looked up, eyes wide, as if surprised that he hadn’t gotten down to brass tacks yet. He covered his mouth with a heavy napkin and came out smiling. “Ah! Why you’re here! Well … because I’m not done with the gangsters yet, that’s why. There’s work that remains to be done before I rest.” His face was very firm and serious now. He’d leaned back and crossed his legs and folded his arms across his chest. He was carefully modulating his voice, keeping it just short of the whine of religious zealotry. He wasn’t selling The Watchtower. He was a man who wanted to be President with Albany a station on the line. “What I did to Luciano,” he intoned, wagging a forefinger to let you know he damn well meant it, “I am going to do to … Max Bauman!” He blinked beneath eyebrows that made a set with his moustache. “Max … Bauman.” He stood up and paced once around the three men at the breakfast table, his hands behind his back, and went to stand by the windows. He looked out into the blowing snow as if seeking inspiration, then turned back to face them. “Max Bauman is a very wicked man. Did you know that, Lew?”
“Well, no, I wouldn’t call Max wicked, exactly. I think of Max as having a checkered past. No worse than lots of others. Anyway, I’ve been told all of that was a long time ago.” Cassidy shrugged. He didn’t know what he was talking about and he was beginning to resent Dewey’s having led him down the path to a defense of Bauman.
“Well, you’ve been misinformed, Lew. Don’t tell me, let me guess. Bauman’s character witness has been Terry Leary—am I right?”
“That’s right. Terry’s known Max a long time.”
“Indeed he has. You could hardly call him an entirely unbiased source, Lew, that’s the problem.”
“You want me to believe you’re an unbiased source, Tom?”
“Let me tell you about Max Bauman. I’ll make it brief.” He looked at his watch and shot his cuffs, showing onyx links and an inch and a half of starched cotton. “This is a story about four men, young immigrants, who came to New York, grew up in the streets of the ghetto. Charlie Luciana, who changed his name to Luciano because the other way sounded effeminate to him. His parents came from a village called Lercara Friddi in Sicily. Benjamin Siegel, whose family came from Kiev. Maier Sucholjansky from Grodno, Poland. Max Bauman from the Warsaw ghetto. An Italian and three young men of the Jewish persuasion. Contemporaries, more or less. They picked pockets together as boys; they were drawn together by their poverty, by their lack of good English, by their determination to conquer this new, hostile country of theirs. Early on they discovered that with money they could control their destinies, make this new land their home. Charlie Luciano had a Sicilian proverb he used to recite to them. Cu avini dinari e amicizia teni la giustizia. He who has money and friends has justice as well.”
Dewey came back to the table and poured himself a cup of coffee, then refilled Cassidy’s cup. He went back to the window, sipped from his cup, brushed his moustache with a knuckle, and went on.
“These four lads robbed individuals on a door-to-door basis, graduated to banks and jewelry stores, then developed protection rackets for restaurants, shopkeepers, bookies. They were just hitting their stride when the Volstead Act broadened the scope of their activities. With alcoholic beverages prohibited, our four—along with the other gangsters big and small—began to supply a very thirsty populace. They smuggled whiskey from Scotland, rye from Canada, rum from Nassau, and they ran gunboats to protect their shipments, but still they couldn’t begin to meet the demand. So they began taking over warehouses here in the States to distill and bottle their own stock. But there was a problem—the gangs spent as much time fighting over territories and slaughtering each other as they did selling the stuff. Luciano had the answer … combine the gangs into one vast interlocking organization. Luciano told them the truth—the bigger the operation, the larger the profits. He called a meeting of the gangs in Chicago, taking his three Jewish lieutenants with him, and he laid out his plan. Well, it went over big; they decided to divide the country into territories. Thus, organized crime was born. They decided to resurrect an all but forgotten name for themselves, in honor of Luciano. Unione Siciliano. Funny thing was, Lucky never called it that—he used his own name for it … the Outfit.”
Dewey paused to gauge the interest of his audience and found it pleasing. “Now they were into very big business, indeed,” he said. “Twenty, maybe thirty million dollars a month. Alcohol, gambling, extortion, murder, bribery, prostitution, drugs, you name it. I don’t know, maybe it was fifty million a month. Maybe there was no way to count it. Luciano was the man at the top. Maier Sucholjansky was in control of financial matters. By now his name was Meyer Lansky. Benjamin Siegel was an enforcer with a reputation for what we might call an artistic temperament … which had earned him a nickname. He was ‘bughouse’ as they say, nuts. Bugsy Siegel. And Max Bauman was still Max Bauman and his special areas of concentration were prostitution and drugs. And bribery—Max usually had access to a million dollars in used, small-denomination bills to pay off the cops, the lawyers, the judges, the jury foremen. Max also had a reputation as an enforcer; they called him a backshooter—you never let him get behind you, that was the point.” Thomas Dewey sighed and looked at his watch again. “Which pretty well brings us up to the present, Lew. Except now that Lucky’s in Dannemora, Max has more of the show to himself. The war has been a godsend to Max Bauman. They say he’s now in control of a thousand gas stations, Maine to Texas … and he’s forging gasoline rationing stamps—that alone could make all this other stuff look like small change. And that, Lew, is why I’m going to get Max Bauman. I’m going to put him away for forever and a day, Lew … believe it!”
Dewey snapped the politician’s smile back into place, erasing the crusader in an instant, and grabbed Cassidy’s hand, shaking it sincerely once again. “Lew, may I say it’s damn good to have you on our team? Well, it is. I know how it must frustrate you, having that bum leg when you could otherwise be in uniform, fighting for your country. But”—he raised a forefinger and tapped Cassidy’s chest—“nothing you could do on some hellhole in the Pacific could do more good for this old country of ours than helping to put Max Bauman where he belongs—”
“Wait a minute, Tom,” Cassidy interrupted. “Maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake here but I don’t know what you think I’m going to do to help you … Have I missed something?”
“Lew, I’d love to stay and chat,” Dewey said, “but I’m already running late. Harry and Bert have got another man they’d like you to see, then everything will be explained.” His aide had appeared from the other room and was holding Dewey’s overcoat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—have some more coffee, whatever you like. Harry, Bert, good of you to lend a hand.” He was almost to the door when he turned back. “I almost forgot, Lew. Bauman’s latest enterprise. You’ve read about the Normandie? It was sabotage. The Nazis right here in New York, on our docks. You know who did it for them? Your pal Max Bauman.”
Thomas Dewey gave a jaunty little wave, put his homburg straight on his carefully barbered head, and was out the door.
Cassidy sat in the back of the Cadillac, unaware of the clogged, snowbound Times Square traffic, wondering just what Tom Dewey expected him to do about putting Max Bauman away. Did Dewey simply believe that Cassidy knew Bauman better than he actually did? Dewey’s performance had been so carefully constructed that there had been no room or time for Cassidy to say his lines. It had been a very underwritten part, as his father would have said. Just Tom Dewey giving a lecture about a mobster. To a football player. Former football player.
And how much of it was true?
What had set Dewey off about Max, anyway? Surely none of Max’s past had come as news to the former special prosecutor, so what made it so important all of a sudden? Why hadn’t he gone after Max when he nailed Luciano? Was it the acquisition of all the gas stations? The forged gasoline rationing stamps? And why the hell would Max Bauman blow up the Normandie for the Nazis? There was something wrong with that … And what happened to Max’s Harvard years?
The stories and rumors making the rounds about the Normandie were unavoidable. German saboteurs were being blamed by most people, since the huge French liner was in the process of being converted into a troop carrier capable of taking an entire division to fight in Europe. Built in 1935, it had cost an unheard-of $56 million and it was said that no liner afloat was more luxurious. The silver service for the dining rooms had cost more than $150,000. The walls of the three-story-high main lounge were fitted out with immense slabs of Algerian onyx, and the bronze doors weighed six tons. The floor was covered with the world’s largest Aubusson carpet, the size of several tennis courts, and the 2,170 passengers had shopped at countless Paris boutiques ranked along promenades wide as Madison Avenue. And now, having been partially transformed by 2,000 dockyard workers hard at it in round-the-clock shifts, it lay in rusty, scorched, smoldering ruins in the Hudson.
Somebody had set it on fire and for twelve hours it had burned out of control, sending up smoke so thick it turned day into night and night into a vision of glowing, steaming, burning hell. The metal alloy superstructure melted and buckled, and molten steel ran into the Hudson. And then it had rolled over and died.
And Max Bauman was supposed to have done it?
Terry Leary had said Max was legit, that his mob days had been just an ornamentation of Prohibition. He’d never said Max was a pal of Luciano, Siegel, and Meyer Lansky …
Terry had a lot in common with Dewey when you thought about it. The sense of style, that same kind of confidence, the presence. But his moustache was better, if you were determined to have a moustache. If Dewey was passing out jobs in his political organization, he’d have been a lot better off approaching Terry, not Cassidy, who wasn’t much of an angle man. Cassidy saw the guy up ahead, ready to take you down, and his natural inclination was to accelerate and run him down. Politics was all angles and nobody was better at angles than Terry. Dewey had made his pitch to the wrong man.
Reagan had inched through the snow, slush, and traffic, and it was well past noon by the time they were heading north up the Hudson with the Cloisters up above on the right, the hilltop obscured by the heavy-laden clouds.
Cassidy came out of his reflections and looked over at Harry Madrid, who was reading a newspaper, the sports page, about a big basketball doubleheader at the Garden. He’d put his reading glasses on, and the pipe, still clenched in his molars, was forgotten, dead, cold.
“So what was that all about?”
“Dewey? Oh, Dewey needs the police to work with him on nailing Bauman. Maybe you noticed, Bert and I are cops—”
“But why you guys? Why not two other guys?”
Harry Madrid chuckled, folded his newspaper. “Hear that, Bert? Why us? Well, I tell you, Lew, it’s because we’re the ones know Terry Leary best.” He found the thought amusing.
“Terry? But Terry’s one of you. If Dewey wants Bauman, why not go to Terry? He knows Max best—”
“Get this straight, Cassidy.” Madrid’s shiny little eyes came up out of their hiding places. He yanked his pipe out of his mouth and pointed the teeth-marked stem at him. “Terry ain’t one of us. Never was. He ain’t our kind, y’get my drift? Long time ago he put his money down on Max. Looks like maybe he made a mistake—”
“Harry, I hate to tell you this, but you’re not scaring me. And you’re full of shit, too. Terry knows the guy. Not a crime. You really ought to introduce Dewey to Terry, not me.”
“Hear that, Bert? Lew’s got lots of good ideas back here. Lew, Dewey already knows Terry. A long time already. They sort of worked together once …” He thought better of pursuing that line of discussion. “That’s why he came to you. He can’t go to Terry because Terry’s first loyalty is to Max. Terry won’t help him nail Max. Period. Now, just stop with the questions. We’re not through yet. Sit tight.”
A half hour later Cassidy said, “Where are we going?”
“To see a man. Just enjoy the ride, Lew. It’s a surprise, like a birthday present.”
A little later they got to Sing Sing. Even through the snow, you could smell the acrid stink of disinfectant. It was the smell of prisons everywhere and it was a hell of a long way from the Waldorf Towers.
“Mr. Luciano,” a prison functionary in a gray suit that matched his big-house pallor spoke softly, like someone approaching a prince of the Church, “this is Mr. Cassidy. Of course, you know Detectives Madrid and Reagan.”
“Sure, sure,” Luciano said. He clamped Cassidy’s hand in his own and offered a bitter smile, the kind that turns down in irony at the corners. “Tough about your leg, kid. I heard the game on the radio. Tough.” He was almost a foot shorter than Cassidy, thick and muscular—like a pit bull with broad shoulders that wouldn’t give an inch even if he were overmatched. Cassidy took one look and was glad they weren’t climbing into a ring to fight it out. Luciano had a slightly triangular face with a pointed chin, a long nose with flared nostrils, and thick black hair with a widow’s peak like Dick Powell’s. In middle age he had laugh lines at the corners of his mouth but they’d soured a bit with time. Cassidy wondered what made Lucky Luciano laugh. But it was always the same: You heard about a guy, all the things he’d done, good or bad, whether it was Lucky Lindy or Lucky Luciano, and then you met him and he was just a guy. Maybe they had that stage presence, maybe they had a look about them that filled the room, but then you sat down and started shooting the breeze and they were just guys. Cassidy knew what made Lucky Luciano laugh. Amos and Andy, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Groucho. The same things that made everybody laugh.
“You guys have lunch yet?” Luciano asked.
“Not yet, Lucky,” Harry Madrid said.
“Well, they brought me down here from Dannemora this morning, crack o’ dawn, and I had some oatmeal before it was light and I’m so damn hungry I could eat a horse and chase the rider.” Luciano was ushering them from an anteroom into a private interview room that had been set up with a dining table, chairs, and a sideboard. There was a small dark man in a business suit who was introduced as one of Luciano’s lawyers. Luciano turned to the man who had made the introductions and spoke softly, patting his back. “Okay, Al, take a hike. You, too, Tony. I’ll let you know when we’re through.” The two men nodded and left, closing the door to the dining room behind him.
“So I hear you guys had breakfast with Mr. Dewey.” Luciano was just making conversation as he inspected the lunch arrayed on the sideboard. The table was set with starched linen and the platters might have come from the Waldorf catering offices. “How was Tommy?” There were three opened bottles of Chianti and crystal goblets, china service, and at the head of the table, two bottles of Dr. Brown’s Celery Tonic, obviously intended for the host.
“He was fine,” Harry Madrid said. “All in a lather, of course—”
Luciano’s laugh was soft, tolerant. “So what else is new? He’s in a permanent lather, our Tommy. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m not standing on ceremony here.” He took a plate and began to load it with lobster, rare roast beef, cold sliced chicken, linguine with white clam sauce, crusty bread, butter, salad. He filled two plates and made way for the others to follow suit.
When they were arranged around the table and he had taken the edge off his appetite, Luciano took a deep swig of his Dr. Brown’s and leaned back in his chair to let his digestive juices put in some hard time. “It’s not always like this,” he said, “in case you guys are gettin’ any ideas. This is special. We owe it all to you, Cassidy. It’s like you’re the state’s key witness in an Edward G. Robinson movie.” He chuckled softly again. You didn’t see them at first but they were there, all the scars on his face, all the stitches holding him together from the old days.
Cassidy said, “I feel like I’m being fattened up for the kill.”
“Naw, nothin’ like that. But the way we got it figured, you’re a key man and Tommy and I, we thought we’d ease you into the picture, nice and gentle. Make it fun. You having fun, Mr. Touchdown?” His eyes were large, liquid, dark, like Valentino’s. They were filled with a peculiar mixture of cruelty, humor, and wary distrust.
“I’m not actually beside myself,” Cassidy said, “but it beats sitting around all day listening to The Romance of Helen Trent—”
“Hey, one of my favorites,” Luciano said. “I got a lotta dead time on my hands. That Helen Trent, she must be a looker. A little stiff but a tiger in the raw.
“Look, I been inside six years now. It’s not a great life, Cassidy, not even if you’re Lucky Luciano. Mainly it’s boring. No action. Do I still run things on the outside, you wanna know—I say, a little yes, a little no. The Outfit’s big; some days it runs itself, like General Motors, y’know.” He speared a chunk of lobster, drizzled some mayonnaise over it, and ate it thoughtfully.
“The name of this game is I gotta get outa here. There’s a lot of things I can do to help my country in this time of war. Like dock security. You heard about this Normandie thing. I’m gonna level with you, Lew. I did that. Yeah. No shit, Lew. Ya wanna know why? I needed an angle. I control the docks still. Nazi saboteurs loose on my docks? That’s a laugh, kid. But I hadda make ’em come to me. I do the Normandie, they come to me, ‘Lucky,’ they say, ‘can you do this favor for us, for your country? Can you tighten up security on the docks?’ Sure, I tell ’em, no problem.” He winked at Cassidy. “That’s the end of Nazis on my docks.” He chuckled at the idea of his own ingenuity. “And the government boys owe Lucky one, a big one. Guy stuck in fuckin’ Dannemora makes the docks safe … They know Lucky’s word is good. I wouldn’t shit ya, Lew. From Lucky you get the truth, the whole truth, nothin’ but the truth.
“I can help back in the old country, too. Mussolini, he’s made it real bad for our people there, but when the time comes to invade Italy, believe me, I can help clear the way, I can mobilize an army inside the country to join up with the Allies … I want to get outa here, though, see? It’s tit for tat, like they say.” He finished the first bottle of Dr. Brown’s, buttered a piece of bread, and talked while he chewed. “Now, how do I get out? I’m in here for fifty fucking years, Mr. Touchdown. Long time. Man my age, I can kiss off gettin’ out. I need a parole, is what I need. Only one way to get a parole now these bastards got me in here. I need my own man in Albany. I need the governor to lean on the parole board. You follow me so far, pal?”
Cassidy nodded. Madrid and Reagan were continuing to eat like a pair of starving Armenians.
“Now, the only governor I’m likely to get is Tommy, the same guy who framed me and put me in here. We understand each other, Tommy and me. We musta read the same rule book when we were kids. He’s a shitheel, you understand, but he’s a shitheel I can understand. We need each other. He’s a sharp little guy, not as dumb as he looks with that stupid moustache. Tommy, he comes to me a while back, he says he’s got a deal he thinks I’m gonna like, I should listen to him. Okay, I listen and he tells me he wants to get Max Bauman and Terry Leary, am I interested? I says sure, I’m interested—”
“You want to get Terry? Cassidy shook his head. “I think I just missed a chapter—”
“Listen to me. Am I some jerk you interrupt? Just eat your chicken and drink your wine and listen to Lucky, Mr. Touchdown. I want Bauman and Leary. You wanna know why? You ask Luciano for reasons?” Suddenly the ferocity that had been building stopped. His shoulders relaxed, his face unfurrowed, and he shrugged. “Okay, so Leary’s your pal, I’ll give you reasons. Ask anybody, Luciano’s an honorable man. There are things I do, things I don’t do. Lansky and me, we decided a long time ago, no whores, no drugs. Whores are more trouble than they’re worth, drugs are bad, a man of honor doesn’t sell drugs … it’s like selling poison gas. Any of my boys get into whores or drugs, they know what happens when I find out. What happens ain’t pretty, Mr. Touchdown. So when Tommy decides he’s gonna put Luciano away, what does he do? He can’t make a case, an honest case, that’ll even get him an indictment, let alone a conviction … so he’s gotta frame me, he’s gotta fix it. Tommy’s good at that, he knew where to go—he went to my fancy Harvard friend, Maxie Bauman. Maxie, says Tommy, it’s you or Lucky gonna do a long time in the slammer, who’d you rather have it be? Maxie guesses he’d rather have Lucky do the time. That’s good for Maxie, it works for him no matter how you look at it. Maxie’s got the whores and he’s got the muscle. He puts the squeeze on sixty of his bimbos to testify against me …” His voice had begun to tremble, his fists white-knuckled on the table. “Me, Luciano, they frame … and the world thinks Luciano … runs … whorehouses!” One perfectly manicured fist slammed down on the table. The empty bottle of Dr. Brown’s bounced off and shattered on the floor. Bert Reagan blew about half a pound of roast beef up his nose and Harry Madrid looked nervous, like a man who’d just noticed he was locked in the gorilla cage.
“That’s why I want to get Bauman and Leary. You get that? Okay. I was framed, I want to get even. I’ll help Dewey get Bauman if he throws Leary in … but that’s just the beginning of the deal. Tommy and I both want him—I mean Dewey—in Albany. When he came to me with his plan for Max, he asked me something else.” Luciano paused to open his second Dr. Brown’s and wet his lips. “Dewey’s a Republican, and any Republican who wants to be governor is scared of New York City. There’s only one sure way he can carry the city and guarantee a win—he can get me to put the Outfit behind his campaign. I can carry the city for him, no ifs, ands, buts, nothin’. Getting Bauman gets him all over the papers again, makes him the big hero again … and the Outfit carries the city. Now, what do I get? You don’t have to be a college man to figure that out, eh? As Governor Dewey, he paroles me.” Luciano sank back in his chair. He was wearing a white shirt with the collar open and now it had begun to wilt. Sweat stains were spreading from his armpits.
“Sounds like you got yourself a deal,” Cassidy said, “but I don’t hear anything that sticks to Terry …”
“Oh, that.” Luciano’s voice was so soft Cassidy leaned forward. So did Madrid and Reagan, three men on a single string. “Terry was a young cop and Max bought him, put him in his pocket for keeps. Terry was the guy muscled the hookers for him, for him and Dewey. All three of them in on the frame. Two hoods and Dewey. Dewey is the only one who can do me any good now. Fuck the other two.”
“Terry Leary’s my friend,” Cassidy said. “You? You’re just a con I don’t know from Adam. So, Lucky, fuck you.”
Harry Madrid said “Aw shit,” under his breath, and looked at the remains of his lunch. Bert Reagan went into another coughing fit. Lucky Luciano stared at Cassidy. Cassidy stared back and couldn’t keep from smiling.
“You got some mouth on you, Touchdown,” he said at last. “A real smart mouth. Figure you’re a big tough guy. I don’t know. You’re a cripple too.”
“You’re a little greaseball punk,” Cassidy said. “In here for the duration. We could sit here, call each other names all night. But I didn’t ask to see you and as far as I’m concerned I’ve seen about enough. Unless there’s a hell of a dessert, I’m for wrapping this up and getting back to civilization. Harry? Whattaya say?” Cassidy pushed his chair back, stood up.
“Don’t be a cornball,” Luciano said. “Who you tryin’ to impress? Any ladies here I hadn’t noticed? So you’re loyal to your pal. You’re a Boy Scout.” Slowly he began to clap his hands, applauding. “You’re a nice wholesome boy. Loyalty’s a nice quality as long as you’re loyal to the right people. I’m suggesting that Leary’s not quite as worthy of your loyalty as you think he is. I’m asking you to think about it.” He sipped from his Dr. Brown’s again. “Come on, kid, siddown. We’re almost done, anyway. I get gas when people get mad at me, I really do. I’m a real easygoing guy. Siddown.”
Cassidy slid his chair over, sat down. Madrid sighed deeply and closed his eyes.
“Y’know,” Luciano said, “this war ain’t gonna last forever. The Krauts are so dumb, they don’t know it but they’re all wet, they’re pissin’ in the wind and getting it back in the kisser. They didn’t have a chance once the Japs bombed Pearl. Once we were in the war, the meter started running on the Krauts. Couple, three years, there won’t be enough Germany left to fill your cat’s shitbox. It’s gonna be bad over there. We’ll either turn Germany into one big farm or we’ll have to build the whole damn country again to keep the Reds from taking over all of Europe. Either way, the Krauts get the shit beat outa them in this war. And when it’s over, there’s gonna be a boom over here like you never dreamed of. There’s gonna be more money, more people wanting to spend it, and I’m gonna get my share. Casinos, travel, resorts, airlines, money just layin’ around waiting to be picked up—”
“Look, I don’t know why you’re telling me all this—”
“I’m thinking of your future, Touchdown. Once we get Max and Terry where they belong, you’re still gonna be a smart, mouthy, bright-eyed young guy. You may not like me yet, but I think you’re okay. You’re gonna help me, I’m gonna help you. Say the war’s over, all this is behind us, I might put something in your way … a casino maybe, or the travel business, or something else. You know what’s gonna be big? Pro football. Maybe I’ll buy me a football team, it’d need a top man, wouldn’t it?”
“Everybody wants to give me a job—”
Luciano laughed. “Don’t listen to Dewey, he’s a double-crosser.”
“So what’s to keep him from double-crossing you on the parole?”
“Because I’d let it out in detail how he came to me to get elected. No, don’t worry about Luciano. But remember, you can trust me to do what I say, you can’t trust Dewey at all. I’m an honorable man, that shitheel wants to be President … that says it all. Tommy Dewey in the White House.” He shook his head and laughed more loudly. “This is the moment of truth, Touchdown. You’re lookin’ right down the barrel of the rest of your life. You can go in the crapper with Bauman and Leary. Or you can grab the brass ring, go with Lucky and Dewey. That little squirt gets to be President, I’m gonna be King for sure. Think about it, Touchdown.”
Cassidy nodded. “Okay, okay, I’ll think about it. But in the meantime, you haven’t said a word about what you want from me.”
“You’re close to Leary, Leary’s in bed with Max. I want to know what Max is up to. I don’t care what it is, forged gasoline stamps, bribery, homemade twenties, war profiteering … Leary’s got to be in it, too. You find out. You can’t help but find out if you pay attention … and we’ll get back to you, Harry and this guy with the toothpick, we’ll be in touch. Simple.”
“What if I don’t do it?”
“Think of yourself as a spot. Think of me as the spot remover. Like I say, it’s simple.”
He smiled at Cassidy as if he were genuinely pleased, finally at ease knee-deep in a murder threat.
The snow had stopped falling but it was still blowing across the highway, blowing hard off the Hudson. Bert said he wanted to stop and get the chains put on before they slid off into the damn river. He pulled into a garage and café where the blowing snow hovered around the lights like swarms of gnats in the summertime. They went inside for coffee while the kid started in on the chains.
Harry Madrid ordered three coffees. They sat in a booth by a window where a neon sign cast a red glow across their faces. They all took their hats off but left their overcoats on. Cassidy stared quietly into the last fading shreds of daylight. Headlamps poked nervously along the snowy highway. He was trying to make some sense of the day. The more he thought about it the less he liked it. He felt like a man being crammed into a very small cage. Every time he made a move he hurt himself.
“So, Lucky, fuck you,” Harry Madrid whispered. “If that wasn’t the goddamnedest thing I ever did see. Jeez, Cassidy, you haven’t got the brains you were born with … so, Lucky, fuck you! If that don’t beat all …”
“You’re lucky he was in a good mood,” Reagan observed.
“What was he gonna do, shoot me?”
“Oh, Lucky’s got ways,” Reagan said. “Remember the Normandie? Like he said, though, you’re okay with him. You can trust him. Like he said, Dewey’s a liar.”
“Where does all this crap leave you guys?”
“Up to our chins in crap,” Harry Madrid said, “as usual. But Bauman’s going down, any way you slice it.”
“But why drag me into it?”
“Because Max’s operation is real tight. We can’t get a guy inside. Max don’t trust many people. Terry, he trusts Terry—”
“So go to Terry—”
“For one thing, Luciano wants Terry, too. And Terry won’t bite the hand that feeds him.”
“Give Luciano Max and he’d forget all about Terry.”
“Lucky’s got a long memory,” Reagan said, shaking his head.
“You guys think I’m going along with this?” Harry Madrid put a match to his pipe. “Yup, I think you will. If you don’t, you heard what the man said. One spot gets removed. And he still gets Terry. There’s no percentage in that, chum. It’s a mug’s bet. Who knows, you give Dewey and Luciano a hand here, Bauman goes inside, maybe you can deal for Terry’s ass.” He cupped his hand around the bowl of the little pipe and puffed mightily. “No other way, Lew. They’ve got you by the balls. And if Lucky blows you away, don’t think Dewey’ll give a shit. He won’t. He needs Lucky.” He shook his massive head. “Nobody blowin’ smoke your way today. Truth time, all day long.”
The rear chains were starting to bang at the inside of the fenders and the wind was pushing the big Cadillac around the road like a toy. Up ahead the clouds had begun to blow away and the glow of the city had come into view.
To pass the time Harry Madrid told Cassidy how Charlie Luciano had gotten his nickname. It was 1929. A smart Sicilian colleague of his called Salvatore Maranzano wanted Luciano to kill yet another Sicilian, a gang leader, Giuseppe Masseria. Maranzano set up a meeting at an empty warehouse on Staten Island.
The thing was, Luciano was just as smart as Maranzano: He knew the Sicilian Mafia tradition that a man who killed a superior could not then immediately take his place. Luciano wanted to be top man in the Outfit and saw through Maranzano’s scheme to prevent his accession. He told Maranzano no dice.
Before Luciano knew what was happening the warehouse was full of Maranzano’s boys intent on mayhem.
They strung Luciano up against the wall and had at him with clubs and belts. They ground cigarette butts into his back. They took turns slicing his face with razors. Maybe now, Maranzano suggested, he’d reconsider and ice Masseria. But no, with what little strength Luciano had left, he said he didn’t think he would.
They finally cut him down. He looked like a butcher’s mistake. They piled him into the back of a car and threw him out onto the road once they’d reached top speed. They figured the pavement would not only kill him but make such a mess of the corpse that nobody would notice the torture scars.
The cops found the body later on. They didn’t think the poor bastard would live until they got him to the hospital but they gave it a try. It took fifty-five stitches to put just his face back together. And somehow he lived.
Meyer Lansky came to visit him, asked how he felt.
Luciano whispered through the bandages, “Lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky,” Lansky marveled. “Lucky Luciano, that’s you.”
And so it was.