Samantha didn’t say anything as they walked. A streetlight caught the gunmetal blue of her eyes. Wary. A dangerous sort of beauty. She’d easily adapted to the way he worked. While still a cop, she’d figured out early on an interview was more than a conversation. It was serious business. As such, she rarely interrupted when she was with him, and if she did, she found a way to keep it in the flow. This was a special skill. Not every cop had the talent for getting information out of a witness or a suspect. That was why the stupid ones beat the crap out of them instead. In the months since they’d met, she’d worked hard to learn exactly how a reporter’s techniques differed from a cop’s. In many ways, her new job was more like Taylor’s. She didn’t have a badge or the force of the law on her side anymore.
Mrs. O’Malley hadn’t told him anything that explained why Bridget Collucci ended up dead in New York Harbor—killed in such a brutal fashion. She did claim Collucci was a legit lawyer. That went against the theory he was part of the Fronti crime family. He shook his head slowly. He didn’t know nearly enough yet.
Tomorrow, Friday the 2nd, the first tall ships arrived in New York Harbor from Newport. Everyone at City News, including Taylor, had assignments to get to where people were viewing the ships, interview New Yorkers, and describe the whole splendid scene. Man-on-the-street stuff, the sort of feature he hated. The man on the street told you exactly what you expected, which meant it was never news. He’d have tolerated the assignment if he didn’t have a real story to work. One woman murdered was far more important to Taylor than the grandest pageant to arrive in beleaguered, busted, crime-infested New York City in decades. This was the kind of story he’d always gone after—the story of a victim no one else knew about.
Once on Roosevelt Avenue, he found a booth that still had a phone book hanging from a chain. He looked up Mulligan’s. It was a few streets over at 149th.
The bar heaved with a big Thursday-night crowd. “Got to Get You Into My Life” played loudly from a jukebox and mixed with people yelling to be heard in several clusters and clots of conversation. The odors of sweat, tobacco, and beer mingled, not unpleasantly—at least for a lover of bars. Taylor was one of those. The drinking weekend in New York traditionally began Thursday night and went on as long as any particular drinker could keep going—all the way until Wednesday morning for some. Then it started all over again. Eyes followed Taylor and Samantha to the bar. Northern Boulevard might be the busy main drag through the large neighborhood of Flushing, but the drinkers here, like in any New York bar, knew the locals. Knew who belonged in their place.
Taylor ordered a Rolling Rock pony, as the seven-ounce bottles were called, and Samantha asked for a Schmidt. He left four singles on the bar, a big tip because he was planning to ask the bartender about the O’Malleys. Wasted money. Reflected in the mirror behind the bar was O’Malley at a table by the wall. No sign of the son, Tommy.
Taylor went over with Samantha right behind. A glass and a bottle of Jameson sat on the table. O’Malley’s chin rested on his chest. Taylor doubted he was deep in thought. The stick O’Malley had used on Lucco leaned against the wall.
Samantha appraised it. “A shillelagh. An Irish walking stick.”
“More like an Irish hitting stick, from the way he used it.” Taylor turned around one of the chairs at the table and sat.
“Oh they’re good for that too.” Samantha also took a seat. “See the knob at the end.” She pointed to the light-colored bulb at the top of the thick black rod. “Sometimes they fill it with lead. For a bit more smack.”
“The way it knocked that goon to the ground, I believe it.”
O’Malley’s head slowly rose. Tellingly, his eyes flicked to his weapon, though his hands remained in his lap. “You were at the house. Carl said you’re a reporter. Whaddya want with the death of my daughter?”
“I was on the Harbor Precinct launch when the police brought her up.”
“Give the man a fuckin’ prize.” The words slurred slightly. “Doesn’t mean I have to let you play vulture.”
“I’m sorry about—”
“Fuck off. You’re not sorry about anything.”
“Least I want to tell her story. Cops, they’re worried about the perpetrator. The victim is a set of stats they pass on to the DA.”
O’Malley poured two inches of Jameson into the glass and put it away in one gulp. This conversation wasn’t going to remain coherent for long, and information you got from drunks wasn’t worth a shit. A story was about the details, the facts. Drunks were bad at those.
“Still think you’re full of shit. Don’t give a shit about the cops either. Go away.”
“Why do you think your daughter was killed?”
“Don’t have a clue.”
“At Collucci’s, you made it sound like there’s a connection with his family. A narcotics detective told me Collucci might be associated with the Fronti organization. And you talked about keeping women out of the business. What business did you mean?”
O’Malley’s hand gripped the shillelagh but his eyes were looking not at Taylor, but over the top of his head. Too late, Taylor realized there was someone behind him. The cold metal of a gun barrel pressed into Taylor’s neck. Time to get worried.
“My son has returned from the pisser at the perfect moment,” O’Malley said. “Because you’re pissing me off. Sticking your vulture’s nose into my family business.”
Taylor couldn’t help himself. “I get that this is about families.”
The barrel of what was most probably the silver .38 Taylor had seen earlier tonight pressed harder into his neck as the younger O’Malley hissed, “You’re going to shut up and leave. I didn’t get to hurt anyone tonight. Dad had all the fun.”
“Maybe I should have some more fun.” Liam O’Malley lifted the ancient weapon. “Seems to me one person who can do damage to my daughter’s memory is a journalist.”
The stick came down fast.
Taylor yanked his right hand off the table in time. His bottle exploded. Beer splashed all over his shirt and sport coat. Shards of glass plopped in his lap.
“That’s enough.” Samantha wrenched the stick from the father’s hand and pointed her snub-nosed revolver at the son’s face. She rose from the chair. The father and son had made the usual mistake. They’d figured Samantha was a girl—a harmless girl. “Put your weapon on the floor and kick it into the corner.” The younger man looked at this father. “Do. It. Now. This piece is licensed and I’m an ex-cop. Self-defense will be an easy make.”
The son complied.
“Mr. O’Malley, I’ll leave your shillelagh next to the bar and you can head off to Tipperary in the morning.”
Taylor stood and wiped off beer and bits of glass. “I understand getting angry over your daughter’s death. I understand blaming someone with criminal connections. I don’t understand denying it afterwards. Doesn’t make sense. When things don’t make sense, and I get threatened, I know there’s a story. I’m going to get this story.”
“You’re messing with dangerous people.”
“Collucci or you? Or both?”
O’Malley offered a mean, crooked smile and filled the whiskey glass.
Taylor moved back to the bar with Samantha, who checked the rest of the room to make sure friends of the family weren’t planning to get involved. Who knew who had a weapon in Mulligan’s? She set the stick against the bar, and they hustled out, their eyes on the crowd the whole time. Once outside, Samantha broke left and ran down an alley to the back of the building. She waited for him to catch up.
“Don’t know if they’ll follow or keep drinking.” She slid the gun into the holster at her side. “I hope, keep drinking. Did you have to threaten him as we were leaving?”
“He threatened me first. You never know what you’ll learn when people get agitated.”
“You’ll learn they want to hit you in the head with an old Irish stick.”
They walked behind buildings for a ways, then used another alley to get back to Roosevelt Avenue and make for the Flushing-Main Street elevated stop.
On the platform, Samantha stared at him, tense, maybe heading toward anger. “It’s amazing you’re still alive.”
“Killing reporters is a bad business. All the other reporters get interested in the story, no matter what it is.”
“So you’ve told me.” She shook her head. “You’re not at the Messenger-Telegram anymore. Do enough people know about the City News Bureau to care?”
She didn’t mean it to be cruel. She was worried about him. He didn’t have an answer. Or maybe he did and didn’t want to think about it too hard. He’d gotten the juiced-up jolt that came from skirting the edge of a story. That would keep away depressing thoughts about his career for a couple hours at least.
Jersey Stein ordered beef chow fun as soon as Taylor and Samantha sat. He’d been waiting at a table in the back of Lin’s Garden on Bayard Street. Taylor ordered the same. Had to. The piping hot mixture of rice noodles and meat and sauce and grease at Lin’s Garden was the best in the city. This was a thing you knew. Samantha asked for shrimp with black bean sauce, which was pretty good too. The restaurant was one of four in Chinatown open round the clock, serving lunch and dinner, the late eaters and the early-morning drunks and beginning all over again. In fact, the four eateries were a mecca for those New York drinkers who started on Thursday night and whirled their way through the weekend. More than once, Taylor had been through four or five bars in one night and met others from those spots when he got to Lin’s somewhere after four in the morning.
Taylor sipped from the small teacup. “ ‘Paranoia Blues.’ ”
“Probably the right state of mind these days,” Stein said.
“Maybe. I mean the song. Paul Simon. Sings about the chow fun here.”
“You always were a font of knowledge.” Stein’s clear hazel eyes looked back at Taylor from above prominent cheekbones. He wore a seersucker suit. “Tell me what you think you know.”
Taylor started with the harbor launch ride and went through it all, pausing only when the waiter came to deliver food. Taylor continued his story as Stein intently ate his chow fun and smiled, something he rarely did. Samantha ate too, though she seemed to be off somewhere else, probably because she’d heard the whole story enough times already. After he’d finished talking, he picked up his chopsticks and ate his own food. The broad flat noodles, the seasoning and the beef together, all steaming hot, combined to produce a flavor that put all other noodles to shame. No wonder he was disappointed every time he ordered chow fun anywhere else.
Stein set his chopsticks down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “What a mess. FBI. DEA. The good old NYPD trying to keep a murder under wraps rather than worrying about who did it. Two sets of gangsters. Who knows, maybe more. This ‘import license.’ Never heard the term before. You believe there’s a fight over an import license for heroin in New York?”
“That’s what one narcotics detective called it. He thinks the Leung tong is making a play.”
“They play nasty when they do.”
Concerned, Samantha looked at Taylor and across to Stein. “How are they more dangerous than any other gangsters?”
“Play by their own rules and don’t bother to tell anyone else what those rules are,” Stein said. “The Italian mob doesn’t like the press, but they pretty much leave newspaper people alone, I guess figuring violence only draws more press. Tong members don’t know from the press or care. Probably can’t read English. They’ll kill you for asking questions.”
Samantha’s intense blue eyes settled once more on Taylor. “Do you understand? Going in and interviewing tong members is a bad idea.”
“I get it. Wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Don’t start thinking of places to start.”
“Okay, okay.” Taylor resorted to sipping his tea. “Why were you so anxious to meet?”
“Listen to Samantha. She’s a smart woman. Me, I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of what you described, but couldn’t get the full story. Sounds like a bureaucratic clusterfuck of pretty immense proportions. Nobody is talking to anyone else. ’Course, can’t ever get anything out of the FBI. The Brooklyn cops were sitting on something—the Collucci case it turns out. I can’t tell what the DEA knows. If that weren’t enough, everyone in town with a badge is all wound up for security duties this weekend. You couldn’t have been more right about ‘Paranoia Blues.’ I wanted to hear from you if some of the pieces of different stories I’d gotten wind of were true. You confirmed it. Some of it, at least.”
“You wanted to confirm systems normal, all fucked up. Confirmed. What do I get?”
“I got nothing on Collucci, and I’m not going to get anything. That’s over in Brooklyn. Your heroin theory … first I’ve heard it.”
“We both know most of the heroin in New York is brought in via Marseilles by the Fronti family.”
Stein nodded. “An easy yes. You saw The French Connection, right? That’s the deal. The French connection is the route for Afghani smack. Still coming in. Pushers and addicts still getting busted. The big boys in the Fronti organization still doing business. With one minor change. There’s less police corruption, courtesy of the Knapp Commission and the new police commissioners since. Fewer cops involved in the street game. Hasn’t done anything to change the lives of addicts.”
“So it’s possible the Leung tong wants the New York market for the powder coming out of the Golden Triangle?”
“Anything’s possible. But it’s not something I’ve heard.”
“Can you ask around?”
Stein scratched his temple. “I don’t even know why I like you. Reporters are always bad for my business. Still, ya gave me what you got. I’ll ask.”
“Appreciate it.”
“My advice. Don’t get hung up on one sexy conspiracy theory. Classic investigator’s mistake. Looks can deceive. Maybe this murder is supposed to be too obvious.”
“What do you mean?” Samantha asked.
“When something points one way, like this woman’s body does, sometimes the answer is in another direction.”
“I hear you,” Taylor said. “But I don’t have any other directions right now. One other favor. Can you check out the woman’s father? Liam O’Malley.” He wrote the street address on a napkin and passed it over. “Any criminal activity, organized crime?”
“This sounds like fishing.”
“You got friends in the Brooklyn DA’s office?”
“My ex-partner from my NYPD days is an investigator over there.”
“The cops, if they’re lucky, will sit on the murder until Wednesday. When the story of Bridget Collucci’s killing gets out, all hell is going to break loose. You do me this favor, I might be able to help your buddy get ahead on it.”
Stein laughed. “You crack me up. Always thinking you’re doing our job for us. One story has nothing to do with justice. That happens in a courtroom.”
“You need facts, like I do.” Taylor picked up the grease-stained check as the waiter set it down.
Stein wagged an index finger his way. “Here’s a fact. I don’t know where this mess is heading, but if even a part of it is on the up—the mob, tongs, FBI, DEA—it’ll flatten you dead if it runs you over. You be careful. That’s paperwork I don’t need.” He pocketed the napkin. “I’ll see if O’Malley raises any flags.”