The Devil’s Daughter, page 13
Al is with the brothers when they knock on V’s door just to make sure they really are who they say they are. The Dugans don’t know it, but he’s carrying a knuckle-duster in his coat pocket. He’s used it on more than one miscreant who mistook his paunch, his snow-white hair, and his smiling Irish face for an easy mark and thought they could take him. I reassure Al that these are the right guys, and he takes off. The Dugans know Bud from Stillman’s Gym, and handshakes go around before Joe breaks out the bottle of bourbon I promised him and takes a healthy swig.
V’s TV set is a major attraction. The Dugans don’t own one, and they turn it on and settle onto her couch to watch Have Gun—Will Travel while passing the bottle back and forth. I figured them for fans of the Friday Night Fights or wrestling, but they relate to the show’s gunslinging hero mostly because the actor playing him is as pockmarked as they are.
Before Bud and I leave, I tell the boys to keep an eye on Lucy. “I put a bucket beside her bed so it’s there when she starts to puke. Just make sure to keep her warm when she gets the shakes. She’s gonna try to bolt the minute she feels better and might even offer to blow both of you, but don’t fall for it, at least not until I get back.”
The Dugans grin at me in a way that’s a little disturbing. I know they’re not above collecting sexual favors, particularly from a girl who looks like Lucy Garrett, so I promise them a night at Kitty Malone’s brothel over on Tenth Avenue but only if they behave themselves.
A cold wind is howling when Bud and I hit the street, and we aren’t dressed for it. We’re hoping to hail a cab, but it’s late and there isn’t one in sight. We’re about to hop on the subway at Fifty-First Street when somebody calls out my name.
“Jack? It is you, isn’t it, Jack?” A woman emerges from the shadows of a storefront on Third Avenue, but I don’t recognize her. “Sure it is. Jack Coffey. You’re still the best-looking boy on the block, aren’t you Jack?”
The last time I saw Bridget Moran, she was fifteen. She sparkled then, her curly red hair falling to her waist and her green eyes bright, but that sparkle is gone. Her skin is sallow now. There are deep bags under her eyes, and I’d be surprised if she weighs a hundred pounds. She’s wearing a fake-rabbit-fur jacket, a skirt that leaves nothing to the imagination, fishnets, and ridiculously high heels. What Bridget is doing with herself these days is hardly a mystery. Third Avenue is thick with ladies like her selling themselves, even in the cold and at this time of night.
“You got a light, Jack?” she asks, fishing a cigarette out of her purse. I don’t, but Bud does. When he lights her cigarette with a Zippo, the flame illuminates his face, but Bridget either doesn’t recognize him or just doesn’t care who Bud is. Her hands are shaking so badly that she can barely bring the cigarette to her lips.
“Bridget, why don’t you get out of the cold and go on home?” I tell her. “You look like you’re about to freeze to death.”
“I can’t,” she says, “not until my man tells me it’s time.” I assume her man is a pimp.
“Would that man be somebody I know?”
“Probably not. He’s Spanish, but he treats me good. I just gotta earn for him is all. Speaking of which, you and your friend aren’t interested in some fun, are you? I could show you both a real good time, you know?”
This just breaks my heart. Sweet little Bridget Moran trying to sell herself to me. I feel like taking her home to her mother, but her mother was a bad drunk and died a long time ago. “Not my style, Bridge, but if you could use some cash, I got about fifty on me and I’m sure Bud won’t mind chipping in.”
Any money I give Bridget is likely to go for booze, or in her arm, or into her pimp’s pocket, but I can’t leave her standing out here in the freezing cold. I empty my wallet and Bud ponies up another hundred. Bridget takes our money and, without even a thank-you, clatters off down the street, teetering on those high heels.
Bud looks at me, expecting an explanation, but I don’t feel like giving him one, and he lets it go. It’s then that he spots an empty cab coming our way and whistles it to the curb.
“C’mon, we’ll split it,” he says. “I’ll take it crosstown and then you can take it down to the Village.”
But I beg off. I can’t stop thinking about Bridget, a young girl who used to follow me around the neighborhood, now desiccated and down on her luck. The truth is, after seeing her like that, I’d just as soon be on my own.
“You go on ahead, Bud,” I tell him. “I’m gonna walk.”
I was lucky. I don’t appreciate that enough. I survived combat, and a lot of guys I knew didn’t. I went to Fordham on the GI Bill when most of my friends from the old neighborhood dropped out of high school. The Jesuits were a tight-assed Stalinist bunch, but no one else could have gotten me to read Aquinas and Thomas More.
I wasn’t the only one to escape. Some guys got grandfathered into the unions or became cops or firefighters. There was even a doctor or two. And I once ran into a judge in the courthouse downtown who used to run numbers for Owney Madden when we were kids. Not everyone ended up like Bridget, but she wasn’t the exception either.
I’m thinking about her and guys I used to know like her. I’m not watching where I’m going, so I don’t pay much attention to the footsteps coming up behind me. In fact, I don’t pay any attention to them at all until I feel the business end of an automatic in the small of my back.
“When you killed Sergei, I told you I was gonna make you pay, Jack. Today is the day.”
I should have smelled him coming. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Iggy, give it a rest, will you please?”
“Just keep walking, hotshot.”
I’m about to tell Iggy his act is getting old when I hear him jack a round into the chamber of his gun.
I have a split second to take stock. If I don’t move fast enough, there’s going to be a bullet hole where my left kidney used to be. And it strikes me that Iggy is broke, living on the street, and so fundamentally deep in the shitter that he has nothing to lose by killing me. My only possible saving grace is the street sweeper lumbering toward us. I have to make my move now or I’m a dead man, so I throw back an elbow that catches Iggy square on the jaw. It’s enough to jar his automatic, and he misses when he pulls the trigger. I spin around, grab him by his coat lapels, and heave him in front of the street sweeper. There’s an ominous thump, the sweeper’s brakes squeal, and the driver grinds the thing to a halt. He gets out of the cab and joins me on the sidewalk to assess the damage.
“Never saw him,” the driver says. His hands are in his jacket pockets, and he’s stamping his feet on the cement against the cold. There’s plenty of blood, and Iggy isn’t moving. “Think he’s dead?”
He isn’t dead. Iggy isn’t really underneath the street sweeper’s wheels but under one of its big circular brushes.
“No, he’s still with us,” I tell him. “He must’ve cracked his head on the curb, but he’ll come around after a while.”
“You wanna call the cops?”
“Not really. You?”
“None of my business,” the driver says before he climbs back into the cab of his street sweeper, backs it away from Iggy, and drives off.
CHAPTER 26
I do Iggy the courtesy of calling an ambulance from a pay phone before taking the subway down to the Village. I was going to walk, but the temperature must be in the single digits and my teeth are chattering. I let myself into the apartment as quietly as I can. I figure V is asleep in the bedroom, and I don’t want to disturb her.
I’m wrong. She isn’t there. This isn’t necessarily a reason to panic. I know V is working a shoot for Town and Country in Connecticut. If the shoot ran late, she might have decided to spend the night in a hotel up there. It is a shame though. I was looking forward to climbing into bed with her and snuggling up close—not only because I love her but because I’m still shivering and want to get the chill off my bones.
I also wanted to tell her that Lucy is passed out in her apartment where the Dugan brothers are looking after her. V isn’t going to be very happy about that, and I probably would have waited until the morning before letting her know, but that doesn’t matter now. By the time V gets home, I’ll have figured out what to do with Lucy, gone back to Beekman Place, and cleaned up whatever mess she and the brothers leave behind.
And my gut is rumbling. It has been for the past couple of hours, and I have to eat something before I pass out. I root around in the fridge but can’t find very much. There’s some sliced roast beef V bought at a deli on Seventh Avenue last week that still looks edible and a couple of slices of swiss. I know there’s a half loaf of rye in the bread box, and I’m praying that it hasn’t gone completely stale and moldy. It has mostly, but I fix myself a sandwich anyway, pop open a bottle of beer, and settle down at the kitchen table.
I’m about to take a bite out of my sandwich when there’s a knock at the door. This not only makes me suspicious, it pisses me off. I’m hungry and don’t feel like seeing anybody, so I ignore whoever it is, but they keep at it.
I grab my snub-nose in case Iggy has decided to put in a return appearance and go to see who’s there.
I open the door and am surprised to see Burton, Garrett’s butler, standing in the hallway outside the apartment. He’s wearing a long cashmere coat, a thick woolen scarf, and a black knit longshoreman’s cap pulled down over his ears.
“I’m guessing you don’t want to come in,” I say.
“Mr. Garrett would like to see you.”
“I bet he would. Here’s an idea. Why don’t you tell him to go fuck himself and see how he reacts?” Burton doesn’t have much of a sense of humor; he doesn’t so much as crack a smile. In fact, he says nothing at all.
“What does he want?” I ask him.
“There’s a car downstairs,” is all that Burton is willing to say, and he walks off down the hall as if I’m sure to follow.
I grab my coat and do just that. However, I am not an idiot. When I get downstairs, Garrett’s limo is double-parked with its engine running, and Burton is holding the back door open, expecting me to climb in. I’m packing, but I’m not about to get into a car with a guy I know doesn’t like me very much. Instead, I amble past the limo with my hands in my coat pockets. It takes a couple of seconds, but Burton gets the idea and he slides into the front seat next to Garrett’s driver. The driver slips the limo into gear, and it creeps slowly behind me as I walk down the street.
It’s after two in the morning, and the only place open is a bar over on Christopher Street. The place is frequented by homosexuals mostly, which I figure is bound to make Garrett uncomfortable and plays to my advantage. I know Larry Siegel, the owner, who’s a good egg and a big-time movie buff. I stop into his bar once in a while to shoot the breeze because he’s a smart guy and usually has something interesting to say. I came in with Bud one time, and Siegel nearly fainted at the sight of him. I’ve been drinking for free there ever since.
Despite the hour, the bar is crowded. This isn’t surprising. The cops and local hoodlums give Siegel’s clientele an incredibly hard time and aren’t above beating the piss out of them for no good reason. Larry pays off a police captain over at the Sixth Precinct to keep his minions and the neighborhood toughs away after midnight so that his customers can relax and drink in peace.
When I come in, I have a word with Larry, who’s tending the bar. I nod toward the limo, which we can see through the front window, and tell him what it’s doing there. He comes out from behind the bar, shoos a couple of guys away from a table in the back, and I take a seat.
After a few minutes, Louis Garrett walks in with Burton and a beefy guy I take to be his bodyguard. The bar goes silent. Everybody is staring at them, which is exactly what I hoped they would do.
“You have interesting friends, Jack,” Garrett says as he pulls up a chair. “I didn’t know you hit from both sides of the plate.”
“I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I? Now, what can I do for you?”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“No idea,” I say, but for some reason Garrett doesn’t believe me.
“You know, Jack, it’s a mistake to go up against me, a mistake you don’t want to make.” He says this with a supercilious menace that makes me want to smack him. “Now, why don’t you tell me where she is so we can all go home without anybody getting hurt?”
“Here’s the deal, Garrett,” I tell him. “First off, she’s your kid, not mine, and where she goes and what she does makes absolutely no difference to me. And second, I’m not the one who gets his rocks off diddling her friends—you are. Why don’t you ask one of them if they know where Lucy is?”
This is not actually the way I feel about Lucy, and I don’t expect the remark to go over well. It doesn’t. Garrett’s bodyguard reaches inside his coat like he’s going to pull his gun if I don’t watch what I say. Larry, who has been watching and eavesdropping, grabs a Louisville Slugger out from under the bar and makes a show of slapping it against the palm of his hand.
Garrett isn’t impressed. “How’s your girlfriend?” he asks.
This gets my attention, but I decide to brazen it out. “She’s in my bed waiting for me. Why do you want to know?”
“Funny. I thought she was in Connecticut modeling for Town and Country,” he says, and it takes every ounce of my self-control not to reach across the table and rip out Garrett’s throat. “Let me make myself plain, Jack. You’ll deliver Lucy to me in the next twelve hours or Victoria Hemming has graced her last magazine cover.”
The threat might be a bluff, but I can’t afford to ignore it. I’m not going to put V in danger under any set of circumstances, especially not to protect Lucy Garrett from her father. Bud’s right: guys like Garrett will stop at nothing to get what they want.
“I’ll bring her by the Beresford by noon tomorrow,” I tell him, “but only if your goon here isn’t tailing me.”
Garrett’s bodyguard takes offense at this and really does go for his gun, but Garrett stops him. “Is she in one piece?” he asks.
“Barely,” I tell him. “She was breathing the last time I saw her anyway.”
“Just bring me the kid, Jack,” Garrett says and pushes away from the table.
I wait for him to clear off, then sprint back to Perry Street, hoping against hope that V has come home while I’ve been out. But she hasn’t. I’d call her agent to find out exactly where she’s shooting, but it’s just after three in the morning and he’s not going to be in his office. I’d try him at home, but I barely know the guy’s name, much less his telephone number.
Instead, I call V’s apartment to check on Lucy. I let the phone ring at least a dozen times, but no one answers. This is not good. The Dugan brothers could have finished off the bottle of bourbon I left them and passed out. Or maybe they’re too busy watching the late late show on V’s TV to pick up the phone. They aren’t exactly two of the most responsible people in the world, so they might have blown me off and gone home. Whatever’s happened, I’ve got to get over to Beekman Place and make sure Lucy is still there and still alive. She’s probably deep in withdrawal by now, and I might have to hold her hand until she gets straight, but I’ve got to get her home. V’s life might depend on it.
I call a cab service, and there’s a Checker waiting for me when I get downstairs. The sun isn’t up yet and there’s no traffic, so it doesn’t take but fifteen minutes to get uptown. Al, the doorman, isn’t on duty when I jump out of the cab, which is a little strange. I suppose his shift might have ended and his replacement off taking a piss, but the management of an address as ritzy as Beekman Place expects their people to be on duty around the clock. They’re strict about it too, and abandoning your post even to take a leak is a fireable offense.
I pass by the counter in the lobby where Al sorts the mail, but he isn’t there either. I don’t think too much of it though. Instead, I ring for the elevator and watch the dial above the door count down the floors.
The elevator door slides open. I’m about to step aboard when I see Al sprawled on the floor in a pool of his own blood. His chin is resting on his chest and there’s a quarter-size bullet hole in his forehead. I check his carotid for a pulse, but I know he’s dead. Whoever did this must have been going for Lucy and clipped Al on his way. I pull out my gun and hit the button for V’s floor. I spin the snub-nose’s cylinder to make sure it’s fully loaded, and when the elevator door opens, I peek out to see if anyone is there laying for me. No one is, at least no one that I can see, but V’s apartment door is wide open.
I’m not sure of my play here. I could back off and call the cops, but after my run-in with Jimmy Mullen, I’m not inclined to make that my first move. And if Lucy’s dead, I’ll want to know it before trying to explain to the police what she was doing in V’s apartment.
I creep toward the apartment door, hesitate at the threshold, but I don’t hear anyone moving around, so I step inside. The television is on in the living room with the volume blasting. Eddie Dugan is sitting on V’s couch with his pants down, staring blankly at the screen, shot through his head. A trail of blood leads from the living room across the hall and into the kitchen. I follow it and find Joe Dugan face down on the linoleum. He’s taken two in the spine and a third execution-style in the back of the neck. I move to V’s bedroom and ease open the door expecting the worst, expecting to find Lucy Garrett lying there dead too, but she isn’t dead.
She isn’t there at all.
CHAPTER 27
Bernie Rothstein isn’t happy. Dead bodies keep piling up around me, and that not only makes him suspicious, it offends him. Bernie likes things to be neat and tidy, and he became a cop hoping to bring order to the chaos of the city. Now, he and I are sitting at V’s kitchen table while a forensic team scours the grisly scene. I hand over my snub-nose, and he takes a whiff of the barrel. Satisfied that it hasn’t been fired, he unloads it, pockets the bullets, and hands the gun back to me.
