Operation Underworld Read online

  The heated air of the glass-encased room was a welcome relief from the bitter February chill flowing through the lower level of the open market. Stepping up to the chest-high counter, the middle-aged driver removed his gloves and reached into his coat pocket to remove the invoice for his delivery.

  “Hello, Emily!” He addressed the receptionist, who although the same age as the driver, had weathered her years behind a typewriter far better than he had his years behind a mother-of-pearl steering wheel. His syrupy voice held no sway with her, and she showed her affection for him openly.

  “What the hell you want, fat ass?”

  He was undeterred. “How was your Christmas, Emily?”

  “Let me tell ya, Burt. I remember three things about my Christmas. One, it was in Hot Springs. Two, it was too short. And tree, I didn’t have ta conversate with no delivery boys!” Her last comment was in synchronised harmony with the strokes of her pen as she endorsed the document in front of her, pulled the pink copy and curtly shoved it back across to Burt.

  Giggling circulated the office as Burt bid Emily a fond goodbye and wished her a happy Valentine’s Day. The receptionist didn’t answer, but instead made her way over to a door with a wooden letterbox fixed to the inside of it. Through a slot in the cross-piece of the door, she inserted the rubber-stamped, endorsed invoice. Above the slot, lettered on the frosted glass panel of the door, was the inscription, J. Lanza, President Amalgamated Sea Food Workers Unions.

  On the other side of the door five men sat at a dark mahogany conference table, and it was a large, jowly man who was conducting the meeting.

  “So what’s the story in Queens?”

  “Well, Mr Lanza, as far as we can tell, some guy named Dimitri has a coupla trucks and is deliverin’ around Astoria for twenty per cent under the rate.”

  “How many trucks he got?”

  Shuffling through some papers, a third man reported. “Five, Boss.”

  “Okay, you tree.” Pointing to the three largest of the four men,

  “Get over to Queens.” He spoke as he made his way around the table to his desk. “Find this prick! Work him over, good! But don’t cripple the fuck! We still need him ta pay.”

  Two of the men standing in front of the desk smirked at one another. Lanza continued. “Wreck one, maybe two’a his trucks. Let him know who done this.”

  “Who should we say is callin’, Mr Lanza?”

  “Tell him you’re from the Fulton Watchman’s Protective Association.”

  Reaching into a bottom drawer of the desk, Lanza produced three strange-looking items. Homemade devices made from empty wine bottles filled with a yellowish substance and corked with a primitive fuse system, they were too large to fit into a conventional pocket, but small enough to conceal inside a coat.

  “Take these stink bombs. Find three of the markets he’s been deliverin’ to and pop one in each of them. This way they’ll get the picture, too. That’ll be the day some God-damned Ruski son-of-a-bitch moves into New York!”

  As the three men filed out the door, the phone rang, but before answering it, Lanza spoke to the remaining man in the room.

  “Anything else?”

  “No, Boss. That’s about it.” This man was smaller and better dressed than the other three. In addition, he carried a double-strapped satchel.

  “Alright then. Make the rounds, check the numbers and get back to me this afternoon.” As the man opened the door to leave, there was one additional instruction.

  “And stay the hell away from Easy Emily!” Both men smiled.

  Lanza picked up the phone. “Hello…? Yeah, speakin’.”

  “Joseph K. Guerin’s office, please hold for Mr Guerin.” Alook of surprise registered on Lanza’s face when he heard his lawyer’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Lanza?”

  “Yeah! What’s up, Guerin? I thought we didn’t need to meet ’til Monday.”

  “Something‘s come up. The DA wants to talk.”

  “Talk about what? If that prick wants to talk, tell

  “Talk about what? If that prick wants to talk, tell him ta come here.”

  “He wants a meet.” The lawyer tried to maintain his patience.

  “What the hell for? What does he want, to cut a deal?” Lanza became slightly more enthusiastic about talking to the DA.

  “No! No deal!” The difficulty in maintaining his patience was that Guerin knew, although he had not told his client this, that Lanza had two chances of beating his current indictment. Slim, and none, and Slim had just left town. Lawyers don’t like to lose cases, regardless of the guilt or innocence of their clients. Of course, the Mob paid as well as any corporate entity, better than most, so he would stick with the case as long as possible.

  “No deal? Then fuck him!” most, so he would stick with the

  “Joey! I think you should meet

  There was a momentary pause on the mobster’s end of the line. Finally he spoke.

  “This better not be a set-up. And it better be important, Goddamn it.”

  “It is important, and it isn’t a set-up.”

  “Awright then. What’s the plan?”

  “You tell me what time you want to go up to the courthouse, and I’ll meet you.”

  “Whatta you kiddin’ me or what? I go waltzin’ up to the courthouse in the middle of the day and every punk from the Bronx ta Hoboken is gonna think I’m cuttin’ a deal, and that fuckin’DA’ll, do everything he can ta get the word out that I am.”

  “Lanza! It’s not a trick, trust me!”

  “Trust you? What? You stopped bein’ a lawyer yesterday?”

  “Very funny, prick! When and where?”

  Guerin had no stake in whether or not Lanza met with the DA. He was not being paid by anyone for this, and it was not going to affect the outcome of Socks’ trial.

  “Tell him you’ll call him. Tonight, at eight.” Lanza had already worked out all the details in his mind in the last few seconds of conversation.

  “When will you call me?”

  “Tonight, at seven fifty-nine. I gotta go!”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “The sea food workers and some retailers are havin’ a dispute. I called a meeting to straighten it out.”

  “Straighten it out? You own the unions and the retailers!”

  “Yeah, they’re like little kids, always fightin’. Time for Daddy to have a talk. After all, the only thing that matters is the bottom line, right?” Joey checkmated the lawyer.

  “Call me!”

  “Guerin, one more thing!”

  “What?”

  “Ask the DA if he knows who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb,” Socks asked laughingly.

  “What?”

  Lanza hung up, pleased with his forthcoming plan.

  Chapter Six

  Louie shook his head as he knocked firmly on the door of suite number 32. The glass panel read, We Peep While Others Sleep. That Sammon was an asshole. Louie elicited no response from inside so he tried again.

  “Come on, Doc, open up, it’s not a process server.”

  Pasquale Louige Mancino not only disliked the sacred sense of tradition his family tried to shackle him with, he despised it. He hated the tortuously long Sunday linguine suppers. He hated the language that Americans did not speak, and he hated that all the gangsters in the movies were Italian. But most of all he hated his name. Why couldn’t he be Wayne or Lamont or Kent? Or some other dashing name. Why was he burdened with the name of some dead uncle he never met?

  Growing up, he didn’t understand why the other kids called him wop, meatball or spaghetti bender, but he knew it wasn’t complimentary. So after three or four black eyes and a twice broken nose, the kids at St. Matthew’s got the idea that he wanted to be called Louie.

  He hated the gangsters. He hated the punks who acted like gangsters. He hated that everyone thought he was connected because he had an Italian name. He was careful never to actually say he was connected. Of course, he was ju
st as careful to never deny it, either. All he wanted was to be a PI and to be called Louie. Louie the PI. Another month of night classes and he could take his state exam.

  Louie Mancino, Private Investigator.

  That’s why he liked Doc. Doc treated him as an equal and made a deal with him. As soon as he finished his courses at City College in March, he could work out of the office, on his own cases, and out of all the rotten things people said about Doc, not one of them could ever say he broke his word. Not unless they wanted to look stupid.

  “Come on, Doc, open up. I got some good news. I know you’re in there, I can smell you through… the… SHIT!”

  The words were not yet out of Mancino’s mouth when he saw them. Three bullet holes in the hall wall to the left of the door. Not a tight little shot pattern, either, but spread out as if there had been a struggle. A cold chill ran up his spine, and he banged harder on the door with no luck. Then he remembered.

  Louie raced down the hall as fast as his green and orange bowling shoes would let him and slid to a halt in front of the fire hose cabinet. He ripped the door open and the glass shattered with the impact of hitting the wall. He was horrified to see the outline in dust of where the spare key used to be.

  “Must be how the bastards got in,” he surmised.

  Sliding back to the office door, Louie The PI fought down a feeling of panic as he tried to think clearly. The glass! Removing his coat to reveal his white and blue bowling shirt, he wrapped it around his fist. Closing his eyes, Louie punched through the glass panel on the office door. As the shards of glass fell to the floor, he opened his eyes one at a time to see if there was any bleeding. However, his sense of satisfaction at not seeing blood seeped away as the unlocked door slowly swung open. Halfway, it hit a piece of overturned furniture.

  He was aghast at the condition of the office. The floor was completely covered in broken furniture and debris. Doc’s left foot peering out from under the desk reignited Louie’s sense of urgency and he fought his way to the corner of the room to where Doc was lying, face down. Reaching Doc’s body, he slowly rolled the limp form over.

  “Tell me you’re breathin’, buddy! Tell me you’re breathin’!

  “Come on, Doc wake up… wake up! You can’t check out yet… I ain’t solved my first case!” Louie searched the body for wounds.

  Doc moaned, and his eyes opened gingerly as he watched the ceiling slowly come into focus. “Where the hell…? Shit! My head! Louie? What the hell you doing here?”

  Doc breathed onto his friend. Louie gagged and recoiled with a wince.

  “Jesus Christ, Doc! You smell like the Jersey Meadowlands in July!”

  Doc sat up, holding his head with one hand and looked around the room.

  “You okay?”

  “You mean except for this god-damned excavation crew drilling through my brain?”

  “Doc, I’m serious! You okay?”

  Doc shrugged off Louie’s help. “Of course I’m okay! Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “I mean like, you got any extra holes?”

  Doc smirked. “Nah! I’m okay.” Righting his chair, he eased himself into it, gingerly holding his head with both hands.

  “Louie! Why the hell’d ja break the glass? I left the door open for ya!”

  “Uhh… It was stuck. Doc, what the hell happened here last night?”

  “Ahhh. I just had to talk things out with Mary. Sorta get it off my chest, ya know.” Louie noticed the bullet holes were roughly in line with Mary’s photograph and began to lose his patience.

  “Jesus Christ, Doc! Didn’t that letter from the landlord sink in? You had a baptism last night, didn’t you?”

  “Those courses are paying off already,” Doc said, as he rose from the desk and made his way through the carnage to the sink. “How the hell can you be so thirsty the morning after the night you drank so much?” Doc asked to no one in particular.

  “You got hammered last night and shot holes in the damn wall!” Louie pressed his point.

  “I told you. I had to get it out of my system.” Doc maintained his patience. After the preceding week, it was reassuring to be back amongst friends. Even if they were beginning to sound like his ex-wife.

  Now Louie had to get it out of his system.

  “Ya know, Doc, you’re not the first guy to get shit on by some broad over money. And I ain’t Nostradamus, but I think you probably ain’t gonna be the last!”

  Doc, now at the sink, listened to his friend as he drank three glasses of water and ate a handful of aspirin.

  Louie continued as he paced around the office. “Life is how you want to see it, Doc. It’s either a burden or an opportunity. It’s what you make of it. Time to pick up the pieces and move on. No sense cryin’ over spilt milk. Water under the bridge, ya know? To quote Shakespeare, ‘There’s other fish in the sea’.”

  “Louie!”

  “What?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Don’t be condensatin’, Doc! This ain’t funny. It‘s a good thing those offices across the hall are empty!”

  “Thanks for caring, man.” Doc continued to try and lighten the tone as he dried his face.

  “I’m serious! There’s enough local cops got it in fer you as it is, fer Christ’s sake. The only reason they keep givin’ you breaks is ’cause’a your old man.” Louie nodded to the picture of the policeman on the shelf.

  “Seriously, Louie, I appreciate your friendship, I really do. Just lighten up on the bitchin’, will ya?” Louie appeared to calm down, and Doc continued to wash up.

  “Doc, it ain’t like I got an anterior motive or somethin’. I’m just worried about gettin’ you through this shit!” Louie’s client reports were always fun to read.

  “Next thing you know, you’ll be doin’ something really stupid like hoppin’ a plane to Miami and tryin’ ta get her ta come back to New York.” Mancino sat down at the desk and put his feet up. Doc put his towel down and, without looking at Louie, went into the back to change his clothes. Louie immediately understood.

  “Tell me you didn’t do something really stupid, Doc!” There was no response from behind the partition. Looking down at the floor, Louie saw the pieces of torn ticket.

  “You did! Didn’t you? You hopped a plane, you went to Florida and…” Louie was cut off in mid sentence as Doc burst through the partition door in a half-buttoned shirt.

  “I told you, god-damn it! I had to get it outta my system! And I did! So let’s drop it, Louie! You made your god-damned point!”

  “But Doc! Shootin’ holes in the freakin’ wall…” he pleaded.

  “I said DROP IT! I’M OVER IT! She’s history. Yesterday’s news, a footnote in the archives. End of subject! Savvy?”

  Louie was taken off guard by the intensity of Doc’s anger, and wasn’t sure how to react. So he sat in silence behind the desk.

  Doc continued to dress in front of the mirror. Louie continued to sit, and the awkwardness of the silence intensified. Doc finished tying his cravat and slumped over the sink holding his head in his hand in a vain attempt to reduce it to normal size. Louie spoke first.

  “Hey Doc?”

  “What?” He turned to face Louie without lifting his head. Louie held up the empty whiskey bottle.

  “Ya wanna go get a drink?”

  “You’re a sick son-of-a-bitch, Mancino! Ya know that?”

  The tension gone out of the room, they both laughed.

  “So is this why you came up here at the ungodly hour of noon? You felt sorry for me because I didn’t have a wife anymore, so you decided to take over as the pain in the ass in my life?”

  Louie didn’t speak, but rose from the desk and, as he made his way to the door, produced a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to Doc. He continued across the room to the letterbox on the inside of the front door.

  Doc unfolded the paper and read aloud.

  “Ira and Norma Birnbaum, apartment 2B, 127 East 64th. What the hell is this?
”

  “What the hell’s it look like? It’s a client,” Louie said, with a smug look on his face, knowing nothing had come into the office for over two weeks. Doc welcomed the work with guarded optimism.

  “Who are they? What’s the skinny?”

  “She’s Doris’s hairdresser, she’s a nice girl, you’ll get a kick out of her.”

  “If she’s so nice, why does she need us?”

  “She thinks maybe her husband is screwin’ around on her, and she wants to know for sure.” Although he had no choice, Louie was tentative about giving this information to Doc. He knew how Doc felt about that alimony, divorce shit.

  Louie was facing the door, so Doc didn’t see him mouth the words as he spoke.

  “Oh Jesus, Louie! You know I hate this alimony, divorce shit!” Again Louie didn‘t answer. He reached into the same pocket and produced five $50 bills and laid them neatly on the desk. Doc stared wide-eyed at the money.

  “On the other hand, work is work. Where’d this come from?”

  “I had her make the cheque out in my name. I didn’t know where the hell you were or when you’d be back. So I took a down payment and signed the case. I told her you’d call early next week.”

  Doc picked up the money. “Ya did good, Louie.”

  “Ten per cent of that’s mine!”

  Doc handed him a fifty. “Here. Go buy Doris a chocolate layer cake.”

  Louie’s eyes lit up.

  “Shit, Doc! Thanks! You okay with this?”

  “Shut up before I change my mind.”

  “No problem!”

  “This ain’t no gimme. You’re gonna work this case with me.”

  “You serious?” Louie was thrilled. “But I ain’t got my licence!”

  “You won’t need one. We follow the guy, find out who the girl is, take a few snaps, and show up for court. Clean and simple. What could happen?”

  Doc was pleased to see Louie so excited. He would make a good PI. There was an unspoken agreement that Louie would one day take over the agency.

  “Louie… ah, sorry about flyin’ off the handle. I just want some peace and quiet, and ta get back to work.”