The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 13

The expensive Scotch was the first real whisky my father had had since being overseas in the war, and made him think of those great manor houses of England he had seen from the distance, and of the people who lived in them.

Less than two weeks later, Casey Fortune found himself suddenly promoted to detective because of his clever and decisive work at the blind pig, and transferred to a plum midtown beat full of speakeasies, most of them owned and/or supplied by Owney Madden.

Five minutes after he was off duty the first day on the detective squad, Casey appeared in the plush speakeasy Madden used as his headquarters when he was down from Harlem. He quickly spotted the Englishman at a far corner table with three other men, and recognized one of them: Jimmy Walker, the Tammany leader. Casey held a hundred out to the bartender. "Send your big boss over there a drink of his best Scotch."

The bartender curled a lip in scorn. "Boss don't take drinks from customers."

Casey flashed his new s.h.i.+eld. "He will from me."

The badge did not really impress the bartender, but he was unsure enough of just who this cop might be that he poured the Scotch from a special bottle, and nodded the waitress to Madden's table. She raised an eyebrow, but she went. From the bar Casey saw Madden frown angrily at the drink placed in front of him, and then look toward the bar. Casey raised his s.h.i.+eld case in salute.

Moments later the waitress returned in something of a trance, as if in shock. "Boss says you should join him."

Casey picked up his beer and threaded his way among the tables to Madden and his friends. A waiter materialized with an extra chair, and he sat down. Madden waved around the table. "Boys, you're lookin' at maybe the smartest honest cop in New York: Casey Fortune." He pointed at each of his companions. "Our future Mayor Jimmy Walker you 'ave to know, Arnie Rothstein, and Bobby Astor. We're all crooks but the one you got to watch out for is Bobby. He's legal."

Walker was as slender and innocent looking in person as he was in the news photos that plastered the newspapers every day. He gave Casey a perfunctory nod, and scowled at Madden, obviously not appreciating the joke. Bobby Astor, the black sheep playboy of the very proper Astor clan, lounged in his chair as if he had no spine. Under six feet, Astor wasn't much taller than Madden, and almost as slender as Walker. But he had two of the shrewdest, most calculating eyes Casey Fortune had ever seen.

Arnold Rothstein was the most famous gambler in New York, if not the country. But he was far more than that. In fact, as Meyer Lansky himself said later, Arnold was king of the Jewish underworld. Gambler, bootlegger the fine Scotch Casey and Madden were drinking almost certainly came in on one of Rothstein's boats and narcotics financial overlord. But above all, he was a "banker." With his impeccable family connections, and legitimate real estate businesses, he could arrange loans from banks and then finance gangsters no bank would do business with. Rothstein was the money man. He was also educated, das.h.i.+ng, handsome, and dressed better than Madden. In fact, Charley Lucky himself said it was Arnold who taught him to dress well, use the proper knives and forks, made him presentable in the legitimate business world.

Rothstein's hooded eyes studied Casey carefully, as if he were making entries in a ledger. Only Bobby Astor smiled, and said, "Too bad there aren't more like detective Fortune, Owney. Then you wouldn't have to pay off anyone, would you?"

Casey Fortune had no idea what Astor meant by that, and from the looks on the faces of the others, neither did they. Except, Casey felt, maybe Madden.

The four resumed their discussions of new Broadway shows they might invest in, how soon before the 1926 election should Walker start his campaign for Mayor, and what investments Bobby Astor could steer them to. Casey said little, but he didn't feel bored or shut out. Far from it. These men were all rich, one way or another, all were important, all commanded respect, and all seemed to genuinely like each other to a point. There was an aura of isolation about all of them that would forever preclude any genuine friends.h.i.+p.

It puzzled Casey, and he returned to his walk-up that night still thinking about that strange isolation like an invisible wall around each of them.

Over the next few years Casey had little time to think about that odd isolation. His midtown precinct was full of speakeasies, hotels, expensive apartments, actors' rooming houses, theaters, restaurants where booze was always under the table, gambling houses, floating poker and blackjack and c.r.a.ps games, and more private games in hotel rooms than there were police in the precinct. Gangsters owned half the property and they were always fighting over it.

A substantial part of the city government and the NYPD, from the top down, were on the take, but for the most part, along with the honest higher ups, the rank and file of patrolmen and detectives did their day-to-day jobs of solving and stopping the daily low-level street crime and ordinary murders, and raiding the speakeasies, brothels, gambling houses, and floating games whenever the higher ups had a point to make, or some politician needed to demonstrate how hard he was on crime.

Everyone knew the raids were hopeless, useless, and pointless. As long as Prohibition existed, nothing was going to stop the gangsters killing each other, or the gamblers gambling, or the nationwide binge. The public wanted a party, and there was too much money to be made in giving it to them to stop it.

So Casey Fortune arrested his murderers, solved his burglaries, collared his crooked gamblers, and remained on good terms with Owney Madden and his friends. No one asked him to do anything illegal, offered him a bribe to look the other way, or tried to buy him out lock, stock and barrel. Sure, they poured him free drinks, served him dinner on the house, shared tips on the horses, gave him free pa.s.ses into any theater, and slipped him a few hundred now and then in appreciation for doing his job well and turning unwanted trouble away from their doors. They did that for every cop.

By sheer chance, for Casey they did something more. They gave him his wife, and me, my mother.

Handsome, charismatic, exciting, daring, well-dressed, and with perfect manners, Arnold Rothstein attracted the ladies in droves. He cultivated the image of the playboy gambler, ready to bet on anything and party all night, to cover his real activities and power in the Jewish Mob, and hence in the city.

On this particular night in 1925, my father was enjoying a free dinner in one of Rothstein's restaurants, when Rothstein himself swept in with five women, one on each arm and the others trailing close behind. Or two were close behind the gambler, the fifth seemed to be hanging back and not at all happy, looking around as if not sure what she was doing there. More of a girl than a woman, and yet Casey sensed a strength in her. She was not going to pretend she was having a ball with the dazzling Arnie. Casey sensed something else too she was from out of town, and had not been in the city for long. It was there in a certain wariness, her evening dress not quite in the latest fas.h.i.+on, a shade less daring.

Just as the group reached the ornate curtains that Casey and every other cop in midtown knew hid the corridor that eventually led to the guarded door of the casino section of the restaurant, the woman put her hand on the shoulder of the woman in front of her and began to whisper urgently. She was still whispering as the entire party disappeared behind the curtains. Casey went back to his lobster dinner, but the woman stuck in his mind. It wasn't only that she was beautiful with a great body, it was a certain openness, honesty, he had sensed in her. She wasn't someone who played games.

He couldn't understand why a woman like that would trail around after Rothstein, so maybe he was wrong in his a.s.sessment. Then she suddenly reappeared through heavy curtains looking flushed and angry. As fast as he had pounced on the looking-for-trouble Polack in the blind pig, Casey left his table to intercept her half way across the restaurant toward the door.

He flashed his s.h.i.+eld. "Anything wrong, Miss?"

"If you count unwanted pawing as wrong."

"Depends on how far the pawing went."

"Not that far," She sighed and shrugged. "My own fault, I suppose. When Janet, that's my friend who lives in the city, said I should come with her to meet this famous gambler, it sounded like fun. It wasn't." She gave a small s.h.i.+ver, and then turned on a dazzling smile. "Thanks for coming to rescue me anyway."

Casey took the plunge. "Have you eaten dinner?"

"Not a bite, and I'm famished."

"Then join me. I've just started, and it's on the house for my date too."

She hesitated less than a second. "Well then, I guess I'm on my first date in the city."

Things moved quickly after that. They found they hit it off, had a lot in common, and she was, basically, a Midwestern girl who wanted home and hearth, love and children. Fun, yes, but stability more. She liked a lot about the long party that was Manhattan in 1925, but she also liked a solid detective with a good job and a sure pension later. Being a friend of Owney Madden and his cronies, Casey was in a position to offer both.

They were married less than five months later. Madden insisted on throwing the reception in one of his Harlem Clubs, and with the help of Bobby Astor found them a nice three-bedroom apartment in Chelsea that Casey could almost afford on his salary. Madden squeezed "wedding presents" out of a lot of people, all in cash, to help make up the difference, and Bobby Astor advised them to put the cash into stocks and bonds and watch it grow. That's how you got to be an Astor. A year later I was born: Daniel Tadeusz Fortune. (The Tadeusz was for my step-grandmother who had moved into the third bedroom soon after my grandfather died.) Life was good for Casey, thanks largely to Owney Madden, and Bobby Astor, especially Bobby Astor, who, being in a legitimate business and an Astor, was untainted by crime. The apartment was a steal, my mother turned out to be a lot more eager in bed than in public, his investments were paying and growing handsomely. He took my mother out to dinner, to the theater, dancing, and clubbing. My step-grandmother took care of me, told me stories of the old countries and my grandfather. Time pa.s.sed easily, Casey made first grade, I grew.

Then came 4 November 1928.

Casey was never sure later why he decided to drop into the speakeasy on Fifty-Sixth Street next to the Park Central Hotel that night. He recalled he'd worked late on a nasty homicide, but had called it a night at ten and headed home. He had even called to tell my mother he was on his way. Something had to have caught his interest, or aroused his suspicions, to sidetrack him, and he found himself in that particular speakeasy. Whatever had brought him there must not have worked out because he recalled having only two beers before leaving a few minutes before eleven.

The single gunshot echoed m.u.f.fled from the Park Central Hotel. As Casey ran toward the sound, two shadowed figures came out of the service entrance of the hotel. One collapsed in the entranceway, the other hurried away toward an alley across the street. Casey reached the service entrance. The man on the ground was Arnold Rothstein! A patrolman was already running from the opposite direction. "Take care of Rothstein," Casey shouted to the patrolman. Call an ambulance, and call in!" and plunged into the dark alley.

He reached to draw his revolver.

"I wouldn't do that, kid."

Stray light from a window in the building to Casey's left picked out the face of Owney Madden, and the two-inch barrel of a Colt Detective Special aimed at Casey.

"I heard Rothstein'd been wels.h.i.+ng," Casey said. "Over three hundred grand, but I never heard any of it was your money, Owney."

"You think I'd shoot Arnie over the nicker? He was a friend. You don't shoot a friend over nicker."

"What do you shoot a friend over?"

"Business, kid. Times're changing, prohibition ain't lastin' forever. Lansky tried to talk to Arnie, but he wouldn't listen. He was always a gambler at heart, a s...o...b..at, a loner. He wasn't never goin' to fit in the new organization Meyer, Charley Lucky, me, and some other guys 'ave in mind."

Casey nodded to the Detective Special. "What now? You going to shoot me too? Am I a matter of business, too?"

"Everything's business, kid. So you tell me. Do I have to shoot you?"

There in the darkness of the alley, patrol cars and the ambulance arriving out on Fifty-sixth Street behind him, Casey battled inside himself. For five years Owney Madden had been a friend. Much of what he had he really owed to Madden. Yet Owney had never asked him to do anything illegal, never pressured him, never bribed him, never used him, and somehow he knew that if he said Owney did not have to shoot him the gangster would believe him and trust him. Something Lansky, Luciano, even Rothstein never would. They would have shot him already.

Finally, Casey said, "I won't keep quiet if another guy is convicted of shooting Rothstein."

"Fair enough, kid."

Madden grinned, lowered his pistol, and vanished into the darkness. Casey never heard a door open or close, but he knew Madden was gone, and he knew he would say nothing even if Rothstein died, and, somehow, he felt good.

Madden, a gangster and a killer, took his word, knew he was a man of honor.

The arrival of a large package soon after did not make Casey feel better, but it didn't make him feel worse. He'd made his decision without any promise of money. But the money was nice, and Bobby Astor was happy to invest it all in the best blue chip stocks. Casey and my mother began to think of an even better apartment in a better area. Maybe even the Upper East, or Central Park West. Perhaps private school for me.

A year later the dreams ended, the party was over, if not the booze. Only now the drinking was half hearted at best, and at worst to drown sorrows, to get through the desperate nights and days. Black Monday, the stock market crash, that signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. The flow of money, built on nothing more than the sand of optimism and straw of arrogance, slowed to a trickle.

My father lost everything we had, and on his salary alone we couldn't afford the s.p.a.cious Chelsea apartment. My mother tried to get a job, but she had never worked in her life except on a farm, knew nothing but homemaking, and the unemployment lines got longer and longer. No one in business or government seemed to have any idea what to do.

Madden slipped Casey a few bucks, but even gangsters had lost in the crash, and lost even more as the flow of customers slowly dried up and blind pigs, speakeasies, breweries, and bootleggers started to shut down. To top it off, the Seabury Commission investigating Mayor Jimmy Walker to find out where all his money had come from began to turn up the corruption in the NYPD, and everyone came under scrutiny down to beat patrolmen. Casey couldn't risk taking any more money from Madden.

That was when we moved to the five floor walk-up on East Ninth Street near First Avenue, and my father started to brood. Not instantly, or constantly, but gradually increasing over time as he went about his job in this changed world where a robber could turn out to be no more than a man out of a job trying to put food on the table or pay the rent. It became a more ambiguous world for a cop, where it was sometimes hard to tell who was the victim.

Madden also lost a bundle in the crash, but it didn't bother him too much. "Just shows you a bloke should stick to what he knows. I'm a gangster, I make my money outside the law, and that's what I do. Only we gangsters got to change. We got to get organized. Irish, Jews, and Italians. We got to cooperate instead of fightin'. There's always something illegal people want: gambling, women, the hard drugs. We'll always make plenty of money."

He brooded about Jimmy Walker, who, unable to explain where all his money had come from, was forced to resign as Mayor, but skipped the country with all his loot and did not return until he was safe from prosecution, and later was appointed by Mayor LaGuardia as arbiter to help solve garment district disputes. And through it all, the accusations and investigations of his corruption, he was the well-paid president of a music record company.

But he brooded most about Bobby Astor. Nothing happened to Bobby Astor because of the crash. He had as much ready cash as ever. At first, Casey couldn't understand this. He knew that Bobby had invested heavily in all the same stocks he had advised Casey to buy. Only later did it transpire that Bobby had been tipped that certain major companies were on the brink of going under, and with half the nation overextended buying on low margins, the whole financial structure was on the verge of collapse. He immediately began to sell short, covering his possible losses, and when the collapse came, his profits and losses more-or-less canceled out and he even made a few bucks.

What Casey didn't understand was why Bobby hadn't warned him.

"Wouldn't work, old man. Too many people start selling short the market gets the wind up, and crashes before I'm covered. I had to be very careful and s.p.a.ce my transactions over a fair period of time. Warning you would have been extremely bad business."

I was four when disaster struck both the nation and my family. Too young to understand, but not too young to feel, and I felt my father's bitterness. Somehow it was not the same as what my mother felt. She was afraid and angry, given to despair, partly by our changed circ.u.mstances and partly by my father's brooding. Only my step-grandmother seemed unchanged. She had lived through it all before.

Prohibition ended, the high rollers were gone, Arnold Rothstein was dead, Bobby Astor straightened out and took over one of the family businesses, and Owney Madden closed most of his midtown operations and concentrated on Harlem. The years pa.s.sed, my mother eventually got a job as a sales clerk in a department store, and I grew up.

I was ten or eleven when I finally could put words to what I had sensed as a four-year-old. My mother's reaction had been, and was, fear, anger and hate for Bobby Astor and Jimmy Walker and Owney Madden. My step-grandmother expected the betrayal and inhumanity, it was always the way of the rich and powerful. But my father's brooding came from being a sucker, an honest cop who trusted friends. For not understanding the world and playing the angles the way the rich, the corrupt, and the crooked did. For being no one, nothing.

"I'm not nothing," I told him with my ten- or eleven-year-old hubris. "I'm me."

"Are you now, Danny?" His voice became gentle then. He put his hands on my shoulders and sat me down facing him on the couch. But his eyes were not gentle. He wanted me to understand what he understood. "Let me tell you a story. Do you remember the gambler Arnold Rothstein?"

"I've read about him. He got shot because he lost a lot of money in a card game and wouldn't pay. The police suspected a couple of the other players, but only charged one of them, and he was acquitted. So no one knows who did it."

"I know who shot him, Danny, and it wasn't about gambling." He told me the story of that night on Fifty-sixth Street and in the alley. "I thought Owney took my word I wouldn't turn him in because he trusted me as a friend, and an honest man." He laughed, and now the bitterness was back. "But it wasn't that at all. He knew he didn't have to kill me. He knew the chances of anyone being convicted for the death of Rothstein were nil too many important people were deep into Rothstein's activities, they couldn't risk anyone talking. He knew even if I did report what I saw that night, nothing would come of it. Too many "legitimate" bigwigs were involved with Owney. There were no other witnesses. No one would listen to me. I was a n.o.body, a nothing."

The breaking point came in 1938. Casey had been the lead detective in a Park Avenue homicide investigation into the beating to death of a young man's fiancee. His family was old, wealthy, and important. Hers wasn't. The boy was acquitted. Next day Casey got up, kissed my mother, hugged me, and left for work.

He never came home.

He didn't show up at the precinct either, or turn in his badge and guns.

When he didn't report for three days, the NYPD put out an APB, but with three days' start in 1938, as long as he didn't try to use his badge or his guns, they were not going to find him except by luck. No credit cards then, no computers, no Internet.

I never saw him again, and I hated him for it.

My mother tried to hold us together. She worked longer hours, his precinct took up a collection for us and, although Casey had not put in his twenty years, he had a pension coming, and his Lieutenant, a man named Gazzo, talked the higher-ups into approving its payment to his wife. I got odd jobs to help out. But not too long after, my step-grandmother died, and without her I went wild.

My mother couldn't stand being alone night after night, and all the men she knew were cops. There were a lot of cops, and eventually Lieutenant Gazzo himself who was kind to her. My foray into petty crime ended the day I fell into the hold of a Dutchman s.h.i.+p while looting it with my buddy Joe Harris and lost my left arm.

In the hospital I had plenty of time to think. Of how my father finally saw the world, and of how my grandfather had always seen it. For my father, in the end, there was only power, wealth, and dominance by each individual who could achieve that by any means, legal or illegal. Every man for himself. That was the odd isolation he had sensed that first night at Owney Madden's table with Roth stein, Jimmy Walker, and Bobby Astor. Friends, but business was business.

For my grandfather the world was everyone on earth working together to achieve the fullest human potential. Community. No one growing rich and powerful on the sweat of others. No human being exploiting another human being.

The war came, and I tried to enlist. Naturally, they turned me down. One-armed soldiers are produced by war, not sent to fight one. I joined the merchant marine. After the war I continued to s.h.i.+p out. Long voyages give you plenty of time to read, and there were a great many things I wanted to learn, question I needed to ask. From time to time I stayed ash.o.r.e and went to various colleges and universities. I never got a degree, that wasn't what I was studying and learning for. Eventually I landed back in Chelsea, got a one-room office with a window on an air shaft, and put my name on the door: Dan Fortune, Private Investigator.

Why? Because I still had a lot of questions: Why we do what we do; why do we believe what we believe; why do we make the laws we make. Who was the criminal and who was the victim?

It took me years to finally understand my father. How he felt trapped, his life over, and he had nothing, was no one. He ran, not away from us, but towards being "someone". Whether he achieved it or not, legally or illegally, I don't know. What I do know is when I finally came to terms with his need, I knew I would never be like him. I would follow the dream of my grandfather, old Tadeusz, not that of my father.

And my mother? She died young. Still unable to be alone, still lost. One of the victims.

Kiss the Razor's Edge MIKE STOTTER.

I wanted one story in this book that looked at the vicious underside of the gangster's world, not in America but in Britain, in London's East End. And I knew the man to do it. Mike Stotter was born and bred in the East End, treading the same steps as his fictional characters in "Kiss the Razor's Edge" but with less violence he also boxed for East London and became Junior All London Champion Runner Up, a short-lived affair, a weak nose preventing him going any further. Mike has worked at various jobs ranging from BBC TV through to a.s.set Management. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies including, The Best of the American West (Vols 1 and 2), Desperadoes, Future Crimes and The Fatal Frontier. Mike was the editor of Shots Magazine, which he continues on his website devoted to the genre, < www.shotsmag.co.uk=""> .

Blood.

You'd expect to see blood in a boxing match. It stands to reason, doesn't it?

Whenever Billy Griggs fought there was blood. Usually the opponents. And the fight tonight didn't look as if it was going to break the mould. Billy was sixteen years old and stood just shy of six feet. This was going to be his first fight in the lightweight division, having fought these last six months at light flyweight. His opponent was Whirlwind Was.h.i.+ngton who boxed out of Camberwell. He was five feet seven and had been around a bit. But Billy had him outreached and out-cla.s.sed. Griggs had wanted to be called Billy the Kid, after the Old West killer but his second christened him Billy "Fast Hands". Not that exciting but it went down well with the punters.

Mile End Road, Thursday evening and back to the Crescent for his second fight of the week. A special request from his new promoters. All the old faces were there. Up in the gallery were his vociferous fans from the streets. They were the ones who couldn't afford the s.h.i.+lling or two bob seats, but supported him each time he turned out. Second row down, the bookies and the fight fans stood shoulder to shoulder swapping tales and anecdotes, giving it the big 'un. Talking about boxers like they were prize horses: "He ain't got the legs," or "Got to keep his left up or he'll become a cropper," or "If he gets a second wind after round three, he'd knock the bloke's block off." It was par for the course. And, naturally, in the front row were the toffs. Out for the evening to see a "bit of a sc.r.a.p". All dolled up to the nines, puffing away on huge cigars and some of them in top hat and tails.

The arc lights came on and cut through the tobacco smog. When Billy stepped through the ropes the audience were up on their feet as one, shouting and cheering him on. He was the local boy done good. The name of Billy Griggs was found on the lips of most men when it came to talking about sport down the pub. A boy wonder at sixteen and by all accounts could be a great fighter, as good as Jack Dempsey. An exaggeration or not, a lot of people put their week's wages on him. There were doubters, naturally. He wasn't a top-liner, hadn't gone the whole fifteen rounds but his promoters had confidence in him. His normal wage was four pounds a fight, which made him the top wage-earner at home but to cap this his promoters were happy to give him a fiver for this match. At this rate, Griggs thought to himself, he could go on forever.

Round two: Griggs got his first professional black eye when he dropped his guard and walked into a straight right jab.

"You gotta get yer distance right," his second, Tommy Martin said out of the corner of his mouth. "Get yer shoulder behind that right of yourn. Now get out there and give him somefink to fink about."

Round three and Griggs' legs were getting wobbly.

"Yer fightin' like a bleedin' tart! Wa.s.samatter wiv yer?" Martin was working furiously on a cut above Griggs's right eye. "You don't start smackin' him, you're outta here in the next round."

Griggs nodded, and as usual, said nothing.

Tommy Martin was right. A big haymaker of a right hand landed in Griggs's face that sent him down for the count. And the toffs in the front row got what they came for.

Blood.

You don't expect to see a young girl's good looks marred by a line of blood across her throat.

Abraham Shapiro stood in his back yard dressed only in his long johns and looked at the five or six rats huddled together around the back door. There was another odour mixing with perspiration and ageing cat c.r.a.p that wasn't normally present. Shapiro shrugged his shoulders and shooed the rats away but they were contemptuous to his actions.

"Gai in drerd arein!" Shapiro yelled at the vermin. He knew that once they got into the sweatshop and began to make nests in the bolts of cloth or sc.r.a.ps, he'd have the Devil's own work getting rid of them so h.e.l.l was about the right place for them. Mice he could put up with, rats he didn't want. He grabbed the yard broom and attacked the vermin.

"Seven o'clock and already this worry," he muttered.

This was his morning ritual: Up before the family, go into the yard and open up the sweatshop and put on the lights. Then inspect the three treadle machines, checking the cotton threads and belts, that the bolts of cloth were ready to hand and that the basters' bench was clear. He hated it when the workers came in at eight o'clock and had any excuse to delay in getting the day started. What did they think he was paying them for?

Being short and overweight didn't help him any, sweat came easy and rolled down his face. Once he beat the rats away he leaned back against the door and put his bare foot into something sticky and wet. He looked down at the source and his mouth dropped into a perfect O. He shot the bolts and pulled the door open.