Manhattan Noir Read online

  Mulroony gave the lot a cursory look. Garbage everywhere. Them sheenies think nothing of throwing their refuse right out the window. He shaded his eyes from the sun. What was that odd little flutter of white in all that refuse? He poked his stick into the pile, raising a most horrid stink.

  “Mother of God!”

  The girl, naked except for a blue hat with a sunflower, lay on her back, arms at her side, her long black hair tangled in the garbage. Her eyes were open, glassy. The hat, which made the forsaken soul look comical, was askew, magnifying the bathos.

  Mulroony reckoned the rags on the bloody ground about and under her were what remained of a blue dress and a white shift. The white was what had caught his eye. Poor lass, exposed for all the world to see.

  She’d been murdered horribly. Stabbed in the belly and then ripped up to the breast bone. The blood was dried black and the maggots were having their feast. Mulroony reached down, plucked the largest patch of blue cloth, and covered the girl’s parts. Before he put his whistle to his lips, he straightened her hat too, so she wouldn’t go to Jesus looking the clown.

  The organ grinder lived in a room on the top floor of a tenement on Prince Street, around the corner from St. Patrick’s.

  Not the big fancy church they built for the rich on Fifth Avenue, but Old St. Patrick’s on the corner of Prince and Mott.

  St. Patrick was an Irish saint, and this was an Irish church. They hated Italians here, making them go to the basement for a separate Mass. Church was for old ladies in black, not for Tony Cerasani. He hadn’t been to confession since he was twelve. He was thirty now. A man can collect a great many sins on his soul in eighteen years.

  His room was small, which was good. He could see everything he owned: the hand organ against the wall, his nice suit hanging under his coat on the back of the door. At this moment, his hat shared the table with his shaving gear.

  Tony opened the straight razor. It was the only thing left to him by his father. The face he saw in the small standing mirror was his father’s. He trimmed around his magnificent mustache without benefit of lather. Tony had no use for King Gillette’s safety razor or fancy soaps. When he was finished, he honed the razor on the stone and strap till it regained its perfect edge.

  Madonna, he had no use for anything in this terrible country. Once he saved enough money he’d go home a wealthy man and do nothing but drink and eat, have plenty of women, and bask in Ciminna’s nurturing sun.

  After filling his cup with Chianti, he plucked a straw from the bottle’s woven covering and picked his teeth. Immediately came a sharp twinge of pain. He opened his mouth wide and held up the mirror. Christo, he’d lost one of his gold teeth. The one in the back on the left. How could this have happened?

  He would retrace his steps to try to find it, or if by calamity someone had already found it, get it back.

  For now, he needed something stronger than wine to ease the pain and warm his bones. Winter, summer, what did it matter here? He was always cold in this country.

  Grappa was comfort to Tony’s belly; it calmed his pain, restrained his anger. He sat in a dark corner of Giuseppe’s saloon for hours chewing his cigar. Drinking, thinking.

  It was very late when he started home. In front of St.

  Patrick’s, he paused. The rectory door opened. A Sister of Mercy spied Tony, crossed herself, and retreated inside. Tony spat at the door and the Irish bitch behind it. How long he stood there, he didn’t know. He finally decided to go into the church.

  In the rear, to the left of the last row of benches, were the two confessionals. No parishioners waited on the benches.

  He ran his fingers over the lattice-work screen of the nearest priest door, his nails making a clicking noise.

  He was startled when someone, clearly a mick, obviously awakened from sleep, said, “Yes? Do you wish to make your confession?”

  “No.” The organ grinder did not even try to keep the sneer from his voice. “Go back to your dreams of plump little boys.”

  On his walk home he saw himself as a boy at confession, a wrathful crucifix poised above him. The organ grinder shook his head and the memory disappeared. He had stopped drinking too soon. Instead of going home he returned to Giuseppe’s.

  The church was a jail. Worse, a rope around his neck.

  Damn the church. There was money to be made. Religion was for the rich. Or the old and the helpless. He was none of these.

  “A few cents so I may sup, kind sir?” The hoary man’s voice was frail as the old codger himself.

  Dutch Tonneman, a detective with the Metropolitan Police, dropped several pennies into the unkempt fellow’s outstretched hat. He walked into the saloon at 20th and Sixth and sat at the last table in the back. Noisy ceiling fans moved the hot air around, but the heat didn’t budge. Flies hovered over the free eats: the hard boileds and the onions on the bar.

  He had met Joe Petrosino once before. Stubby, dark, marked with pox, the Italian cop would be easy to recognize. But he almost never looked so, for his reputation was as a master of many disguises.

  Detective Petrosino had a good reputation. The Black Hand’s chief adversary in New York, in all of America, worked out of the Elizabeth Street station in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, Mulberry Bend. For years he’d been trying to destroy the notorious Italian crime organization.

  “Sir.” The old man, dilapidated hat now plunked on his head, had followed Dutch into the saloon.

  Dutch sighed. “Twice in five minutes is greedy, Grandpa.”

  “I agree.”

  The vitality in the voice made Dutch look again. On closer inspection, Dutch realized that the old man wasn’t so old and that the rags he wore covered a rugged physique.

  Dutch grinned. “All right, Petrosino, I’m impressed. But why the playacting? You don’t need a disguise to talk to me.”

  Petrosino looked around. “You never know. The Black Hand is everywhere. Little Italy. Up in the woods past 100th Street, on the East Side. Why not right on the Ladies Mile with the rich Episcopalians?”

  “What?” the squat man behind the bar called to them.

  “Two beers,” Dutch replied.

  “Grappa,” Petrosino said.

  “One beer, one grappa,” Dutch said.

  “No grappa, this ain’t no wop house. What I got is a jug of dago red.”

  Petrosino nodded, Dutch said, “Okay.”

  “I’m not showing off with this getup,” Petrosino said.

  “I just came from the Hudson River docks on 23rd Street watching them unload a ship. The Black Hand is stealing some of those shipping companies blind, but I haven’t been able to catch them at it. What can I tell you?”

  Dutch drank his beer. “Do you hear about unusual knifings?”

  Petrosino didn’t react. “When I pose a question like that to a suspect, it usually means I’m more interested than I want to let on.”

  “If you’re that transparent,” Tonneman said, “I would suggest you don’t pose your questions like that.”

  “All right. You have your secrets, I have mine.” He rotated the tumbler of wine on the table. “The Black Hand has those who take care of any who cross them. I hear one wields a fine stiletto.”

  “I must say, you Italians talk real pretty at times.”

  The two smiled goodnaturedly at each other.

  “We must have more of these talks in the future,”

  Petrosino said. “Who knows what one might know that could facilitate the other?”

  The Sicilian sun was warm and good. The young girl had smooth olive skin and big tits. With moist fingers she peeled the grapes and fed them to him. He savored the tart flesh.

  Suddenly the grapes were stones. The pain drove him awake.

  Marie was always with him, singing a sweet sad love song, promising her tender kiss.

  Tony seized the bottle of grappa on the floor next to his bed and filled his mouth with the coarse brandy, then clutched his jaw in agony. He swallowed, took ano
ther drink, guiding it away from the left side of his mouth.

  He poured tepid water from pitcher to basin and tried to shave. The only place he could stand the feel of the blade was under his chin. He would let his beard grow.

  The nick on his throat didn’t bother him, though it was most unlike him, for he was a perfectionist. He knew that only a little pressure and the artery would feel the blade. Death would come in minutes. And for his suicide, he would burn in hell.

  He laughed. “What makes you think you won’t burn anyway?” he asked the image of his father in the mirror.

  Dressed, he brushed his suit with the damp cloth and reached for the hand organ near the wall. He hesitated. No. Not today. Today he needed to move fast, unencumbered.

  One final swallow of grappa. He was going among the micks. That meant he’d have to subsist on watery beer or tasteless whiskey. He would have to be wary because he didn’t look like them and he didn’t talk like them. They would consider him the enemy.

  The Harp on Bleecker Street was the fifth mick bar he’d been to. This hole in the wall was near the precinct, where he knew the cops came for the free lunch served with the drinks. He stood at the end of the bar listening.

  Next to him was a mick with breath as foul as the dead goat beard on his ugly face. He was running at the mouth about his friend Mulroony and the windfall he’d found in a vacant lot, a nugget of gold. A gold tooth, no less.

  Everyone clustered round the goat, some actually drooling.

  The goat pushed through the group to relieve himself out back, then returned and lurched along the bar drinking the dregs from glasses. He bumped against Tony, who did not move away. The goat gave him a bleary, pale-blue stare.

  “Tim Noonan’s the name. You can call me Wingy.”

  “Tell me about Mulroony and I’ll buy you a beer.”

  A shrewd glint came into Wingy’s clouded eyes. “I’m fair thirsty. A thirst only whiskey can quench.”

  “Beer.”

  Wingy sighed. “Beer ’tis, then.”

  Tony raised a hand.

  Jimmy Callahan took Tony’s measure. Not many Eytalian’s found their way into The Harp. This one’s skin was a funny red, though he was dressed clean and neat. But why wasn’t he with his own kind? What did he want?

  Tony didn’t like the scrutiny. “Beer for him, whiskey for me.”

  “Now is that fair?” Wingy whined. “I ask you, Jimmy, is that fair?”

  The drinks served and paid for, Jimmy Callahan stood off to the side watching as he rolled himself a Bull Durham.

  Jimmy didn’t trust dagos. He’d never met one worth a fiddler’s fart.

  Wingy slurped beer, Tony sipped whiskey. “If you tell me slow,” Tony said, “I’ll finish my whiskey. If you tell me fast, I’ll leave it for you.”

  “What you want to know?” Wingy spoke quickly, but biting each word.

  “Mulroony.”

  “Mulroony the priest, or Mulroony the cop?”

  “The cop.”

  “Lost his ma recently. Very tragic.” Wingy crossed himself. “Hail Mary, Mother of God—”

  “The longer I wait, the less you get.” Tony took a hearty sip of the whiskey.

  Wingy’s face screwed up as if to blubber. “You don’t want to do that, mister. My friend Aloysius Rafferty, the famous bricklayer and stevedore—he seen Mulroony tearing after a bunch of young punks right before he found that dead whore in the empty lot a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Where can I find Mulroony?”

  Wingy nodded many times. “Him and his wife live with his ma, God rest her soul. She ran a rooming house somewhere on the Bowery.”

  From the variety of signs on walls and in windows along the Bowery, there were far too many rooming houses. He would have to sweat to find Mulroony.

  The saloons beckoned. Which one didn’t matter. He opened a door and stepped inside to shouting and laughter. An Irish place, by their lumpy potato heads and the stink of cabbage and pig feet.

  Irishmen loved to drink and talk and talk and drink and drink. They were braggarts. He preferred to drink alone, left to his own thoughts.

  It was dark and dank, the smell of beer and hard-boiled eggs potent. The men sitting around tables or standing at the bar stopped talking to stare at him.

  He didn’t waste his time by asking for grappa. “You have red wine?”

  “This is McSorley’s. Beer and ale.” The tone was unpleasant. “We don’t serve wine.”

  “Or dagos!” a customer yelled.

  Then, as others repeated the phrase, a firehouse gong went off behind the bar.

  The organ grinder flicked his thumbnail on the edge of his top front teeth, spat on the sawdust floor, and left to loud jeers.

  He didn’t want to deal with another mick saloon. He renewed his quest. Two blocks north his luck changed. On the wall, inviting him, was the sign: MRS. MULROONY—ROOMS.

  He knocked and pushed open the ground-level front door. This put him in a tiny vestibule. To his left, a small parlor, to his right, another small room that held a long table and ten chairs. The table was set for dinner. A narrow, tilting staircase led up.

  “Yes?” A full-figured woman with a rolling pin in her hand came from behind the staircase. Strands of red hair crept from under her kerchief and she had spots of flour on her florid face.

  “I need a room.”

  She looked him over. “All full up.”

  “I hear your husband is a patrolman. Maybe I could speak to him.”

  “Ain’t home.”

  He tipped his hat. “Sorry to bother.”

  Tony walked into the alley to the right of the house. The abrupt scratching shuffle of claws told him he’d disturbed a pack of rats. At the back, keeping a cautious eye peeled, he found an open window. An unoccupied bedroom, by the looks of it. Good, that’s how he’d get in if he had to.

  He left the alley and crossed the street to a cigar shop.

  The bastard Mulroony was probably sitting in a saloon drinking, showing off Tony’s gold tooth instead of going home.

  With one of his twisted cigars between his teeth, Tony stepped out onto the street again and fired it up as he crossed the road.

  The organ grinder was a patient man. He would wait. The Bowery was a busy place at night. Carousers and pickpockets. He settled in, back against the bricks.

  Every workman who staggered past him he gave the eye. Two men, sailors by the bags slung over their shoulders, stopped at the Mulroony house, peered at the sign, and went in. No one came out, so the woman had lied. She had rooms. But not for Italians.

  The tap of a club on bricks was unmistakable. Now the whistling of some awful Irish tune located a policeman on his rounds just a block away.

  Tony eased back into the alley. The rats again. This time he saw the bright eyes staring at him from not ten feet away. Glints of white teeth showed in the dim light. Five or six filthy rats, on their guard and enraged, screamed at him.

  He found a broken cobblestone, but didn’t throw it lest the cop hear. The minutes passed with Tony and the rats staring at each other. When he could no longer hear the tapping or the whistling, Tony let fly.

  An angry screech. When the stunned rat fell, his mates immediately turned and fed on him. It was to be expected. Such was the world. Tony headed back to the Mulroony house.

  A heavyset man had his hand on the door.

  “Mr. Mulroony?”

  “No, I’m O’Neil. What you want with Al?”

  “He helped a friend of mine with a problem. I have some money for him.”

  “Why don’t you come inside? Money is always welcome. I’m sure his missus will give you a taste for the news of it.”

  “No. If she asks for the money, I’ll have to give it to her.

  Then Mulroony may never know my friend was grateful.”

  The man laughed. “Begorra, you’ve got Alice Mulroony down all right. Don’t you worry, I won’t tell her.”

  “Thank you.”

&n
bsp; Shortly after O’Neil went in, a pudgy policeman paused in front of the rooming house to straighten his uniform. Just the type to be a cop in this city. Tony could smell the dust and beer on him.

  “Mr. Mulroony?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “If you’re the right Mulroony, I have money for you.”

  “I’m Mulroony of the Metropolitan Police.” His greedy eyes glinted like the rats. “What money?” he demanded.

  Tony walked into the alley surreptitiously, drawing Marie from her place on his thigh up through the hole in his pants pocket. Mulroony followed.

  The organ grinder fit his gold tooth back in place. He spat at the dead Irish cop and caressed Marie before putting her to bed.

  A long day, a bad day. Tonneman was late coming home to the house on Grand Street where he lived with his widowed mother, Meg. There was a light on in the kitchen. She always left a light on for him and food on the stove or in the ice box, fussing over whether he was getting enough to eat while he did the good work of the police.

  He came in quietly so as not to wake her, but she was there waiting for him.

  “You have a visitor, John Tonneman.” She was the only one who called him John, his birth name. And her tone told

  him that she didn’t like his visitor.

  “Where is he, Ma?” There was no one in the kitchen. He looked in the parlor. No one there.

  “I wouldn’t put him in the parlor,” she said, shocked.

  “Then where is he?”

  “Out back. And I don’t like the look of him.”

  “What’s wrong with him, Ma?” Tonneman splashed his face with cold water and used the cloth his mother handed to him.

  “He’s a dago,” she said in a loud whisper. “I gave him a bit of bread and ham. He didn’t want beer. You see to him, and be careful. I don’t trust them.”

  Tonneman opened the back door. Sitting on the steps was a man in heavy trousers, a long coat, and a shabby brown hat. An enormous mustache hid his mouth, which was only visible because he was smoking an Italian stinker. The man was a stranger to him until their eyes met.