Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [60]
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.