"Some old transvestite," the super said. "Wearing women's clothes but he forgot to shave. He looks like hell."
"Pay in advance?"
"Two months."
"Good. Maybe we can attract a colony of transvestites."
Upstairs, Lizzard looked around the apartment and was satisfied with it. He decided that such a good start on the day's work entitled him to a drink or two before he went to rent the second apartment. A real drink, not some kind of hurried sip from a flask.
He was in such a hurry to get to a bar that he forgot to keep slouched over. After four Vodkas, he forgot to use his woman's voice.
No one seemed to mind.
Al Baker had been directed by Sam Gregory to use all his mob contacts to find out just who was moving into Bay City, where they were moving and what they were up to.
The only problem with that assignment was that Al Baker had no mob contacts. He had run numbers in Brooklyn for five years back in the mid-Fifties, and then given it up when his brother got arrested. Since then, he had worked in a laundry, as a used car salesman, a liquor-truck driver and a dram and sewer cleaner.
He was carrying five hundred dollars of Sam Gregory's money in his pocket.
"Mafia informants don't come cheap," Baker had said. Gregory had nodded and paid.
When he had been running numbers, Baker had dreamed of working his way up through the ranks until he was the head of America's underworld. Along the way and before taking his first step up, he realized that those who reached the top didn't necessarily have to be smart. But it certainly helped if they were lucky and bullet-proof. Since he had never been lucky and he was afraid of bullets, he had lost his zeal for living the mob life. But he had never lost the fascination that came from thinking about it and talking about it, which was how he had come to Sam Gregory's attention.
Baker parked his car near River Street and wondered what to do next. "Use all your mob contacts," Gregory had said. All Al Baker knew about illegal was how to run numbers, which gave him an idea when he saw a newsstand on the corner.
Baker knew how to make people talk. To make the newsie talk, he first had to convince him that he wasn't an undercover police agent. The simplest way to do that was to badmouth politicians at every level, for cops, even undercover cops, never spoke ill of politicians who might control their destiny. The stories of what they said just might get back and they might wind up walking traffic posts in the meadows in winter.
Five minutes after going to the newsstand, Al Baker had placed a bet on a number a small bet because he was counting on keeping most of the money Gregory had given him. He found out from the newsie that there had been a shake-up in the numbers business, that City Hall was more deeply involved now and was taking a bigger piece for protection. To stay in business, the numbers bank had had to cut the amount paid on a winning hit from 600-to-1 down to 550-to-1 and the people who bet on numbers were growling.
"Can't be much of a business anyway?" Baker said.
"Nickel and dime stuff. Every newsstand. Every candy store. Every saloon. This town so rotten, what else to do but play numbers," the newsie said. "Hope you hit it big and go to Florida 'cause this town's crap."
Baker rolled up his newspaper and began to walk away. It would do no good to spend too much time at the newsstand. Sooner or later the newsie would start asking him questions and if the cop on the numbers run saw him and didn't recognize him, he might start asking questions too. Baker waved back at the newsie.
"You're not going to Florida, are you?"
"Not that lucky," the newsstand owner said.
"Me neither. I'll be back tomorrow for my winnings."
As he walked away, Baker was framing the report to Gregory in his mind. "A massive infiltration of the illegal gambling industry by Rocco Nobile and his power-mad henchmen."
He walked along River Street for a while and jotted down the addresses of loft buildings which had obviously had work done on them recently or which had gotten new tenants.
In his small notebook, next to the addresses, he put a crime. He had no idea, what crimes, if any, were being perpetrated in those loft buildings so he made them up.
When he was done with his walk, his notebook read:
#358. Loansharking.
#516. Counterfeit operation.
#612. Heroin drug factory.
#764. Hq. of national auto theft ring.
He put his notebook back in his pocket. That was one side of the street. The next day, he would come back and do the other side, but first Sam Gregory would have to give him another five hundred dollars to buy off more Mafia informants.
Driving out of town, he stopped at the Bay City Bank to open a savings account. He was going to start it with $498, but he changed his mind at the last minute and only deposited $493. The other five dollars was for admission, just in case he passed a theater where The Godfather was playing.
Mark Tolan had also spent the day in Bay City but he was not interested in renting apartments or in who was running the numbers operation. His job was to try to clock schedules so that when The Eraser and the Rubout Squad were ready to launch their war against the Mafia, they would know what targets were vulnerable and when.
Gregory had tried to talk Tolan out of taking weapons on the mission.
"If you get picked up, it's the end of you," he had warned.
"I feel naked without a weapon," Tolan had said. "And who knows? One of those bastards may lip off to me. I want to be able to pay him back."
"We don't want random violence," Gregory said. "This is a military operation. I'm your leader. Remember the chain of command." He held up the piece of cardboard with the boxes drawn on it.
Tolan's dark eyes had blazed. "Screw the chain of command. When you're out there, alone on the streets with the beasts, you have to take care of yourself. I'm not going unarmed."
"Well, only take one gun then."
"No. I'm taking what I need. Three. The .32 caliber automatic for my jacket, the Gregory Sur-Shot for my hip and a Derringer taped to my left leg. You want me to be defenseless?"
Gregory sighed. Mark Tolan might yet prove to be difficult.
Tolan spent much of his day walking around the streets of Bay City, bumping against people as he walked, hoping against hope that one would turn and badmouth him. He crossed the street three times to try to bump into men wearing pinstripe suits, but nobody seemed to want to shoot it out in the street.
He knew that Lizzard was supposed to rent apartments to be used as sniper posts against Rocco Nobile but sniping was no fun. Tolan liked his killings up close and personal, as they had been in Nam when he had wasted everybody left behind in that VC village. He liked to see the horror on the faces. He liked to see the pain when the bullet hit home. He liked to see the movements that turned slowly to still death.
When Rocco Nobile's time came, it wouldn't be from sniping. It would be from a bullet between the eyes, fired from no more than a few steps away. By Mark Tolan.
He felt good walking along, feeling the gun on his hip and in his pocket bumping against his body. He went into the lobby of the Bay City Arms and asked about renting an apartment. He was told that all the apartments had been rented.
He was not much good at small talk so he asked the doorman, "Mayor live here?"
"Yes."
"When's he go to work?"
"Who wants to know?"
Tolan really had to draw a tight rein on himself so he didn't shoot the doorman. When he came back from Rocco Nobile, he'd pay that debt too.