Lying close to the windowsill, he could see the figures and hear them now, every word, as they talked about everything but the heist. Mainly about a batch of hooch loaded up in one of the Fords for a delivery to a tong in Chinatown named Mickey Wu.
One of the boys had a girl in a short skirt on his knee and bounced her up and down like a child. She clapped and laughed as the boy wiggled a poker chip over his knuckles.
Sam coughed again and bit into the handkerchief to silence himself. His hands shook as he righted himself on the railing, sitting there for ages, maybe an hour, before the conversation turned to another meeting, somewhere in Oakland, and a trade with Gloomy Gus’s wife.
Sam leaned in and listened, thinking about who the hell would’ve married a fella like Gloomy Gus, and then there was a small crack. The slightest splitting of wood that sounded like warming ice.
Sam held his breath, unsure what had happened, and reached for the railing.
Then he heard a larger crack, and within seconds the entire porch fell away from the roadhouse. Sam tried to hold on to the drainpipe, keeping the entire rickety affair up in the air for a few moments, enough that he steadied himself and got some air back in his lungs, but then the porch leaned far away and crumbled like a tired fighter into a solid, violent mess.
The Schaefer gang was on him before he could get to his feet. They extended their revolvers down as he lay on his back. The air had gone out of him like a burst balloon.
Four of them, including Gus, stared down at him. He tried to catch a breath.
“Hello, Gus.”
“Shut up,” Gus said.
“Sure thing.”
“You the cops?”
“I have some business.”
“What business?”
“Diamonds,” Sam said, two men pulling him to his feet as he dusted off the pin-striped suit. He tried to look annoyed at the dirt on his elbows while two of the boys poked guns into his ribs, another frisking him and finding the little.32.
Someone had hit the headlights on a Model T and Sam turned his head and squinted. Schaefer nodded thoughtfully, checking out Sam, with the shock of white hair and the young face and the wiry, rail-thin frame.
“In times like these,” Sam said, coughing, “a man can’t be too careful.”
Schaefer’s droopy eyes lightened. He smiled.
Sam smiled back. A crowd started to form on the roadhouse’s porch. The tinny sounds of the piano player started again.
“Somebody shoot this bastard,” Schaefer said.
“Now, Gus.”
“Don’t make a mess,” Schaefer said. “Put down a blanket or something first. We’ll dump him in the bay.”
They brought Sam upstairs, tied him to a ladder-back chair, stuck a handkerchief in his mouth, and locked him in a broom closet. He heard the men walk away and waited until he heard laughter and poker chips again to try to work his hands from the knots.
HER NAME WAS Bambina Del Monte.
Her name was Maude Delmont.
Her name was Bambina Maude Delmont Montgomery. Hopper-Woods, if you count the last two.
Her last husband, Cassius Clay Woods, was a real screw. He hadn’t known she was still married to the Hopper fella and was still sending her sap letters about eternal love and even little poems he’d written, really horrible ones about her eyes being like the sky and her skin the color of milk. Her eyes were black, her hair was black, and she had her father’s dark Italian skin. Who was this guy trying to fool? But that’s what happened to a man who’d slipped a vise on your finger and still didn’t get into your drawers.
It was after hours at Tait’s Café, a speakeasy on O’Farrell, and as usual Al was late. Paddle fans worked away the smoke that rose from marble-topped tables where couples sat in little wiry chairs. There was a big stage, but the stage was bare except for a placard announcing A SPRIGHTLY AND DIVERTING ENTERTAINMENT INTERSPERSED WITH GUEST DANCING.
She ate ice cream and drank bourbon, mixing the two a bit, and hadn’t a clue on how she was going to be paying if Al didn’t show up with some cash. He was the one who drove her from Los Angeles along with the girl, the whole way bragging how they’d soon be dining in Paris on a king’s budget.
But Al Semnacher didn’t look much like a king when he walked through the alley door of the speakeasy. He looked more like a goddamn rube, with his graying hair, low hairline, and horn-rimmed glasses. A guy who’d stutter if his hand touched your tit.
“Anyone ever tell you that you look like a rube?” she asked. “Why don’t you clean your glasses now and again?”
“He’s here.”
“Who?”
“The mark.”
Maude rolled her eyes. “Just pay the tab and let’s fly. ‘The mark’? You never worked a con in your life.”
“What’s that?”
“Bourbon and ice cream.”
He wrinkled his nose, making him look like a spoiled-rotten kid smelling something he didn’t like.
“It’s good. Want some?”
“It’s gone.”
“So it is,” said Maude. “Say, your girl doesn’t exactly look like her pictures.”
“The nightie shots or the one from Punch of the Irish?”
“Both,” Maude said. “She’s gotten fat.”
Al Semnacher leaned back into the chair and drummed his little fingers. He readjusted his thick, dirty glasses and leaned in, speaking in his little voice: “She needs money and we need her.”
“And she’ll stick with the script?”
“A variation on the Engineer’s Daughter. But it’s a long con.”
“I’m glad you listen,” Maude said, thumping her fist on the table. “But, Al?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me do the thinkin’ in this relationship.”
Al fiddled with the long spoon, dabbing out just a teaspoon of the melted ice cream. He winked before he slipped the spoon into his mouth and said, “I like your hair.”
“Do you, now? You don’t think I look like a boy?”
“With those knockers that’d be kind of tough.”
Maude reached down and hefted those big boobs on her skinny frame and asked, “She’ll get us in?”
“She’s been knowin’ ole Fatty for years now. His pecker will get hard just hearin’ her name. Trust me.”
Maude met Al’s eyes and she smiled, keeping the contact.
“You have balls, Al. No brains. But a big set of ’em.”
2
Sam had knocked over the chair and was working the ropes on a rusty pipe when the door opened and rough hands gripped him by the arms and jerked him into a room where the gang played poker. Gloomy Gus glanced over at Sam as he counted out some cash, tossing a wad to the center of the table, and said to one of his boys, “Thought I told you to kill the bastard.”
“Thought we’d wait ’cause of the mess.”
“Are you trying to say something?” Gus asked. One of the gang stooped down and pulled the handkerchief from Sam’s mouth.
“I came with an offer.”
“You came to us as a copper or a bank dick. Look at you, the way you’re dressed, you look like a copper from a mile away.”
“Can I explain my offer?”
“Explain, my ass.”
The boys laughed, Gus laughed, chomping down on an unlit cigar. His right incisor made of gold.
Sam was jerked to his feet by two men. His legs felt strange, tingling and light.
“I can give you five grand for it all.”
“Who sent you?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
One of the boys punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over and, as the wind came back to him, spat blood.
“Five grand. Is this a joke?”
“How ’bout I sit in for a hand?” Sam asked. “Then you can get to killing me.”
Gus looked up from the cards that he’d begun to deal. He glanced over at the boys and shrugged, one of ’em just a kid, with jet-black hair parted down hard with drugstore grease.
Gus picked the cards off the table. He shuffled. He relit the old cigar, the tip glowing red-hot.
He stomped his feet in time with the music below them.