By the second week of the war, the pace began to slow down. Pillars of both mobs were beginning to realize that a state of war demanded wartime security measures. One could not wander about without a second thought as in times of peace. One could not visit a meeting or a nightclub or a gaming house or a girlfriend without posting a guard, or even several guards. In short, one had to be very careful.
Even so, not everyone was careful enough. Muggsy Lopez turned up in the trunk of his car wearing a necktie of piano wire. Look-See Logan was found in his own kidney-shaped swimming pool with his hands and feet tied together and a few quarts of chlorinated water in his lungs. Benny Benedetto looked under the hood of his brand-new car, found a bomb wired to the ignition, removed it gingerly and dismantled it efficiently, and climbed behind the steering wheel clucking his tongue at the perfidy of his fellow man. But he completely missed the bomb wired to the gas pedal. It didn’t miss him; they picked him up with a mop.
The newspapers screamed. The city fathers screamed. The police commissioner screamed. Finney and Mattera worked double-duty and tried to explain to their wives that this was war. Their wives screamed.
It was war for three solid months. It blew hot and cold, and there would be rumors of high-level conferences, of face-to-face meets between Archer Moscow and Barry Beyer, cautious summit meetings held on neutral ground. Then, for a week, the killings would cease, and the word would go out that a truce had been called. Then someone would be gunned down or stabbed or blown to bits, and the war would start all over again.
At the end of the third month there was supposed to be another truce in progress, but by now no one was taking truce talk too seriously. There had not been a known homicide in five days. The count now stood at eighty-three dead, several more wounded, five in jail, and two missing in action. The casualties were almost perfectly balanced between the two mobs. Forty of Beyer’s men were dead, forty-three Moscow men were in their graves, and each gang had one man missing.
That night, as usual, Finney and Mattera prowled the uneasy streets in an unmarked squad car. Only this particular night was different. This night they caught the little man.
Mattera was the one who spotted him. He noticed someone sitting in a car on Pickering Road, with the lights out and the motor running. His first thought was that it was high school kids necking, but there was only one person there, and the person seemed to be doing something, so Mattera slowed to a stop and killed the lights.
The little man straightened up finally. He opened the car door, stepped out, and saw Finney and Mattera standing in front of him with drawn revolvers.
“Oh, my,” said the little man.
Finney moved past him, checked the car. “Cute job,” he said. “He’s got this little gun lashed to the steering column, and there’s a wire hooked around the trigger and connected to the gas pedal. You step on the gas and the gun goes off and gets you right in the chest. I read about a bit like that down in Texas. Very professional.”
Mattera looked at the little man and shook his head. “Professional,” he said. “A little old guy with glasses. Who belongs to the car, friend?”
“Ears Carradine,” said the little man.
“One of Moscow’s boys,” Finney said. “You work for Barry Beyer, friend?”
The little man’s jaw dropped. “Oh, goodness, no,” he said. His voice was high-pitched, reedy. “Oh, certainly not.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Aberdeen Pharmaceutical Supply,” the little man said. “I’m a research chemist.”
“You’re a what?”
The little man took off his gloves and wrung them sadly in his hands. “Oh, this won’t do at all,” he said unhappily. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you everything now, won’t I?”
Finney allowed that this sounded like a good idea. The little man suggested they sit in the squad car. They did, one on either side of him.
“My name is Edward Fitch,” the little man said. “Of course, there’s no reason on earth why you should have heard of me, but you may recall my son. His name was Richard Fitch. I called him Dick, of course, because Rich Fitch would not have done at all. I’m sure you can appreciate that readily enough.”
“Get to the point,” Mattera said.
“Well,” said Mr. Fitch, “is his name familiar?”
It wasn’t.
“He killed himself in August,” Mr. Fitch said. “Hanged himself, you may recall, with the cord from his electric razor. I gave him that razor, actually. A birthday present, oh, several years ago.”
“Now I remember,” Finney said.
“I didn’t know at the time just why he had killed himself,” Mr. Fitch went on. “It seemed an odd thing to do. And then I learned that he had lost an inordinate amount of money gambling—”
“Inordinate,” Finney said, choked with admiration.
“Indeed,” said Mr. Fitch. “As much as five thousand dollars, if I’m not mistaken. He didn’t have the money. He was trying to raise it, but evidently the sum increased day by day. Interest, so to speak.”
“So to speak,” echoed Finney.
“He felt the situation was hopeless, which was inaccurate, but understandable in one so young, so he took his own life.” Mr. Fitch paused significantly. “The man to whom he owed the money,” he said, “and who was charging him appalling interest, and who had won the money in an unfair gambling match, was Thomas M. Carroll.”
Finney’s jaw dropped. Mattera said, “You mean Lucky Tom—”
“Yes,” said Mr. Fitch. For a moment he did not say anything more. Then, sheepishly, he raised his head and managed a tiny smile. “The more I learned about the man, the more I saw there were no legal means of bringing him to justice, and it became quite clear to me that I had to kill him. So I—”
“You killed Lucky Tom Carroll.”
“Yes, I—”
“Six times. In the back of the head.”
“I wanted to make it look like a professional killing,” Mr. Fitch said. “I felt it wouldn’t do to get caught.”
“And then Beyer hit back the next night,” Finney said, “and from there on it was war.”
“Well, not exactly. There are some things a man must do,” Mr. Fitch said. “They don’t seem to fit into the law, I know. But — but they do seem right, you see. After I’d killed Mr. Carroll I realized everyone would assume it had been a revenge killing. A gangland slaying, the papers called it. I thought how very nice it would be if the two gangs really grew mad at one another. I couldn’t kill them all myself, of course, but once things were set properly in motion—”
“You just went on killing,” Mattera said.
“Like a one-man army,” Finney said.
“Not exactly,” said Mr. Fitch. “Of course I killed those three men on Cameron Street, and bombed that Mr. Spune’s car, but then I just permitted nature to take its course. Now and then things would quiet down and I had to take an active hand, yet I didn’t really do all that much of the killing.”
“How much?”
Mr. Fitch sighed.
“How many did you kill, Mr. Fitch?”
“Fifteen. I don’t really like killing, you know.”
“If you liked it, you’d be pretty dangerous, Mr. Fitch. Fifteen?”
“Tonight would have been the sixteenth,” Mr. Fitch said.
For a while no one said anything. Finney lit a cigarette, gave one to Mattera, and offered one to Mr. Fitch. Mr. Fitch explained that he didn’t smoke. Finney started to say something and changed his mind.
Mattera said, “Not to be nasty, Mr. Fitch, but just what were you looking to accomplish?”
“I should think that’s patently obvious,” Mr. Fitch said gently. “I wanted to wipe out these criminal gangs, these mobs.”