“We need your phone.”
The eyes went to the larger black man. “You don’t hear so good?” the bartender asked in his Brooklyn accent.
Several men at a nearby table were younger than the older ones they had first seen inside. The older men in the darkness in the back of the room continued to play cards without much notice to the visitors. The younger men in running suits and others in nice sport coats took another view entirely of the interruption to their day.
Will swallowed when he realized just what sort of club they had stepped into.
“Boy, you just have a sixth sense for getting us into this stuff, don’t you?” he said to Jason out of the side of his mouth just as the front and rear doors opened and their pursuers joined them.
The younger men at the farthest tables tensed but remained seated when the four dark-haired men came in. Some of these young Turks looked to the back and the others at the front of the club. All eyes watched the confrontation without comment, with the exception of the burly little bartender.
“As I told these two, this is a private club.”
The man leading the well-dressed charge into the club turned at the front door and smiled at the bartender. He was also out of breath.
“We have no wish to intrude,” he said as he dismissed the bartender and approached Mendenhall and Ryan, who stood their ground defiantly. “We just came in to help you with your vermin situation. We shall remove them and be on our way.”
All the men, twenty plus of them, with the exception of the nine old men who continued to smoke cigars and play cards, along with another two who sat in the far corner playing checkers, exchanged looks at the funny accent of the bearded man in the black silk suit and shiny shirt. The gold chains around his neck were fully exposed to show off their glory.
“You do that outside,” the bartender said as his right hand vanished beneath the counter.
“Gentlemen, I am Captain William Mendenhall, United States Army; this is Commander Jason Ryan, U.S. Navy. We really need to use that phone,” Mendenhall said as he looked from the men sitting at the tables and then back to the bartender.
“Now, now, does this man look as if he’s in the U.S. Navy? Has the navy’s standards fallen so low as to recruit men such as this?” the Russian said in perfect English as he slowly advanced on the two men in the middle of the room. The men at the tables remained silent as they took in the situation. “We will not bother you further,” the man said, slightly turning his head toward the beefy bartender as he gestured for his three men to take the two outside. “Come, we have much to discuss.” He tried to take Mendenhall’s arm and the captain pulled away.
“Don’t touch me, Russian.”
This caught the attention of the men in the room. Even the older men stopped playing cards and looked up at what was happening. Several of their eyes went to the older men playing checkers. Even they had stopped and were watching the scene unfold.
“Come, come, let’s not make a scene. We have a few questions and then you can return to your commander, whoever he is.”
“Thought you said these men wasn’t in the army or the navy?” the bartender asked.
“Friend, please mind your own affairs, before something bad happens to you,” the Russian said as his three men encircled Ryan and Mendenhall.
“Something bad?” the bartender asked with a wry smile etching his face.
“Do you have a hard time understanding English, my friend, or do you only understand that lost tongue of Mama Mia Italiano?” The man laughed and looked at his men as they joined him.
Before the Russians knew what was happening every younger man had risen and had produced handguns before the Eastern Bloc mob could even blink and drop their silly grins. The bartender charged the sawed-off twelve-gauge pump shotgun and leveled it at the bearded leader. The bartender looked to his right at the table where the old men sat playing cards, and then finally to the two gentlemen who sat and watched from their interrupted checker playing. All sets of eyes were on the Russians, who had suddenly started to deflate. An old man in a green sweater and old fedora placed his checkers down on the board and then slowly nodded at the bartender.
“As you can see, Russian, we speak both languages rather well. And while we have no love for some of our more aggressive federal authorities, never think that relates to boys in uniform, ever.” The bartender pointed the barrel of the shotgun directly at the Russian’s head. Will and Jason had to admire the fact that the bearded man never blinked; instead he looked bemused. “You two better make for the door before these boys and us have a serious disagreement.” The bartender nodded toward the front of the building.
“You don’t know what you’re involving yourselves in,” the leader said as his men wondered if they stood a chance if they resisted the Italian’s orders.
“We know exactly what it is we’re involved in, Russian,” the bartender said as if the word was a bad-tasting cheese. “For years we’ve noticed. You boys go about things in a not very professional manner.” The shotgun became the main focus of the Russian’s attention. “Now you two get to runnin’, these boys are going to sit and have a drink while we explain a few rules we have in this particular area of town.”
Will and Jason exchanged looks and with a nod at the men in running suits and sport coats, they ran through the front door and vanished.
“Now, what will you gentlemen have — vodka?” he asked as the young bucks of the Gambino crime family gathered the handguns of the arrogant new kids on the block, who were finding out that old grudges never really vanished with certain families.
The bearded man looked at the men disarming them and smiled — if only briefly.
“Yes, vodka will do.” He gestured for his men to sit.
The bartender’s eyes flicked to the old men at the table who had resumed playing cards. One of then looked up and raised his gray-colored brows. The man took a dusty bottle from the bar and came around with glasses and approached the angered Russians. He placed the glasses down with the bottle of vodka.
“On the house.”
The bearded man looked up as a small shot glass of clear liquid was placed in front of him. He raised his glass in toast and turned to the old men at the card table and then finally at the two men playing checkers in the far corner. The oldest man was recognizable as Paul Gazza, the head of the Gambino crime family. The man posed no threat to the power of the Russians, at least according to Russian sources.
“To old times,” he said with a sad smile, and then drank and slammed the glass down.
The men looked up and their silence made the Russians feel uncomfortable. The old man in the hat nodded his head as if in agreement as he smiled at his friend across the table and jumped several red checkers over black ones.
“Ah, checkmate!” he said with a laugh.
“You’re playing checkers, old man, not chess. There is no checkmate in checkers,” the Russian said with a bemused smile.
The old man in the moth-eaten fedora looked up and his smile vanished as his eyes narrowed. “There is always a checkmate, no matter what game you play.”
The Russian mobsters never knew what hit them as several silenced weapons thudded in the darkness of the social club on a small side street just off of Flushing Avenue.
The card game, among other more dangerous games in New York, continued within the Brooklyn underworld as if nothing extraordinary had just happened.
11
As Virginia’s nuclear sciences team and Jenks’s newly aquired engineering department examined the doorway like ants crawling on a hill, Anya sat next to the Traveler, Moira Mendelsohn. The old woman looked at the sad countenance of the young raven-haired woman. Her eyes would wander back to the activity below in the newly discovered PIT where a machine she never knew existed sat in its sparkling glory as the Group went over it with all the advanced science at their disposal — equipment Moira had never seen before. Soon the old woman’s eyes were back on Anya, who felt her gaze. She faced the smiling Traveler.