The Gangster (Isaac Bell 9)

“Did anyone see you?”

“No, Father.”

“Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent. It was just me and him in the bed.”

“Well done!”

A rolled-up silver certificate passed through the lattice. Francesca Kennedy unrolled it and examined it closely.

“It is not counterfeit,” the priest assured her.

“You want we should hit the Van Dorn captain?” whispered Charlie Salata.

Salata’s gang ran Black Hand letters, kidnapping, and protection, and he hadn’t gone to confession since he was a boy in Palermo, but kneeling in church still made him whisper. “Gold Head . . . Right? Show the Van Dorns who owns Elizabeth Street.”

Silence. He ventured a glance at the lattice. It was dark inside the priest’s booth. All he could see through the perforations in the crisscross wooden screen were Stiletto Man eyes, empty as night, clouds mobbing the stars. Still silent, but for a staccato click-click-click-click-click. Was he spooked or did he really hear the man behind the screen opening and shutting a knife again and again and again?

Salata tried again. “You prefer we hit the old dicks on the coal wagon? Spook their horse so he gallops into people and Van Dorns get blamed.” Again, Salata waited for a reaction. Precisely how his men should attack the Van Dorns guarding Banco LaCava would not ordinarily be worth troubling the Boss, but Salata recognized a delicate situation. The trick was to distract the Van Dorns so they could bomb Banco LaCava and get away with the money and at the same time scare the White Hand Society out of existence.

“Maybe we hit the red-haired one, show they can’t trick us.”

“Hit the kid.”

“The mick?”

“Not the mick. The Italian.”

“But he’s—”

“He’s what?”

“Nothing.” Salata backpedaled instantly. The stiletto was not a pistol. You didn’t wave it around, making threats. You only pulled it to kill. And to be sure to kill, you had to pull it without warning. The narrow blade could fit through the grid and right in his eye.

“Hit Richie Cirillo.”

That the Boss had discovered, somehow, the Van Dorn apprentice’s name was a stark reminder that Charlie Salata’s weren’t his only eyes and ears on the street. “The kid is Italian. He will be an example for the neighborhood. Teach them never go to police. Never go to Van Dorns.”

“How hard?”

“So hard, people don’t forget.”

Salata jumped from the kneeler and hurried out of the church.

Ten minutes later, right on schedule, his place was taken by Ernesto Leone, a counterfeiter.

“The plates are O.K.,” Leone reported. “The ink is better than before, but still so-so. The paper is the big problem. Like always.”

“Have you tried to pass any?”

“It’s not ready. Not good enough.”

“Tell Salata to send someone to Pennsylvania. Buy stuff in general stores.”

“I don’t think it will pass.”

“And Ferri. Tell Ferri send someone upstate.”