“Yeah? So?”
“One of ’em dropped his sack. It was full of cow horns.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Across 36th Street.”
Charlie Salata and his top gorillas found their escape blocked by a long, slow New York Central freight train creeping up Eleventh Avenue at the pace of the city-mandated railroad cop escorting it on a horse. Salata was beside himself. Anything that could go wrong had gone wrong: Harbor Squad cops where they weren’t expected, one of his men gored by a cow, and the boat trapped. At least they had the dope, including the sack that the worthless Ernesto Leone had managed to drop in plain sight of half the waterfront. But they were stuck on foot in Walloper territory, and it was a long way home to Little Italy.
All of a sudden, pounding up 36th Street, came the Wallopers.
15
Isaac Bell stuck close to the Italians he had spotted scrambling off the lighter. Only twenty yards behind when the freight train stopped them, he pressed into a shallow doorway.
There were nine men carrying sacks. Leone had dropped his while jumping ashore, spilling what looked like the horns of cows, before the rest of the gang scooped them up. The counterfeiter was a hapless sight, shooting frightened glances over his shoulder, bumping into the other gangsters, and generally getting in the way. The rest were cool customers, spoiling for a fight.
Bell recognized their leader, Charlie Salata, who had failed to ferret out the disguised detectives on Elizabeth, then sicced a stiletto man on apprentice Richie Cirillo. Running with him was the thug himself, Vito Rizzo, sporting the flattened nose Wish Clarke had smashed on the steps of the Kips Bay Saloon.
Whatever the Italians had stolen or smuggled had caught the attention of the local Irish—West Side Wallopers, Bell surmised by their gaudy costumes, a poisonous outgrowth of the Gopher Gang. A glimpse of their leaders’ scarred faces revealed that Tammany Hall had sprung Ed Hunt and Tommy McBean from prison again.
More Wallopers were joining the pursuit, streaming out of saloons and ten-cent lodging houses. The gang stopped several doorways behind where Bell had taken cover. A sharp, two-finger whistle split the air.
Elaborately coiffed and behatted women ran to them. Shapely as Lillian Russell, hard-eyed as statues, they stood still when the men groped into their bustles and bodices for the revolvers that would get the men arrested when cops patted them down.
The Italians pulled their own guns, all but counterfeiter Leone.
It seemed to Bell that the first shots were fired simultaneously from both sides. Whichever gang shot first, it triggered a fusillade, and the tall detective found himself in the middle of a shooting war. Bullets splintered the wooden jamb, shattered windows, and ricocheted off cobblestones.
Bell drew his pistol in the event a charging Walloper or a counterattacking Salata gangster ran for his doorway. He was reasonably sure he was better armed with his heavy automatic, but there were at least twenty of them, jerking triggers as fast they could, spraying lead like dueling Maxim machine guns. Best to let them get it out of their systems, or at least run out of ammunition. A quick glance down the street confirmed that the Irish were banging away like the Fourth of July, and would be for a while, as their women were tossing change purses filled with fresh bullets.
The tall detective threw another quick glance at the Italians. They were pawing through their sacks for boxes of ammunition and reloading with the speed of men who had been in gunfights before. Bell pressed into his doorway, which was beginning to feel very shallow.
When he heard a lull, he looked again. A glimpse of the Italians offered a sudden opportunity to get his hands on Ernesto Leone. The terrified counterfeiter was attempting to slither away on his belly, hugging the cobblestones and shielding his head with his hands while trying to pull himself along on his elbows. If ever a man was out of place, thought Bell, it was Leone. And if ever a man could shed light on the alliance of extortionists, bombers, kidnappers, smugglers, and counterfeiters, it was Leone.
Bell pivoted out of the doorway. Bullets plucked his sleeve. One burned close to his shoulder. Hugging the buildings, jumping stoops and ash cans, he ran toward Leone, covered the twenty yards in six long bounds, seized the counterfeiter by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him into the closest doorway.
“You’re under arrest.”
“No gun, no gun,” cried Ernesto Leone.
The madman who had rescued him was pointing a pistol in his face and frisking his clothing for weapons. “False money. No gun. No gun.”
For days, Leone had had awful forebodings that someone was following him. He had spotted the shadows. Assuming they were Secret Service agents, he would not make counterfeiting charges even worse by getting pinched with a gun.
“Start talking.”
“What?” Leone could barely hear him over the roar of the battle.
“You owe me your life.”
Leone hung his head. “I know.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“I don’t know.”
Charlie Salata charged into the doorway, gun in hand.