Tommy McBean could not imagine Ed Hunt dead. It was like the river stopped. And now the Wallopers was all on him.
“What killed him?”
“It looked like a heart attack.”
Antonio Branco walked from the waterfront to Little Italy.
They would be bloody years, those ten or so years to take the New York docks. The Irish would not let the theft of their drugs and the killing of Hunt go by without striking back. Chaos loomed and pandemonium would reign.
At Prince Street, he went into Ghiottone’s Café, as he often did. The saloon was going strong despite the hour. Ghiottone himself brought wine. “Welcome, Padrone Branco. Your health . . . May I sit with you a moment?”
Branco nodded at a chair.
Ghiottone sat, covered his mouth with a hairy hand, and muttered, “Interesting word is around.”
“What word?”
“They are shopping for a killer,” said Ghiottone.
“The grocer” can’t fool everyone. Especially a saloon keeper who works for Tammany Hall. Cold proof of the chaos that threatened every dream.
“Why do you tell me this?”
Ghiottone returned a benign smile. “A padrone recruits employees. Pick and shovel men. Stone masons. In your case, you even recruit padrones. Who knows what else?”
“I don’t know why you tell me this.” Did Ghiottone know how close he was walking to death?
“Are you familiar with the English word ‘hypothetical’?” Ghiottone asked.
“What ipotetico are you talking about?”
Ghiottone spread his hands, a signal he meant no harm. “May we discuss ipotetico?”
Branco gave a curt nod. Perhaps the saloon keeper did know he was close to death. Perhaps he wished he hadn’t started what couldn’t be stopped.
“The pay is enormous. Fifty thousand.”
“Fifty thousand?” Branco couldn’t believe his ears. “You could murder a regiment for fifty thousand.”
“Only one man.”
“Who?”
“They don’t tell me. Obviously, an important figure.”
“And well-guarded. Who is paying the fifty thousand?”
“Who knows?”
“Who is paying?” Branco asked again.
“Who cares?” asked Ghiottone. “It came to me from a man I trust.”
“What is his name?”
“You know I can’t tell you. I would never ask who brought the job to him. Just as he would never ask that man where it came from. In silence we are safe.”
What blinders men wore. “Kid Kelly” Ghiottone seemed unable to imagine that he was linked—like a caboose at the end of a speeding train—to a titan who could pay fifty thousand dollars for one death. Branco pictured in his mind jumping from the roof of that caboose to the freight car in front of it, and to the next car, and the next, running over the swaying tops, one to another to another, all the way to the locomotive.