“Make it so.”
COMMODORE TOMMY THOMPSON was listening, calculatingly, to Brian “Eyes” O’Shay’s scheme to send his Hip Sing partners to San Francisco, when a boy ran into his 39th Street saloon with a note from Iceman Weeks.
The Commodore read it. “He’s offering to kill the Van Dorn.” “Happen to say how?”
“Probably still thinking it through,” Tommy laughed, and passed the note to Eyes.
In a strange way, he thought, they had picked up their old partnership. Not that Eyes dropped in regular. This was only his third visit since the five thousand dollars. Nor did Eyes want in on the take, which was a big surprise. Just the opposite. Eyes had lent him money to open a new gambling joint under the El Connector on 53rd, which was raking in dough already. Add that to his deal with the Hip Sing, and he was sitting pretty. Besides, when he and Eyes talked, Tommy found he trusted him. Not with his li
fe, Jaysus knew. Not even with his dough. But he trusted Eyes’ good sense, just like when they were kids.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Should we take him up on it?” O’Shay smoothed the tip of his narrow mustache. He hooked his thumb in his vest pocket. Then he sat still as stone, legs stretched out, heels in the sawdust, and when he finally spoke he stared at his feet as if addressing his fine boots. “Weeks is tired of lying low. He wants to come home from wherever he’s hiding, which is probably Brooklyn. But he’s afraid you’ll kill him.”
“He’s afraid I will kill him on your say-so,” Tommy corrected acidly. “And you will say so.”
“I already have,” Eyes O’Shay answered. “Your so-called Iceman-”
“My so-called Iceman!” Commodore Tommy erupted in tones of wrathful indignation.
“Your so-called Iceman, who you sent to Camden when I paid you five thousand dollars, allowed the only credible witness in that dance hall-a Van Dorn Agency detective, for the love of Mary-to witness him committing murder. When the Van Dorns catch up with him-and we know they will-or the cops nail him for some other transgression, the Van Dorns will ask, ‘Who’d you do murder for?’ And Weeks will answer, ‘Tommy Thompson and his old pal Eyes O’Shay, who we thought was dead but ain’t.’ ”
O’Shay looked up from his boots, expression noncommittal, and added, “Frankly, if I didn’t insist, you’d be screwy not to kill him on your own. You’ve got more to fear than I do. I can disappear, just like I done before. You’re stuck here. Everyone knows where to find the Commodore-on 39th in Commodore Tommy’s Saloon-and pretty soon the word will get around on your new joint on 53rd. Don’t forget, Van Dorns aren’t like cops. You can’t pay Van Dorns to look any other way than at you. Down a gun barrel.”
“So what do you think about Weeks offering to kill the witness?”
Eyes O’Shay pretended to ponder the question.
“I think Weeks is brave. Sensible. Practical. Maybe he has something up his sleeve. If not, then he’s firmly possessed by delusions of grandeur.”
The Gopher Gang boss blinked. “What does that mean?”
“ ‘Delusions of grandeur’? It means Weeks will have to get damned lucky to pull it off. But if he does kill the Van Dorn, your troubles are over.”
“The Iceman is tough,” Tommy said hopefully. “And he’s smart.”
O’Shay shrugged. “With a little luck, who knows?”
“With a little luck, the Van Dorn will kill him, and that it’ll be it for witnesses.”
“Either way, how can you lose? Tell him to give it a whirl.”
Thompson scrawled a cryptic reply on the back of Weeks’s note and shouted for the kid. “Get in here, you little bastard! Take this to wherever that scumbucket is hiding.”
Brian O’Shay marveled at the sheer depths of Tommy’s stupidity. If Weeks did manage to kill the Van Dorn-who was not just any Van Dorn but the famously deadly Chief Investigator Isaac Bell-Iceman Weeks would be the Hero of Hell’s Kitchen, which would make him a prime candidate to take over the Gophers. How surprised Tommy would be by Weeks’s shiv in his ribs.
Tommy’s brand of stupidity reminded O’Shay of the Russian Navy in the Russo-Jap war. Clueless as the Baltic Fleet, when old-fashioned warships and ancient thinking bumped into the modern Japanese Navy. Ahoy, bottom of the Tsushima Strait, here we come!
“Now, could we get back to the business at hand, Tommy-the journey of your Chinamen to San Francisco?”
“They’re not exactly my Chinamen. They’re Hip Sing.”
“Find out how much money they will require to make them your Chinamen.”
“What makes you think they want to go to San Francisco?” Tommy asked. The Gopher Gang boss could not figure out what O’Shay was up to.
“They’re Chinamen,” O’Shay answered. “They’ll do anything for money.”
“You mind me asking how much you can afford?”