Читать книгу Every Man for Himself - Mark J. Hannon - Страница 12

CHAPTER 8

BUFFALO, 1918

When the police got called to Columbus Hospital, they recognized the battered, young hoodlum immediately, but he never recovered consciousness, and died that night. There was another guy there, an older guy, getting his arm set who one of the detectives, Packy Mulhern, recognized.

While the other officers gathered information about the dying man, Packy walked over to the older man and asked, “What happened to your pal Sciandra?”

His eyes danced in pain but none of the hairs in his handlebar mustache moved.

Packy leaned over close and smelled the spilt coffee.

“Jersey Street Cafe, huh?”

The older man’s eyes blinked, but he said nothing.

Packy nodded and went to the other detectives, who were writing notes. “You guys get the rest of the information here. I’ll see you at the station house later,” he said, tugging his derby down tight.

When Packy walked into the cafe, everyone started speaking Italian. The place was clean, but the plaster on the wall was still busted. Frankie came over to him, and Packy pointed to the wall and said, “Who busted up Sciandra and his boy Frankie?”

“Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about, detective. That wall is old. I just gotta find time to fix it. Ask anybody.”

“Uh, huh.” Packy asked the rest of the staff if they’d seen anything, but all he got were shaken heads and a lot of muttered Italian behind him.

As he walked up the steps at the Tenth Precinct, he ran into a patrolman named Dave Barone, who was getting off duty. “Hello, Dave, gotta minute?”

“Sure, Packy, whatcha need?”

“What does ‘zoppo’ mean in Italian?”

“Zoppo? It means cripple, or gimp.”

“How about ‘barcollante’?”

“That means staggering.”

“And ‘ubriconte, ubricone,’ something like that . . . ”

“Oh, you probably mean ‘ubriacone.’ That means a drunk; a sot.”

Packy snapped his fingers, tucked a cigar in Dave’s pocket, and went inside. I find this gimp and a drunk waiter and I’ve got it solved, he thought to himself.

It took Packy another week of asking around to find the Monteduros, as they weren’t on any policeman’s list of suspects for anything, but find them, he did. He had them both locked up. They never said anything, not even the one going through “the horrors,” convulsing and screaming as the alcohol left his system. Without anyone talking, the police let them go: the waiter first, and then, a week later, the gimp.

When he got home, Torreo went into the house and found Rafaele lying on his bed, mouth and eyes open, bottles scattered around the floor. Torreo put his hands on his brother’s shoulders to shake him, but he was cold to the touch. When Torreo pulled the body close to him to warm him, Rafaele’s head dropped back, and Torreo held him there for a long time, crying the last tears of his life.