The Gangster

“The nature of that business deal led to your arraignment.”

“I’m a contractor. It was an ordinary business consideration involving the supply of stone. I am not in the bribe line of business.”

“You will have opportunity to assert that at your trial. Bail is fixed at ten thousand dollars.”

There was a sudden commotion at the back of the small courtroom and the alderman turned hopefully toward it. He had been telephoning friends all afternoon, begging for bail money. Maybe one of them had had a change of heart.

A message was passed to Martin’s attorney, who addressed the magistrate. “Your Honor, I have a bondsman present. He will offer properties at 31 and 32 Mulberry Street as security for Alderman Martin’s ten-thousand-dollar bail.”

* * *

Isaac Bell bounded up the stairs to the bond room in the Criminal Courts Building and told the clerk, “I presume the court will accept my check on the American States Bank as bond for Alderman Martin.”

“We’ll accept an American States Bank check. But Alderman Martin is already free on bond.”

“Where’d he go?”

The clerk shrugged. “Somebody sprung ’im.”

Bell palmed a ten-dollar bill and slipped it to the clerk. “I was informed that Alderman Martin was running out of the kind of friends who would put up ten thousand.”

“You were informed correctly,” said the clerk.

“Any idea who paid the bond?”

“Fellow put up a couple of houses on Mulberry Street.”

“Mulberry? That’s in the Italian colony, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Isn’t Martin’s district in Queens?”

“Until they lock him up in Sing Sing.”

“He’s really on the ropes, isn’t he?”

“Word is he’s in hock to his eyeballs and run out of favors. The man’s got nothing left.”

Bell palmed another ten. “You must see a lot of strange goings on.”

“Oh yes.”

“Who would risk two houses betting that Martin wouldn’t jump bail?”

“Somebody with more money than sense.”

“What do you suppose they’d get out of it?”

“Something the Alderman still has.”

Bell felt someone watching him. He looked around. “Is that fellow leaning on the door jamb a DA’s detective?” he asked the clerk.

“Detective Rosenwald. He nailed Martin.”

Bell walked up to Rosenwald. “Let me save you some trouble. I’m Isaac Bell, Van Dorn Agency. And I was asking that court clerk what I’m about to ask you.”

Rosenwald said, “I’ll save you some trouble by telling you don’t try to grease my palm.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Bell. “But I would like to buy you a drink.”

* * *

“Out of the frying pan,” thought Alderman Martin, with an awful feeling he was headed for the fire. At first, it all went smooth as silk. Court officers, who were grinning like some swell had stuffed enormous tips in their pockets, let him out of the building by a side entrance. Instead of having to duck his head from a pack of howling newspapermen, he was greeted by a silent escort who whisked him inside a town car before the reporters got wise. But now that his rescuers, whoever they were, had him in the closed and curtained auto, they were not treating him with the respect, much less the deference, expected by a member of the New York City Board of Aldermen, who had jobs, contracts, favors, and introductions to dispense.

They would not tell him where they were taking him. In fact, they never spoke a word. Relieved to dodge the reporters, he hadn’t taken notice of the fact that his broad-shouldered protectors were swarthy Italians. Kidnapped, he thought, with a sudden stab of terror. Snatched by the Black Hand. Abducted for ransom by Italians too stupid to realize that he was in so much trouble already that no one would pay to get him back.

He tried to climb out when the car stopped in traffic. They gripped his arms from either side and sat him back down forcefully. He demanded an explanation. They told him to shut up.

He filled his lungs to bellow for help.

They stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth.

When the auto stopped at last and they opened the door, it was parked inside a storehouse. He could smell the river, or a sewer. They marched him down stone stairs into a cellar lit by a single bulb, glaring from the ceiling. He saw a table in a corner with something spread on it under a sheet. In the shadows of another corner, a man was standing still as stone. There was a heavy, straight-backed chair under the bulb. They pushed him into it and shackled him to the arms with handcuffs and yanked the handkerchief from his mouth.

The escorts left. The man in the shadows spoke. Alderman Martin could not see his face. He had an Italian accent.

“Alderman Martin, your heeler confess-a you order him to hire assassin.”

His heart nearly stopped beating. He had been right about the fire. This was no kidnapping for ransom. Suddenly, he was thinking clearly and knew that the entire terrible day, starting with the bribe trap, was unimportant. This was a situation he shouldn’t have gotten involved in — would not have gotten into if Brandon Finn’s people hadn’t known he was desperate — and it had gone terribly wrong. He had no hope but to bluster his way out of it.