The Gangster

She raised her blue eyes to smile up at him and Bell forgave Archie for most of his stupidity. As he had told Marion, Francesca Kennedy was intoxicating — and then some.

“Shall we talk?” Bell prompted.

“I like talking,” said Francesca.

“So I’ve heard.”

She said, “Could we, by any chance, talk over dinner? I’m starving.”

“Good idea,” said Bell. “We’ll have dinner at Captain Mike’s.”

“I don’t know it.”

“It’s on West 30th in the Tenderloin.”

* * *

Captain “Honest Mike” Coligney of the 19th Precinct Station House posted a police matron outside the room he had provided for Isaac Bell to interrogate his prisoner.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Isaac,” said Coligney. “That woman is poison.”

“I don’t know any one more familiar with Antonio Branco than she.”

“Even though they never met face-to-face.”

“He gave orders. She carried them out.”

Bell stepped inside the room and closed the door.

“What would you like for dinner?” was his first question.

“Could I have a steak?”

“Of course.”

“Could we possibly have a glass of wine?”

“I don’t see why not.” He stepped out of the room and handed Mike Coligney twenty bucks. “Best restaurant in the neighborhood — steaks, the fixings, a couple of glasses of wine, and plenty of dessert.”

“You’re wasting your dough,” Coligney said. “What makes you think she’ll turn on him? When she had a choice of braining Branco or Detective Abbott, she chose the detective.”

“The lady likes to talk and the deck is stacked against her.”

“As it damned well should be.”

“She knows that. From what she told me on the way over, she would be the last to claim angelhood.”

Bell went back inside. Francesca had remained where he had left her, seated at a small, rough wooden table that was bolted, like both chairs, to the concrete floor.

“You know, Isaac… It’s O.K. if I call you Isaac, isn’t it? I feel I’ve known you forever the way Archie talked about you… I’ve been thinking. I always knew it had to happen some time.”

“What had to happen?”

“Getting nailed.”

“Happens to the best,” said Bell.

“And the worst,” Francesca fired back. “You know something? Archie was my favorite job the Boss ever gave me.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Bell. “Archie is excellent company.”

“I had to buy wonderful clothes to be with him. Archie’s used to the best girls. I could spend like a drunken sailor and the Boss never complained.”

“Do you remember the first job you did for Branco?”

“I didn’t know it was Branco.”

“Of course not. You got it from the ‘priest,’ so to speak. Do you remember it?”

“Sure. There was this guy who owned a bunch of groceries in Little Italy. The Boss said he had to go. But it had to look natural.”

“How did you learn to make a murder look like natural causes?”

“Not that kind of natural. Natural! The grocery guy had a taste to do certain stuff to girls and he’d pay a lot for it. But everybody knows if a guy goes around houses doing that, one of these days some girl’s going to get mad enough to stab him. So when he got stabbed, he got stabbed, naturally.”

“Why did the Boss want him killed?”

“I never knew until now it was to get the guy’s business. It’s how Branco got to the big time, owning a string of shops. Big step on his way to the aqueduct job, right? Now he’s on top… Or was.”

“Could you tell me about the next job?”

* * *

Isaac Bell coaxed her along, story to story, and Antonio Branco emerged as a criminal as ruthless as Bell had expected. But the gangster was unerring in his ability to couple effective methods to precise goals.

Captain Coligney interrupted briefly when dinner arrived.

Francesca ate daintily and kept talking.

Bell asked, “How did you happen to meet the Boss?”

“I don’t really know. I got in trouble once — big trouble — and out of nowhere some gorillas come to my rescue, paid off the cops. One second I think I’m going up the river, next I’m scot-free. Then I get my first message to go to confession.” She cut another bite of porterhouse, chewed slowly, washed it down with a sip of wine, and reflected, “Sometimes things really work out great, don’t they?”

“Did you help him get the aqueduct job?”

“I sure did! I mean, I didn’t know then. But now… There was this guy, celebrating a big, big deal. Practically takes over a whorehouse for a weekend. Champagne, girls, the whole deck of cards. I went to confession. Next thing you know, the guy is dead. Before he died, he told me he won this huge city contract to provision the aqueduct. Guess who got the contract after he died?”

“Branco.”

“You got it, Isaac.”

“What was the last job you did for him?”

“Archie.”

“Were you supposed to kill him?”

Francesca Kennedy looked across the table at Bell and cocked an eyebrow. “Is Archie dead?”

Bell gave her the laugh she expected and said, “O.K. So what did Branco tell you to do with Archie?”

“Listen.”

“For anything in particular?”

“Anything to do with your Black Hand Squad.”

“What did you hear?”

“Not one damned thing.”

“But you learned about the raid?”