The Gangster (Isaac Bell #9)(29)

“An ace in the hole?” Coligney asked with a dangerous glint in his eye. The bejeweled and cologned Nick was a former “fancy man” who had developed a flair for business that turned a string of streetwalkers into the Ritz of the Tenderloin, and Mike Coligney had heard just about enough.

But Nick stood his ground. “Four aces.”

Coligney formed a fist. “I’m warning you, boy-o, you’re about to run into a straight flush.”

“Captain Coligney, I’m offering you priceless information in return for being allowed to stay open.”

“Priceless?”

“And vital.”

Coligney pointed at the clock on the wall. “Thirty seconds.”

“A secret club meets in my house. Wall Street men. So secret that even you didn’t know about it.”

“What do they do?”

“Drink, talk, carouse.”

“Sounds like all your patrons. Minus the talking.”

“It’s the talking that you will let me stay open for.”

Coligney saw that Nick was in deadly earnest. The brothel owner truly believed that the cops would make an exception for his house. “O.K., spill it. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

“Their secret club. It’s kind of like a joke, but it’s not a joke. These gentlemen run Wall Street.”

“This club have a name?”

“The Cherry Grove Gentlemen’s Society.”

“Original.”

“But, like I say, it’s a joke. Sort of.”

“Your thirty seconds is running out.”

“I listen in on ’em,” said Nick.

“How?”

“There’s a vent shaft for air. I can hear upstairs what they say in the library.”

“A vent which just happened to be there?” asked Coligney. “Or you had built so you could eavesdrop?”

“The latter,” Nick admitted with a grin.

“Why?”

“I listen for stock market tips. I mean, these men know everything before it happens. Twice I made a killing. Once with U.S. Steel, once with Pennsylvania Rail—”

Coligney exploded to his feet, both fists balled. “Are you trying to bribe me with stock tips?”

“No, no, no, no, no! No, Captain. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just telling you how I happened to hear it.”

“Hear what?”

Nick took a deep breath and blurted, “They’re going to kill President Roosevelt.”

The police captain rocked back on his heels. Nick looked triumphant that he had captured his attention. Coligney sat back down heavily and planted his elbows on his desk. “What exactly did you hear?”

Nick reported in detail.

“Give me their names.”

“I don’t know their names.”

“They’re your regular customers.”

“I can tell you who was there. But I can’t tell which ones were talking.” Nick explained that he could make out what they were saying but could not distinguish one voice from another, as sounds were distorted by the shaft.

Coligney said, “You must have recognized his manner of speaking.”

“It’s not like there’s only one blowhard in the club, Captain. They’re Wall Street swells, what do you expect? They’re all blowhards.”

Coligney questioned Nick repeatedly. Nick stuck to his story, and eventually the policeman was convinced he did not know who in the “club” had threatened the President.

Coligney wrote down their names. Seven of the richest men on Wall Street.

“O.K.,” said Coligney. “Here’s the deal. You shut down now, like everyone else. You change the name on your deed. You reopen at the weekend.”

Nick nodded. “That way no one knows about this, and it looks like Tammany stepped in and lent me a hand.”

“But if this ends up blarney, you’ll be selling women to blacksmiths in Joisey. Now get outta here.”

Five minutes later, Mike Coligney headed out, too, wearing a greatcoat over his uniform and a civilian’s fedora low over his eyes.

“Back soon,” he told his desk sergeant. “Just going to clear my head.”

“O’Leary’s or the Normandie?” asked the sergeant.

“O’Leary’s.”

But he walked straight by O’Leary’s Saloon. Continuing up Broadway, Coligney passed the Normandie Bar, too, and cut over to Sixth Avenue, thinking hard on what he had learned. “Satan’s Circus” percolated around him as he strode past brick tenements and frame houses, street muggers and stickup artists, dance halls and saloons. Downtown again in the shadow of the El, pondering possibilities and weighing the complications.

The captain had a gut feeling that the plot was real. But as earthshaking as it was, who in blazes could he trust to help him dismantle it? The department was in an uproar. The new Police Commissioner—a friend, ironically, of President Roosevelt—was turning the force on its ear. Worse, Bingham was a stickler for communicating through “proper channels.” Proper channels in this case would be through a politically connected inspector whom Coligney would not trust to solve a candy store theft.

Besides, who knew how long Commissioner Bingham himself would last? Or what disruption he would perpetrate next? For the moment, Coligney was the only precinct captain Bingham hadn’t transferred, but he had fined Coligney eight days’ pay for a technical violation of department rules. What if, in the midst of pursuing Nick’s allegation, he suddenly found himself banished to a sleepy precinct in the Bronx? The grim fact was that the Commissioner, a by-the-book former military man, was not equipped to investigate a plot against the President, much less muster the speed required to save his life.