The Gangster (Isaac Bell #9)(36)

Branco nodded at a chair.

Ghiottone sat, covered his mouth with a hairy hand, and muttered, “Interesting word is around.”

“What word?”

“They are shopping for a killer,” said Ghiottone.



“The grocer” can’t fool everyone. Especially a saloon keeper who works for Tammany Hall. Cold proof of the chaos that threatened every dream.

“Why do you tell me this?”

Ghiottone returned a benign smile. “A padrone recruits employees. Pick and shovel men. Stone masons. In your case, you even recruit padrones. Who knows what else?”

“I don’t know why you tell me this.” Did Ghiottone know how close he was walking to death?

“Are you familiar with the English word ‘hypothetical’?” Ghiottone asked.

“What ipotetico are you talking about?”

Ghiottone spread his hands, a signal he meant no harm. “May we discuss ipotetico?”

Branco gave a curt nod. Perhaps the saloon keeper did know he was close to death. Perhaps he wished he hadn’t started what couldn’t be stopped.

“The pay is enormous. Fifty thousand.”

“Fifty thousand?” Branco couldn’t believe his ears. “You could murder a regiment for fifty thousand.”

“Only one man.”

“Who?”

“They don’t tell me. Obviously, an important figure.”

“And well-guarded. Who is paying the fifty thousand?”

“Who knows?”

“Who is paying?” Branco asked again.

“Who cares?” asked Ghiottone. “It came to me from a man I trust.”

“What is his name?”

“You know I can’t tell you. I would never ask who brought the job to him. Just as he would never ask that man where it came from. In silence we are safe.”

What blinders men wore. “Kid Kelly” Ghiottone seemed unable to imagine that he was linked—like a caboose at the end of a speeding train—to a titan who could pay fifty thousand dollars for one death. Branco pictured in his mind jumping from the roof of that caboose to the freight car in front of it, and to the next car, and the next, running over the swaying tops, one to another to another, all the way to the locomotive.



“They came to you,” Branco mused. “Why do they come to an Italian?”

Ghiottone shrugged. Branco answered his own question. The conspirators wanted someone to take the blame, a killer who is completely different from the titan who wanted the victim dead. What better “fall guy” than a crazed Italian immigrant? Or an Italian anarchist.

“What do you say?” asked Ghiottone.

Branco sat silent a long time. He did not touch his glass. At last he said, “I will think.”

“I can’t wait long before I ask another.”

Antonio Branco fixed the saloon keeper with the full force of his deadly gaze. “I don’t believe you will ask another. You will wait while I think about the man you need.”

“Fifty thousand is a fortune,” Ghiottone persisted. “A third or a half as a finder’s fee would still be a fortune.”

Branco stood abruptly.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ghiottone.

“This is no place to discuss such business. Wait ten minutes. Come to the side entrance to my store. Make sure no one sees you.”

Branco made a show of thanking him for the wine and saying good night as he left the crowded saloon.



“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone waited five minutes, then walked across Prince Street and down an alley. Looking about to see that no one was watching, he knocked at the grocery’s side entrance.

Antonio Branco led him through storerooms that smelled of coffee, olive oil, good sausage, and garlic, and down a flight of stairs into a clean, dry cellar. He unlocked a door, said, “No one can hear us,” and led Ghiottone into a room that held an iron cage that looked like the Mulberry Street Police Station lockup from which Ghiottone routinely bailed out fools in exchange for their everlasting loyalty.

“What is this? A jail?”

“If a man won’t repay the cost of getting him to a job in America, he’ll be held until someone pays for him.”

“Ransom?”

“You could call it that. Or you could call it fair trade for his fare.”

“But you hold him prisoner.”

“It rarely comes to that. The sight of these bars alone focuses their mind on repaying their obligation.”

Ghiottoni’s eyes roved over the thick walls and the soundproof ceiling.

Branco said, “But if I must hold him prisoner, no one will hear him yell.”

He exploded into action and clamped Ghiottone’s arm in a grip that startled the saloon keeper with its raw power. Ghiottone cocked a fist, but it was over in a second. Outweighed and outmaneuvered, the saloon keeper was shoved into the cell with a force that slammed him against the back wall. The door clanged shut. Branco locked it and pocketed the key.

“Who asked you to hire a killer?”

Ghiottone looked at him with contempt and spoke with great dignity. “I already told you, Antonio Branco, I can never betray him, as I would never betray you.”

Branco stared.

Ghiottone gripped the bars. “It’s fifty thousand dollars. Pay some gorilla to do the job for five—more than he’ll ever see in his life—and keep the rest for yourself.”