'57, Chicago by Steve Monroe

Author:Steve Monroe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504012584
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

Tuesday, April 2

No damn elevator; Jack sat in the lobby of the bank, tried to cool down, ignored the people who stared at him. Leonard was upstairs, searching for information on the Sunrise Club, an old whorehouse in Schiller Park that Momo had purchased, courtesy of a mortgage held by the dead banker, Leon Marcus. The banker must’ve been blackmailing Giancana: purely a money issue; the banker had kept an uncanceled check for $300,000 in his pocket—a reminder of how close he’d been. Alternatives just didn’t pan out. Orville Hodge, the former state auditor who had cashed over $600,000 in fraudulent state warrants at Marcus’s bank, was doing time. The fact that Marcus was due to stand trial in September for misapplying the bank’s federally insured funds gave credence to the theory that he was killed to stop him from talking, but that solution fit Momo Giancana, not a state auditor. The oil man who had written Marcus the check for $300,000 was dead, and the other characters in his life just didn’t fit the script. It had to be Giancana. The question was, who pulled the trigger?

Jack finished his coffee and set the empty cup in his lap. He rubbed his brow and ran through Giancana’s men. Jackie Cerone, Fifi Buccieri, Mad Sam DeStefano, Willie Potatoes—the list seemed endless, and each man had more men underneath him. Screw it. Wipe ’em all out and you’d get the killer.

He noticed that his colostomy bag was full, wheeled over and asked the receptionist for the location of the closest bathroom. She pointed down a hall and Jack rolled away. When he hit the bathroom door he nearly screamed in anger: one bathroom door gave way to a second door. There was no way to maneuver his chair inside. He wheeled back toward the staircase, furious. Leonard Funk stood waiting. Thank God.

“The FDIC has the place flooded. I’ll come back later.”

“Let’s hit it,” said Jack, already rolling toward the front door.

Leonard stepped outside behind Jack and helped him down the steps, then walked briskly to the van. He pulled out the ramp and stood aside while Jack wheeled himself inside. “Hold on for a minute, Leonard,” said Jack as rolled out of view. Minutes later, Jack wheeled back, asked Leonard to step aside and heaved a coffee cup full of waste out the side door. Piss on all of them: the assholes in the bank, Sam Giancana and a banker stupid enough to blackmail the syndicate.

Al scanned the newspaper while he waited for Janet. Not a bad Monday night; made a little on the heavyweight fight in New York. The German, Willi Besmanoff, had won a decision over Bob Baker. Locals had played a lot: foreigners brought out their hate money.

He sat in a corner booth at the High Roller. Not exactly Booth One at the Pump Room, but not bad. Timmy Murphy brought him a bottle of beer and slid into the booth next to him. “Not here to pay off today, are you?” asked Murphy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.