Bay City Blast (td-3) by Warren Murphy

Author:Warren Murphy [Murphy, Warren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_action, det_irony

Al Baker had been directed by Sam Gregory to use all his mob contacts to find out just who was moving into Bay City, where they were moving and what they were up to.

The only problem with that assignment was that Al Baker had no mob contacts. He had run numbers in Brooklyn for five years back in the mid-Fifties, and then given it up when his brother got arrested. Since then, he had worked in a laundry, as a used car salesman, a liquor-truck driver and a dram and sewer cleaner.

He was carrying five hundred dollars of Sam Gregory's money in his pocket.

"Mafia informants don't come cheap," Baker had said. Gregory had nodded and paid.

When he had been running numbers, Baker had dreamed of working his way up through the ranks until he was the head of America's underworld. Along the way and before taking his first step up, he realized that those who reached the top didn't necessarily have to be smart. But it certainly helped if they were lucky and bullet-proof. Since he had never been lucky and he was afraid of bullets, he had lost his zeal for living the mob life. But he had never lost the fascination that came from thinking about it and talking about it, which was how he had come to Sam Gregory's attention.

Baker parked his car near River Street and wondered what to do next. "Use all your mob contacts," Gregory had said. All Al Baker knew about illegal was how to run numbers, which gave him an idea when he saw a newsstand on the corner.

Baker knew how to make people talk. To make the newsie talk, he first had to convince him that he wasn't an undercover police agent. The simplest way to do that was to badmouth politicians at every level, for cops, even undercover cops, never spoke ill of politicians who might control their destiny. The stories of what they said just might get back and they might wind up walking traffic posts in the meadows in winter.

Five minutes after going to the newsstand, Al Baker had placed a bet on a number — a small bet because he was counting on keeping most of the money Gregory had given him. He found out from the newsie that there had been a shake-up in the numbers business, that City Hall was more deeply involved now and was taking a bigger piece for protection. To stay in business, the numbers bank had had to cut the amount paid on a winning hit from 600-to-1 down to 550-to-1 and the people who bet on numbers were growling.

"Can't be much of a business anyway?" Baker said.

"Nickel and dime stuff. Every newsstand. Every candy store. Every saloon. This town so rotten, what else to do but play numbers," the newsie said. "Hope you hit it big and go to Florida 'cause this town's crap."

Baker rolled up his newspaper and began to walk away. It would do no good to spend too much time at the newsstand.

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