Cosa Nostra (The Mafia Chronicles #2) by Peter McCurtin

Author:Peter McCurtin [McCurtin, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 1930 gangsters, FBI, hard boiled crime, machine guns, Mafia, Piccadilly Pubishing, the Organization
Publisher: Piccadilly
Published: 2023-03-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

NOT FOR A minute did I believe Gus when he radioed in to say he was still looking for the floater. Down at the dock there was an old ice-house where his cronies did more drinking than fishing. Gus would be there mixing cheap rye with apple wine, holding forth on the dismal state of affairs in the Chapmans Corners P.D. Officer Irwin was to the poolroom born; there was no poolroom in town, so the ice-house had to do.

Better there than here; I told Gus to look hard. It was a license to drink in a nice, warm, fishy, boozy atmosphere, but Gus said, “All right for you to say that. I’m down here freezing my ass off.”

Albergo must have made a good impression because they let him stay after closing hours at the bank. Coles, the manager, came out on the steps and shook hands with the little hood before he went across the street and got into the Cadillac and was driven all of a hundred yards to the first of the town’s three real estate offices.

When I got tired of waiting for him to come out, I got the operator and told her to route all police calls to the barbershop for the next ten minutes. A nerve was jumping behind my left eye and I had the twingy pain that goes with it. When I haven’t shaved I have a habit of scratching the stubble and it does nothing but make me more irritable by the minute.

At the barbershop Addy Lawes was telling three guys to get their reading done at the library. One of them was a tree surgeon named Mapes. The others were young Frenchmen who hadn’t worked since the shoe factory ran to Tennessee.

“It’s not my business they don’t take Playboy at the library,” the barber was saying. “Take a shave, take a haircut, then you can read the magazines.’’

They grunted at me and kept on goggling at the air-brushed nudes. “Just a shave,” I told the barber. “The hot towel hot as you can make it.”

The hot towel felt good but Lawes couldn’t let me enjoy it in peace. He went around and started feeling the back of my neck. “You’re overdue for a trim,” he decided with the gravity of a doctor telling a patient he’ll have to get that growth removed or else. “I’ll just fix another towel and give you a nice trim.”

Maybe in 1950 I’d be overdue; by today’s standards I was a clipped Prussian. “A trim, Addy,” I said.

“No wonder business is punk, cops going hairy like frigging kids,” the barber complained. “Barbershop News says to change the name to hair stylist. I did that and business is still punk.”

Mapes looked up from the centerfold of an ancient magazine. “Maybe it’ll get better when this Eyetalian cutter gets started. They say he’s going to hire on five hundred men the first month. They say it was Senator Muskie persuaded him to start up here.”

The barber took away the towel and whipped lather in a mug.

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