“That’s right, Soopy. You know the boss is careful and that’s why I’m here.”
“Hell, we’re taking every precaution in the book. Them pipes you see run cold water through the mash vats, so the place don’t overheat. That little thing on the wall over there — see, it looks like a torpedo tube — opens on a pipe which dumps the used mash out into the Atlantic Ocean. I get a charge every time I read how Coney Island water is polluted. I’ll say polluted!
“And we keep up production, Frey. We’re turning out a thousand gallons of hundred and ninety proof booze a day, to be watered down and sold as the real McCoy. There’s nothing wrong with the stuff, either, and that gripes the T-men every time, let me tell you.”
I began to feel like the visiting executive at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Altoona, Pa. They conducted me next into the bottling room, where half a dozen men stood around and let the machinery do its work, the conveyor belts spinning endlessly around the bottle-racks, the six racks, one for each of half a dozen different brands of popular whiskey, depositing their bottles smoothly into place, the finished liquor pouring smoothly into the bottles “with hardly a drop wasted. A man could work up quite a thirst just watching it.
Soolpovar plucked one of the bottles off its belt before it reached the sealer and offered it to me. “Try some.”
I drank from the bottle. The label said Four Roses. That’s what it tasted like, Four Roses.
“How about that now?” Soolpovar demanded after I put the bottle down. “Any complaints?”
“Huh-uh. It’s good stuff.”
That finished the tour. Soolpovar spoke in low tones with a couple of the bottlers and Sheila went upstairs. Kellum stood close to me and right along he’d been smiling when I smiled, and scowling when I scowled. More and more Karen’s prediction made sense.
I poked around a while, looking for nothing in particular but trying to give the impression of careful scrutiny. That equipment could rival what some of the smaller legit liquor outfits used to turn out their aged brew. Someone was cleaning up like mad, although I guessed the people at Tolliver’s didn’t go unrewarded for their labors.
I decided to have a talk with Karen but couldn’t find her anywhere upstairs, so I left Tolliver’s to get a bite to eat, since Vito still hadn’t opened his pizzeria. My steps took me automatically to the Lutz bar until I remembered about Ben, who had wanted to tell me something and got himself killed instead. The bar was closed, anyway. If Becky were in the back somewhere, I didn’t want to disturb her.
I tried another bar around the corner and ordered a couple of hamburgers and a bottle of beer, then got to talking with the chunky, balding guy behind the counter. Yes, he knew about Ben Lutz. Terrible thing. No, he hadn’t heard how Mrs. Lutz was taking it. Yeah, he figured today was going to be another scorcher, too. I was from Tolliver’s. That’s nice. What did I have on my mind? Another beer? Sure. Has who been selling him something? Vito Lucca? Sure, he knew Vito. Good boy, what he means, clean-cut. Working all the time in the pizzeria, out of it, delivering, picking up, you know. What kind of deliveries? He didn’t want to be bothered, Mac. He hadn’t said a thing.
Well, he wouldn’t tell every Tom, Dick and Gideon about Vito’s deliveries, that was for sure. On the other hand, I could sop up beer at more Coney Island joints, especially on a hot day.
They knew Vito almost to a man. Industrious young guy, always on the go. They knew him in the red-mirrored joints on the boardwalks, and in the side street places which served beer on tap with a fresh smell that quenched your thirst before you even sipped the amber brew. And they knew him in the commercial joints where a guy doubled as a quick-order cook on the greasy, chrome-backed grill and bartender out in front.
Did that make Vito a big wheel? Vito Lucca, pizza specialist and boy genius of the new, scientific bootlegging. Not necessarily. Vito was the errand boy, and — because Soolpovar and the others might cherish anonymity — the contact man. Hadn’t Becky told me Ben had more contacts than Vito? Then she wanted Ben to take Vito’s place, which meant that as far as Becky knew Vito wasn’t top dog or even close.
This place-1 was getting had a name. Nowhere. Sure, the neighborhood bars carried on a brisk trade with Vito. Maybe they knew it was bathtub brew and maybe they didn’t. You hear stories about bootleg boys who claimed they got the stuff tax-free outside the country and then smuggled it in.
I wondered if I ought to place a call to the Treasury Men. But I thought of Karen and I hesitated. I had to give this thing a whirl myself, first. If the law got itself cheated for another few days or more that was the law’s problem. I had my own to think about. Name of Karen.
So it was back to Tolliver’s again, and I wasn’t the only one who had that idea. The joint was jumping. People drifted from one amusement to the next, some of them munching wedges of pizza from Vito’s place. But Vito wasn’t there. One of the kids who helped out with the summer crowd dished out the slices of pie, piping hot and in portions larger than Vito would have considered necessary.
When I discovered Karen still hadn’t returned, I figured I might as well cool off with a swim in the pool. I went upstairs, but no further. Vito, who sold pizza and also dealt in the illegal liquor traffic, was in addition a woman beater.
At least, a Sheila beater.
They stood at the top of the stairs shouting, and the last thing I heard Sheila say was, “You’re impossible!”—before Vito’s right hand darted out and struck her smartly across the cheek.
Sheila looked at Vito not with anger, but surprise. “I think it’s like you’re crazy,” she said. “You’re crazy jealous, that’s what,”
Vito tried again, but I moved between them and caught his forearm. “Someone your own size?” I said. “Your own sex?” And landed on the floor on my back. Great stuff. Gideon Frey to the rescue, hitting the floor with the base of his spine and seeing stars. Vito had used judo, and the way he stood waiting for me said he knew plenty more.
I got up and barreled in at him and landed on my back again. He moved so swiftly I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but I could feel it. This time I let Vito dance and strut a little before I climbed to my feet again.
Cocky-quick he danced toward me, then chopped with a judo cut. I sidestepped and drove my own left fist at his head. He cursed and I said “temper” and Sheila said wouldn’t we please cut it out before someone got hurt.
Vito had his own ideas for cutting things out. His foot blurred up out of nowhere and buried itself in the pit of my stomach. You know how it is. First you feel nothing. Then a numbness and a hard-to-breathe feeling starts down at your belt buckle and fills your whole body to exploding. You can’t stand any longer but that doesn’t matter because you can’t breathe. You fall and roll over, clutching your stomach and retching and when you get to feel, a little better you start wishing you could puke.
I just reached that stage and the stage where I began to think it would have been fine, just wonderful, yes sir, if I hadn’t decided to go for a swim this late in the afternoon when Vito launched himself down at me and panted something about minding my own business.
I did just that. My business right now was self-protection, and while I couldn’t do anything with my legs yet but thrash them, my arms were free. Vito struck my hands on the way down, outspread above my chest. I heaved back and his torso went out of sight over my head as he fell, but his head thudded against the boardwalk floor and this was one of those fights where as soon as he yelped and sounded like I’d hurt him some suddenly I could breathe again.
He was just climbing to his feet when I hit him. Low. Low enough for the referee to wonder if it had grazed the belt and maybe warn me about the round without actually taking it away. It was payment in kind. Vito gagged and Sheila yelled and I hit him again. Same place. Other hand. He had good, flat belly muscles. My fists didn’t sink in, but they hurt him plenty. He began to sag and his mouth hung slack so I brought a right back and down and up and almost got splinters at the lowest part of the arc and then clamped his jaws firmly shut with a sharp Castanet click that would leave him with loose teeth and sore gums for a week. Down he went, tumbling loosely, indifferent to the way the hard floor received him.