He wasn’t real to Charlotte. She would blather at him in her Texas voice, always talking on her phone to someone else, and John Adamson would stand there in the back office with his hands balled together before his groin — John who worked the door, John who striped the parking lots with new white paint. She didn’t know he kept meticulous records in a formal day planner, so that along with the bad checks he had the dates, amounts, and check numbers all written down in case he ever needed them in court. She didn’t know he would be famous some day. They would call him John Harvey Adamson then. They would have to use all three of his names once he had committed his first murder.
Dennis Kelly came walking into Durant’s one afternoon in a white mesh shirt and faded jeans. He actually screamed when he saw Carl Verive sitting at the bar. Kelly was screaming, Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! and everyone in the restaurant heard and Adamson had to walk over and calm him down. He was tired of Honey by then, but the last thing he wanted was a public scene.
They went to the New Town Saloon to talk. They got a booth and Adamson ordered a vodka and he told Kelly to stop fooling around, to pay Warren the $100,000 he owed. He didn’t like chasing Dennis all over town, he had had enough of it. He wasn’t even getting paid for it anymore, as Kelly knew from his own bankbook, where all those bad checks had come from.
“You should never have talked to McCracken,” Adamson said, leaning forward. “He can’t help you anyway. No one’s afraid of McCracken. They’ve got him boxed in on every side.”
Kelly’s white mesh shirt seemed to glow against his tan skin. He looked away. They called him “Honey” because he was gay. He was broad-shouldered and heavy-jowled, with the black hair and bushy eyebrows of a car salesman. He ran six or seven bars, and now they all belonged to Warren and Ned Jr. and Gale Nace.
“Just keep me away from Carl Verive,” he said. He reached into his pants pocket and put a roll of bills on the table in front of him. It looked like about two hundred dollars. “I get the point,” he said, then left.
Adamson remembered the bad checks from Charlotte and Kelly. He called Warren at his Camelback Mortgage office, but Warren wasn’t there or he wasn’t taking Adamson’s calls.
The next day, he was subpoenaed to a federal grand jury. The agent identified himself as Clint Brown, FBI, Chicago. He said that Dennis Kelly was in the federal witness protection program. He said that Dennis Kelly had told him that Adamson and Ned Warren were threatening his life.
A federal case. Not just McCracken anymore, but the FBI. Not just perjury, but extortion, maybe worse. That’s what Adamson had told Warren. The investigators would have facts and rumors now from every Mafia source from California to New Jersey. Every Mafia source from California to New Jersey would know about the probe.
One hundred seventy-one known gangsters in Phoenix, arriving over the past ten years, a kind of invasion. Warren had watched Ned Jr. start to emulate their style. Ned Jr. had come back from Vietnam and then spent fifteen days in Pima County Jail for assault, acting just like a muscle. Gale got hooked on the idea of himself as Sonny Corleone. It had never been Warren’s style. He had always told people that he lived by his wits, not by “fists or hard-guy attitude.” He set Junior and Gale up with some bars. He tried to help them out. He bought Junior the Broken Arrow, on North 7th Street, and the bar became a money loser, a place Junior used mainly as a place to sleep with the help. Eventually they sold it off to Dennis Kelly and made Kelly a partner. Kelly took out a loan then to turn the old Roman Gate Cocktail Lounge into the Happy Garden, and as a favor Warren assigned the loan to Gale. That’s when the threats began. It took about three months before Kelly realized that he owed Warren and Gale everything he had, and that Gale was determined to break his legs.
Warren ordered a French dip and a Dry Sack to sip on while he waited. It was October 2, a week after his first indictment from the county, the feds now involved, a vulnerable time. The restaurant was dimly lit and the table’s thick, coffee-colored wood had a deep grain that felt good beneath his hand. Applegate’s Olde English Pub was another place the mobsters liked. Adamson showed up when Warren was half finished with his lunch. He was followed by Carl Verive, whose mustard-colored jacket bulged open to reveal the girth of his trunk. The room, with its brass and dark carpets, became vivid, slow-moving. Verive took a seat at the wood-paneled bar and Warren picked up his sandwich end and dunked it in the au jus sauce. Adamson sat down on the banquette across from him, his big head seeming to teeter on his neck as he hunched in — sunglasses, open-neck shirt, a turquoise bracelet around his wrist.
“I’d like to have those checks before we get into this,” Warren said. “The ones Charlotte wrote.” He wiped his mouth and sat back. “I’m going to make sure Dennis pays you for those. I don’t know if Charlotte did it, or maybe Dennis told her to do it, but it never should have happened.”
Adamson placed his hands sideways in a steeple on the table, studying them as though to see if they were clean. It seemed to Warren that he was trying to remain deliberately motionless. He made a very slight shrug toward the bar, where Verive sat with his arm extended on the counter, fingering an ashtray.
“I brought Carl along when I went to see Dennis the other day,” he said. “He just sat at the bar like he’s sitting now. I didn’t have to make any threats, in other words. Carl was sitting there. I don’t know what Honey told the feds, but I never even had to raise my voice with him.”
Warren looked at him, lighting a cigarette. “You’re upset about not getting paid,” he said.
“Not upset.”
“I apologize for it, it was stupid. You’re doing me a favor by giving me the checks back. When you go to the grand jury, why don’t you take Mickey Clifton with you? He’s a good lawyer and I’ll pay for it.”
Adamson unclasped his hands and tapped the table. “I told Dennis it was time to pay what he owed. I was firm with him, but I never touched him and I never had to make a threat, because I brought Carl with me. Just the sight of Carl is usually enough to get the message across, do you know what I mean?”
Warren pushed aside his plate. He let out a long stream of smoke, one eye squinted slightly, the other watching Adamson, a show of alert wariness backed by self-assurance. “What if I told you I want to have three people killed?” he said. “Could you get me a price for that?”
“What?”
“Don’t say ‘what.’ Is that something you can do, or did you and Carl just come in here and try to strong-arm me?”
“I’m not stupid enough to try to do that.”
“Given what you’ve been telling me about this grand jury you’re going to. Given my problems in the courts. Given this little story you keep telling me about taking Carl to go see Dennis. I’m asking you if you can look into what I just asked you, or do you want to just give me the checks and I’ll pay you the money and that will be it? We’ll all just go our separate ways. Or maybe I should go talk to Carl myself.”
Adamson didn’t answer. Warren took another drag of his cigarette, then crushed it out in the ashtray. Then he stood up and walked away from the table. He knew that Verive could sense from his spot at the bar that the stakes had just been raised. He looked right at him until Verive finally looked back. Then he went into the bathroom and waited for Verive to join him there.