He was surprised to find the door wasn’t locked. He pushed it in and found himself in the middle of a party.
Madeline was lounging on her couch with a glass of champagne, her boozy cackle filling the small room. She was surrounded by the three men Otis had described-two boys in tuxedoes on her left and Carmine Rizzo seated on her right. Carmine’s back was to the wall.
They all stopped laughing when they saw Terry Quinn was standing in the doorway.
Rizzo looked more alert than scared and kept his hands on his lap. In plain sight and no sudden movements. Carmine was a smart boy indeed.
The other two in the tuxes weren’t so smart. Quinn judged them both to be in their early twenties and of the well-bred, over-fed variety. Big on money and short on sense.
The one on the couch next to Lady M was the smaller of the two. Skinnier and blonder than his friend, with pink skin and scared blue eyes that darted back and forth between Quinn and Lady M.
But the other tux wasn’t so docile. He slowly got up from his chair and, judging by the way he was swaying, he was more than a bit drunk. He was a broad, dark-haired kid with mean, reckless eyes. Quinn pegged him as a prep school bully who’d been a tough guy at Yale or Princeton. But there was softness about him, a softness that only a life of money could bring.
A softness Quinn had never had.
One of Lady M’s loud, boozy snickers broke the tension. She was twenty years past pretty and had never been much of a looker to begin with. Her face and skin had the ruddy tinge that comes from too many years of too much gin and not enough sunlight. She was wearing a slinky black cocktail dress that a thin young woman would’ve had trouble wearing well. Lady M was neither thin nor young and hadn’t been either for a very long time.
“Well, well, well,” she cackled, “if it ain’t my old pal Quinn.” She slapped Rizzo on the knee. “You know who Terry Quinn is, don’t you, Carmine?”
“Sure.” Carmine’s hands were still flat on his lap. “Everybody knows him. How’s every little thing, Terry?”
“No complaints. You’re a little far west, aren’t you, Carmine? Last I checked, Rothmann’s territory ends at Fifth Avenue.”
Carmine made a show of straightening his tie. “I like to get out once in a while.” He tried a smile. “See a better class of people.”
Quinn smiled too. “Then what are you doing here?”
Lady M was drunk enough to laugh like that was the funniest thing since Prohibition. She drained her champagne glass, then held it out for Blondie to refill it. The kid couldn’t stop looking at Quinn and damn near knocked over the bottle while he reached for it.
His big friend still stood there, breathing heavy and swaying while he tried to stare Quinn down. And Quinn kept on ignoring him.
Lady M smiled at the sound of the champagne filling her glass. “So how’s about tellin’ me what brings out Doyle’s Black Hand into my humble abode this fine evening?”
“Business. We need to talk, Mimi.”
“So talk!” Lady M threw open her arms in a grand gesture. “We’re all friends here, ain’t we boys?” She looked at Rizzo. “Carmine knows all about our kind of business, don’t you Carmine?” She looked at the two boys in tuxedoes. “And these dapper gentlemen here…”
The big boy in the tux cut her off, “…don’t know who the fuck you are, mister. We were having a damned swell party for ourselves before you showed up. So why don’t you do yourself a favor and take it on the heel and toe so we can get back to our good time?”
He shuffled one step too close.
Quinn dropped him with a short left hook to the jaw. The blueblood fell back over his chair and hit the floor head first.
Carmine didn’t move a muscle.
“That ain’t nice, Terry,” Madeline slurred. “That young man just so happens to be Jack Van Dorn of the Fifth Avenue Van Dorns.”
“Then he should’ve been smart enough to keep his goddamned mouth shut. We’ve got business, Mimi. You and me. Alone. Right now.”
Madeline’s fleshy arms flapped as she threw up her hands and motioned for Blondie and Carmine to leave. Carmine moved first, slow and steady as he passed Quinn and out the door.
Blondie got to his feet and seemed to think about helping his friend, but ran out of the room instead. He even closed the door behind him. A nice, polite boy.
Quinn kept standing where he was.
Madeline drained her champagne glass again and filled it for herself. “You happy now, you goddamned animal? And stop callin’ me Mimi in my own joint.”
“It’s Archie’s joint. You and that shitbird husband of yours just run it for him. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Archie Doyle,” Mimi said, drawing out his name. “Joe and me have been runnin’ this dive for three years and ain’t never heard a word of complaint outta him before.”
“That’s because you never stole from him before.”
“Stole?” Mimi lowered her champagne glass very slowly. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought she was genuinely insulted. “Stole?” Her ruddy skin blanched quickly. “We stole? From Archie? Me and Joey? That what he tell you? After all we done for that miserable Irish son of a…”
“Stow the bullshit. Archie’s take from this place has been off every week for the past month and it’s not because business is off. You’re leaking money, Mimi, and that means either you or Joe are getting greedy. Which one of you is it?”
Mimi sat up as straight as she could manage. “Neither me nor Joey ever stole off nobody, especially Archie. We run a gamblin’ joint for Chrissakes! We make plenty off what we take in, even with Archie gettin’ his cut.”
“The take says different.” He remembered Doyle’s instructions. “If it’s not you, it’s got to be Joey. Where is he?”
“How the hell should I know,” she said. “I ain’t seen him for three whole days, the bum. Never could rely on that lousy bastard for nothin’.”
“That’s too bad. That just leaves you, unless someone else in this place was in on the skim with you. And the quicker you start talking, the easier this is going to be. For both of us.”
Mimi shook a long, crooked finger at him. “Let me ask you somethin’, tough guy. In all of this big thinkin’ Archie’s been doin’, did the grand man himself ever ask why we’d steal from him? Now? After all these years, now we get greedy?”
“People change,” he said. “Crazy notions pop into their heads out of nowhere. Notions like maybe they ought to jump ship and join up with Rothmann’s bunch.”
“Pshaw,” she said with a boozy wave. “That’s crazy talk.”
“Not really.” He nodded over at the chair where Carmine Rizzo had been sitting. “You having one of Rothmann’s top boys in here tonight doesn’t look too good.”
Mimi’s face became all lines and shadows. “First you call me a thief, then you call me a traitor. You sure know how to make a girl sore. You…”
“Quit stalling. I know damned well you’ve got the money you owe Archie with you right here and now. Just hand it over and Archie promises he’ll forgive the whole thing for old time’s sake. But if you keep lying to me, and I have to tear this place apart looking for it, things will get real ugly real fast.”
He heard a floorboard creak behind him just before he heard the door open. He had plenty of time to go for his gun, but didn’t.
Archie had already told him no gunplay.
Quinn heard the hammer of a.38 being cocked behind him. The same kind of gun he knew Carmine Rizzo used.
“You’re goddamned right it’s gonna get ugly,” Carmine said. “Starting with you.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Mimi shrieked from the couch. “Put that damned thing away before he takes it from you.”
Quinn turned just enough to let Carmine see his grin. “Listen to the lady, stupid. You’re not going to use it anyhow.”
“No kidding?” Carmine said. “What makes you so goddamned sure?”