They sat for a while and watched a couple of middle-aged men exchange a few words and greetings with the doorkeeper, then pass inside.
“Where’s your newspaper?” Pat asked, grabbing the paper from the back seat.
“I was checking out the movies downtown. What, you think you can sneak up on ’em, pretend you’re reading the paper? That’s nuts . . .”
Brogan rifled through the paper’s sections until he got to the entertainment section and started reading.
“What the . . .”
“Here it is, just right,” he said, looking at his watch. “The Palace Burlesque. Around the corner. They’ve got a show that lets out in ten minutes. The Paramount’s got one letting out five minutes after that, and Shea’s . . . is just letting out now. There’ll be a crowd coming outta there onto Pearl, and we can slide through these streets with nobody noticing. Should we call Patrol and get a few more guys down here? These guys aren’t gonna be happy when we crash their party, el-tee.”
Constantino sat for a few seconds, looked at his watch, and thought. “Outstanding idea Brogan, but we don’t call anybody outside the squad until we make the pinch. Boss’s orders. There were a few parties we tried to crash like this; word got out once a call went in, real fast. Too many leaks at the precinct, too many leaks downtown. He says, ‘The only guys we trust is ourselves,’ so until we close the bag, we do it alone. Don’t worry, though, Paddy boy, the D and D boys, Dudek and Dowd, should be on their way. Know why we call ’em the D and D boys?”
“Because their names begin with D.”
“Nope. It stands for ‘death and destruction.’ They’ll be all the help we need for this clambake.”
“Okay, boss. How do we handle this?”
“I go to the back door and use the password. I may be a flatfoot, but I don’t dress like one,” he said, looking at Brogan’s clothes, “And I’m a paisan. That, and the password should fool ’em long enough for me to get through the door and into the basement. Dudek will follow me in and collar the lookouts at the door and the top of the stairs. You and Dowd come in the front, nice and easy, and work your way through the bar to the back; making sure nobody escapes that way. You two guys’ll go first, and I’ll give you about three minutes to get around front and inside. Then, I’ll slide down the alley with Dudek following.”
“Okay. Looks like it’s getting busy in there,” Pat said. A couple more men were passed by pork pie hat through the back door.
The lieutenant, looking at his watch, said “It’s almost eight; where the hell are those guys?”
They sat a few minutes, waiting for the crowd to exit the theaters. Brogan could feel his heart speed up and his mouth started to get dry, like before the shooting started over in Europe. What the hell was the name of that lieutenant who always lost his voice, couldn’t get a word out once the bullets flew? After trying to choke the words out, he’d just point, wave with his carbine, and run forward. It broke the tension, made the guys crack up a little the second or third time it happened, even when shells were going off.
Glancing over at Constantino, Brogan saw the thick overcoat over his chest rising up and down faster, too.
The show crowd started to come down the street, laughing and talking about the comics, gesturing about the shapes of the strippers, and firing up smokes.
“Shit!” Lou said, watching three more men enter, one slapping the lookout on the back. “We wait any longer and they’ll lock the door and not let anyone else in. Let’s go now. The D & D boys’ll be here any minute and know what to do. Go!”
Brogan went out the door, going upstream against the crowd and around the corner, to the front of the building.
Constantino waited a few moments, his foot tapping the car floor, then slid out the driver’s door, tugged his overcoat on tight by the belt, and went across the street to the mouth of the alley, slipping through the show crowd. The lookout was glancing back and forth to both ends of the alley, and Constantino approached the back door, a disarming smile for the lookout. Constantino moved towards him, then saw two guys come up the alley from the other direction on Chippewa, also headed for the back door. The lookout turned and gave a look of recognition to the two men, both in overcoats with the collars turned up, both taller than Lou. One glanced down the alley, spotting Lou’s natty attire then knitted his brow in recognition. Cop! The lookout had already opened the door and looked inside, nodded, and was ready to let the two guys go in, when Constantino put his head down and charged the three of them like a lineman breaking up a kickoff wedge. Arms outstretched, he grabbed the lookout with one hand, and with his head between the bodies of the other two, took them all down to the pavement, knocking his hat off onto the dirty cement. Jumping up, he spun around and saw a pair of hands pulling the door closed from the inside. Charging the door and yanking it wide open, Lou pulled the hands loose from it. He turned to see the bared teeth of the doorman, his face flushed with anger and growling, extended hands reaching for him.
Lou knocked his attacker’s right arm to the side with his left and threw the hardest punch he could with his right, connecting solidly with the man’s big teeth. Stunning him, Lou grabbed the doorman’s right shoulder with his left hand, pulling the man behind him onto the three guys in the alley, who were trying to get him from behind as he jumped inside. He saw the cellar stairway to his left, and there was heat, cigarette smoke, and noise coming at him from down there. Right in front of him was the barstool where the doorman with the big teeth had sat, up against a plaster wall with the wood lath exposed in spots and stacks of beer cases filled with empty bottles. To his right he looked into the bar, and despite the dimmed lights, he could see a lot of people, standing and sitting at the bar and at tables. Most of them were turned to him with What the hell is this? looks on their faces.
Ah shit, I better announce myself, before this gets real ugly, he thought, But I don’t know if we’re gonna make this work myself, Paddy Boy, and just where the hell are you, anyway? He heard glass shattering from the front.
Brogan moved easily through the show crowd, turning his shoulder and avoiding eye contact, and got right in front of the bar: a brick-faced front painted red, two big picture windows with beer signs, specials written on cardboard, and a neon one advertising cocktails in red and a stemmed glass in white. There was a stainless steel door with glass, and the foyer floor was set with tiny, black and white, octagonal tiles spelling out the address. Keeping his head down, Brogan pushed through the door and stood right in front of it inside, blocking the way out. He looked up, and slowly let out a breath as he sized up the place. Lights dimmed, red neon light framed the bar’s mirror on his left. Crowded, must be twenty, maybe thirty people, he thought. There were wooden tables on his right, people two deep at the bar in some places.
Two guys he spotted, right off, at the bar. They were two of the four guys who had knifed the Indian. One was talking to the bartender, and the other faced him, squinting at him in vague recollection through the cigarette smoke that came from the long Pall Mall that dangled from his mouth. He nudged the other guy. The other guy turned and the bartender looked up at Pat, as well.
This ain’t good, Brogan thought, reaching with his left hand for his badge, and feeling for his sap in the right overcoat pocket.
Just then the uproar caused by Constantino’s entrance started at the rear, and Brogan could dimly see several bodies in violent motion a good thirty feet away from him there.
Oh shit, he’s in trouble, he thought, I gotta get to him. To hell with that not needing help crap, he thought.
The guys at the bar slid off their stools with their hands reaching into their pockets. Gotta get a patrolman’s attention the old fashioned way. He looked to his right and saw a petite woman with