*
*
CHAPTER 9

Sally took the scenic route back to her detective agency's office to make sure they weren't followed by anyone but the regular traffic. Longer meant slower, and she kept a firm gaze on the cars around them at all times - not just to look for the wharf rat bruiser, but for over-zealous motorcycle traffic cops who had yet to fill their daily quota of tickets.

The missing window and the buckled and dented rear would attract attention from even the greenest of uniformed rookies which would inevitably lead to a pile of questions, perhaps even downtown, so Sally let out a sigh of relief when she drove onto Eighty-seventh Street without outside interference.

Moving along slowly in the inner lane, she kept vigilant and watched every single parked car they went past. There were a few Chevrolets present but all were in pristine condition. Still, she didn't let down her guard as chances were great the bruiser had changed cars following his wall-scraping accident.

When she reached the mouth of the alley adjacent to the office building, she waited patiently for a couple of gawking pedestrians to walk past before she drove down the narrow pathway to get to the inner courtyard. "Okay, we're here," she said as she yanked the heavy steering around to make a U-turn.

Gennaro let out a sigh of relief of his own; Maureen did one better by kissing the Count's cheek and burying her face in the nook of his chin.

"All right, listen up," Sally said as she reversed onto a large patch of smooth concrete that she used whenever she needed to jack up her Ford. "I'll do a sweep before youse guys get out. I doubt Mista Palooka gonna be back any time soon after getting his heinie kicked like that, but he might corner up new cannon fodder faster than I'd like. See?"

"Ah… not really," Gennaro said and looked at Sally with wide, puzzled eyes.

Sally let out a chuckle as she stepped out of her beat-up car. "In other words, stay here until I get back. Yeah?"

"Oh… all right. We stay."

Drawing her Hi-Power, Sally ran along the side of the building to look at the various nooks and crannies; she found nothing save for a hissing alley cat that was severely peeved at being disturbed while eating a ratty lunch. The corner of the alley was soon reached. A scant thirty seconds and a string of peeks later, she had established that all was quiet on the Eighty-seventh Street front.

An approving grunt left her as she jogged back to the Ford. "The coast is clear," she said as she holstered her weapon - the news made Gennaro open the door and help Maureen climb off his lap.

When Sally reached the Ford, she went around to the smashed tail and yanked the buckled trunk lid open. The suitcases and the duffel bag were soon out on the ground and distributed among them. "Let's get your luggage schlepped upstairs. Yeah?  This has dragged on for too long already… we need to call Big Daddy again on the double."

---

The warm aroma of fresh coffee greeted them as they entered the hallway that ran parallel to the offices. Sally had already broken out into a wide grin at the thought of pouring down a bucketful of the good stuff when the smile turned into a grim mask - the door to her office stood ajar. She reached into her coat at once and drew her Browning.

The situation was far too unpredictable and potentially too hot for all three to move ahead at once, so she put out her hand to motion Gennaro and Maureen to stop - a quick shush made them pipe down as well. Further hand signals told them to move back to the stairwell in complete silence.

Sally's eyes narrowed down into slits as she worked the Browning's action and crept ahead leaning against the wall. Her silhouette against the frosted pane would give her away as soon as she would reach it, so her plan was to jump in gun-forward and ask questions later.

Reaching the door to her office, she moved up the Browning while using her free hand to grab the handle. She drew a deep breath and held it. Bursting inside, she came to a screeching halt in the middle of the floor when she was greeted by the sight of Vicky Prince standing atop a wooden stepladder sweeping the useless ceiling fan with a feather duster.

A loud "Yeeeee!" escaped the secretary as she jerked up from being taken by surprise by the raging, fedora-and-trench coat-wearing bull. She teetered on the brink of falling off the stepladder for a few seconds before she dropped the duster to grab hold of the ladder's frame with both hands. "Well, I've never!  Really, Sally, that was most uncalled for!" she said in a strangled voice.

"Golly Gee whiz, toots!  I'm sorry!  I'm really, honestly, truly sorry," Sally said as she holstered the weapon and hurried over to her friend to help her off the rickety contraption. "When I saw the open door, I thought we'd been invaded by… oh, I don't know… Jimmy The Ice-Pick's waterfront crooks or Grazziani's brilliantine boys or the coppers… or somebody."

"You live too exciting a life, Sally," Vicky said and took off her glasses to wipe the lenses and dab her brow with a handkerchief.

"You're tellin' me?"

A brief grunt escaped Vicky as she put the glasses back on and slid them up her nose. She did send her friend a stern gaze and a small dose of blue fire, but it only lasted for a few seconds. "Hm!  How's your day been?"

Chuckling, Sally scratched her neck. "Up and down. I cracked both active cases at once."

"You what?!"

"Yeah… you'll see in a moment," Sally said and pushed her fedora back from her brow. "Say, doll, is that fresh coffee teasin' my nostrils?"

"Well, it sure isn't Skipper's Stew," Vicky mumbled as she picked up the feather duster intending to carry on where she had left off.

"Coffee sounds and smells mighty fine to me, doll. We'll need some more mugs."

"Why?  Did you bring a few of your destitute friends along?"

Sally chuckled as she undid the belt of her damp trench coat and put it on the hallstand. The fedora soon followed, but she kept the blazer on. "Ah… not exactly. Like I said, you'll see in a moment."

Vicky adjusted her glasses again. She looked at the feather duster before she put it away for good - applying a woman's touch to the cobwebs in the ceiling and other parts of the untidy office would have to wait.

---

Two minutes later, Vicky Prince stood stock-still while staring wide-eyed at their guests. Her neck came back to life as the first of her well-assembled body parts, and she used it to look at the bearded fellow, the woman who wore a warm autumn coat and Sally Swackhamer - in that order.

"Sugar," Sally said, ignoring the breath Vicky had already taken to inform her that her name was in fact not Sugar but something else entirely, "I'm as proud as a fightin' rooster to introduce you to Count Gennaro of San Bonnaccio and his charming bride-to-be, Miss Maureen Brazelton. People, this is my dear friend and closest confidante Miss Victoria Prince," she continued while she gestured at the people involved in the introduction.

Vicky kept staring for a moment longer before she performed the deepest curtsey ever seen in Mooresburg City. "Your Grace!" she said in a honeyed voice that made Gennaro's eyebrows fly up and his jaw slip down.

Maureen broke out in a snicker at the sight - Sally just laughed out loud.

"Oh, no!" Gennaro said as he helped Vicky back upright. "I am Count, not Holy Pope. Yes?  Please, a handshake is good."

"Oh… I see," Vicky said and completed the introduction by shaking the fellow's hand instead. Her cheeks ran red as she turned to Maureen to repeat the traditional shaking. "And hello, Miss Brazelton. I'm sure your father will be relieved to see that you're safe and in such good health. And company!"

A brief smile flashed across Maureen's face. "First and foremost, I hope my father will listen."

Sally broke out in a grunt. "Yeah, and that's my cue," she said while taking off her blazer and hanging it over the backrest of her desk's swivel-chair. The sight of the leather shoulder-holster and the Browning Hi-Power gave the mood in the room a slight knock, but she didn't have time to nurse anyone's feelings and pulled out the chair at once. "Doll, how about the coffee while I get Big Daddy on the horn?"

The expected reply of "My name's Vicky!" was shot back within seconds, but Sally just grinned, winked and reached for the receiver.

Vicky rolled her eyes before she helped Gennaro and Maureen over to the sofa bed. "Please wait here. I'll make some more coffee… you look like you need it. Are you hungry?  I could call for some sandwiches or perhaps more substantial food-"

"Sandwiches sound good. Yes?" Gennaro said while pulling Maureen closer to him on the couch - Maureen nodded as she leaned into the Count's chest.

"All right. Sandwiches it is," Vicky said with a smile. She turned to look at Sally to repeat the question, but the column of smoke that rose from a new cigarette and the three fingers' worth of cheap sauce the private investigator had already poured into a glass proved she was all right for the time being.

---

Ten minutes later, Sally slammed the rest of the Black Knight scotch before she put the empty glass on the table. The receiver was still stuck to her ear as it had been throughout the excruciating conversation: "No, you listen to me now, ya dumb block of wood… I don't care- no, I said you listen to me now!  Yeah?  The next time you interrupt me, I'm gonna come by and teach you some manners, see?  I get it, the General is out hunting, but there's gotta be some way to reach him!  Why the hell not?  Now, see, that's between the General and- say what?  That's none o' your Goddamned beeswax, Mista Palooka!  No. No- hey, there's no need to get personal!"

Vicky adjusted her glasses several times as the embarrassing conversation dominated the small, single-room office. She offered Gennaro and Maureen apologetic smiles, but it seemed they understood what went on. "So you're from South Tyrol, Sir?" she said to take everyone's mind off the angry P.I.

Gennaro tore his eyes away from the irate Sally to offer Vicky a smile. "Ah, that is right. Old castle in small town. San Bonnaccio not far from Bolzano. My family home for generations. Italy is much better place now so we hope to go home one day soon. Is that not so, caro?" As he spoke, he pulled a nodding Maureen into a sideways hug.

Vicky was about to keep up her end of the conversation when she noticed that Maureen's chin started quivering. An "Oh!" escaped her as she patted herself down to find a handkerchief or a napkin she could offer the young lady.

"Please don't cry, caro," Gennaro whispered and leaned in to kiss the side of Maureen's head.

"I can't help it… everything was so scary… all that gunfire and the dead body and the car chase…" Maureen said in a tiny voice; it made Gennaro pull her close and whisper a long line of soothing words in Italian.

Vicky narrowed her eyes and turned to glare at Sally. Their connection wasn't to be denied and the private investigator soon looked back - she carried a smile at first, but it grew embarrassed in a hurry.

"Gunfire?  Dead body?  Car chase?" Vicky said and adjusted her glasses.

Gennaro noticed that Sally was busy, so he replied for her: "Yes. Three ugly criminals with guns. They shot at us when we left apartment on Fennimore Street. One chase us through city but Miss Sally drove good and we escape into old factory. All was good."

"I see," Vicky said in a voice that had gained an inch of frost all of a sudden; she glared at Sally again who was still too busy mouthing off to the person at the other end of the telephone connection to notice.

Clearing her throat, Vicky turned back to their guests and once more slipped into her natural role as the perfect hostess. "Would you like some Irish whiskey in your coffee?  It's the famous Four-Leaf Clover brand. Sally's favorite, but I don't care a bit if she minds. It'll heat you up from the inside."

Maureen shook her head. "No, thank you… I don't drink."

"And I am too tired for strong spirits," Gennaro added while he mirrored the gesture.

Before Vicky could add another suggestion, Sally let out a growl and slammed the receiver onto the telephone. Another Serrano's was soon lit and a healthy squirt of the far cheaper Black Knight scotch was poured into her glass. Once the amber liquid had been knocked back, she stuck the cigarette between her lips and stomped into the center of the office.

"Those damn palookas!" she said and crossed her arms over her chest. "They won't give me the time of day much less let me speak to the General. You know what?  I'm beginning to believe the hunting story is a big, fat slice of moldy baloney."

Maureen briefly furrowed her brow until she had parsed the unusual comment. "I don't think so… God, I remember Dad's hunting parties from the old days. He dragged me along for years until he finally understood I didn't want any part of them. He dresses up in an olive-green uniform and pretends to be some kind of big game hunter in Africa… all alone in the woods with a rifle and a backpack full of field rations. He can spend days doing that until he runs out of patience or has killed the number of animals he came for…"

"We don't have days," Sally added in a dark tone.

A flash of worry raced across Maureen's face, and she reached for Gennaro at once. She gulped several times before a thought seemed to come to her: "Have you tried calling Geraldine instead?  She doesn't go on Dad's hunting trips. She hates them even more than I do."

"Yeah, I've tried getting through to her. More than once," Sally said and let out a sigh. "It doesn't matter what I do or say, or even how polite I am-"

Vicky let out an "Ahem," while she adjusted her glasses.

"-the dumb lugs just put me in the freezer all over again," Sally continued and put out her arms in a shrug. The gesture meant the tip of ash fell off the cigarette and onto the rug, but she didn't seem to notice it - or care.

"Oh…" Maureen said before she fell silent and gave Gennaro's manly hands a little squeeze. "Wait, did you try her private number?"

"She has a private num- oh-hoh, that's sweet music to my ears, sugar!" Sally said and slapped her palms together in glee. "I need it… no, on second thoughts, you better call her yourself. Even if you get one of the palookas on the horn, they're bound to recognize your voice. I hope."

"I'm sure they will," Maureen said and got up from the sofa bed. She was over at Sally's swivel-chair in no time where she sat down and reached for the receiver. The private number was soon dialed. "It's ringing," she said with a smile.

"I'll keep my fingers crossed for ya, Maureen," Sally said as she took a deep puff from her cigarette - the pale-gray smoke soon rose toward the ceiling where it swirled around the long-dormant fan like a tender caress.

The Black Knight scotch beckoned, and not even another 'Ahem!' from Vicky could prevent Sally from pouring two fingers' worth into her glass. She grinned at her friend as she held up the glass containing the amber liquid to toast her.

Gennaro and Vicky both moved out to the edges of the sofa bed when Maureen said: "Hello, Geraldine?  It's me- oh!  Ohhhh, you're going to make me cry, too!  I'm fine… I'm fine, Geraldine!  Yes, I- no, I just needed to- no, no, I've never been in dang-  everything has been- yes, I've been with- I'm fine, honest!  Is Dad on a- he is?  You must get in touch- yes… yes, right away. It can't be soon enough. Do you underst- no, no- Geraldine, please calm down and listen to me!  Please!  I'm unhurt, but you must get in touch with Dad right away. There's something very important he needs to know. And I wish to- no, I'm not pregnant!"

Vicky let out a scandalized gasp. Sally chuckled while Gennaro just stared.

"-But I have met the most wonderful man and- yes. No, you don't know him. No, it's not my tennis instructor- never mind that now!  I wish to go home. Please, just get in touch with Dad and come to Miss Swackhamer's office on- all right. Yes. Yes, please… all right. Thank you, Geraldine. I hope you and Dad will be here soon!  Bye-bye!"

After such a fast-moving torrent of words, Maureen let out a long, deep sigh as she put the receiver back on the hook - she even cast a long glance at the bottle of scotch almost as if she was considering breaking her lifelong stance on drinking alcohol.

"Your tennis instructor, eh?  I'll bet he's a dreamboat. I'll drink to that," Sally said with a chuckle before she downed the rest of the scotch in one gulp.

Vicky got up from the sofa bed and began to collect the empty mugs and plates. "I better call for some more sandwiches. I have a feeling this might take a while. And Sally?"

"I'm all ears, doll," Sally said as she took the final puff of her Serrano's.

"Two things. Number one, it's time to lay off the drinking. I don't want General Brazelton to find a passed-out drunk private investigator when he and Miss Van Eyck get here."

Sally nodded as she looked at the empty glass in her hand. "Yes, dear. And number two?"

"My name's Vicky!  Won't you ever learn?" Vicky said and let out a huff that even a steam locomotive would have found impressive.

---

An hour and ten minutes later, no news from the home front had come through any of the grapevines. The rain and the constant breeze had eased off though the sun had yet to break through the cloud cover. The outside world on a whole seemed almost eerily quiet - like the calm before the storm. Sally wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing, but at least the minutes that had passed had been without incident.

Vicky had returned to her real job at the bookmaker's next door and Maureen rested her weary eyes on the sofa bed. Count Gennaro had helped tuck her in and was presently sitting on one of the regular chairs at Sally's desk staring at nothing in particular.

A column of pale-gray smoke rose from the cigarillo Sally had stuck between her lips. She stood at the windows overlooking Eighty-seventh Street to keep an eye on the traffic below. So far, her suspicions hadn't been raised by anyone within her field of view, but she knew their opponents played that game just as well as she did so chances were that someone, somewhere had his eye on her at that exact moment in time.

Her two Brownings and the FN Herstal were on the desk. The Hi-Power she had used earlier in the day in the gunfight down south on Fennimore Street was lying around in bits while the cleaning solution she had applied to the working parts did its job.

Two empty cardboard boxes had been thrown into the trash can next to the desk as the rounds of 9mm ammunition they had contained had been transferred to her five magazines - one in each of the active guns plus three spares. It all meant she had 65 little friends ready to help her against the big, ugly nasties if the tide brought violence to the shore, and she was certain it would.

Moving back to the desk, Sally took the FN Herstal pistol and inserted it into her ankle-holster. She noticed the Count looking at her. "A gal can't be too careful in this day and age," she said after taking a deep puff from the cigarillo.

"I suppose not," Gennaro said and reached into his pocket to take the silver pistol. He looked at it for a moment before he put it on the desk. "For you. I am so tired of it all."

Sally grunted as she picked up the smart weapon and looked at it from several angles. "Is it European?  I've never seen such a design before."

"Yes. A Beretta. I bought it on black market during war to defend."

Nodding, Sally put the pistol back on the desk. "I think you should hang onto it. It might come in handy one day. If nothing else, Big Daddy Brazelton will be impressed by it. He seems to love his guns and war mementos."

Gennaro broke out in a noncommittal shrug but left the weapon on the desk.

Sally puffed on her cigarillo while she observed the Count in general and his manners in particular. Similar to the sleek and nimble Beretta juxtaposed to its brutish American counterparts, Gennaro had a vastly more sophisticated nature than the people he had been working for and with. Don Franco Scardamaglia, the underboss Vittorio Grazziani and their top enforcer Angelo Corrado all believed they had class and style, but the glory they pretended to wear was nothing but a thin veneer over brutality, callousness, rampant misogyny and infinite contempt for every skin color and creed other than their own.

She took a final, deep puff of the brown cigarillo before she stubbed it out in the ashtray. The cone of ash already there proved it had been a while since it had been emptied and cleaned, but although she had plenty of time to do so now, she had little interest.

"Pardon?" she said when she realized she had been spoken to.

"Oh, I just ask what you do during war, Miss Sally?"

"The same that I do now, actually," Sally said and moved over to the swivel-chair to sit down. "Look for missing people. Fight the creeps. Try to help the good guys. Stake out cheating husbands and deliver divorce papers… there were fewer of those during the war 'cos so many of the guys were overseas after Pearl."

Gennaro furrowed his brow and shot Sally a confused look. "Ah… they were after pearls?"

"No, they enlisted or were called up after Pearl Harbor. December 'forty-one. That's when we entered the war."

"Oh… of course. We had already had several terrible years then," Gennaro said and leaned back on the chair. Falling silent, the distant look in his eyes proved he was on a journey back in time. "My family try to remain neutral but fascists hate aristocrats and did not allow it. We had Hitler north in Austria and Germany and Mussolini south in Italy. We were trapped in the middle with nowhere to go."

"Did you fight the fascists?" Sally said as she fiddled with her gas lighter to have something to do with her hands.

"No. I am no warrior. We do what we could. We help, ah… political…" Gennaro came to a halt and waved his right hand in a typical Italian gesture while he searched for the words. "I do not know English word. But we help people who oppose Mussolini. Let them stay in castle."

"Political dissidents?"

"Perhaps. I don't know."

Sally shrugged. "Well, it doesn't really matter. I get the picture."

"When the Germans come, everything is worse. Not regular German army but the SS. A high officer… high-ranking?"

"High-ranking. Yeah."

"His name was Alois Wiederegger… the senior SS commandant of South Tyrol. We could do nothing. They take over castle and murder two people the first day. Our gardener!  He was a Jew. And a stable boy who throw horse manure at their car so they shot his head. Bastardi tedeschi."

Though Sally didn't understand the actual words of the profanity, the message had come across loud and clear. She let out a grunt and reached for her pack of Serrano's. "Smoke?" she said as she held it up.

"Thank you, no."

Sally smiled at her guest before she concentrated on smoking and assembling her Browning Hi-Power - she had a hunch she would need it before long.

-*-*-*-

The period of frustrating inactivity continued as a further forty minutes went by with no word from either Geraldine Van Eyck or the General. While Gennaro had resumed his thousand-mile stare, Sally had nearly worn a hole in the rug from pacing so much. Three fresh cigarette butts in - and around - the ashtray proved that her patience had already worn thinner than the remaining threads of the rug.

Vicky had been by in her next break to get an update. Once she had left again, she had brought Maureen next door to let the young woman get an insight into the colorful world of bookmaking.

Sally spun around and started yet another lap of her pacing - if the maddening radio silence went on for too much longer, she would need to get her gum-shoes re-shod. The one thing that annoyed her the most was the fact her neck itched like never before. It was usually a rock-solid indication of something bad coming her way, but when, where or by whom were always open questions that would only be answered when the hot lead started flying.

She had just started her thirty-ninth tour of the single-room office when the telephone on her desk let out its typically shrill ringing. Gennaro jerked upright in the chair like he had fallen asleep; Sally leaped over to the desk and grabbed the receiver. "Talk to me," she said in a stern but not too unfriendly voice.

'Consider this your first and last warning, shamus,' a coarse voice said at the other end of the connection; the words had come in a broad, rural Irish accent offering a hint the person speaking was just off the boat from the Emerald Isle. 'Give us that book and we may let you and your friends live. If you don't, we'll come for you and kill everyone. Soon. Very soon.'

Count Gennaro stared wide-eyed at Sally; he had gripped the armrests hard. "The General?  Miss Van Eyck?" he said, but Sally shook her head.

"Gee whiz, Mista Oirishman. That sure sounds like a threat. I don't respond well to threats. I get a twitchy trigger finger, see?" Sally replied into the receiver in a voice that carried the strength of a Sherman battle tank about to out-flank an enemy position just off the Siegfried line. "And when my finger twitches, goons like you tend to wind up dead. Like that boob this morning on Fennimore. Maybe you were there?  Say, I didn't catch your name?  Just so we can get it right on your headstone."

'You have been warned. The book or your life,' the voice said and hung up.

Sally held onto the receiver for a few more seconds before she slammed it onto the telephone. A grim mask fell over her face as she looked at Gennaro whose own features paled. "We got trouble coming, friend. Bad trouble. Sonovabitch, I knew it," she said and smacked her fists together.

"The Calabreses?"

"No. Our emerald-green pals from the waterfront. Jimmy The Ice-Pick's crew. Dammit…"

"But… who told?"

"It could have been anybody," Sally said and put her hands akimbo. "It coulda been Orlando or his boozehound brother Ramón or… hell, it could have been one of the brilliantine boys who got royally shafted in the last promotion and decided to get even with the suckers."

It was clear by the puzzled frown on Gennaro's forehead that he hadn't understood much of that, but he shook his head and got up in a hurry. "We must leave. Now. Before they come!"

"No. Well, yeah, you and Maureen need to get the hell out of sight in a damned hurry, but I'll stay and fight. I didn't build all this only to see a buncha wharf rats come in and tear it down."

"But what we can do?"

Sally ran her fingers through her hair a couple of times before she broke out in a nod. "Okay. I got a plan. My next-door neighbor knows a thing or two about being hunted by the a-holes of the world. See?  He's a little craggy but he'll help once he knows the score. So I want you, Maureen and Vicky to get into his inner office and stay there no matter how crazy the lead storm's gonna be out here. All right?"

"But-"

"It wasn't a suggestion, Gennaro."

Gennaro stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the private investigator before he spun around and hurried over to the suitcases and the duffel bag that they had put by the sofa bed.

"We don't have time for that!  You're just gonna hafta get by without your silk PJs tonight, pal," Sally said as she lit yet another Serrano cigarette; the gas lighter was soon clicked shut and slid back into her rear pocket.

Gennaro went down on his knees and opened the leather straps that kept the large, shapeless bag tied. "The book!  I have the book here… you take it… you know how to-"

"Holy hell, you've been carrying that thing around the whole Goddamned time?  Why didn't you put it in a safety deposit box or something?  Were you afraid the bank might get robbed?"

"No. Many, many banks under Calabrese control. They know me too well," Gennaro said as he pulled out an eight-by-eleven inch notebook. He briefly stared at it before he got back to his feet and handed it to Sally.

"Figures," Sally mumbled around the cigarette. Taking the book, she looked at a few pages - a large plume of pale-gray smoke escaped her mouth as she read a couple of random names on a random page. "Well, I'll be darned. I'm obviously no expert, but this looks like the real deal. This is a Goddamned blockbuster!"

"Is why I took it. I want to end this crime and violence. All the violence," Gennaro said and wiped his damp brow. He looked at Sally for a moment before he tied the duffel bag and pushed it over next to the suitcases once more.

Sally kept staring at the book but eventually ran back to the desk and hid it among the case files for the time being. "Gennaro, how in the hell did a straight-up gentleman like you ever get mixed up with the Don and those goons?  Night-and-day doesn't even begin to describe the difference between ya!"

"Only reason is my family tree. We are distant related. After war, my own family had almost nothing left so I travel to USA to meet distant family. They took care of me."

"Yeah. The Don and his Calabrese connections are swell folks, all right. They certainly know how to take care of people," Sally said before she knocked off some ash into the overfilled ashtray. "So you started working for them to repay their favor?"

"Yes."

"And they sucked you in to their world of pain."

"Yes. I understand now."

"Better late than never. All right, we need to hustle- ah, we need to hurry. The sooner we talk to Birnbaum the better. The hoodlum I spoke to on the phone didn't sound like he was joking," Sally said and put her hand on Gennaro's shoulder to guide him toward the door.

"What he say?"

Sally let out a dark grunt as they left her office and hurried along the hallway. "Trust me… you don't wanna know."

---

Vicky had been showing Maureen the ins and outs of the seemingly mysterious bookmaking business when the door to the office opened; the two ladies were soon joined by Sally and Gennaro. Maureen ran over to her husband-to-be and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Is Daddy here?  Are we leaving?"

"No. Sally will tell," Gennaro said and leaned down to give Maureen a brief kiss on the lips.

"Vicky, we got a bad storm brewin'," Sally said in a no-nonsense fashion that not only made Maureen gasp but Vicky stand up straight and look concerned. "I just heard from one of McGarrigle's boys. I didn't recognize the voice but I have a feeling it might be the same, damned bruiser I've already run into a couple of times."

"Do we need to leave?" Vicky said and adjusted her glasses.

Sally moved over to the desk where Vicky waited for her. She leaned in to speak to her friend's ears only: "No, there's no time. It'll go down pretty soon, doll. You need to talk to Birnbaum at once. I need you… all three of you… to get into the inner office and stay there until I signal you. Does ol' Ira still have the-"

"Sally, listen to me!" Vicky said and grabbed hold of the blazer. "We must call the FBI or the police!  Surely you can't fight a horde of-"

"I can and I will, doll. We ain't got no time to call anyone. Just talk to Ira Birnbaum right now… he'll understand. You'll be much safer in there than out here."

"But… but what if you get wounded and can't-"

"Then that'll be all she wrote," Sally said in a gruff voice. "But it ain't gonna happen. The goon who gets the better of Sally Swackhamer ain't been born yet."

"I don't worry about the goons… I worry about the bullets they fire!"

"I know, toots. Just get into the inner office and stay there until I signal you. Please!"  When her words seemed to have a hard time getting through to Vicky Prince, Sally stood up on tip-toes and placed a kiss on the taller woman's cheek. "Please?"

"Okay… okay. But duck whenever they shoot at you!"

Sally let out a laugh that was a little more unrestrained than she had wanted. "Gee whiz, doll… I'll be sure to make a note of that!  Now git. Ain't no tellin' how much time-"

The shrill ringing of the telephone back in Sally's office made her spin around and hurry back through the hallway. Storming into the office, she grabbed the receiver and said: "Yeah?"

'Just hand over the book and nobody dies, shamus. Last chance. What'll it be?'

"Sorry, Paddy O'Paddy… you got the wrong Goddamned number!" Sally roared and slammed the receiver onto the telephone.

She ran back to the bookmaker's office just in time to see Vicky come out from the inner room - they exchanged a quick thumbs-up and a wave before Vicky led Gennaro and Maureen behind the reinforced door.

*
*
CHAPTER 10

As Sally returned to her own office, she wiped her damp brow on her shirtsleeve while taking a quick inventory. She only wore her regular shoulder-holster, but she had added all the spare magazines she had to the pockets under her right arm. After patting the Browning Hi-Power to make sure it was buttoned down tight, she made a beeline for the desk where she pulled out the top drawer to retrieve her second Hi-Power.

She initially stuck it inside her waistband at the back but reconsidered at once and put it into her right-hand blazer pocket instead. Her handguns were in place and primed to end the careers of a few goons, but she had a hunch she needed even greater firepower.

First things first: the ledger. Grabbing the book that all and sundry were after, she hurried over to one of the metal filing cabinets and put her shoulder to it. Little by little, inch by inch, the heavy cabinet was pushed away from the wall - just enough to create a perfect hiding place for the book.

Once the ledger was safe flat against the wall, she forced the cabinet back to where it had been for the past several years. She took a step back to admire her handiwork. The rug had only been given a small nudge - but that was soon rectified - and the action had left no scratches on the floor.

"Works. Nobody ever gonna guess it's been moved," she mumbled before she went over to the cabinet labeled 'L.' The bottom drawer was soon pulled open. Grunting, she pulled out a genuine Sicilian Lupara: a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun of the side-by-side variety where the wooden stock and the metal barrels had been sawn off to create the perfect concealed weapon.

It didn't carry the same kind of ornamental decorations that most other Luparas did, but its lack of flash had no impact on the firepower. She had claimed it as spoils of war after an altercation with a junior hit man who had gone after her to build his reputation and literally carve a notch on the Lupara's stock. They had both gained something from the showdown - she got the weapon and the junior hit man got a nice final resting spot in the family mausoleum.

Being just over a foot long in its cut-down state, the Lupara didn't look like much compared to an M3 'Grease Gun' submachine gun or even the legendary Thompsons that all the gangsters had used back in the bloody, old days, but the double-doses of instant death that came from the two barrels could not be argued with.

The powerful firearm was equipped with a leather strap meant to go around the user's shoulder, so she quickly whipped off the blazer to pull the Lupara into position. A steely smile spread over her lips as she put the blazer back on - the pockets were soon full of all the shotgun shells she could carry.

Commotion down on Eighty-seventh Street made her hurry over to the windows. Two cars had parked at the curb on the opposite side of the street; a third joined the first two just as she took in the worrying sight - one of the cars was the familiar pale-blue, badly dented Chevrolet. The wild and destructive chase through Mooresburg City's mean streets and back alleys hadn't made it any prettier, but it was still a good match to the driver's ugly mug.

A closer inspection of the scene revealed that the wharf rat bruiser and eight of his closest pals seemed to have heard there was a new jazz-combo in town that they all wanted to see before it was too late. By now, none of them tried to blend in so they all stuck out like sore thumbs in their typically crude heavy-duty work clothes and large boots. Most wore flat caps, pork pie hats or similar types of blue-collar headwear. No weaponry was visible yet, but all would be armed with at least a .32 revolver that seemed to be the firearm of choice up north at the docks.

Sally's steely smile vanished and was replaced by a grim mask. Going back to the hallstand, she grabbed her fedora and put it on her blond locks. "I didn't want a war but it looks like everyone else did. They can have one. Those palookas better be prepared to fight 'cos hell hath no fury like a woman throwin' lead," she said to herself as she left the office and ventured into the hallway.

She stopped to ponder her best options. Every nook and cranny of the office building was as familiar to her as the back of her hand, and that would be a plus for her. Her opponents outmanned her nine to one which would be a plus for them. In short, she had to level the playing field somehow. A grunt escaped her before she spun left and ran toward the fire escape at the far end of the hallway.

---

Unusually for the buildings built in the 1920s, the fire escape was an internal concrete staircase rather than a large metal contraption bolted onto the outside of the end wall. The stairwell had no windows and was only lit by dim bulbs on the walls at each of the landings. As expected, it reeked of garbage, reefer joints and human waste.

Moving with stealth, Sally opened the fire door and stepped onto the landing. She peeked over the central railing and strained her hearing to sense if someone had already entered the staircase down at ground level. It seemed she was alone there save for a hissing alley cat, so she turned around and ran up the next flight of stairs to get to the floor above her office.

She made it upstairs in record time. The upper fire door was soon cracked ajar so she could peek past the thick panel. The hallway was empty, so she took off at great speed toward the identical stairwell at the other end.

Halfway was as far as she got before a shadow of a person stepped out into the corridor directly ahead of her. She clenched her jaw hard and whipped up the Lupara to strike first, but a deep gasp uttered in a female voice - not to mention the bad fright that had been etched onto the shock-white face of an elderly woman - convinced her to hold off pulling the trigger.

"Lady, you need to get back inside!  The ghost of Al Capone's gonna be walkin' by here any minute now… we're gonna have one helluva shootin' war. Yeah?" Sally said as she glanced at the ornate letters on the door - it seemed it was the administrative headquarters for the West Mooresburg Crochet & Needlework Club. "You got a telephone in there?"

"N- no…" the elderly lady croaked as she literally clutched her pearls.

"Damn. All right. But get back inside. The lead's gonna fly soon," Sally continued as she took off toward the fire door.

Opening it, she peeked out and prepared to strain her hearing once more - but she didn't even need to as the stairwell echoed with plenty of clangs created by the clumsy, hobnailed work boots worn by the strike team. Nobody spoke so it seemed they were taking it very seriously.

Sally held her breath as she heard hinges squeaking from the floor below. She counted the seconds before they squeaked again - it turned out to be four seconds. A quick calculation said that three to five men had had time to enter the hallway below depending on how nimble they were on their feet.

A mocking grin flashed across her face when she came to the conclusion that the wharf rats weren't nimble whatsoever. It meant that a maximum of three men had gone toward the offices which left six. Nobody in their right mind would assign six men to watch the same stairwell; three to four opponents would be a better bet. The final two would be outside watching the exits.

With a heart that tried to thump its way out of her chest, Sally inched downstairs with the Lupara in a rock-steady two-hand grip. Her gum-shoes acted as the perfect companions as they made no sound whatsoever on the concrete steps.

The first flight of stairs offered no obstacles of any kind, but the next one had been infested with a pair of man-sized rodents of the worst-dressed kind. The two goons waited by the fire door holding their revolvers ready. They hadn't noticed Sally sneaking up on them and had no eye for anything but the door they had been told to guard.

When she was within ten paces of them, she used her thumb to cock both barrels. The metallic clicks were as loud as a thunderclap in the quiet stairwell, and it made the men freeze in place; one soon let out a curse in a foreign language that might have been Gaelic.

"Drop those bean-shooters and grab some air, fellas," Sally said in a quiet but insistent fashion. "Youse guys can yell for your buddies if ya like. I wouldn't, though, 'cos it's gonna be the last thing you'll-"

Instead of yelling, the goon who had let out the curse snapped around and held up his revolver. A split second later, a pot shot rang out that struck the wall not twenty inches from Sally's head. It produced a shower of pale-gray chips of concrete before it ricocheted further up the stairwell.

The goon's associate whipped up his own revolver to join the fight. It left Sally no choice but to respond in the messiest fashion possible. The second goon had the intention but not the time to squeeze the trigger as the double barrels of the Lupara took care of business Sicilian-style: with a deafening boom and a spraying of hot death.

The dead bodies of the two goons were thrown backward in identical grotesque poses as the full brunt of the buckshot slammed into their chests and midsections. The men landed with the same grace as sacks of cement while reams of blood that spewed from the horrible wounds painted the pale-gray concrete crimson all around them.

At the same time, the Lupara's recoil made Sally take a stumbling step back that nearly saw her end up on her rear on the stairs. "Goddammit!  Those stupid fools!  I warned 'em!  Two down. Seven to go," she said while she cracked open the shotgun and ejected the spent shells. A couple of fresh ones were soon inserted before she closed the weapon with a meaty clunk.

The thunderous shotgun blast had alerted the other goons and hoodlums from the gang of the feared Jimmy 'The Ice-Pick' McGarrigle, the self-proclaimed King Of The Docks. Shouting, inarticulate roaring and the occasional pot shot were let out all along the hallway, but Sally was more interested in the distant noises of footfalls that seemed to run down toward the fire escape at the opposite end.

She let go of the Lupara and yanked her Browning Hi-Power from its holster. Getting down on one knee, she flung the door open and sent off five fast rounds toward the various targets along the hallway. One man went down after a red rose blossomed on his chest; another caught one in the leg and dragged himself out of the firing line.

A second later, the remaining men returned fire which made Sally slam the door shut in an almighty hurry. Chipped woodwork and chunks of concrete were sent hurtling through the air by the flying lead, but none of the shots ever came close to posing a threat.

Sally moved ahead once more and held the door ajar - not by much, but enough for her to stick her hand and her Browning through it and send another batch of little friends in the general direction of the hoodlums. She didn't hit much in the sneak attack, but the sound of smashed glass raining down onto the floor did reach her ears. "Oh, swell," she mumbled to herself, "I probably just blew my own frosted pane all to hell…"

Another barrage of lead came at her from the hallway, so she ducked away from the door to take a small breather. Sudden noises from below reached her. Moving fast so she wouldn't risk getting caught in an ambush, she grabbed hold of one of the dead goons and dragged the body over to block the fire door.

The noises from the stairwell came closer, so she ejected the magazine to check how many rounds she had left in the Browning: three was the short answer. "Dammit, I only got one… one and a half, maybe… out of ten shots!  Focus, Sally… focus, aim, shoot," she mumbled before she holstered the Hi-Power and reached for the Lupara.

Jumping up, she raced up the next flight of stairs and slipped down onto her stomach so she had a perfect field of fire. She cocked both barrels to be ready for anything. The goons in the hallway began to push and shove the door to get it to open, but the dead body was in the way.

Their delay in getting through meant the men who rushed up the staircase got there first. The two new men were dressed like all the others who worked in the docks offloading the packet coasters and the international freighters: black work boots, dark pants and sturdy jackets over bricklayers' shirts. One was bare-headed while the other wore a greasy, old pork-pie hat that had seen better days.

They glared at their dead buddies by the door before they spun around and continued up the flight of stairs holding their revolvers ready - they ran directly into the path of the Lupara's two barrels. They only discovered the black eyes of death when it was too late.

Sally held the sawn-off stock to her shoulder as she squeezed the trigger. The second boom was no less thunderous than the first, and in fact made dust fly up from the steps nearest it.

The men had only been a few feet from the muzzle blasts, so their bloody remains were shredded in an even more thorough and grotesque fashion than their comrades. Chunks of this and that rained down from a crimson cloud that had formed in the stairwell. The bodies took to the air as well and moved through a perfect parabolic flight until they landed with heavy thuds just inside the door, thus blocking it even more.

"Five down… four to go," Sally said in a steely voice as she cracked open the shotgun. A fresh set of shells was soon inserted before she let the Lupara rest on its leather strap. Drawing her Hi-Power, she ran down the staircase to get to the alley adjacent to the office building.

---

Turning the corner into the inner courtyard, she spotted a single opponent preparing to slash the tires on her old Ford Coupe. The man was too far out of range for the shotgun, so she let it hang on the strap and rushed forward holding her Browning ready.

She made it to within fifteen paces before she drew a deep breath. "Hey!  Ya dirty, rotten sonovabitch!" she roared at the top of her lungs to get her opponent's attention. Another roar escaped her when she noticed the hoodlum had already done the nasty to the right-front tire. "I'm gonna make ya pay for that!  Reach for the clouds, fool!"

The goon, who appeared to be younger than the others, initially jumped back but soon thrust his hands in the air. Despite the afternoon gloom, the blade he continued to have a firm grip on glinted in the grayish light almost like he didn't yet know whether to surrender or attack.

"Drop that chive or I'll provide ya with a glorious sunset, pal!  Drop it! Now!"

Instead of listening to the threatening tone in Sally's voice, the young goon suddenly lurched forward and thrust the knife hard at the private investigator.

Sally jumped to the side as fast as she could but still received a long tear in the side of her blazer jacket. A measured response was required, so she squeezed the trigger and gave the undertakers a little more business.

"Dumb boob. Three to go… and one of those is that ass-ugly chief bruiser," she said as she stood over the stone-dead youngling. She glared at her ruined jacket before she holstered the Hi-Power and reached for the Lupara instead.

No more than two heartbeats later, she let the shotgun be once more as a barrage of shots rang out from somewhere above her. She howled and ducked behind her battered Ford that soon became a stationary target for the unseen triggerman. Aiming at the windows in the office building, Sally fired the remaining two shots to empty the active magazine.

Ducking back down, she ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in. She inched upward to look through the windshield that was already cracked following the car chase; a muzzle flash soon revealed the position of at least one shooter. As the bullet smashed the remains of the Ford's windshield to pieces, Sally jumped up and fired two rounds at the open window where she had seen the blinking light. She had no idea if she had hit anyone or not, but the firing ceased which enabled her to sprint over to the rear entrance that would take her back to the fire escape.

She leaned against the door while she tried to catch her breath that came in irregular wheezes and moans from the adrenaline and all the running to and fro. In the background, several police sirens approached the office building on Eighty-seventh Street. "Aw great, the coppers are here. Now ain't that swell!  Those nincompoops 'll probably start shootin' at me like I'm one of the bad guys," she growled as she swung open the door and hurried inside.

The lower flight of stairs was empty, but she had barely set foot on the first landing before a shot rang out from above - it struck the crown of her fedora and tore it clean off her head. The shooter let out a whoop of triumph in the belief he had scored big, but the three rounds Sally sent his way made him clam up and escape further upward.

A growled "Why, that low-down son of a bee!" escaped Sally as she picked up her precious hat that sported an ungainly moth bite exactly in the most visible spot. The hat was soon back on her mop before she sprinted up the stairs to get even with the fashion-hating goon.

She caught up with not one but two of the remaining wharf rats on the landing at the second floor. The situation called for the Lupara's greater concentration of firepower but there was no time to holster the Hi-Power - working fast and efficiently, she stuffed the Browning into her coat pocket and cocked both barrels of the shotgun.

"Ah-ah, boys!  Stretch!" Sally roared as the dock workers turned the corner with their revolvers ready - they came to screeching halts and stared at the instrument of death. "Lemme introduce ya to my pals Buck and Shot!  Ya think ya can outrun 'em?  Well, why dontcha be clever saps and put down those roscoes there while ya still got legs to run on?  Dontcha hear those sirens?  The flatfeet gonna be here any second now and they ain't gonna play fair if they see ya wavin' those fire rods around!"

The men shared a brief look before they dropped their revolvers and reached for the sky.

"Now ain't that nice!  Okay, fellas, come down here slow and steady-like. Yeah?"  While the men responded and began to go down the stairs one step at a time, Sally kept them covered with the Lupara. "Where's the big, ugly bruiser?  The one with the busted nose and the cauliflower ears?"

"He split when the lead got hot," one of the men said in a typically broad Irish accent.

"Yeah?  Where to?"

"Dunno. Back to the docks, prolly."

Sally let out a dark grunt. "Figures. I'll bet I haven't heard the last of him. Mista Flatnose got a name?"

"Declan O'Leary."

"I'll make a note of that. All right, boys. Let's take it one step at a time. That's right, one boot in front of the other until ya reach the courtyard. Yeah?  C'mon," Sally said and waved the Lupara at the descending flight of stairs. The men soon complied with her polite request. "Nice and easy does it. Move too fast and you gonna get a free harp lesson courtesy of Yours Truly."

---

Sally could hardly believe her eyes when she and the two goons exited the fire escape and stepped out into the inner courtyard - the word chaos couldn't even begin to describe it. In addition to two police vehicles that arrived with wailing sirens and flashing beacon lights, a black sedan with tinted windows raced around the corner on two wheels.

A loud exclamation of "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" burst out of one of the dock workers at the sight of the six dangerous-looking men who rode on the black sedan's running boards.

The black-clad men who were all armed with World War II-surplus M3 'Grease Gun' submachine guns swarmed off the sedan the second it came to a halt next to the police cars. Fanning out, they had soon established a defensive perimeter. One of the men opened the sedan's back door and flipped a few switches on a field pack-radio. Once it was ready, he grabbed the horn and spoke into it.

Sally snorted and pushed her fedora back from her brow. "Yeah, okay… and I thought I'd brought plenty of firepower… I guess there's always a bigger fish. Damn!"

While the regular uniformed police officers arrested the two surviving goons and surveyed the one Sally had dealt with over by her Ford, the private investigator in question spun around on her heel and ran back upstairs to take care of the real important business.

---

To be on the safe side, she drew her Hi-Power and sneaked along the corridor that led to her agency and the bookmaker's office. Plenty of spilled blood on the floor of the hallway marked the spot where the first man she had hit had gone down - that he wasn't there any longer made her break out in a puzzled grunt as she had seen the characteristic red rose blossoming on his chest. Drag marks on the floor led over to her office. The door frame around the center lock had been ripped apart through a well-placed kick; it had forced the door open, but at least the expensive frosted pane was intact.

A red splash surrounding an impact hole in the ceiling showed she had grazed or nicked the man she had shot at while downstairs in the courtyard - the red palm print on the wall seemed to confirm her theory.

Another dark grunt escaped her as she hunched over and ran closer to the potential ambush inside her office. When she reached the door, she stuck the Browning through the opening to draw out any possible attacker. No hot lead, fierce cussing or other kind of response came back at her.

After taking a deep breath, she kicked open the door and stormed inside. She came to a brief halt to stare at a dead goon that had only made it to the center of the floor before croaking - he was nose-down on the rug, but it could only be the one she had shot in the chest when the fire fight had still been in its infancy.

A dead body on the floor typically meant the immediate threat was over, so she moved over to the door to the bathroom and put her ear to it. All she could hear was the usual sound of her toilet's leaky cistern. She used the tip of her gum-shoe to inch the door open, but it soon became obvious that nothing or nobody had felt a need to hide in there during the exchange of lead.

She stepped back to the center of the office floor and slammed her hands on her hips as she stared daggers at the dead goon. An unfortunate smell spread from the body as his bladder and bowels had released upon the point of death. "Aw, what a jerk. He coulda taken a whizz and a dump before he went on the job!  Now I have to get a new rug!" she mumbled before she spun around to check out the next-door office.

---

The anteroom of Ira Birnbaum's bookmaking office seemed quiet and undisturbed, but safe had always been better than sorry so Sally entered with great stealth and the Lupara pointed straight ahead.

A shrill, unexpected noise suddenly cut through the eerie silence. Jerking up on tip-toes, Sally spun around and readied her finger on the shotgun's trigger. At the last moment before she sent a double-dose of buckshot at the offending opponent, she realized the shrill noise was in fact a ringing telephone. She let out a strangled chuckle as she stared at the three telephones on the desk where Vicky usually worked.

"Sorry, pal, the bookie ain't home right now," she said before she lowered the shotgun and turned toward the reinforced inner door. She inched over there and put her ear to it. The door was too thick for voices to carry through it, so she had to place a bet - she chuckled when she considered she was in the right place to do so - that everyone inside was safe.

She turned the shotgun around and used the sawn-off stock to knock on the door so it could be heard inside. "Vicky?  Vicky, it's over!" she shouted, knowing her voice might not carry far enough if she didn't put plenty of volume behind it.

Ten seconds went by with no activity; then the sounds of the door's multiple locks and chains being manipulated filtered out into the anteroom. A few seconds after that, the door cracked open and the tip of a familiar-looking silver Beretta was stuck outside.

"Gennaro, it's me." Sally said and took a long step back so she would be visible in the tiny crack the door was held ajar. "This deal's over. The bad guys are dead or booked. Are youse guys all right in there?"

'Yes, we all right,' Gennaro said, but he barely had time to complete the brief sentence before Vicky yanked the door fully open and stormed outside.

The secretary spread her arms out wide and pulled an unprepared Sally into the hug of a lifetime. A hundred squeezes, moans, groans and caresses - as well as a deluge of kisses on cheeks, chins, foreheads and pretty much everywhere else in the general area of Sally's face - were distributed within the span of a short minute. It wasn't until Vicky was in the process of laying down a huge smooch directly on Sally's lips that she realized she may have overdone it just a tad.

A scarlet surge exploded all over her face as she stepped back with a sheepish look that rivaled any ever seen at the legendary Debutante's Ball. Her glasses had been knocked askew during the wild reunion, but she reached up and adjusted them - then she noticed the lenses had fogged over.

For Sally, a snicker bubbled up to the surface. The snicker turned into a chuckle, a husky laugh and finally a full-on belly-buster that she had to lean her head back to let out.

While Vicky tended to her glasses, Sally helped Gennaro and Maureen out of the inner office before they sealed the reinforced door shut. The bookmaker's parting salute was: 'Will someone pick up that telephone!  We're meant to be working here!'

Vicky collected herself before she wobbled over to her desk and bumped down onto her swivel-chair. Picking up the receiver, she updated all her regular indexes while she listened to the bet being placed.

---

"It is over?  It is truly over?" Gennaro said as he pulled a pale Maureen into a sideways hug - the young woman's wide, misty eyes never left the lethal hardware carried by the private investigator.

Sally nodded. "Your part of it, yeah. The Leathernecks have landed downstairs so I'm guessin' Miss Geraldine and Big Daddy himself won't be far behind. I swear, I ain't seen that much firepower since the newsreels from the battle of Berlin. I coulda used them a little sooner, but there ya go."

Maureen let out a deep, long sigh that came from the bottom of her soul. The misty eyes overflowed for real, and she dug her face into Gennaro's chest for support. "I've always been frightened of those people… they're nothing but cold-blooded killers. Bought mercenaries," she said in a mumble. A moment later, she ran a soaked handkerchief over her eyes to mop up the worst of the tears.

"Hey, Miss Maureen," Sally said, "dontcha worry 'bout nothing. Gennaro and I will only allow the Dynamite Dame and your father to see you. Ain't that so, pardner?"

"Very much so," Gennaro said and broke out in a vehement nod.

Vicky joined them a moment later. She continued to wobble and her cheeks were still marked by the red tidal wave that had flooded them, but the sheepish smile had been replaced by a grateful one. She intended to sneak her arm inside Sally's in a positive gesture, but all the hardware she found there only underscored how dangerous the situation had been for all of them - the sight of the round bullet hole in the fedora didn't make it any better. "Are you all right, Sally?" she said for her friend's ears only. "I was so worried I could hardly breathe… but I had to be the brave one. I hated it."

"I'm fine, doll. Vicky," Sally said with a wink and a smile. "It got a little close once or twice. My hat and my jacket got nicked, but nothin' a little needle and thread can't cure. Could I perhaps persuade you to find your sewing kit-"

"How many did you kill?"

"Well, two surrendered. One chickened out… the chief bruiser, wouldya believe. The same damn goon who chased us earlier today. Gee whiz, doll, I sure woulda liked to have gotten my paws on the big lug-"

"Sally. How many did you kill?"

Without showing even the tiniest amount of remorse, Sally let out a calm "Six."

The chilling fact had been delivered in such a casual tone that Vicky drew a deep, wheezing breath that was close to, but not exactly, a shocked gasp. "Six?!  Oh, Gawd…"

Sally let out a dark grunt. "No, toots. God had nothing to do with it. This was a joint venture of Mister Browning, Signore Lupara and Miss Sally. Tell ya what, though… the grub-line down at Lucifer's is gonna be pretty long tonight. That's what those palookas got out of comin' after me. After us. Maybe Jimmy The Ice-Pick learned a lesson today. I sure hope so… but on the other hand-"

Sally didn't have time to finish the sentence before further commotion behind her made her spin around and reach for the Hi-Power in her holster. As she stood there a heartbeat away from pulling the trigger, she sent a dark, fiery glare at Geraldine Van Eyck whose white face proved she hadn't thought her rapid approach could cause such a reaction. "Here's some free advice, see… knock-knock. Get it?  Yeah?" Sally said as she inserted the Browning into the leather holster.

Geraldine had no time to reply as her spooked eyes soon fell on Maureen - giving the annoyed private investigator a very wide berth, she hurried over to the daughter of her employer and pulled her into a brief hug. "I'm so relieved to see you safe, Miss Brazelton!  We've all been greatly concerned about your safety."

"I'm fine… tired but fine," Maureen said in a tiny voice. She kept looking at the door for the person she wanted most of all to enter. When nothing happened, she looked at Geraldine with a puzzled expression on her face. "But… where's Daddy?"

"He's downstairs in the car, Miss Brazelton. Ah… your father wanted to make sure it wasn't a trick or a…" - she glanced at Sally - "an attempt to blackmail him… or some other kind of shady business."

Sally let out a growl and stepped forward. "Gee whiz!  Shady business?  Why, it certainly was, see?  Plenty shady if you ask me. I presume the blood in the hallway was the cleaning lady driving her utility cart over her bunion?  Okay, that doesn't explain the dead body next door…" Sally said and pretended to work out the inner logic of the unusual events. A moment later, she sobered and pinned Geraldine Van Eyck to the spot with a hard glare. "Dammit, you already spoke to Maureen over the phone earlier today!  How much more proof does this General of yours need, anyway?"

"He was worried it might have been an impostor…" Geraldine said while looking at Maureen instead of Sally.

"Why, naturally!  An impostor… well, I can see that!" Sally said and threw her arms high in the air. "He didn't speak to her. You did. So he doesn't trust his right-hand assistant to recognize the voice of his own daughter tho' she's only been away from home for, what?  Three weeks?  Less than that?  Oh yes, I'm sure you'd forget the sound of her voice in that period. You know what, Miss Gee?  This stinks. It stinks to high heaven!  I just laid waste to half a gang of crooks to protect your boss' daughter, yeah?  I had expected to find a pot of gratitude at the end of that particular rainbow!"

"General Brazelton will be generous when it comes to the financial-"

"Well, that's neat, doll, but I ain't talkin' about moolah tho' I'll take the check and cash it before he can annul it. No, I'm talking about Big Daddy actually showin' up to say 'I love ya' to his daughter and 'thanks, Miss Sally' to me!  Yeah?"

An awkward silence spread between the people present in the office. Vicky adjusted her glasses. Maureen concealed a snicker with her hand. Gennaro pulled his bride-to-be into a sideways hug, and Geraldine Van Eyck just looked embarrassed.

Grunting, Sally reached for her pack of Serrano's at once. Once she had lit up, she took a deep puff to let the smoke reach down into the deepest recesses of her lungs - she needed them cleansed of the last traces of the stink of death that had spread throughout the office building.

A knock on the doorframe to the bookmaker's office made everyone turn around - Sally couldn't help but let out a "See?  That's how it's done…" under her breath.

A uniformed police sergeant entered the office and promptly scratched his neck at the unusual collection of people in there. "Good afternoon. Has anyone noticed there's a dead body next door?"

Sally let out an amused puff of pale-gray cigarette smoke before she thrust her hand in the air. "I have!  Ooooh, do I win a lollipop?"

A long groan escaped Vicky whose eyes soon went on a tour of the ceiling before they landed on a grinning Sally Swackhamer.

---

Ten minutes and an endless ream of explanations later, the motley group of people reconvened at the foot of the stairwell in the inner courtyard. In addition to the black sedan and the two police vehicles - that had been boxed in by those that had arrived later - an ambulance, the coroner's van and the familiar, yacht-sized LaSalle Special took up so much space there wouldn't have been room for one of Mooresburg City's famous hot dog concession carts if one had happened to be nearby.

Maureen, Gennaro and Vicky stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the pandemonium in the courtyard, but it was old hat to Sally who strolled over to the LaSalle with Geraldine Van Eyck in tow. She whistled a jaunty tune through her teeth as she opened the rear door and stuck her head inside the passenger compartment that still resembled a ballroom. "Hiya, General. Why, I do believe this is where youse guys in the military say mission accomplished. Yeah?"

Everett Brazelton sat all alone on the huge back seat; he wore trekking boots and a dark-green hunting uniform that had been tailor-made for him from his own design. The pine needles that stuck to the pants and the clumps of dirt on his boots proved he had been brought directly from the woods near his mansion to the courtyard. "Hello, Miss Swackhamer. So you really have found my daughter?"

Sally chewed on her cheek for a couple of seconds while pondering how far to go with the barb she had already lined up. Ultimately, she settled for saying "That's right," before she took a step back and waved Maureen and Gennaro closer to the limousine.

The shocking sight of police officers and the city coroner's crew literally dragging the bodies of the slain gangsters over to the nondescript van for proper identification made the sensitive Maureen bury her face in Gennaro's chest all the way to her father's car. When they reached it, they waited outside for a few moments until it dawned on them that Everett Brazelton wasn't about to step outside into the open despite the presence of his own Marine Corps security detail, an entire squad of armed, uniformed policemen plus Sally's own formidable arsenal.

Maureen let out a deep sigh as she bent down and entered the large vehicle. Gennaro remained outside to begin with out of politeness, but Maureen reached behind her to grab his hand and pull him inside as well.

Sally was determined to stand in the open door until the General or one of his Leathernecks would tell her to get lost. She smiled at the visibly nervous Gennaro who had to gulp several times as he sat down on the far right of the bench seat.

Tension mounted for a few seconds before Maureen and her father both let out identical howls while they reached out for each other. A long, crushing hug followed that didn't end until every emotion had poured over their faces.

The General spoke first: "I'm so glad to see you safe, darling… I love you and I've missed you terribly. I so dearly wish you had come to me before you decided to leave…"

"I tried, Daddy. You didn't have time to see me," Maureen said and traced her father's lined face with her hand. "Daddy, there's someone I want you to meet. Gennaro, this is my father. Dad, this is Gennaro. The man I love and the man I want to marry."

The news made the retired General come to a dead stop and his face freeze over; his eyesight was the first to come back, and he stared in utter disbelief at the bearded, dark-haired fellow with the unusual pale-blue eyes. "Him?  Gennaro… is he a foreigner?" he said in a croak.

"Yes, him. Yes, he's a foreigner… though I don't know what that's got to do with anything," Maureen said as she moved back from her father so Gennaro had room to shake hands with the General. The ambient temperature inside the LaSalle suddenly dropped several degrees as an awkward silence spread between the three people present. "Dad, this is non-negotiable. If you don't approve of the man I love, I'll walk away right this minute. I mean it."

"No, no, wait… wait!  I'm… it's just… oh… rather sudden!" Everett Brazelton croaked as he took in the sight of the far younger man sitting next to him. "Ah… hello. How do you do," he eventually said and put out his hand.

Gennaro performed a regal nod of the head while he shook the General's hand. "Good afternoon, Sir. I am Count Gennaro of San Bonnaccio in, ah… South Tyrol I believe is called in English. Not far from Bolzano in Italian-speaking zone."

"A Count?!" Everett Brazelton said; a moment later, a broad smile spread over his features. "I am honored to meet such a distinguished gentleman!  A Count!  Good Lord, Maureen, you must tell me all about it at once!"

Maureen and Sally shared a brief look before the investigator moved back from the door to give the happy trio a little privacy - she returned to it and stuck her head in for a second time when she heard the General call her name. "Miss Sally's my name and reunitin' fractured families is my game. You rang?"

"Miss Swackhamer, you may refer to Miss Van Eyck for your payment," the General said; it took a nudge on the knee by his daughter before he added: "And thank you."

"Why, ya sure is welcome and all, Mista General, Sir. It was my pleasure to work with such a proper gentleman as Count Gennaro here. And your own charming daughter, too, of course. Hi de ho, Mista. Catch ya on the flip-flop. Yeah?"

While the General furrowed his brow as he tried to parse the odd language, Maureen quickly reached out and put a hand on Sally's arm. "I'll be in touch!  You'll be a guest of honor at our wedding!"

"Haw, I can't wait for the canapés, sugar… see ya then. Count Gennaro, I know ya gonna treat her well, yeah?  Hi de ho, ev'rybody," Sally said with a grin before she closed the vault-like door and stepped over to Vicky Prince.

The limousine and the black sedan belonging to the heavily armed Marine Corps detail took off. Both vehicles drove slowly along the inner courtyard to be able to swerve around all the uniformed officers - once they reached the ninety-degree right-hand turn at the far end, they were soon out of sight.

Sally snorted and wrapped her arm around Vicky's waist. "Case closed and all wrapped up in a neat bow tie. It's time for booze, babes and maybe a ball or two of the pool kind. You got anything to do the rest of the day, toots?"

"I have plenty to do, Sally, and so do you," Vicky said and pointed at the hive of uniformed police officers who continued to swarm around the courtyard. "And then there's Miss Van Eyck who seems to have been marooned here with us commoners," she continued as she moved her pointing finger over to the well-dressed lady whose pretty face held an odd, forlorn expression.

"We better humor her. She's got our dough."

"I see," Vicky said and adjusted her glasses. "As soon as she's written the check, I'll hurry over to the bank to cash it. We can't be too careful these days."

"We sure can't, toots."

Sally had already opened her mouth to add another quip when Vicky added: "And my name's Vicky!"

"I know… sugar," Sally said with a wink so saucy it needed a warning label from the Surgeon General - the deep sigh she got in return made her laugh out loud and gave her enough of a boost to deal with the nonsense surrounding them.

*
*
CHAPTER 11

Four-and-a-half hours and twice as many conversations with various police officers of the uniformed and plainclothes kind later, Sally sat at her desk enjoying a glass of Irish whiskey and a half-smoked Cuban cigar that she had found in her filing cabinet under 'H' for Havanese Heaven. She had her feet up on the corner of the desk while she looked at nothing in particular and listened to the rain tapping against the windows overlooking Eighty-seventh Street.

Only the lamp on her desk had been turned on which left the single-room office a dark and moody affair. A few casefiles that needed updating had been spread out on the desk top; they took up space next to the open ledger that all and sundry within the Mooresburg City underworld was willing to kill their grandmother for, but she had pushed all the paperwork aside to have a quiet moment to herself.

The 4-Leaf Clover whiskey was tasty, the genuine Cuban cigar was excellent, Maureen Brazelton and Count Gennaro of San Bonnaccio were safe and together, the General's check hadn't bounced, and the fact she had made it through not one but two vicious run-and-gun firefights plus a car chase without getting as much as a hangnail - not counting her damaged coat and hat - was even better.

The seven men she had killed over the course of the day weighed heavily on the negative side of the balance sheet. All seven had fired upon her first so she felt little remorse or guilt for ending their lives, but the consequences of her actions could cause an even greater obstacle later on.

It all depended on how Jimmy 'The Ice-Pick' McGarrigle would react. The boss of the syndicate that operated in and around the docks and the waterfront in general was known for his volatile temper. If McGarrigle got a bee in his bonnet about the humiliating defeat, it could signal the start of a hot, violent autumn for the detective agency. That Declan O'Leary, the chief bruiser with the mangled nose and the cauliflower ears, had managed a clean getaway also provided a major source of annoyance.

After taking a deep puff of the cigar, she put it on a saucer that had been brought into play after the dastardly ashtray had refused to take more ash from anyone. She downed the remains of the whiskey in the glass before she poured herself another three fingers' worth and leaned back on the creaking swivel-chair.

"We ain't heard the last of Mista Flatnose and the Ice-Pick, that's for damn sure," she mumbled to herself before she took another deep puff of the cigar.

The rain splashing against the panes was a perfect indication of the mood in the small office - somber. She let out a sigh and took another sip of the quality whiskey.

---

Five minutes later, Vicky knocked on the doorjamb next to the spot where the goons had broken the frame earlier in the day. When she couldn't hear anything, she poked her head in to see if Sally was asleep. The two women locked eyes for a brief moment before Vicky stepped into the office. "Mr. Birnbaum has gone home now. I've closed up for tonight," she said and folded her hands in front of her.

"Yeah?  Don't forget your umbrella. The rain sounds like a nasty critter scratchin' at the windows tonight."

"I won't."

"Swell. Have a buncha sweet dreams, doll," Sally said and took a deep puff of the cigar.

Vicky broke out in a shy smile. She spent a few seconds looking around the office like she was working up the nerve for something. "I was thinking… perhaps we could talk a little?  I feel like… oh… that I need to get a few things into perspective," she said as she made her way over to the desk and the regular chairs. She put her hand on the backrest of one of them while she waited for a reply.

"Sounds swell to me, doll… but I ain't much of a conversationalist tonight. You might be doin' all the talkin'. Cheers."

Another nervous smile spread over Vicky's features as she watched Sally chug down a good portion of the amber contents of the glass in one go. "Oh, that's all right. Maybe just being together will be enough."

"Yeah."

"It was bad today, wasn't it?" Vicky said as she moved around the chair and sat down. She put her hands in her lap and folded her legs to the side in a proper, lady-like fashion.

"Yeah. Been a while since it was this messy. My blazer got ruined, my Ford looks like it's been dropped rump-first from the roof of the Excelsior and some dumb Paddy chose to croak on my rug… at least none of us shed a drop of blood. A table for one down at the city morgue would really have put a crimp in my evening."

Grunting to herself, Sally chugged down the rest of the whiskey before she reached for the bottle yet again. She reconsidered at the last moment and left the amber nectar where it was. Instead, she took several deep puffs of the cigar to keep the expensive Cuban alive and kicking.

"Gawd… I can't believe you can joke about it," Vicky mumbled and adjusted her glasses - she needed to rub her arms to counter the shiver that ran over her entire body.

"Gallows' humor, toots."

"Must be. Sally, you know I'm always willing to listen if you feel like having a heart-to-heart… or clear your conscience for that matter. Like I said before, it was a really bad day."

"I know you are. Thanks. It ain't necessary right now," Sally said and offered her friend a smile. The swivel-chair creaked once more as she leaned back and stuck her cigar between her lips. "Out there on the mean streets, it's either them or you. It was them today. Might be me tomorrow. Or tonight. Or in two minutes' time if Flatnose O'Leary or Ice-Pick McGarrigle throws a party favorite through the windows to get even."

"Or you may end your days falling off the porch swing holding a glass of peach lemonade when you're ninety-six." A faint smile creased Vicky's lips as she spoke.

Sally grunted and reached for the bottle of 4-Leaf Clover after all. "Sugar… right now, I'll be happy if I reach thirty-six."

With her attempt at brightening the mood just a little shot down in flames, Vicky bared her teeth in a concerned grimace. "Sally… how about I made us some good, strong coffee instead of all that whiskey you're pouring down?  I think we could both need it."

"Coffee?" Sally said and swiveled around. She put the three fingers' worth on the table but kept it within easy reach. "Yeah, I could use some strong coffee. This night's only gettin' started. I still have this to ponder," she continued as she tapped an index finger on the top cover of the ledger.

"Deal!  Won't be long," Vicky said as she got up from the regular chair. She offered her friend a smile before she went about her coffee-making business.

---

A short fifteen minutes later, she returned carrying a tray that held all the regular remedies for an enjoyable coffee klatsch. She had to let out an involuntary cough at the amount of smoke that billowed around the upper part of the office's atmosphere, but she managed to make her way over to the desk without needing to turn on her proverbial fog lights.

As she put the tray on the corner of the desk and distributed the mugs and the other items, she eyed Sally who had assumed her game face as she gave the ledger a close and exceedingly thorough study.

"It feels unreal that we have a genuine mob ledger in our possession… what does that thing actually contain?" Vicky said as she sat down and poured black coffee into her own mug. Ten seconds of dead silence made her say: "Sally?  I asked you a question."

"Huh?  Oh… yeah… it's quite simple, see," Sally said and got up from the swivel-chair. She moved around the desk and put the ledger in Vicky's lap so she could look at a random page. "It's in alphabetical order, sorted after the surnames. Now, this is J, yeah?  Look there," she continued as she pointed at one of the lines of text on the page.

Vicky adjusted her glasses to look where Sally's finger led her. Jonsson, Karl Johan. Councilman, East Side Borough Council. $120 mthly. 7 years. Loyal but dim. Often arr. work for Ramshacquel Constr. Cpny.

"Oh, I see… Mr. Jonsson is a councilman on the East Side who gets one hundred and twenty dollars per month from the Syndicate. Apparently in exchange for… what, exactly?  Suggesting and perhaps voting for this construction company whenever a large job needs to be carried out?"

"I knew your gorgeous brains would figure it out, sugar!  It took me three minutes to decipher… it didn't even take you three seconds!" Sally said as she peeked over Vicky's shoulder while taking in the full blast of her friend's delightful perfume.

Vicky responded by adjusting her glasses and letting out an amused "Hmmm?"

Sally chuckled as she looked down at the text in the ledger. "Loyal but dim, huh?  He gotta be if he's satisfied with one-twenty measly bucks a month for seven years straight. I'd ask for five hundred at least!"

This time, Vicky let out a grunt as she adjusted her glasses. "Well, you're not him… and whoever this fellow is, he's certainly not you. Nobody's like you. You're a true original."

"Gee whiz, doll!  I knew I'd make you come 'round eventually!" Sally said and broke out in a laugh.

"Ahem. Well, excuse me for stating the obvious," Vicky said and returned to the ledger, "but Mister, ah… Jonsson is clearly just a little fish in a vast pond."

Sally continued to grin as she leaned down to skip a couple of pages ahead. "Yeah, yeah, no question about the size of his fin, doll, but take a look at the fourth name on the Y-page."

Vicky looked down to see who Sally meant - a brief gasp escaped her. "Franklin Young!  Not the Franklin Young?"

"The one and the same," Sally said and read along from the line. "Blah, blah, blah… elected administrator for Mooresburg City infrastructure, gas, water, sanitation. $2,500 monthly. 3 years. Directly connected to Calabrese through cousin."

Pulling back, she lit a Serrano's Special Blend and drew a deep puff from the cigarette. As she clicked the gas lighter shut, she broke out in a grim nod. "That's the kind of fish I can't wait to see flopping around in the net. Hell, I can't wait to see him gutted!"

"Gawd, Sally…" Vicky said and squirmed in the seat.

"Figuratively speakin', of course, toots. Just browsing through it, I found local, regional and even national politicians. Judges, lawyers, coppers… and yeah, my special friend Lieutenant Conrad Garrett is listed as well. The dirty, rotten sonovabitch. Not his li'l buddy, Detective McFarlane, tho'. They probably consider him too much of a rube. Well, he is, so… anyway, it also lists plenty of regular folks as well who make a quick buck on the side by whispering information into the right ear. It makes me wanna puke, I'm tellin' ya."

Though Vicky grimaced at the direct language, she broke out in a slow nod to show she agreed with the gist - if not the specifics - of the statement. "Oh, if we could only send this to the FBI. I know it's impossible. But imagine if the Bureau could use it to bring down at least some parts of the Calabrese Family? Oh, that would be-"

"My blood in the gutter is what it would be," Sally said and broke out in a shrug. "Vittorio Grazziani expects it back, see?  I need to hand it over to him. If I don't and it happens to turn up at the Feds all of a sudden, what went down here today will look like some kiddo's birthday party compared to the bloody vendetta the Don will set in motion for my benefit. I can hear Angelo Corrado cheerin' and clappin' already."

Vicky fell quiet and stared at the evil book in her lap. The pragmatic, casual fashion the lines of text listed countless important people on the take made her queasy; it also made her close it with a whump. While Sally moved around the table to finally get a mug of the steaming-hot coffee, Vicky leaned back on the chair. The ledger seemed to burn her hands so she dumped it on the desk top.

They locked eyes and kept the silent connection going for a good handful of heartbeats before Sally cocked her head and let out a grunt. "Sally Swackhamer, you knucklehead… you're too much of a boob for your own good sometimes," she mumbled as she swapped the mug for the lit cigarette. After a quick puff, she reached for the receiver.

The puzzled frown that spread over Vicky's face made Sally go on: "I just got a light bulb wedged in my melon that may throw us a lifeline. Yeah?  I'll explain in a little while, toots."

"Uh… good," Vicky said before she adjusted her glasses.

-*-*-*-

Half an hour went by before the first detail of Sally's plan was revealed: a string of knocks in a special two-quick-two-slow-two-quick pattern proved the knockee was there on a covert and highly secret mission.

Once Sally opened the broken door, the person who had been summoned to carry out a special task stepped inside: Deidre Montgomery - who was an intelligent-looking woman in her late thirties - wore flat shoes and a Navy-blue overcoat. A black beret sat crooked on her short, brownish locks, but it was soon transferred to one of the coat's large side pockets. As she loosened the coat's wide belt and undid the three buttons, an elegant, tan pant suit and a dark-blue suede bag she carried over her shoulder came into view. The large bag was rectangular and resembled the type of portfolio a sketch artist might use.

She nodded a quick 'good evening' to Vicky before she moved over to the hallstand like the office was a second home to her.

Vicky's left eyebrow crept up her forehead as she observed the female guest, and especially the tell-tale body language on display between she and Sally. Vicky chewed on her cheek as she took in the obvious signs of former lovers reuniting after a while apart. A slight blush tainted her cheeks as she got up from the chair to give the ladies some privacy.

"Vicky," Sally said, "meet Deidre Montgomery, the number one forger in all of Mooresburg City. Deidre, meet Vicky Prince. She's my next-door neighbor's secretary, but far beyond that, she's one of my closest friends and allies."

"Friends?" Deidre said as she put out her hand for the traditional shaking.

Vicky shook the hand offered to her. "I'd like to think so," she said before she reached up to adjust her glasses.

Nodding, Deidre turned to look at Sally who couldn't help but grin in return.

The silence grew awkward in a matter of moments; Vicky used it to make a beeline for the door. "Ah… would anyone care for some more coffee, perhaps?" she said to have an excuse to leave.

"I'm fine, thank you," Deidre said before her attention was grabbed by the ledger. Picking it up, her experienced eye began taking in all the little details of the handwriting used.

Sally grinned again before she waved Vicky back into the office. "Gee whiz, doll… I think you oughtta stay. I promised an explanation, didn't I?  Well, if you use your long gams to come back here and then slap your cutie patootie in the seatie, I'll tell all."

Vicky let out a grunt at the overly childish language, but she relented and soon sat down once more. She folded her legs to the side in a lady-like manner and assumed an expression that said she was ready to listen to whatever explanation would come her way, but that it had better be special if she was to be convinced to stay.

"All right," Sally continued as she lit a Mohican - she had run out of her favored Serranos - "I asked Deidre to come over because I want her to make us a perfect copy of the lousy book. That's what she does and she's damned good at it."

"I'm not merely good, I'm the best," Deidre said without looking up from studying the ledger.

Hearing that, Vicky's left eyebrow went on another tour of her forehead - Sally just grinned.

"Yeah, if ya say so," the private investigator continued. "But in any case, see, my plan is to give Deidre's perfect copy to the Feds and hand back the original to Vittorio Grazziani and Don Scardamaglia."

Deidre looked up in a hurry as she recognized the names of the top bosses of the Calabrese family. She stared at Vicky before she turned to do the same at Sally. "What the hell kinda of mess did you get yourself involved in this time, Sal?  The Calabreses?  Those Joes aren't pleasant people, you know."

"Oh, I know. Trust me. But that's my plan. What's your assessment, Oh Ye Best Forger In Mooresburg City?"

Deidre fell silent and began to thumb through the book. She scrunched up her face as she took in the entries that had been written in several different pens - on one page alone, she observed the use of a fountain pen, one of the fancy, new ballpoint pens and even an old-fashioned no.2 pencil - and seemingly by several different people as well judging by the variations in the handwriting. "Hmmm. I wish you'd told me a little more over the phone, Sal. I can copy it, but it'll cost you an entire cabbage patch of greenbacks… and it'll take me four to five days. Give or take."

"Four to five days?!" Sally said and put her hands behind the back of her head like she was trying to surrender to an invisible foe. "Shingles, Deidre, we ain't got four days!  We got the night and that's it!"

"Forget it," Deidre said and slammed the ledger shut.

Sally could only keep quiet for a short moment; then she drew a deep breath and engaged in a bout of rapid-fire tit-for-tat repartee with Deidre that seemed to go around and around in circles without ever reaching any kind of conclusion.

Vicky stared wide-eyed at the two and their heated conversation; she opened her mouth several times to butt in, but Sally and Deidre's repartee was always delivered quicker so she found herself thoroughly ignored: "Please- I have an idea- please listen- Sally- Miss Montgomery, how about- please- will you please-"  It went on for so long that she eventually slammed her fist onto the armrest and barked: "I have something to say, dammit!" in a far stronger voice than she would ever use under normal circumstances.

The touch of profanity worked as Sally came to a hard stop so she could stare at her friend - Deidre stopped speaking as well.

"Thank you!" Vicky said and adjusted her glasses several times to get her annoyed glare to fit behind the lenses. "Instead of copying the entire ledger page by page, how about we went through it with a fine tooth comb and separated out all the big fish… all those despicable people in trusted positions who deserve every misfortune the exposure will send at them. And then leave out all the little fish, like Mr. Jonsson, who might only be involved to put food on the table for his wife and children… wouldn't that be fair?  And much faster?"

"Beauty and brains, toots!" Sally cried as she slapped her hands together. "Beauty, brains and some damn fine coffee, too!  Deidre, you heard the professor lady… how about it?"

Vicky scowled at Sally for a moment but soon looked at their guest for a reply.

Deidre rubbed her chin as she picked up the ledger once more. She cast another glance in it before she looked up. "I can sink my hooks into that. But I have an even better idea. The G-men have never seen this original so they'll have no way of knowing the one they get is a copy. Right?  Which means I don't even have to emulate any of the handwriting. The G-man reading it will just think the whole thing was kept by the same person… which it would be, o' course. Namely me."

Nodding in an overly enthusiastic fashion, Sally took a deep puff of the Mohican before she hurried over to peek past the slightly taller Deidre's shoulder. She glanced at the names on the page that their guest had opened at random. "Yeah. That's the best idea I've heard all day. Hell, all week. Knock it outta the ballpark, Deidre."

"Oh, I will. I always do," Deidre said - it earned her a snort by Vicky - "But it'll still cost ya a nice ol' wad of dough. Let's say… hmmm. A McKinley. For that, you'll get fifty names of your choice transferred to a new ledger. I'll have it done by midnight. I just need somewhere quiet to work."

"I can live with that. No pun intended. Gee whiz, Deidre, it sure is nice to have ya on our team this time. Also no pun intended," Sally said while displaying a cheeky grin that seemed etched onto her face. The Mohican bobbed up and down as she spoke; the tip of ash finally gave up the wrestling match with gravity and ended up down on the bare floor.

Deidre nodded and pulled the rectangular bag off her shoulder. Once she opened it, it was revealed to contain all the tools for her chosen trade like special blotting paper, a variety of pens and pencils, official stamps, the proper dye for stenciling the familiar 'Top Secret' logo, crimson wax and a US Eagle signet ring to create old-fashioned seals that were still used on overseas diplomatic mail, and even the brand of eraser used in government offices. "Oh, and I obviously need one more thing… a notebook of some kind to transfer the names to. I don't think writing on napkins would fool anyone."

The smile on Sally's face froze as she looked around her office for something to use. She had to scratch her neck when nothing jumped out at her. "Yeah… see, now that could pose a problem…"

"No it won't," Vicky said and got up from the chair. "Mr. Birnbaum has an entire packing crate full of notebooks next door. He bought them wholesale in late 'forty-four to make sure he wouldn't run out in case paper was rationed. I'll get one."

"Gee, thanks, doll!" Sally said - the grin returned to her face at once. "And how about making us some coffee while you're at it?  And maybe call for some sandwiches or something?"

Vicky let out a huff, scrunched up her face and adjusted her glasses a couple of times. "So now you do want coffee?  When I asked five minutes ago, you said-"

"Oh, five minutes ago was last week," Sally replied and waved her hand in a joking fashion. "I could use some coffee. I'll bet Deidre could too." - Deidre nodded - "See?  And don't forget the midnight snacks. Yeah?  Thanks, sugar!"

The expected reply of "My. Name. Is. Vicky," was let out in a growl before the lady in question stomped out of the detective agency's office to get on with the program.

Sally took out the cigarette to have room for the cheeky grin that formed on her lips. As the busted door closed after her friend, she turned back to Deidre who continued to study the ledger.

The master forger let out a knowing chuckle at the banter between Sally and Vicky. Moving over to the nearest chair, she sat down and put the ledger in her lap. "You call that merely being friends, Sal?  I'd call it something else."

"Actually, no," Sally said and sat down on her swivel-chair. She found the bottle of 4-Leaf Clover and poured herself two fingers' worth.

Silence fell over the office as she looked at the woman across the desk who had already begun preparing for her work. Deidre Montgomery had introduced her to the wild, wonderful and occasionally wacky world of Sapphic-minded womenfolk more than a decade earlier. A steamy relationship had developed between them, but it had ended on the rocky shores of Lake Heartbreak after a good stint in Paradise - at least they had been able to get back on good terms when so many other gals couldn't.

As colorful and certainly pleasant memories, images and scenes from the early years she had spent in those circles flashed across her mind's eye, she couldn't help but grin at all the thrilling things she had been involved in - those years had been some of the best of her life save for a dark, tragic incident that continued to haunt her dreams.

Her smile turned wistful as she took a long swig of the whiskey and a deep puff of the Mohican. Growing quiet and reflective again, she settled back to give the master forger plenty of room to conduct her unusual business.

-*-*-*-

It took Vicky ten minutes to return with a notebook she assumed would fit the bill - unfortunately, it only took Deidre ten seconds to see that it wouldn't.

Grumbling under her breath about the nerve of some people who were merely guests in their humble abode but who behaved like they owned the whole, dang place, Vicky returned next door to rummage around a little more. The next search party gobbled up another ten minutes of the late evening, but her quest was successful when the master forger accepted her latest finding.

Vicky continued to grumble as she went back next door to make them a new potful of coffee and call for a batch of sandwiches and assorted other goodies from the oft-used Sternbach & Sons All-Night Delicatessen near the corner of Scholes Road and Sixth Avenue.

The spotty, gangly delivery boy Bertram - one of Oscar Sternbach's four sons - earned himself a five-dollar tip when he actually ventured up the stairs to deliver the food in person rather than merely depositing it at the foot of the stairwell like so many of their competitors did.

---

After going through the ledger three times to find the people most deserving to be included in the copy, Sally checked the list they had compiled a final time before she broke out in a dark grunt and pushed it aside.

Covering forty-two names in total, the list contained seven judges at various courts, nine defense attorneys who had all successfully cleared mobsters of racketeering indictments, first-degree murder, rape, kidnapping and other major crimes, twelve politicians from all sides of the political spectrum, and no less than fourteen members of different branches of law enforcement ranging from an upstate sheriff to a police captain working at divisional headquarters downtown.

Their original 'short'-list had comprised of fifty names - which had been the number they had talked about at the outset - but eight had been scratched off the list due to various reasons: most of the eight were small fry compared to the heavy hitters based on the amounts they pocketed on a monthly basis, and none were public figures.

Sally had drawn a fat box around her special friend Lieutenant Conrad Garrett's name to make sure Deidre would find a prominent place for him - after all, there was no point in risking that his presence would get overlooked amid all the high-explosive information contained in the ledger leaked from the Calabrese Family.

For a change, the pale-gray column that wafted past Sally's hazel eyes wasn't cigarette smoke but steam that rose off the surface of the hot coffee. Deidre had told her in no uncertain terms that the desk was the only place she could perform her magic at, so Sally and Vicky had relocated to the sofa bed where they sat like a pair of school girls who had been summoned to the headmistress' office.

Vicky had their regular tray placed across her lap while she enjoyed a corned beef sandwich. She couldn't take her eyes off Deidre Montgomery who was in the middle of putting her right arm through an impressive warm-up routine to get her shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers in the right mood for a little forgery - Deidre stretched, bent, rotated and cracked each joint in turn until they were all fully awake and paying attention.

While Vicky was snared in by the show, Sally's hand sneaked over to the tray to grab the next sandwich. It was wrapped in greaseproof paper so she had no way of knowing what it would contain, but the strong, cheesy smell that rose when she started unwrapping it made her grimace and put it back at once. She sniffed her fingers and grimaced once more before she gave them a thorough wipe-off on her pants.

"What's that for?" Vicky said when she noticed Sally's gestures. "You eat cheese. And don't say you don't, because I know for a fact that you do."

"Sure I do, but not stinky cheese. What else did ol' Oscar make for us?" Sally said as she eyed the remaining sandwiches.

"Well," Vicky said before she put down her corned beef and wiped her fingers on a napkin - as she spoke, she moved an index finger from one sandwich to the next. "Liver pate spiced with green pepper corns. Turkey cold cuts. Egg and tomato. Ham and bacon. Cold cuts of rolled roast with prunes. Spam and pickled cucumbers. Another corned beef and finally a ham and cheese. A mild cheese."

"Gee whiz, doll!  Why didntcha start with that?" Sally said and snatched the one with ham-and-cheese. She unwrapped it in a hurry and stuffed an entire corner into her mouth in one go. Two seconds later, her eyes grew wide and the corners of her mouth went south. "Aw-yuck!  It's got mustard in it!  Plenty of mustard!" she said around the big bite.

Vicky drew a deep breath and let it out slowly while she shot her friend a stern look. "You don't say?  I wonder if it's Oscar's home-made, prize-winning mustard?  You knew that. If you'd rather have a slice of Spam with pickled cucumbers, just-"

"Hate pickled anything. A damn waste of perfectly good cucumbers," Sally said and champed down on another big bite, mustard or no mustard.

The sigh that came from Vicky was long and pained. Her glasses were subjected to several adjustments before she settled down with her own sandwich and mug of near-midnight coffee.

Over by the desk, Deidre let out a chuckle as she eyed the two women on the sofa bed. "I'd still call that something else, Sal. Are you sure you're on the same page in the script?" she said while she concluded her warm-up routine and rolled down her sleeve.

"Mmmm-hmmmm," Sally said around the bite. Once she had gulped it down, she grinned and used her elbow to give Vicky a very light poke in the side. "Ain't that right, toots?"

Vicky looked at the private investigator for a short moment before she let out a puzzled snort. "I haven't a clue what you're talking about. None. But I'm sure the joke's on me somehow. Eat your sandwich so you won't disturb Miss Montgomery at her work."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Sally said with a wink aimed at Deidre.

---

An hour and fifteen minutes later, Deidre leaned back on the creaking swivel-chair to massage her weary arm. All forty-two names had been transferred to the new, old notebook in alphabetical order. To give it gravitas and to make it seem the updates had been entered over the course of several months, she had used different pens for different entries, crossed over one name and written it again with a new monthly sum, and even added a fictional one that she had literally marked for death by adding an exclamation point, a black star and a cross next to the name and details.

To age the notebook even further, she had borrowed one of the empty mugs to create a coffee ring or two, and she had smeared a small amount of ash onto several of the pages. A lower-right corner of a page had been torn off irregularly to suggest the person updating the ledger had needed a piece of scrap paper to write down a telephone number or something similar - all were tricks of the trade that she had picked up over the years.

She left the ledger on the desk as she got up to stretch her back. The snaps, crackles and pops that were produced made her wince. "All right, Sal… it is what it is. It can't get any better."

"Excellent," Sally said and got up from the armrest - she had been sitting there ever since Vicky had decided she needed a lie-down on the sofa bed. "So… I do believe we said something about four C-notes, right?"

Deidre chuckled as she put her various utensils back into her suede bag. "Did we?  I seem to recall we were talking about a McKinley."

"Naw, Deidre, I'm pretty sure it was four-" - Sally came to a halt and seemed to weigh the options. A moment later, she grinned and broke out in a shrug. "Ah, why the hell not. A portrait of McKinley it is," she continued as she moved over to the metal filing cabinet that held her strongbox.

She opened the cabinet itself but held back from going any further. She winked several times at her ex before the lady in question caught the hint and turned her back to the action. "I sure do be thankin' ya!" Sally said with a grin as she manipulated the combination lock into releasing. She didn't have a five-hundred dollar bill after all - known as a 'McKinley' as it featured the portrait of former President William McKinley - so she counted five bills of the one-hundred dollar variety instead.

After securing the strongbox, she closed the cabinet and walked over to the desk. "Ya know, a gal can't play it too safe these days. There are so many shady individuals out there trying to take advantage of us!"

"Ya don't say?" Deidre said in the drollest voice she could muster. Taking the bills, she counted them twice before they were folded up and slipped into the suede bag. Quiet snoring from the sofa bed made her let out a muted chuckle. "Sal, I'm only gonna tell you this once. If you let that gorgeous gal over there get away, you're dumber than an upside down sack of horsefeathers. And I know you're not."

"We're just friends."

"We were friends once. Remember?  Then we became more."

"Yeah." Sally stuffed her hands into her pockets while she cast a somber look at her ex. "And when that ended, so did our friendship. For what… three, four years?"

They locked eyes for a moment before Deidre nodded. "I suppose. Oh, it's none o' my beeswax, anyhow. Gimme a holler some other time, Sal. This was a good challenge."

"Will do," Sally said as she led the master forger over to the broken door. They stopped in the doorway to exchange another knowing glance and the briefest and smallest of hugs. "Hi de ho, Deidre. See ya in the funny pages and not the obituaries, yeah?  Stay safe."

---

The hands on Sally's wristwatch seemed to be on the losing side in the fierce and eternal deathmatch with the concept of time - the minutes went by so fast midnight was already just around the corner. While Vicky continued to snooze on the sofa bed, Sally had composed a cover letter that would accompany the copy of the ledger. The items would be sent directly to her contact within the Federal Bureau of Investigation more or less incognito, though she was fully aware the Special Agent she had back door access to would know she had sent it.

Leaning back on the creaking swivel-chair, she ran over the cover letter once more to be certain it made sense.

It read,

'To whom it may concern at the Organized Crime & Racketeering Desk.

Interest in the information herein has led to the violent deaths of seven men in the past few days. Several more have been, and are, under severe threat.

Do with it as you see fit, but 1) do not disclose the name of the person, or persons, who brought the information herein to your knowledge, and 2) my advice is not to employ a bull-in-a-china-shop approach as it will only jeopardize the health of the person, or persons, who brought the information herein to your knowledge.

Sometimes, stealth is more effective than brute force.'

Grunting, Sally signed the note Concerned Citizen before she folded it and attached it to the cover of the copied ledger with a paper clip. The sounds of a large yawn and smacking lips from the other end of the single-room office proved that Vicky had decided to join the scene once more.

Sally chuckled as she reached for her pack of cigarettes. The chuckle changed into a depressed grunt when she realized she was literally down to the last of the Mohicans - once that had been smoked, she was all out. She put the pack away for all of three seconds before she grabbed it, tapped out the cigarette, stuck it between her lips, crumpled up the pack, found her gas lighter and lit the Mohican; it had all been done in a single, fluid motion through muscle memory alone.

Not too long after that, Vicky sat down in front of the desk with a bleary-eyed expression on her face. "I don't understand how you night owls can even function. If I kept the hours you do, I'd collapse within a week," she said in a voice that still held a thickness gained from her slumber.

"It's a gift, doll," Sally said before she opened a large manila envelope and slid the copied ledger into it. She tapped her fingers on its cover a couple of times; then she looked through all the desk's drawers to find the appropriate postage stamps so the package wouldn't get confiscated by an overzealous postal inspector. "I know we have some stamps… but where?" she continued as she swiveled around to look at the filing cabinets.

"They're filed under 'S,' " Vicky said and concealed a yawn with her hand.

"Ya sure?"

"Positive. I put them there myself."

"And that's good enough for me," Sally said and got up at once. She only needed to look into the 'S'-drawer for a few seconds before she found what she was looking for. "Ha!  I oughtta know better than to doubt your organizational skills, toots!"

Moving back to the desk, Sally soon took her favorite scissors to the sheet of stamps to cut out the amount required by the package. She found a fountain pen to write the address on the envelope, but stopped herself before she could get going. "Sugar-"

"My name is Vicky!"

"Why, it sure is, doll," Sally said while a broad, cheeky grin played all over her features. "But anyway, wouldya mind writing the address on it?  The Feds employ handwriting-experts now… they can't know about you, tho'. Or?"

"Well, of course they can't. And don't. Unlike some, I know how to keep cool and behave myself," Vicky said while she adjusted her glasses To Make A Point. Nodding, she held the fountain pen ready. Nothing happened, so she cast a puzzled glance at Sally. "Perhaps you think I'm a psychic?  I need the address, you know…"

Sally pretended to wear a sad, sad mask after being accused of not knowing how to behave herself; she clutched her hands against her chest and appeared to be on the brink of sobbing - the deep sigh, strong huff and repeated eye-rolling her histrionics earned were enough to make her break out in a loud laugh. "Okay, it's The Organized Crime & Racketeering Desk, c/o The Federal Bureau Of Investigation, The Ernest T. Tallmann Building, One Federal Plaza. Got that?"

Vicky wrote out the long address before she put the cap back on the fountain pen. "Yes," she said before she put the pen on the desk. "Sally, I need to head home. I'm so tired I can hardly even yawn. Do you want me to bring the envelope?  I walk straight past a mailbox over on Cooper Street on my way home."

"No. It's too dangerous, doll. And dammit, I wish you'd buy yourself a car like everyone else," Sally said and got up - the stamps and the scissors were soon back in the 'S'-drawer. "All right, so you can't take the subway to work 'cos there ain't no stations where you live, but walking home?  That's just nuts if you ask me."

"Nobody did. Save for once or twice where you drove me to my doorstep, I've walked home throughout the time I've worked as Mr. Birnbaum's secretary."

"Yeah, and it's still nuts. This ain't 'forty-three or 'forty-four any longer, Vicky… hell, it ain't even 'forty-five," Sally said before she knocked off some ash into the ashtray - the Mohican was soon back between her lips like an oblong pacifier. "Tens of thousands of G.I.s were discharged from active service in the past year when their divisions were mothballed. Most of those guys are obviously Honest Joes, but some sure ain't. In case you hadn't noticed, the streets are full of creeps and snakes who continue to use what Uncle Sam taught them… except they're using it to mug, rob and harm decent folks like you."

"Well. You keep talking… I keep walking," Vicky said as her parting salute - she was soon at the broken door where she turned around to offer Sally a far friendlier smile than had been the case when she had spoken. "Anyway, have a good night. I presume you'll be sleeping on the sofa bed again?"

"Why, I sure will, doll. Yeah. 'Nighty-night and don't let the bed bugs bite."

Vicky smiled before she left the office. Although she pulled the door shut as she left, the smashed lock and the bent hinges meant it re-opened with an agonizing squeak not long after.

The single-room office turned as silent as a tomb. Sally switched off the ceiling light before she shuffled back to the desk. The last of the Mohicans finally gave up the unequal struggle and ended its days stubbed out in the ashtray. A long sigh escaped her before she made a return trip to the filing cabinet and reached into the drawer labeled 'W' - the bottle of Black Knight scotch was soon found and opened.

"No smokes but plenty of scotch… I can live with that… kinda," she mumbled as she poured herself three fingers' worth in the same glass she had already used all day. Once the first swig had set her gullet and stomach alight, she leaned back in the swivel-chair and lifted the receiver off the telephone.

Dialing only took a short while; the voice that greeted her at the other end of the connection held a strong Italian accent. "Hiya, bub. Is Corrado still around?  Whaddaya mean which Corrado?  How many Corrados do youse guys have, anyhow?  Angelo Corrado, obviously. He is?  Okay, put him on if ya don't mind. Tell 'im it's the private dick and that I have what he's been looking for. Got that?  Okay. Yeah, I'll hold."

A short minute went by before the familiar voice of the Calabrese Family's top enforcer came over the line and into Sally's ear with a short, gruff greeting. "Hiya. I have the item," she said and sat up straight. "Yeah, it's undamaged. Yeah. No, I didn't. Listen, I presume you want it at once- yeah, I figured you would. And the handover will be at…?  Sandown Street by the pool hall. That's an A-firm, pal. I can be there in half an hour or so. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Hi de ho, bub."

The receiver was soon back on the telephone. Sally let out a deep sigh as she settled down in the swivel-chair once more. She practiced a grim thousand-mile stare for a short while before she downed the rest of the scotch and poured herself a new one to quell the butterflies that had begun to flutter in her gut.

-*-*-*-

Twelve minutes past midnight, a figure wearing a mismatched set comprising of a tan trench coat and a gray fedora became visible at the mouth of the alley next to the office building. The deep shadows concealed the figure at first, but it was soon revealed to be an oddly shapeless Sally Swackhamer who soon strolled north on Eighty-seventh Street.

The intensity of the rain had eased off from the earlier deluge to a mere drizzle, but it was still enough to make her pull the trench coat's collar up to her ears while she walked. Her dark-brown fedora had been too battered from being bitten by a .32 moth, so she'd had to use the gray one from her Sunday set.

It irked her - a strong fashion sense was more important among the private eyes than most people suspected despite their oft-wrinkled clothes - but there was nothing she could do about it until she could get her tailor to mend the hole. Professional pride meant that showing up to a meeting with the high and mighty looking scruffy was out of the question.

The countless neon signs on the buildings lining Eighty-seventh Street were reflected in the puddles and other shiny surfaces on the rain-soaked street. The garish colors and flashing patterns created a spectacle so typical of Mooresburg City that Sally didn't pay any attention to it.

The street was busy even at that time of night which made it more difficult for her to keep track of her surroundings. Public omnibuses rumbled past as did the ubiquitous delivery vans and taxi cabs. Now and then, a black-and-white police car cruised along Eighty-seventh Street to be visible and thus keep the order among the street toughs. Sirens in the middle distance proved that some of their colleagues had been given an assignment.

Sally divided her attention between looking at the goings-on out on Eighty-seventh Street, the late-night crowd of pedestrians who shared the sidewalk with her, and the deep shadows that had formed at the foot of every building she walked past. Each of the shadows could hide an assassin out to get her.

There had been no direct - or even indirect - word from Jimmy 'The Ice-Pick' McGarrigle since the costly and embarrassing defeat in and around the offices, but it was illusory to think the feared crime boss would forget about it. The bloody payback would come sooner or later, that was a God-given guarantee.

The two ledgers she had stuffed under her coat were of such critical importance that it would have been foolish to go anywhere unarmed - thus, she carried both Browning Hi-Powers, the FN Herstal in the ankle holster and the Lupara over her shoulder. She had filled every spare magazine she had, and she had poured thirty-six shotgun shells into various pockets so she'd be able to reload no matter how a potential firefight would turn out.

In addition to that formidable collection of firepower, she had attached a leather sheath to her belt that contained a six-inch fillet knife. The blade was slender but double-edged and almost unbreakable. She rarely carried it, but the risk of falling into a close-combat melee was so great she needed the extra method of defense - or offense.

A grim and bitter chuckle escaped her as she recalled why she had even come to being blackmailed into aiding brutal, conscience-free crooks like Don Franco Scardamaglia and Vittorio Grazziani. The slender blade had literally been at the heart of the mess.

In November of 1937, she had been involved in a bloody, messy one-on-one in a smelly back alley behind a speakeasy. The clandestine establishment had been frequented by women of the Sapphic kind, and the fight had been a bog-standard affair between two Alpha Females over the attentions of a Pretty Young Thing.

The fight had ended when a young, stupid and high Sally Swackhamer buried the fillet knife in the other woman's chest. Although the victim was spared death through a stroke of unfathomable luck, the repercussions had been massive for all involved.

Through life's devious twists and turns, Sally's police records were among a group of nearly 150 files that ended up in the hands of Vittorio Grazziani. A trusted Capo at the time, Grazziani was already primed for a senior management role in the Calabrese hierarchy due to his blood ties with the Don. He used his powers to remove the underboss and assume the position as second-in-command under Don Franco Scardamaglia.

Now, the underboss continued to hold all the aces and Sally had been left holding the proverbial bag - he would call her up every now and then to get her to do some of his dirty work that needed a clean face up front.

As the rain increased once more, Sally let out a mumbled curse and upped her tempo. She ran across Eighty-seventh Street between all the vehicles - earning herself a concert of honks in the process - before she continued north. Her first stop would be an all-night tobacco shop so she could get some cigarettes; then she'd find a mailbox so she could get rid of the copy of the ledger before one of her countless opponents could catch up with her.

---

Once the high-explosive package had been put into one of Mooresburg City's familiar red mailboxes, Sally lit a Mantonari cigarette and took a long puff. It wasn't her favorite brand in the world, but all her first options had been sold out.

She grimaced as the exact reason why she disliked the Mantonaris presented itself: within a few moments, she was forced to pick tobacco fragments off her tongue. Not only were the leaves used in Mantonari cigarettes cut much coarser than other, admittedly more expensive, brands, the cigarettes were almost always too loosely compressed - it all meant she could look forward to picking half a smoke's worth of tobacco off her tongue and teeth each time she lit up.

Turning onto Redondo Street, Sally kept vigilant. The rain had eased off once more which helped, but she still needed her wits about her. The neighborhood she had entered had been the original hot spot for the thugs, bruisers, hoodlums and street toughs who had come together in a working relationship in the early years of the 1920s to form the first of Mooresburg City's crime syndicates.

Over the next fifteen years, the widely differentiated group of fiercely independent career criminals would prove increasingly impossible to control until everything disintegrated into an inevitable, and endless, spiral of tit-for-tat betrayals, violent assaults and murders.

When only a few among the upper echelon were left standing, the organization was ripe for the picking by Franco Scardamaglia who soon claimed the throne. His rule was based on loyalty through fear, and the hitherto fragmented syndicate soon grew into the second-largest in Mooresburg City. As the 1930s became the 1940s, the original Calabrese Family absorbed the new syndicate but kept Franco Scardamaglia as its leader. Before long, he had climbed the corporate ladder to the very top and could call himself the Don.

Sally turned left onto Sandown Street and upped her vigilance even further. The flat-topped, square building housing the pool hall where she was to meet Grazziani and the enforcer Corrado came into sight. Though the sidewalk was empty, a neon sign above the main entrance was still lit indicating it was open for business. The two storefront windows had been covered up through several coats of white paint so nobody would be able to take pictures of the people playing - or talking - at the tables.

She came to a halt in front of the pool hall and made sure to turn her back to it so nobody inside would get antsy - even so, she was soon joined by a pair of bruisers who were as wide as they were tall. The square-bodied, flat-topped goons of Mediterranean origin both wore business suits that featured tell-tale bulges under their left arms. They kept quiet but never lost track of the far more petite interloper in their midst.

The typical sounds of cues striking balls and subsequent cheers or groans soon reached Sally's ears. Off to her left, a black-and-white police car drove slowly along Sandown Street. The officer in the passenger seat seemed to have a blast shining their powerful spotlight at the cars parked at the curb. The cone of light also happened to illuminate the front of the buildings that included the pool hall, a grocery store, a barber shop and several other places that everyone knew were connected to the Calabreses.

Sally was in no mood to be stopped and potentially frisked by the police, so she strolled back to where she had come from. The mouth of an alley suited for the task of staying out of sight was only another thirty yards up the street; it was soon reached and exploited to the fullest. The smell wasn't exactly rose-like - although fertilizer was in fact present - but she had been in stinkier places so it didn't bother her.

Once the police car had trickled past, she went back onto Sandown Street to await the arrival of the important men she was there to meet. Another grimace was etched onto her face as she spat out what had to be half a bale of tobacco that had fallen out of the Mantonari cigarette. A handkerchief was soon brought into play to wipe her lips while she continued to glance up and down the street.

Her wide, scowling and not-so-friendly-looking companions reappeared a few seconds after she had returned to the sidewalk in front of the pool hall. The mischievous side of her begged to fire off a quip or two in their direction, but the more mature part of her brain told her in no uncertain terms she should forget all about it and just stick to her own space.

A pair of headlights flashing on-and-off to her left heralded the familiar, black Cadillac. The luxury limousine soon came to a halt in front of the pool hall. Angelo Corrado stepped out wearing the regular uniform of the Calabrese Family: a dark-gray overcoat and a matching fedora. He nodded at the wide, flat-topped bruisers who went back inside. Despite the fact it was their home neighborhood, the top enforcer kept his right hand inside the coat at all times.

"Hiya, bub," Sally said as she threw down the worthless Mantonari and squashed it with the heel of her gum-shoe. "Sure is swell of ya to drop by. You ain't been plugged yet, I see?"

"Shut up and get in," Corrado said before he shoved Sally inside the Cadillac's passenger compartment and slammed the door shut behind her. He remained on the sidewalk watching the proceedings closely; his inactivity only lasted for a few seconds longer before he opened the front door and slid onto the passenger-side seat. The Cadillac took off at once.

Grunting, Sally folded down the extra seat opposite the rear bench. Like always, the chubby presence of Vittorio Grazziani sat wide and mighty on the seat with his black Borsalino hat, the silver-tipped cane and the briefcase within easy reach. The dark-gray three-piece business suit he wore was tailor-made and had cost as much as a typical one-room apartment - it had even been upgraded through a glittering gold chain that ran over to an old-fashioned pocket watch.

The important fellow smoked a cigar that created a sweet, rich scent. As he took it out to knock off some ash into the tray integrated in the armrest, his diamond-studded cufflinks and the precious gems on his finger rings caught the light and sparkled just in case Sally had forgotten about them.

"You have something for me, I believe?" he said in a voice that held traces of his native accent. His icy eyes studied Sally for a moment before the cigar seemed to have more worth than the woman sitting opposite him.

Sally grunted and undid the belt of her trench coat. "Yes. But before I hand it over to ya-"

A puff of cigar smoke escaped Grazziani's mouth accompanied by a sound that was his attempt at laughing. "You are in no position to make demands," he said and shot her a cold look.

"I'm aware of that, Mista. I just didn't want you to panic when you saw my hardware."

"Mmmm?"

Instead of explaining, Sally swept the trench coat aside in a slow, cautious fashion. The sawn-off shotgun, the shoulder-holster with the Hi-Power and the array of spare magazines came into sight. She had stuck the original ledger behind her belt next to the sheath containing the double-edged blade. "See?  I know how much you palookas like guns… except when they're in someone else's hands… so I just wanted you to know. Yeah?"

"A Lupara. Fascinating. Are you of Sicilian blood?" Grazziani said as he studied the weaponry on display.

"Hardly, fella. I come from the great melting pot, see?  A little of this, a little of that," Sally said and let the trench coat fall back in place.

"Mmmm. But you came expecting a war. Foolish of you. We are businessmen. The pen is mightier than the gun."

"Oh, that's rich," Sally mumbled as she pulled out the ledger and held it out. Grazziani shook his head and pointed at the back seat instead. Sighing, she put the important book next to the briefcase and settled down once more.

Sally's stomach churned at the casual way Vittorio Grazziani opened his briefcase and put the ledger into it - he had never even looked at it. She had to gulp down a bitter surge before she cast a dark look at the feared underboss. "So?  My file?  That was part of our deal."

"Was it?  Perhaps it was. In a little while," Grazziani said and knocked off more ash. The Cadillac continued to drive through the neon-lit streets of Mooresburg City for what seemed like miles even though it was only a couple of city blocks.

The sound of the Cadillac's springs creaking from driving over a pothole breathed life back into the dark presence on the bench seat. "What did you do to Count Gennaro?" Grazziani said in another example of his cool, casual style.

"I dealt with him."

"Permanently?"

"I would hope so."

"Good." Several beats went by before Grazziani pinned Sally to the spot with an icy glare. "There is something on the horizon. It might require your input at some point. In fact, I am sure it would benefit from it."

Sally's brow grew furrowed in an instant; her right hand moved closer to the handle of the Hi-Power just in case. "And what would that be?" she said in a hoarse voice.

"Oh, it is nothing urgent. It might be later on. Unless we nip it in the bud first," Grazziani said and let out another of his spine-chilling attempts at laughing. He took a puff of the cigar before he continued: "Paddies are often the easiest to manage after mowing down the weeds." A diabolical smile played on his lips as he spoke proving he was secretly pleased with his clever pun.

"Look, pal," Sally said and scooted out to the edge of the extra seat. "You better listen to me now!  I ain't your errand gal, and I sure as hell ain't your hired gun either, see?  You have plenty of muscle already. What the hell ya need me for?"

Instead of replying, Vittorio Grazziani took his cane and tapped it against the sheet of metal separating the rear compartment from the driver's space up front. The luxury limousine pulled over at once and Corrado stepped out onto the sidewalk. The enforcer waited by the rear door but didn't yet open it.

"Hey," Sally said and leaned forward, "we had a deal, Grazziani!  Don't give me a runaround… what about that file?"

"I always honor the deals I make," Vittorio Grazziani said and opened the briefcase once more. His hand moved close to the small pistol before he retrieved a tan folder. The smile he offered Sally was colder than a January morning in Siberia as he pulled out two pieces of paper. Changing his mind, he slipped one back before he handed the other one to his guest.

Sally narrowed her eyes and glared at the single page and the folder. She needed to clench her jaw and glue her lips shut to stop herself from telling the underboss a few truths - the fiery glare in her eyes and the throbbing veins at her temples hinted at the storm raging within her.

Tension continued to mount until Sally took her proverbial kettle off the boil. Sighing, she accepted the offered page. She glanced at it before she folded it twice and stuck it into her liner pocket. She had no desire to maintain the charade, so she reached for the door handle at once.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk, she cast an Evil Eye at Angelo Corrado, but even her best efforts weren't enough to make the dangerous enforcer drop dead. "Where the hell did you take me this time, Schmoe?" she growled as she tied the belt of her trench coat so nobody would get jittery at the sight of her arsenal.

"Oh, we're still in Mooresburg City."

"Gee, that's a load off!  And here I thought we'd gone to your momma in Fackenquack, Noo Joisy."

The dark shadow and a twitch that raced across Angelo Corrado's face proved he didn't find that quip funny at all. Though he tried to pin Sally to the spot with a murderous glare, she stood her ground and gave as good as she got. The combatants eventually declared it a draw and went their separate ways.

Sally let out a severe huff and pulled up the collar of her trench coat. There was nothing left to say, so she stomped away from the black Cadillac, the two men and the stench of death that always seemed to hover around them.

Continued

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