“Why?”
“Pete was talking about it again. He was talking to the safety director himself. Ness is working on reforming the boy gangs. Putting them on patrol, giving them incentives to stay out of trouble. That stuff.”
“Eliot Ness?” Dani whispered.
“That’s right.”
“Is that what you want me to tell Mike?”
“Nah. I mean. Sure. But he needs to know what I’m risking giving him information.”
“I don’t have any more money to give you, Steve.”
He stewed. “All right. I’ll give you this one for free. But you tell Mike he owes me.”
“I will.”
“After I talked to him the other day, another guy showed up, right after, asking about him.”
“About who?”
“About Mike,” he said, scoffing like she was slow. “Fella asked if I knew who Mike was and what he wanted. See, Mike didn’t blend in. An Italian guy in a Slav neighborhood, you know?”
“Yes. I know.”
“The thing is . . . this other guy didn’t really belong either. So he wasn’t just somebody curious about a stranger poking around.”
“What did he look like?” she asked.
“Trouble. He definitely wasn’t a copper. But that’s all the freebies I’m giving. Just tell Mike he has a tail. He can come talk to me if he wants me to find out more. He knows where to find me.”
He turned away, yanking on his lapels so the top button didn’t choke him. Michael’s coat didn’t fit. He tossed the dime she’d given him into the air and caught it again, repeating the action as he headed back in the direction he’d come, a boy playing a big man’s game.
12
Malone was filthy. He walked through the back door and directly into the laundry room where he pulled off everything he’d been wearing for the last few days while sleeping on trains, squatting by hobo fires, and talking to whoever wanted to talk, which were many. He smelled like burning rubber; tires kept the fires hot but created a stench like no other. He also reeked of rodents and body odor and every other bad smell related to blending in and staying alive while hitching a ride on the trains with all the other down-and-outers.
With the weather improving, he had decided he couldn’t postpone riding the trains any longer. A series of murders in a New Castle, Pennsylvania, swamp had people talking about the possibility of the Butcher having moved to new territory. He’d intended to start slow, just take one stretch east to Youngstown, find the hobo camps, and come back the following morning. But it hadn’t worked out that way.
He’d caught a freight by running at full speed alongside it, grabbing the ladder on the side of a car, and swinging himself up. He’d spent two hours watching other men do the same on earlier trains, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Nothing ever was. The action nearly pulled his arms from their sockets and dragged him under the wheels. Adrenaline and outrage were the only things that saved him, and he heaved himself up onto the tanker and inched his way along the top of the thundering train until he found an opening he could swing into. He swung a little too hard and landed in a heap at the back of the car. He’d wanted to kiss the floor and shout the Rosary, but the car he climbed into was occupied, and the three men inside weren’t especially welcoming. He’d had to bribe them with cigarettes and polish his very big, very sharp knife to make them more accepting and considerate.
Two of the men had the swinging tones of Louisiana, peppered with Creole spice, and they’d huddled together in the farthest corner, accepting a cigarette but only talking to each other. The third man had a bit of “Missouruh” in his thank-you when he’d accepted a cigarette, and he’d taken the opposite corner from Malone when the Cajuns started fighting. When he jumped off the train just outside of Youngstown, he invited Malone to tag along.
“It’s not the worst camp and not the best, but it’s better than staying on the train,” he said, “and the jump ain’t bad if you hit it just right.” Malone hadn’t hit it just right or even mostly right, but he’d survived without major injury, and the Missourian—whose name was Sully—provided the opening he hadn’t even dared hope for.
It turned out Sully wasn’t a bad sort, though it took three cans of beans, all Malone’s potatoes, and two days of sleeping with one eye open in a hobo jungle for Sully to ease up on his guard. He hadn’t minded the whiskey Malone had added to his flask either.
On the second night, he and Sully shared a fire with a ragtag assortment of residents and travelers before they dispersed to their own primitive lodgings. Malone introduced himself as Micky from Chicago and let the vagrants think they were dealing with a low-level gangster looking for a hideout. But they didn’t press, and he didn’t oversell.
Malone was adept at judging bullshit and who was full of it. Some people talked because they were lonely and some because they were liars, but neither was a good source of information. He’d gotten some of both, sitting around the fire with Sully and his cohorts, but he’d also heard a story that had made the hair stand up on his arms.
“I knew a guy, used to ride the trains like us. He’s doing okay now. Got a job in Chicago on the docks. Emil Fronek. You ever know him?” Sully’s friend, Chester, asked him. Chester was the proud owner of the tin shed and the hole in the ground they sat beside. His Boston accent and scraggly red beard made him seem more like a lost sailor than a jungle dweller.
“Nah. Can’t say I did,” Malone said. “Chicago’s a big town.”
“Yeah. This was back in the fall of ’34. Long time ago, now.”
Malone feigned a yawn, though he was too uncomfortable for sleep.
“Emil jumped off in Cleveland. Had an old friend in one of the camps he thought might still be around. But he wasn’t. And a nor’easter was blowing in too. Fronek hadn’t eaten in days, and he needed a new pair of shoes.”