The Yankee Club Read online

  The Yankee Club is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Alibi eBook Original

  Copyright © 2014 by Michael Murphy

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  ALIBI is a registered trademark and the ALIBI colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  “Anything Goes” words and music by Cole Porter (c) 1934 (renewed) WB Music Corp.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-7931-7

  Cover art and design: Scott Biel

  www.readalibi.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  New York City, 1933

  Chapter 1: The Return of Blackie Doyle

  Chapter 2: The Lone Ranger

  Chapter 3: A Detective Again

  Chapter 4: Anything Goes

  Chapter 5: Split Pea and Dry Bread

  Chapter 6: Poker and Chess

  Chapter 7: The Green Hippopotamus and the Stalker

  Chapter 8: Dorothy and The Greek Slave

  Chapter 9: She Had Me in Stitches

  Chapter 10: Isn’t It Romantic?

  Chapter 11: The Bambino and Peaches

  Chapter 12: A Dozen White Roses for My Funeral

  Chapter 13: The Wake of Mickey O’Brien

  Chapter 14: A Warrior on a White Horse

  Chapter 15: The Presidential Suite

  Chapter 16: A Man with a Conscience

  Chapter 17: A Good Day for a Swim

  Chapter 18: High Noon at the Plaza

  Chapter 19: Thursday Night Fights at the Garden

  Chapter 20: The Streets of New York

  About the Author

  New York City, 1933. Bootleg alcohol fuels the spread of organized crime. After thirteen years, the country finally accepts Prohibition as a noble but failed experiment. The Great Depression isn’t measured just by the twelve million out of work or the eleven thousand failed banks, but by the crushed hopes and shattered dreams of countless Americans. Less than a hundred days into the new administration, opposition mounts to President Roosevelt’s radical New Deal solutions. Those who cling to their wealth and power will do anything to keep from losing both.

  Chapter 1

  The Return of Blackie Doyle

  As my train drew closer to New York City, the dining car’s rhythmic sway offered no comfort to the painful memories I left behind two years earlier. I ignored the blank sheet of paper in front of me. Rain spattered against the window, and lightning streaked above the countryside. The train didn’t slow as we headed into a torrential storm.

  “Sir?” The waiter carried a carafe of coffee to the table, smiling like a vaudeville tap dancer.

  “Yes?”

  He cocked his head. “You been tapping your pen on the coffee cup.”

  I was? I slid the cup closer to him. “I’ll have a little more coffee, please.”

  He filled the cup and moved to the next table where two men argued about the proper size of their wager over the prospect Prohibition would be repealed before 1933 came to a close.

  I tried to tune them out and focus on revising to my publisher’s satisfaction the last chapter of my latest mystery. Since departing Tampa, I’d tossed out half the paper I brought with me. I had nothing, and Mildred, my editor, wouldn’t be happy.

  The dining car door hissed open. A middle-aged woman with a fox stole curled around her neck entered smiling, as if she expected a round of applause. To my surprise she carried my latest novel, The Return of Blackie Doyle.

  The sight of one of my readers never failed to lift my spirits. Writing spared me the financial calamity suffocating the economy. Judging by the woman’s fur, her flowered silk dress, and her diamond necklace, she wasn’t hurting either.

  Beside her stood a bored-looking blonde in her early twenties, wearing a lemon-colored dress and a pearl necklace. Tight curls poked from beneath a chamois hat. Matching gloves completed the Garbo look. The only accessory out of place was the round black-rimmed glasses the actor Harold Lloyd would’ve envied.

  They parked themselves beside my table. “I told you, Dorothy. It is Jake Donovan.” The woman set the novel in front of me. “My daughter would love you to sign your novel.”

  “It would be a pleasure.” I gave them the polished smile Mildred helped me perfect, but I couldn’t avoid staring at the beady dark eyes of the dead fox around the woman’s neck. “Won’t you have a seat?”

  The mother eased into the chair closest to the window. She set a beige handbag on the table and signaled the waiter. Instantly I regretted the invitation since she looked as if she’d settled in for the remainder of the trip.

  The Prohibition debaters at the next table stared at the woman’s timid and stunning daughter. She perched across from me, on the edge of her chair, as if she might get up and leave any minute. Her blue eyes avoided contact while she adjusted the perfectly placed silverware in front of her.

  The waiter filled the two women’s cups and retreated.

  The mother pulled a silver flask from her handbag and stirred a splash of booze into her cup. “I’m Peggy Greenwoody.” She took a gulp like an ironworker at an all-night diner. “Call me Peggy.”

  Her last name clawed a memory from a recent conversation with my Florida poker buddies. “Greenwoody. Any relation to Oliver Greenwoody, the war hero?”

  “My husband.” Her face lit with prideful glee. “Oliver can’t get away to the country so we’re visiting him for a few days. Saturday he’s taking Dorothy and me to a Broadway play. It’s the final weekend of Night Whispers with William Maddow and—”

  “Laura Wilson.” My Laura. The burning dread returned. I glanced through the rain-swept window. My thoughts drifted back two years to Penn Station when I stepped onto the train with a final glance back, still hopeful Laura would come to see me off—hoping she’d come to talk me out of leaving.

  Glancing at me for the first time, Dorothy stirred her coffee like it was the best Joe ever. “I hear she’s marvelous.”

  “What takes you to New York?” Peggy asked me. “You on your way home?”

  Home? I hardly knew the meaning of the word anymore. “Business.”

  I signed the title page Dorothy, Blackie Doyle hopes you enjoy his story. Best wishes, Jake Donovan.

  Mrs. Greenwoody snatched the book, flipped to the last page, and read a moment. She pointed to a line below my photograph. “Says you currently live in Tampa, Florida, but grew up in New York City.” She glanced down at the book as her daughter stared at me. “You were an amateur boxer!”

  “My father boxed a little to put food on the table when my sisters and I were kids. I never boxed, but I grew up in a tough neighborhood. The bio is my publicist’s way of explaining all those fights I got into as a kid.” I pointed to a small scar above my right eyebrow, courtesy of Laura’s old man.

  Mrs. Greenwoody read aloud, “After serving his country during the Great War, Jake Donovan joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He opened his own detective agency in 1927—”

  “The year the Babe socked sixty,” I said.

  Confusion flickered across Mrs. Greenwoody’s face. “The Babe?”

  “Babe Ruth, Mother. George Herman.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the young woman. “The Bambino.”

  Dorothy grinned. “The Sultan of Swat.”

  Her mother’s life was obviously so full she didn’t have room for the Babe. She ign
ored our baseball banter and picked up where she left off in the bio. “In 1927. Two years later Donovan began a mystery series about fictional detective Blackie Doyle.”

  A surprising tease danced in Dorothy’s blue eyes. “Are you a two-fisted ladies’ man like Blackie Doyle?”

  Behind her large black glasses hid an attractive, intelligent woman with a sharp sense of humor. I chuckled. “If I behaved like Blackie, I’d get slapped by women a lot.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She leaned forward and removed her glasses. “You wear a white rose in your lapel, like Blackie.”

  I chuckled. “That’s our only similarity, let me assure you.”

  Her flirtatious smile would’ve curled most men’s toes, but I could use another complication in my life like I could use an ulcer. I preferred the shy Dorothy Greenwoody who hid behind large black glasses. This Dorothy was beautiful and trouble. “If you ladies will excuse me, I should return to my room and get to work finalizing my next book. My editor doesn’t think Blackie should settle down with one woman.”

  “I most certainly agree.” Dorothy’s manicured nails toyed with her pearl necklace. “He’d lose his roguish charm with just one woman.”

  “Unless it’s with the right woman.” Mrs. Greenwoody held my gaze then gave a quick nod toward her daughter. “We’re staying at the Plaza for a few days. Perhaps you’d join us for a drink.”

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town, but thank you for the gracious invitation.”

  “You never married, Mr. Donovan.” Mrs. Greenwoody closed the book.

  The young woman’s face flushed. “Mother, please.”

  With Dorothy’s looks, she hardly needed her mother to play matchmaker. At least the two women helped place my sense of dread over my return to the city on hold.

  Mrs. Greenwoody finished her coffee. “Dorothy, if I’d waited around for your father to ask me to dance, I probably would’ve married someone far less interesting. Probably Christian Chandler.” She gazed through the window.

  It didn’t take a writer’s imagination to assume she pictured a young, dashing Mr. Chandler, a man with less dough and fame than Oliver Greenwoody, but one who curled her toes years ago.

  I winked at Dorothy. “So you’re interested in me romantically, is that what I’m hearing, Mrs. Greenwoody?”

  Peggy bellowed with laughter and slapped the table. A dozen passengers gave her disapproving stares. If she noticed, she didn’t show it. “I might be too much woman for you, son, but my daughter here …”

  I signaled the waiter for the check.

  Dorothy slid a foot up the side of my leg. She hid a playful smirk from her mother.

  Despite my detective past, I’d completely misjudged this young woman. I scooted the chair back a ways, but her foot continued its caress beneath the tablecloth.

  The waiter set the check beside my cup. “Thank you, sir.”

  I hurriedly signed and slid the chair back. I shook Mrs. Greenwoody’s offered hand.

  Her eyes locked on mine. “A pleasure.”

  Dorothy shook my hand and winked. “Enjoy your visit, Mr. Donovan. Don’t get slapped.”

  An hour later, just after dark, the train pulled into Penn Station. I stepped off in the city I hadn’t expected to see for years. Yet, here I was.

  Hopefully it would only take a couple of days of pounding on a typewriter and sweettalking Mildred into a compromise ending. Two days were enough to visit the old neighborhood, as long as I didn’t run into Laura.

  I tipped the porter who retrieved my bags. Before I could step outside and hail a cab, a man called, “Mr. Donovan. Jake Donovan?”

  I nodded toward a thin man in a brown suit and scuffed shoes. Chewing on a toothpick, he flashed a gap-toothed smile.

  He spit out the toothpick and shook my hand, revealing the frayed cuffs, calluses, and chipped nails of a hardworking man. He tipped his hat and grabbed my bags. “Mildred sent me. I’m your driver until you’re safely on the train back to Florida.”

  My editor, a stickler for details. I needed someone to drive me around New York City like Shirley Temple needed more dimples. The man’s frayed cuffs said he could use the job, so I swallowed my pride.

  Outside I breathed in the thick, damp air. The man sidestepped rain puddles and led me to a green Model A coupé double parked beside an empty cab. He opened the rear door. “Mildred says I should get you checked into the hotel.”

  I climbed in the backseat. “Nice car.”

  “Ain’t she a beaut? Mildred rented it. Says you should ride in style.”

  “She thinks of everything.”

  The man set the bags beside him in the front seat. He stuck a fresh toothpick in his mouth and started the car. We sped from the station. “Never met her, just by phone. She a looker?”

  Mildred? I’d never thought of her in that way. Forty, stylish, and totally devoted to her work and her authors. “She’s very businesslike.”

  “Businesslike.” He winked at me in the mirror. “I get the picture.”

  I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression of the person most responsible for my success. Without her, I’d still be a gumshoe sharing a cramped office, across from a seedy hotel, with Mickey O’Brien. “She’s sophisticated, attractive in a—”

  “Sure she is.” He displayed the skills of a New York cabbie as he swerved around a slow-moving car and splashed two men setting up a ladder in front of a hardware store.

  I braced my feet on the floor. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Didn’t toss it yet. Name’s Frankie. Frankie Malzone.”

  “You have a card?”

  Frankie pushed out a laugh. “A card. That’s rich. Naah. I’m one of the country’s twelve million without a real job. I hang out at The Diamond House, pick up jobs from time to time, like this one. Enough to keep the old lady from smacking me across the head about earning a living. You been to The Diamond House? It ain’t no gin joint.”

  I dropped in once or twice with Laura back when we were … what were we before I moved to Florida? A couple, an occasional gossip item in the newspaper. Nothing more.

  I made polite conversation to take my mind off the man’s driving. “You have kids?”

  “No kids. Edith ain’t exactly my wife.” Frankie blew through an intersection, bringing an angry blast from a cab’s horn. “You’re staying at the Carlyle. Fancy, schmancy. Guess you’re pretty important.”

  “Not to anyone I know.”

  Frankie laughed and slapped the dash. “Excuse me for saying, but you’re not what I expected.”

  “What’d you expect?”

  He shrugged. “Tailored suit, silk tie, expensive shoes, sure, but behind all that you seem like a regular Joe. Anyways, she says—Mildred—I should look out for you, fix you up with whatever you need.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You interested in a broad? I know some classy dames … and some not so sophisticated.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t think I’ll have time for romance.”

  “Romance. Good one.” Frankie snorted. “How ’bout a nightcap? The Diamond House’s got some smooth booze … and broads.”

  I checked my watch. Still early enough to drop by and see Gino and Mickey. The Yankee Club was a couple blocks from my old office, now Mickey’s—O’Brien Detective Agency.

  “A nightcap won’t hurt, but take me to The Yankee Club in Queens.”

  Frankie studied me in the rearview mirror. “You’re serious? A hundred thousand speakeasies in the city and you gotta pick that dive? That place gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s not in the best of neighborhoods.”

  “I grew up in that neighborhood.”

  “You did good to get out. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  Frankie continued to weave his way through the crowded streets that grew increasingly familiar. Not much had changed, except for a few more boarded-up shops.

  I closed my eyes as he continued to yap about the city I knew so well. For a moment
I dozed off. I gripped the edge of the seat as he swerved in front of a convertible, bringing another blast of a horn. “You in a hurry?”

  “Naah. We’re here.” Frankie parked across the street from what looked like a boardinghouse. An unlabeled door hid the speakeasy. I leaned forward as he reached beneath the seat. Frankie pulled out a pistol and stuck it in his jacket.

  “Leave the gun.”

  “It’s mostly for show.” Flashing innocence, he stuffed the piece beneath the seat.

  I climbed from the car and locked eyes with a billboard touting the final week of Night Whispers at the Longacre Theatre. Large photographs of the two leads gazed from the billboard. I saw only Laura, not the image of the famous Broadway actress she’d become.

  I came to know Laura in her first play at school, a thirteen-year-old Becky Thatcher with painted-on freckles. I played Tom Sawyer. Our first kiss came onstage during rehearsal in front of our teacher and a dozen classmates including Gino and Mickey. Memories of our second kiss still gave me goose bumps. I pictured the girl in high school who hid the truth about her old man smacking her around—until I took care of the problem.

  Frankie followed my gaze. “You wanna take in a show, ’cause I can get tickets. I know a guy.”

  I shook my head and pulled a couple of bills from my pocket.

  Frankie stared at my hand. “A tip? Don’t insult me.”

  “Buy Edith some roses.”

  He flashed a sheepish expression and stuffed the money in his trouser pocket. “Last time I brought home flowers my old lady accused me of cheating on her.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the point. I’ll buy her some chocolates. When I bring her candy, I never get no questions.”

  We crossed the street dodging puddles. I rapped on the front door.

  A panel in the door slid open. A familiar granite face gave us the once-over. “You got a membership card?”

  “Hello, Danny.” Danny Kowalski didn’t appear to remember me. Good thing because Gino and I stole his bike when we were in fourth grade and Danny was in sixth. Though the three of us palled around through high school, Danny never got over the prank.