Crime Fiction by Jack Durant
Lucky slowly examined his cards. The fingers holding them had started to dampen and he held his breath to stop it from quickening. The hand was strong but unwanted. Aces and eights, clubs and spades, a cursed set for a day like this. Lucky closed his eyes until a second’s blink had passed, then looked back down at the cards whose murder had birthed gambling’s most infamous title, Dead Man’s Hand.
Coney Island was far from the Dakotas. Nowhere near the gold, grassy plains, and gunslingers that made up that rugged land. It was an America he did not know. A wild nation soaked in bloody, frontier legend. Some men today went west thinking they’d still find that world. But there was nothing for them out there. Nothing left unbroken by American industry. An organized, mechanical operation that had paved over their dreams of freedom even before that bullet had shattered the skull of Wild Bill Hickok. He’d been an old man by then, tired and limping into each new day. Jack McCall had only made way for the new power consuming The American West. One greater than the crude, disorganized gangs of horse-backed outlaws. Those who pulled wealth from the earth after waging wars across the continent far bloodier and coordinated than any saloon brawl or midday shootout. Wars with none of the tragic beauty a cowboy’s death still evoked in the minds of the ignorant.
Lucky knew this because he was himself no stranger to violence. There were many men who would do what had brought lasting infamy to the butcher of Wild Bill. And he knew these men well. They rode streetcars instead of horses, and dueled near midnight not high-noon. That didn’t matter though. They were still the same. Brutality was a trait that emptied any aesthetic.
They had come for Lucky in the dark. Starting with what could’ve been the end, he’d been clubbed on the head and woken later by the same weapon pounding away at the rest of his body. Then, they had slid a knife across his throat for cold diligence, and shoved him out onto some wooded field.
He lay there for hours. Saved only from a sloppy, shallow cut by the hand of his would-be killer. It took a long time for Lucky to realize his fortune was stronger than the laws that governed the world he knew. Finally, through blood and shivering pain, he saw the first embers of sunrise across his city’s skyline and understood that he had survived what was meant to be the always fatal one-way-ride.
Lucky didn’t remember much after that. His mind kept only glimpses of wandering through the cold, foggy, morning. He didn’t even really remember the pain that had numbed his mind to nothing but the thought of pressing forward. Eventually, the police saw him and did their interrogation after he’d been brought to the hospital and bandaged. He gave them nothing then, nor on the day he was arraigned for conspiracy. Though, unlike the past, Lucky’s acquittal had been justified. He had only notions of which men had given him a ride that night. Everything said had been the truth. He didn’t know who had attacked him.
But Lucky knew the one responsible. It was a charge that went beyond the attempt on his life. Instead, he loathed the one who had planted the seed that had grown into those desiring him dead. And that man was sitting across the table.
Joe Masseria, Lucky’s leader, cast a large shadow in the otherwise empty restaurant. He was a bulldog of a man, sporting the breed’s box-like frame and flapping jowls. Nicknamed the boss, Masseria had been a force in the Italian rackets for decades. He wasn’t old, but had enough of the old ways to garner the respect age carried. Walking New York’s modern streets, Masseria was a man out of place. He should have been strolling down a dirt path among the livestock and peasantry of the world which the two of them had been born. An island that was so sunny, warm, and beautiful, yet cursed by how far its memory stretched through centuries of possession. Change always coming on promises that curved into new loads for their already withered backs, making his ancestors averse to any path claiming progress. It was evident in their customs. The people huddled together in their towns. Weary of the outside, and clinging to the familiar, even as it decayed. That’s why the houses and roads were old and would not soon be repaired. And why the land was bare, apart from their villages dotting the island like little barnacles on the great steam ships that had brought him here. Their island was a world unto its own. And there was nowhere to go in it.
So, coming from such limitations, to say New York had been a shock was an understatement. Lucky could remember how his arrival had brought him into modernity. How, seeing skyscrapers and subway cars scattered amongst the plethora of automobiles, streetlamps, and endless other examples of what had only recently been impossible, made him feel like he’d been dealt a new hand, a lucky hand, full of as much possibility this new world could offer. The feeling made him want to catch up with everything his early horizons had fallen behind. And he had tried to adapt as quickly as possible.
The same could not be said for Joe Masseria. To an outside observer, he and Lucky were two immigrants cast in with the same lot. Both born Sicilian, both emigrating to New York, and both having succumbed to the quick, but perilous, profits of the underworld. It was not a calculation to be scorned. It had been one made by these very men. But there were crucial differences to each story that had shown themselves to be intractable odds with how to move into the future. Masseria was almost a decade older. And he had come to this country later in life. Those years meant a lot. Because, even if just a little older, the gap often felt as wide as the sea now separating them from the world they had known. Masseria had not gazed upon New York as a boy like Lucky had. And unlike Lucky, who’d seen the city’s new cultures, languages, and methods as possibilities, his boss had felt the opposite, fleeing back into what they’d always known. He still walked, talked, and looked all but indistinguishable from the Sicilians arriving today. The only difference being that his upper-lip missed the dark, bushy hair that would have made him the total image of their island’s rural gangster.
With that attitude had come hesitancy, and long, painful placation. It had been a fight to convince Masseria to work outside their neighborhoods. A fight to let him loosen power and allow expediency in the lower ranks. And a fight to expand into new rackets. Even bootlegging, the business that had brought them more wealth and power than could ever be found back in all the hills and fields of their poor, little homeland, had come with an arduous slog of easing the rustic Masseria’s fears before acquiescence finally made him a millionaire.
There was one thing though that men like Lucky’s boss would do without a fight. And that was fighting itself. After more than a decade of unprecedented profits, made possible by Lucky’s guidance, Masseria had brought it all to a halt by declaring war on Salvatore Maranzano. If Lucky had supported conflict, he could find reasons to fight. But war didn’t interest him. He knew his boss. And he knew Maranzano. Any rational was secondary to that the city’s two biggest bosses happened to hail from rival provinces back where they called home. No one knew what had started it or how many souls this vendetta had already claimed. But that was the reason their factions had never seen eye-to-eye, butting heads long before any declaration of war. And more importantly, why Lucky would now forever consider every one of his days borrowed. Fossils like these would have left the riches of prohibition on the table for the very groups they hated. Now, they again risked all their gains for the sake of pointless conflict.
The war needed to end. Everyone but the generals knew it. Lucky had not woken up in that hospital bed with the drive to murder anyone, but to never die for foolishness. There was no reason for such old squabbles to have ever been brought over to this new world. It had always been a weakness for them. A useless, futile, waste of time, only satisfying the bloodlust and egos of leaders too short-sighted to ever stop. Gangrened limbs had to be removed. That’s what Lucky thought. And a whole generation of freshly molded Americans agreed. Masseria had no roots here. Lucky did. Short, early roots that he intended to push deeper into the rich, American soil after having fought so hard to break through the New York concrete.
So Lucky pushed his superstitions out with the rest of the old world he’d forsaken, then folded his cards into a neat pile in the cup of his hand. He placed the pile face down on the table and told his boss he needed to use the bathroom. Masseria stopped complaining and grunted permission. Lucky nodded and stood up, walking through the empty room, eyes fixed towards the door with the painting of a toilet, his gaze only deviating when he caught movement in the kitchen door’s circular window, where the owner and his wife were pretending to be busy.
In the bathroom, Lucky could only wait. His legs became heavy and he sat with his hands over his face. He couldn’t wait forever. His boss would eventually come. He didn’t know what he’d do then. Only continue on as he had and hope he wouldn’t be caught in the crosshairs. If it ever came. If it didn’t, he’d been set up. And if he wasn’t plugged walking out of this little stall, then he’d only have the opportunity to run.
Again, Lucky thought of Jack McCall. Not daring to look behind him, Lucky tried to push away the ghost haunting his mind. The country had changed so much since that day. And they hadn’t changed at all. America had grown strong taming its wilds, while vines and shrubs were retaking the gardens and walls of Sicilian houses. His people needed to evolve. Otherwise, they’d all die by one another’s hand. Lucky could only hope the others realized this.
Finally, he heard the door to the outside open. Then came the muffled rumblings of whatever was said before a murderous crack of bullets echoed over the sounds of death.
When the door closed behind the last assassin, Lucky stepped out. The room was thick with the smell of what had killed the man now face down on the floor.
Lucky walked over to his former boss and reached towards the pile he’d left on the table. Lucky picked up the top card and placed the ace of spades between the corpse’s fingers. The old way was over. Looking over the bloody mess that had only just been his leader, Lucky grinned. He said goodbye to the past. Then walked out into the warm day of early Spring, feeling like he’d been dealt another new hand.
Bio: Jack Durant is an ESL teacher who has taught in Chile, Japan, Spain, and New York. He lives abroad and writes fiction in his spare time. Some places to find his work are Ponder Review, Written Tales Magazine, and The Ulu Review. He has also posted the story “The Score” on The Yard: Crime Blog
Read More Organized Crime Stories on The Yard: Crime Blog
Photo by The Yard.