down in my gut I had a feeling that it was tied in to something bigger. Something enormous. I scooped my change off the damp bar top and went back to work for Louis Cyphre.
The drive out to Coney Island was a pleasant distraction. Rush hour was still ninety minutes off and traffic moved freely along F. D. R. Drive and through the Battery Tunnel. I rolled down my window on the Shore Parkway and breathed the cold sea air blowing in through the Narrows. By the time I reached Cropsey Avenue the smell of blood was gone from my nostrils.
I followed West 17th Street down to Surf Avenue and parked beside a boarded-up bumper-car ride. Coney Island in the off-season had the look and feel of a ghost town. The skeletal tracks of the roller coasters rose above me like metal and timber spiderwebs, but the screams were missing and the wind moaned through the struts, lonesome as a train whistle.
A few odd souls wandered about Surf Avenue looking for something to do. Sheets of newspaper blew like tumbleweed down broad, empty streets. Overhead, a pair of sea gulls hovered, scanning the ground for discarded scraps. All along the avenue, cotton candy stands, fun houses, and games of chance were tightly shuttered, like clowns without makeup.
Nathan’s Famous was open for business as always, and I stopped for a hot dog and a cardboard cup of beer under the boldly lettered billboard façade. The counterman looked like he’d been around since the days of Luna Park, and I asked if he’d ever heard of a fortuneteller named Madame Zora.
“Madame who?”
“Zora. She was a big attraction here back in the forties.”
“Beats me, bud,” he said. “I only had this job less’n a year. Ask me something about the Staten Island Ferry. I ran the night food concession on the Gold Star Mother fifteen years. Go on, ask me something.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“Can’t swim.”
“So?”
“Afraid of gettin’ drowned. Din’t wanna press my luck.” He smiled, showing me four missing teeth. I stuffed the last of the hot dog into my face and wandered off, sipping beer.
The Bowery, situated between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk, was more a circus midway than a street. I strolled past the silent amusements and wondered what to do next. The gypsy community was more clannish than all the Ku Kluxers in Georgia, and I knew I would get no help from that direction. Leg work. Pound the pavement until someone turned up who remembered Madame Zora and was willing to talk about it.
Danny Dreenan seemed like a good place to start He was a retired bunco-steerer who operated a run-down wax museum near the corner of 13th Street and the Bowery. I met him in ‘52 when he was fresh out from a four-year stretch in Dannemora. The Feds tried to make him on a stock-option swindle, but he was just the fall guy for a pair of Wall Street shysters named Peavey and Munro. I was working for a third party who was also a victim of their grift and had a hand in cracking the case. Danny still owed me for that one, so he put me wise when I needed some knockdown on the q.t.
The Wax Gallery was housed in a narrow, one-story building sandwiched between a pizza stand and a penny arcade. Out in front, in foot-high crimson letters, it said:
SEE:
HALL OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
FIFTY FAMOUS MURDERS
ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN AND GARFIELD
DILLINGER IN MORGUE
FATTY ARBUCKLE ON TRIAL
EDUCATIONAL! LIFELIKE! SHOCKING!
A henna-haired harpy not a day older than President Grant’s widow sat in the ticket booth, playing solitaire like one of the mechanical fortunetellers in the penny arcade next door.
“Danny Dreenan around?” I asked.
“Out back,” she grunted, sneaking the jack of clubs from the bottom of the deck. “He’s working on a display.”
“Mind if I go in and talk to him?”
“Still gonna cost you two bits,” she said, nodding her ancient head at a cardboard placard: ADMISSION … 25˘.
I dug a quarter out of my trousers, slid it under the barred window,
The drive out to Coney Island was a pleasant distraction. Rush hour was still ninety minutes off and traffic moved freely along F. D. R. Drive and through the Battery Tunnel. I rolled down my window on the Shore Parkway and breathed the cold sea air blowing in through the Narrows. By the time I reached Cropsey Avenue the smell of blood was gone from my nostrils.
I followed West 17th Street down to Surf Avenue and parked beside a boarded-up bumper-car ride. Coney Island in the off-season had the look and feel of a ghost town. The skeletal tracks of the roller coasters rose above me like metal and timber spiderwebs, but the screams were missing and the wind moaned through the struts, lonesome as a train whistle.
A few odd souls wandered about Surf Avenue looking for something to do. Sheets of newspaper blew like tumbleweed down broad, empty streets. Overhead, a pair of sea gulls hovered, scanning the ground for discarded scraps. All along the avenue, cotton candy stands, fun houses, and games of chance were tightly shuttered, like clowns without makeup.
Nathan’s Famous was open for business as always, and I stopped for a hot dog and a cardboard cup of beer under the boldly lettered billboard façade. The counterman looked like he’d been around since the days of Luna Park, and I asked if he’d ever heard of a fortuneteller named Madame Zora.
“Madame who?”
“Zora. She was a big attraction here back in the forties.”
“Beats me, bud,” he said. “I only had this job less’n a year. Ask me something about the Staten Island Ferry. I ran the night food concession on the Gold Star Mother fifteen years. Go on, ask me something.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“Can’t swim.”
“So?”
“Afraid of gettin’ drowned. Din’t wanna press my luck.” He smiled, showing me four missing teeth. I stuffed the last of the hot dog into my face and wandered off, sipping beer.
The Bowery, situated between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk, was more a circus midway than a street. I strolled past the silent amusements and wondered what to do next. The gypsy community was more clannish than all the Ku Kluxers in Georgia, and I knew I would get no help from that direction. Leg work. Pound the pavement until someone turned up who remembered Madame Zora and was willing to talk about it.
Danny Dreenan seemed like a good place to start He was a retired bunco-steerer who operated a run-down wax museum near the corner of 13th Street and the Bowery. I met him in ‘52 when he was fresh out from a four-year stretch in Dannemora. The Feds tried to make him on a stock-option swindle, but he was just the fall guy for a pair of Wall Street shysters named Peavey and Munro. I was working for a third party who was also a victim of their grift and had a hand in cracking the case. Danny still owed me for that one, so he put me wise when I needed some knockdown on the q.t.
The Wax Gallery was housed in a narrow, one-story building sandwiched between a pizza stand and a penny arcade. Out in front, in foot-high crimson letters, it said:
SEE:
HALL OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
FIFTY FAMOUS MURDERS
ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN AND GARFIELD
DILLINGER IN MORGUE
FATTY ARBUCKLE ON TRIAL
EDUCATIONAL! LIFELIKE! SHOCKING!
A henna-haired harpy not a day older than President Grant’s widow sat in the ticket booth, playing solitaire like one of the mechanical fortunetellers in the penny arcade next door.
“Danny Dreenan around?” I asked.
“Out back,” she grunted, sneaking the jack of clubs from the bottom of the deck. “He’s working on a display.”
“Mind if I go in and talk to him?”
“Still gonna cost you two bits,” she said, nodding her ancient head at a cardboard placard: ADMISSION … 25˘.
I dug a quarter out of my trousers, slid it under the barred window,
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