Free Prohibition by Terrence McCauley

know.”
    Zito squinted at him. “Wait a minute...I know you.” His eyes opened
    wider. “Christ, you’re Terry Quinn, ain’t you?”
    Quinn kept Zito’s .22 leveled at him while he fished out his cigarette
    case, selected a Lucky and lit it with one hand. “You know me?”
    “I know what you done to Charlie Murphy,” Zito said. “And what you done John Calabrese up in the Bronx.”
    Quinn let out a long stream of smoke through his nose. “Some of my best work.”
    Zito’s eyes stayed wide. “What the hell do you want with me, mister?”
    “You shot Fatty Corcoran, dimwit,” Quinn accused. “What did you expect? A dozen roses?”
    Quinn watched Zito forget all about his sore head and gut. His eyes went vacant, then darted around the room. His mouth started quivering and his hands started to shake.
    Zito stammered. “Th...that fat man in Ames’ was Fatty Corcoran?” “As if you didn’t know.”
    “Jesus,” Zito whispered. He inched to the far side of the bed, away from Quinn. The trembling got worse. “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Listen, mister, you gotta believe me. I didn’t mean to...”
    “You didn’t mean to what? You didn’t mean to shoot him or you didn’t mean to leave him alive? Which is it?”
    Zito popped sweat. “I...I didn’t mean to shoot Fatty Corcoran.” He fidgeted with the sheet like a little kid who’d just pissed the bed. Quinn wondered if he had. “I...I mean I shot him, yeah, but I didn’t mean to shoot him.” He ran his hand nervously over his unruly hair. “Fatty Fucking Corcoran? Oh, sweet Jesus, what did I do?”
    Zito’s whimpering surprised Quinn. He held back giving Zito another slap to steady him down. He’d seen a lot of liars act this way before he’d killed them, but something about Zito’s act rang genuine. He decided to switch tactics. Keep the guinea off balance.
    “Take it easy,” Quinn said. “If I’d wanted you dead, you would’ve woke up that way.” He tossed his cigarete case on the bed. His lighter followed.
    The .22 stayed level.
    Zito looked at the case, then at Quinn. He slowly reached for the cigarettes with an unsteady hand.
    “That’s better,” Quinn approved. “No sense in getting too nervous, Carmine. You and me are just a couple of guys chewing the fat is all. So just lay back, relax and tell me everything from the beginning. Who hired you to kill Fatty?”
    Zito was shaking bad now, worse than before. Quinn wondered if he was going into shock. Zito barely got the cigarette in his mouth. He fumbled with the lighter. But Quinn wasn’t dumb enough to fall for that old trick. He saw how it could play out: reach over to give him a light and Zito makes a play for the gun. Fuck him if he can’t light it himself.
    Zito gave up trying to light it and tossed cigarette and lighter aside. “What’s the use? You ain’t gonna believe me anyhow. You’ll just plug me
    anyway. Christ!”
    “Maybe, maybe not. Who hired you to shoot Fatty?”
    “Nobody,” Zito quickly waived his hands. “I...I mean I used to pull jobs for the O’Bannion boys in Chicago, the Kansas City combine and so on. I get on a train, do the job, get paid and come back. But that kinda work’s been slow lately, and I ate into most of what I had squirreled away for a rainy day. I was getting pretty desperate...”
    “My heart bleeds. Get to the fucking point.”
    Zito took a deep breath and began again. “A couple of days ago, I woke up and found a paper bag on the floor at the foot of my bed. Somebody must’ve climbed down the fire escape and tossed it in the window while I was sleeping. I opened it up and found a thousand bucks in tens and twenties in there with a note card inside.”
    Quinn hadn’t been buying the story until then. “A note? What kind of note?”
    “See for yourself,” Zito said, pointing quickly over to the RCA cabinet.
    “I put it in there with the record player after I read it.”
    Quinn looked over at the cabinet. It still looked too