the guy responsible for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He was gunned down himself a few years later, in the middle of a frame of tenpin. If you saw the name McGurn’s Lament, you knew the numbers that followed were code for a target’s name—and if you were lucky, an address. Even money said whoever that name belonged to wasn’t long for this world.
It worked like this. Say the horse wearing number thirty-eight came in sixth. That meant the sixth letter on the thirty-eighth page was the one you wanted. Big enough block of numbers, you could encode damn near any message you liked. Any message like a name and an address. Any message like take your time or make it look like an accident. And because nearly every letter of the alphabet appears in dozens of places throughout the course of any book, there’s none of the repetition code-breaking programs rely upon to work their mojo. Unless you knew what book the code was referencing—right down to the exact edition—there was no way you were ever going to crack it. At least, that’s what Lester kept on telling him once he’d identified the code itself.
Unless you get me the goddamned book, Mikey, he’d told Hendricks, ain’t no way we’ll break this thing.
So Hendricks got him the book.
Granted, it took him the better part of two years—and if his target hadn’t slipped, he might never have discovered it. Said target was a made guy who was picking up a little freelance wetwork on the side. Hendricks took him alive, and after a couple hours’ cajoling—and enough sodium amytal to make half a cell block sing—the guy told him what he wanted to know in return for ending him quick.
Turns out, it was the 1969 first edition of The Godfather.
Never let it be said the Mob doesn’t have a sense of humor.
After several minutes of poring over Lester’s printouts, Hendricks gave up. “You know I’m lousy at reading this stuff,” he said. “You want to tell me what exactly I’m looking at?”
“The first one’s a series of dispatches from the Chicago Outfit. Urgent, by the sound of ’em. Seems they’re looking to pop one of their own on the quiet—a capo’s nephew. He runs a nightclub the Outfit uses as a front to peddle Molly—but word is, the guy ain’t right. He likes cutting on women. They’re worried his extracurricular activities put them at risk, and they’re sick of cleaning up his messes.”
“Pass,” Hendricks said. He was no fan of organized crime, but one thing most old-school outfits had going for them was their disdain for crime of the disorganized variety on their turf—even if it was committed by one of their own. Anybody who cut women was a rancid pile of human garbage, and as far as Hendricks was concerned, there was no point saving someone who wasn’t worth saving. If Chicago wanted to take out their own trash, it was best to let them do it without a fuss.
“Yup. Good riddance, says I.”
Hendricks took a bite of his sandwich—the bread toasted to crunchy perfection, the pastrami juicy and delicious—and washed it down with a sip from his pint. “What else you got?”
“The Los Angeles mob just put a hit out on some gangbanger out of Long Beach. Nobody’s accepted the contract yet, so the details are a little light on the ground.”
Hendricks ate in silence for a moment. “You got a name on the target?”
“Yeah, and not much more. Born Irving Franklin. Receives mail at his grandma’s place. Doesn’t seem to have a fixed address.”
“Arrest record?”
“Vandalism. Petty theft. Possession with intent. The arresting officer on the latter rolled up a crew of corner boys who call themselves the Savage Prophets, and he was one of ’em.”
“Any reason these Savage Prophets would have a beef with the LA family?”
“None that I could find—and anyway, Franklin is the only one they’re looking to whack. They’re one of the few black gangs in the area not affiliated with the Crips. Could be the Prophets get
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