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Fiction 3, Chapters 3 & 4

Chapter 3

It is easy to sugar to be sweet and to nitre to be salt.

We take a great deal of pains to waylay and entrap

that which of itself will fall into our hands.

COLUMBUS CIRCLE AREA - NEW YORK, N.Y.

They ate at a Schrafft's on lower Broadway, a relatively inexpensive place more like a men's club than a public restaurant. Dark leather, dark wood, dark drapes, wine-red rug and chandeliers combined to surround them with cool refuge from the hot, noisy city outside.

Rosemary's hair was no longer in an upsweep. Instead, soft chestnut waves just brushed a bare neck and beautiful shoulders. Her wide-brimmed straw hat was now resting on one of the unused chairs at their table. The pastel pink ribbon that served it as a hatband and trailed down off the back of the brim complemented a peaches-and-cream complexion and pale blue sundress perfectly.

A hint of bosom peeked at him from over the modest neckline whenever she leaned forward.

He hoped that Rosemary didn't notice how much he was sweating. His blazer and tie were not meant for this kind of weather __or such close company.

Henry was positive that she had picked Schrafft's to make it easy on his wallet. To be sure, he appreciated that consideration even though his own civil service salary was based on 1928 wage levels. In the terrible deflation of the last six years, now when family wage-earners were lucky to make fifteen or twenty dollars a week, Henry Locknane was comparatively well-to-do with little to spend his money on besides the Ford and his family.

He normally drank little and smoked not at all. On this occasion, however, he'd ordered a bottle of French wine for them without consulting a wine list. When the waiter asked which French he'd prefer though, he was totally stumped. Luckily, Rosemary asked for the house white wine instead, saving him additional embarrassment.

Maybe she hadn't noticed.

They both ordered a New England "boiled dinner"; she because she honestly liked it, and he because she honestly liked it.

"Tell me about your mother," she asked, while they were waiting. "What a terrible thing to be widowed twice." And Henry was back again on the rat-race wheel, but this time he was determined to be more polite and let Rosemary get a word in edgewise.

It was just that she seemed so interested.

Still, he forced himself to ask more about her family and interests. That was only common courtesy, even though he knew that the details of her life would only serve to point up the differences in their backgrounds.

"School? Oh, of course, Henry? Everyone has to go to school. I went to____" Rosemary seemed to hesitate. She looked carefully around first, then said in a low voice, "Well, I suppose it's all right to tell you __she emphasized the 'you.' I attended a finishing school. It wouldn't be right to say more at the moment, because the school is administered by Countess Balinski, a Russian emigree."

She leaned closer to him over the corner of their table and whispered in his left ear, "They're looking for her. You know, the Reds in Russia; so please: Not a word to anyone. All right?"

He found himself whispering back into her ear. "Of course." The proximity made him a little giddy. Maybe it was her perfume.

Wait a minute!

When she sat back, Henry started to sip a little more wine. Then he quickly decided that it wasn't a good idea if he wanted to keep his head. After seven years on the force he knew a line when he heard it and how to coax it along until he found out the "why" of it.

He looked quickly around as well, just to demonstrate that he was alert to the Red Menace. Communists! What next?

Turning back, he smiled reassuringly. "I wouldn't worry too much. Russia's threatening the rebels in Spain. I think they'll be too busy there to bother your teacher."

She smiled back.

His heart danced inside even while he telling himself to be wary. He went on. "I mean: now that Franco's definitely left Morocco, everybody's wondering what's going to happen. The Commies are destroying Spain __Lowell Thomas said last night that there were fifty churches burning in Madrid alone__ they're killing priests and nuns and anybody with money. The junta __and the Falange, whatever that is__ seem to be slaughtering everybody else."

Rosemary shuddered, so he wound it up quickly on a promising note. "Anyway, everyone overseas says that Franco is the one general that the whole Army there will follow. He's supposed to be the only man who can stop the bloodshed."

His date kept her silence on the subject.

It was time for him to find out more about her, anyway. "Enough of Europe," he said. "It's nothing that Americans should have to worry about. More to the point: How long will you be in New York?"

She smiled ruefully and shook her head. "I'm not sure. Probably only for a day or two." She touched Henry's arm with the fingers her left hand. He almost jumped out of his skin. "I think my mission here is a lost cause already."

Mission? Oh brother!

"I'm looking for my older brother. He disappeared many years ago when I was a little girl, but I loved him dearly. And no little girl ever had a better brother, either, despite his problems."

"What was wrong?" He touched her arm in return.

"He'd been run over by a truck when he was thirteen and lost his left leg. It was before I was born, of course, but he never really recovered. He tried to wear a wooden leg. It should have been good that the amputation was below the knee, but the stump never really healed that well, I guess, so he had a kind of peg attached. He couldn't really stand on it or walk without a crutch, though."

"It must have been really tough on the boy," Henry said. "And on your family." He brushed the back of her hand again with his fingertips and let them rest there this time.

The young woman nodded and he noticed that two tears, suspended at the outer edge of each eye, were dislodged to gently roll halfway down her cheek. She put down her napkin and took a tissue from her purse to blot them up.

Good! Really good! His brain didn't seem to connect with anything south of his neck. No matter what it thought, the rest of him wanted to grab the world by the neck and lay it at her feet.

Still, Rosemary and her mother had prepared her lishgael __her sales pitch__ very well. The basic elements that could possibly be examined in the present day were factual: her brother had lost his leg as an adolescent, felt bitterly disappointed with life, quarrelled with his father and had disappeared without a trace at the age of seventeen.

All the other elements, especially the motivations, were lies. Safe lies, thought Rosemary; although her mother would have known better, had she met the adult Henry Locknane.

"So," Henry summarized when she had finished, "an old family friend was sure he recognized your brother here in this city, fifteen years after he disappeared from Hartford. And he has to accept his share of your combined trust fund or be declared legally dead, which might take years." They were holding hands now, albeit not romantically.

"The money isn't important to me personally," she said. "But if there is any possibility that he's still alive, I have to find him for the sake of his health. Money and medicine can work wonders these days. I'm sure that he'd be able to walk again, if he's not too far gone in drink or worse. He was very bitter, very sad and beaten down." Rosemary thought wryly to herself that part of her story was true, anyway.

She remembered thinking, even at seven years of age, that her big brother acted like a baby sometimes and, nice as he was to her, he needed badly to grow up.

There was no doubt in her mind that the best place to start looking for him as a grown man would be among the homeless and the hopeless, crippled in character as well as physically. He probably wouldn't be found __was probably dead__ but at least her mother would be satisfied that she had tried as hard as she could.

Rosemary gripped Henry's hand tightly. "Now let's not talk about anything sad, like Spain or crippled brothers. We could drive into the park and stop at the boathouse." She smiled brightly. "Would you be my gondolier for the afternoon?"

He smiled back, teeth a bit crooked but quite white, wondering exactly how much of this whopper was true. "Rosemary, do you have a good snapshot of him around the time he left?"

"Oh, yes! But let's not bother about that. If I can't find him, I just can't find him and that's that. With the trust all tied up, I won't be able to hire private investigators or advertise in newspapers. So if I have to leave soon, at least let's make the most of the rest of the afternoon."

Henry smiled again, inwardly now. He was being sold a bill of goods; that was all right. But volunteering would keep them working together, at least, and success would put her in his debt. He was fascinated by her manner as much as her beauty, regardless or possibly because of her story.

She challenged both the man and the cop in him.

He'd seldom gone out of his way to look for challenges in his life __maybe that was true, that he wasn't a world-beater__ but he'd never walked away from one either, or failed to meet it head-on.

"Sure, I couldn't agree more," he said, nodding his head, smiling innocently, "and the heck with Spain. One last thing, though. What's your brother's name?"

Her mother would be pleased, she knew. Henry Locknane was hooked! Now if only he was smarter, gutsier than he looked. She said "Michael. Michael Quirk, of course."

* * * * *

CHELSEA DISTRICT - NEW YORK, N.Y.

"Michael Quirk. De Valera, of course." There was a strong Dublin brogue to that voice, a beautiful brogue to listen to; although its listeners were not so accustomed to English as to be impressed by more than the baritone timbre of it. The tall man who had spoken so took a card from the handkerchief pocket of his tuxedo jacket, and dropped it on the baptismal font between himself and his contact.

That contact, a Spaniard also dressed in formal clothes, paused in the minimal pleasantries to evaluate the man who had limped into his life. No use, he thought, the strong face gave away nothing that the Irishman could not afford to lose. Not for the first time, the Spaniard wished for the comfort of a full beard on his own face instead of the Vandyke which his dignity required.

He gestured to his knights __that is how he thought of himself, as a man to command knights__ and they closed in on the tall stranger, to search him. Perhaps, to hurt him a bit and save their master a little time.

The Irishman didn't seem to do much, moving a bit awkwardly on a stiff left leg. But neither did his searchers evidence any further interest in checking his pockets, or in anything else besides kissing the marble floor of The Spanish Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Their chief __Miguel Caballero__ made no sudden, overt moves, merely gripped the Walther pistol in his pocket even more tightly. A re-evaluation of the other man had suddenly been impressed on him. He noticed that Quirk __or De Valera, as he called himself__ was young, no more than thirty surely, trim and broad-shouldered, dressed in a loose black opera cape.

That garment, a full cloak, seemed oddly out of place on such a warm evening. Something, perhaps a sap or blackjack, had just been replaced in a right side inner pocket by its wielder.

Caballero wondered what dangers might be found in the other pockets, as well. And where the other man had left his top-hat; pondering just who else might be in the background, holding that hat __and God knows what else__ for the man named Quirk, or De Valera when it suited him.

Michael Quirk smiled, again in an elegant way __as he did all things save running. The smile emphasized perfect teeth and a nobly aquiline, rather than handsome, nose. He picked up his card and flipped it across the well of the font, to land directly in front of Caballero.

The latter man would have sworn that he had never taken his eyes off Quirk, but knew he was mistaken when he saw that the other man was now pointing a revolver at him. Quirk carefully laid his gun down on the polished stone, however, spreading his arms in a gesture of peace.

Is this man a stage magician, I wonder? thought Caballero, more on guard than ever. No, there are no flourishes, only actions.

Quirk said gently, "If I'd meant to kill you, I would have done it somewhere else than in a church, Señor."

But Caballero gripped his own pocketed pistol even more tightly, his whole pudgy body clenched with tension. He hadn't included personal danger in his plans for the evening.

Quirk was amused, but cautious himself. He went on. "Look! The choice is very simple, Señor Caballero. The Nazis have promised planes and pilots __for a price. The Italians have promised you one-hundred thousand men, tanks and guns __for a price, and Balbo's giant seaplanes, and maybe phosgene as well to clear the cities __for a price."

He halted for effect before going on. "But, you don't have the price handy. And Stalin will sell everything he's stolen to support your enemies, the Republicans, the Communists __except the Trotskyites, of course__ and the Socialists. I'm sure I've left a few out; you have so many enemies. Not to mention the fanatic foreigners who will dance into battle to the tune of the International."

Caballero sniffed. "And you will save España, Senor? I do not believe that for a moment."

Quirk laughed. "Not me, Caballero. General Franco will do that, of course, but to do so he needs money __unless he sells the honor of Spain to peasants like Adolf and Benito. But my father knows pretty much where he can find all the money the General will ever need to keep his virginity."

Then he nodded meaningfully toward the Spaniard. "Enough for the rest of us, as well," he added.

Caballero bristled at the sarcasm but took the Irishman's hint about side bets. "Why then does Eamon De Valera send his natural son to me?"

He seemed to mull over his own question at length but before the other man could reply, he observed, "You know, few men would profess with pride to be a bastard, unless they claim noble blood." Caballero then gave the other just enough time to take offense and not enough to retort. "But that is a digression, Quirk, and certainly not the case here. For what then does your presumed father, the Prime Minister of Ireland, need the Nationalists if we are so powerless?"

He knew Quirk's backers needed something from him, of course. He'd been promised millions for the Nationalist cause in return for "a simple favor," as yet undefined.

Quirk kept his own temper easily. "Please spare me the high drama, Señor. Two things only does he want: to keep the British preoccupied with everything but Ireland for the next year or two, and your aid in acquiring our half of the gold."

Caballero exclaimed, "Gold! Do you take me for a fool?" Then the other intriguing word struck him fully. "What do you mean, 'half'."

"Yes, half; that is, one of two treasures. And no, I do not take you for a fool at all, Señor. You can prove my claims for yourself as soon as your forces capture Barcelona."

Caballero snorted. "As you have pointed out, Quirk, we do not have the resources to capture Barcelona for some time, if at all. I say this frankly, you see. Why do you not deal with the Republicans?"

Quirk just smiled.

"Aah-haah," Caballero said slowly, seeing the light. "You need us but the Republicans would not need you. Correct?"

"Quite correct, Señor Caballero. They have a prisoner within one of their chekas, their dungeons. One of many, actually. I know the name that they're holding him under and I know how to get him out of there with your help. And he knows the location of one treasure and the key to the second."

"Yes! I see why you could not negotiate with them. They have almost all the cards. Why do you say 'treasures?' Are they artworks, golden artifacts?"

Michael Quirk shook his head. "No. There are two distinct treasures: one in Spain, presumably Seville; the other, in the Caribbean."

"You are very free with details, Señor Quirk, for a treasure seeker. That does not encourage confidence. Seville might as well be on the moon at this moment."

"Perhaps you have not received the news yet."

"News of what, Irishman?"

"The wire services have reported that your General Queipo has taken Seville personally, without a shot being fired or a single soldier at his command. He just drove up to the barracks and took over, personally arresting the senior officers who refused to turn their coats. It will be in the Times and the Tribune tomorrow morning."

Caballero was elated but tried to stifle the wave of relief that swept through him. He'd received notification of such a rumor, but scarcely dared to believe it, that a Republican city would fall to their forces this quickly. Spain was a hotbed of fantastic __and inaccurate__ rumors at any time and especially now.

But all he said to Quirk was, "It is promising news, of course, but old news now. And more important developments will soon eclipse Seville."

Quirk shrugged. "And we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Speeches can only take you so far, Señor Caballero, and you would be very foolish to debate so with Anarchists, Socialists and Communists. You promise duty and honor. The others, your cousin Largo among them, promise exactly what the peasants want: Paradise next year."

Caballero flushed at the mention of his second cousin who was the Socialist Prime Minister. "Seville?" he demanded. "Please get to the point."

"Your treasure is there, in your territory." Quirk pointed at Caballero for emphasis. "And the man who knows where it is hidden is in Barcelona, not in your territory. You need my help to find him."

"And what do you need."

"Your help to acquire him, Señor."

"For what, Irishman? As long as you are giving away all of your secrets today for nothing."

"For a code, Caballero, a key that fits a lock that only my father knows, one that guards a second treasure you could never hope to obtain, still buried somewhere on the Spanish Main." Quirk's face took on an ironic cast easily, thanks to his almost Hapsburg nose.

He continued, "They're both originally from there, of course. The first from the Mona Passage and the second from somewhere on the great man's High Voyage." Quirk could see the astonishment and disbelief his information had engendered. The terms he'd used were familiar to every student of Spanish history.

Caballero's face went scarlet with indignation. "Impossible!" he shouted, "He died in poverty and chains, a broken old man."

"Check that story with your historians. You'll find that it isn't true, although the Admiral himself encouraged the myth. But his descendants lived like royalty, even though his own King reneged on their contract."

"I suppose this prisoner is one of those," the Spaniard guessed.

"Yes, a direct descendant of Diego, his only legitimate son."

"And your 'father?' How does he come by his knowledge?"

"He is descended from Diego Gomez, the man who saved the whole expedition. Not legitimately, however. Through a son born to a Taino Indian princess."

The haughty aristocrat snorted with derision at the affectation, as Quirk had meant him to. "So, Irishman, it seems that bastardy runs in your family." Caballero's inbred scorn for others had slipped through there; although the lack of any money demand had helped to lull some of his suspicions so far. The family of The Admiral of the Ocean Sea had lived well through the last five hundred years though; it was true, he reflected. The Spanish aristocrat was caught up in spite of his distrustful nature.

Quirk said mildly, "I suppose that's only natural, considering our Spanish blood, Señor." He then bowed without apparent mockery.

The quasi-noble Spaniard ground his teeth, but said nothing nor did his expression betray his anger. A good commander of knights is concerned, first and foremost, with his pay-chest.

The properly insulted Caballero asked, "And what arrangements would be necessary to acquire this Spanish prisoner who __I assume__ is not to be located under his family name?"

Quirk hesitated slightly when the other man used the expression "Spanish prisoner," but he continued with his presentation anyway, hoping the pause had been brief enough not to arouse suspicion.

He reached __slowly__ into the left inside pocket of his cloak with his right hand and took out a thick envelope. Then he carefully placed it next to his business card on Caballero's side of the baptismal font between them.

"First," Quirk said, "I'd like you to go over these photostats and abstracts. You'll see that I have solid ground for my claims. Next, you must come up with a plan to get us into and out of Barcelona that I think will work. The plan must also contain iron-clad assurances for me that there will be no betrayal. That is all I ask for."

"And in return? What do you offer in return, Quirk?"

"Tons of gold, 'Don' Miguel, tens of millions of dollars worth." Quirk spoke with less sarcasm than irony, then more seriously __more forcefully, "The Treasures of Colón. The last bequest of Don Cristóbal, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, to his sons. One for you: one for us."

Christopher Columbus.

And this sucker was hooked. Now for the others.

Later, Michael Quirk laughed quietly as he walked away in the night, his limp now almost imperceptible. "Spanish prisoner," indeed. His plan combined several of the greatest scams of all time and one of them was always called exactly that.

A tall pudgy man with a long awkward stride joined him after a few blocks, handing over the silk top hat that completed his uniform of social standing.

Chapter 4

SOUTH BROAD AREA - NEWARK, N.J.

"You can't threaten me, you rajd old beuers." The old man who spoke wore his suit jacket __Hart, Shaffner and Marx__ long-sleeved dress shirt and tie, and Panama hat, even though the temperature had hit 100 that afternoon. There was a high-gloss shine on his black Florsheim shoes and long, slim, uncalloused hands played with the gold-plated head of his strictly ornamental cane.

He rapped the head __for effect__ on the tabletop that separated him from the three old women who also occupied the South Street porch. Near him, but not with him. Then the old man sat back. His name was James Quirk; often he was called "Gentleman Jim." For his affectations, not for his character.

Each of the women had a single item in front of her: a deck of cards for Rose, a Bible for Bridget and a smoking corncob pipe in the hands of Winifred.

James Quirk settled on Rose, who sat between the other two women and directly across the table from himself. He leaned forward at her, saying "I'm your husband, woman, and don't you forget it." That was true; although her daughters __wiser in the ways of the modern world than their mother__ had long since arranged for a legal separation codifying the physical one.

He raised the cane again in a threat to all three, however.

That didn't faze them particularly. Rose colored a little and replied, "You're nothing to me but a mad dog, James."

Her sister, Bridget __who specialized in indignation__ wasn't content with that and told him, "You'd spend the rest of your days in jail for using that fancy chat on helpless old women. If Rose had any brothers, anyway, you'd have been dead these fifteen years now, or if she'd told her sons all you done. Remember: Evan's just down the block, James Quirk. If Winnie tells him to, he'll rip your throat out. Maybe even if she doesn't. You know 'Alamo'."

Indeed, James Quirk knew Winnie's son "Alamo." Evan Furlong had earned that nickname in some Mob war in Chicago, early on in Prohibition. One of his brothers, Barney, __called "Buffalo"__ had been there as well. The two had made a fine set of up-and-coming gangsters until their lack of self-discipline prompted a hasty retreat eastward.

Five years earlier "Buffalo" had been shot down and killed in New York City by the notorious young criminal, "Two-gun Crowley." Their fight started out simply enough; "Buffalo" liked Crowley's girlfriend and so did Crowley. His girlfriend also liked "Buffalo," __especially in bed__ and therefor, Crowley didn't.

There were those who claimed that Evan __"Alamo"__ strangled his brother's killer to death in retaliation. And there were those who claimed that he carried one of Crowley's guns still. The first was not true; the second might have been. Crowley had barely escaped Evan's first attempt at retribution with his life, in too much of a panic to worry about losing an automatic pistol.

The electric chair actually caught up with Crowley before "Alamo" did. The eighteen year old gunman killed a policeman who had stopped his automobile while fleeing the vengeful Traveller.

All the courage in the whole world be inadequate to ask Evan if it was the gun which had killed his brother, or the other, or even if he knew which was which. Still, he was almost a personable young man____ compared to Winnie's other known surviving son, Frankie.

"Known" is used here because the woman was rumored to have abandoned several broods in her long lifetime of wandering. Those who knew her best believed it. Unlike Rose and Bridget, she looked and smelled like a foul old witch and made a fair living __for the times__ by being so obnoxious that businessmen would pay her to leave their premises.

Her pipe had gone out so she lit it again with a wooden match and tossed the blackened stub off onto the still-baking sidewalk. They were all sitting on the front porch of the building where she lived in the third floor attic. Two of Rose's married daughters also occupied the first floor apartments there.

78 South Street: Next to Nick's saloon, a hangout popular with Irish Travellers from miles around, as well as others from the lower end of the social strata. They were on the eastern border of what was commonly called "South Broad," in St. Columba's parish, next to McCarter Highway and the elevated B&O railroad tracks.

South street continued west-southwest away from Broad street, under and beyond the tracks into the Ironbound area of Newark, which they all called "Down-neck" on the wrong side of those tracks. It was a much more upscale area than South Broad and its generally-Italian denizens fiercely resented the few Portugese who were starting to move in.

St. Columba's was so thoroughly populated with Italian parishioners and priests that few, if any, even of the small Irish-American contingent realized that the saint had been an Irishman himself, nobly born, a renowned educator and missionary of his ancient era.

Winnie blew the foul exhaust from her pipe directly into the face of old James Quirk, who glared at her but still did not strike.

The old man removed his Panama, using his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration off a bald head supported by a fringe of closely trimmed silver hair. He asked, "Where would I get five thousand shtammers, anyway? You're all daft, radj'd out of your nyucks. And all for some phantom you haven't seen these many years. Some son! You're the one who kicked him out, not me anyway."

Rose leaned toward him. She hissed, "You'll get it, you old thief. You owe him every penny and more for what you stole from him. Oh, you'll get it, you will! You'll always find somebody else to cheat; it's the spending of it that's the problem. Michael would have killed you then when he had the chance, if I hadn't stopped him."

He was livid. "Don't look for any thanks from me, you ugly old bitch. He didn't have the guts to do it, even with me on the floor. He never had any guts. Never! Like you, you old cow; you just 'moo' all day long and weep all night. He was never my son!"

Rose's battered face flushed again. "If only that was true. I'd have told him so and killed you myself. There isn't a decent man in this world who wouldn't have killed you for what you did after. You'd be dead and gone, if it wasn't that he'd find out. It would kill him to know."

James Quirk looked around nervously. "Keep still!" he said. "There's no sense in aggravating the thing. You know that was an accident, Rose____Damn it! You know that! I wouldn't do you like that. You know that!"

But there was no let-up in his wife now. "Liar!" she almost screamed. "You could've killed me a dozen times. I told myself that wasn't so bad; you never beat the kids. Until I found out you cheated poor Michael, you dog in the manger. Then you abused him with your terrible mouth and you even smashed his crutch. You'll roast in Hell for destroying that boy, James, and I'll go there too, just to turn the spit."

Her husband was sputtering.

But there was no let-up in his wife now. Rose hit him where it really hurt __the bankroll. "The 'glonth!' Drop it on the table right now!"

The tall, wiry old man whipped his cane back to strike her across the face. Winnie cried, "Evan, boy!" in a loud voice and Quirk sat as suddenly as if he'd been shot, looking around him in obvious terror.

"Come on, gammee gyuck, hand it over. NOW!"

He reluctantly pulled a folded wad of green from his pocket and removed the gold-plated, monogrammed money clip that kept it together. The horseshoe clip went back to its pocket and the wad to the center of the table.

Rose separated the few outer hundreds and threw the rest __mostly ones__ back to him. "Many's the time our children went hungry, man," she said shaking the bills up and down in the air between them.

"You don't look like YOU ever did, you old bitch!" He was starting to work up one of his berserk rages, Rose could tell. She looked at Winnie, who opened her mouth to call her son again, this time seriously.

James Quirk yelled, "NO! No! No." He pretended to clutch at his heart.

No pity from Rose. She finished it, sick to her stomach at the sight of him and yet fighting the terrible connection between them; forty years of love, lust and hate together; six children born, almost seven. "And just get all his glonth for him before the next full moon, or you're dead, James Quirk. This has gone on too long now, and we're all cursed by it, the children too."

He was still anxiously keeping his eye on the front entrance of Evan Furlong's apartment building when the women suddenly left him there and went inside, shutting and locking the front door against him and also any hope of a cooling breeze.

James Quirk shivered in the left-over heat of a terrible day. Then he rose and quickly walked away in the night, around the corner __well away from "Alamo's" front door__ along the darkest side of the street.

* * * *

PRECINCT- NEW YORK, N.Y.

Detective Johnny Broderick looked at the picture and grunted, while Henry Locknane sat in the hot seat beside Broderick's coffee-ringed desk and kept his silence well. The detective appreciated that; knew it for a characteristic of the other man, a rare characteristic.

Almost everyone else who had sat in that chair babbled from the moment they sat down until they were intimidated into abject silence. It didn't matter whether the sitter was complainant, witness or perpetrator, Broderick was famous __not notorious__ on the Broadway beat for dispensing justice with his fists.

Henry Locknane was the best listener he'd ever run across. Everything went in, but very little went out. Broderick figured he'd bust at the seams someday.

"You know, Hank," he growled, "for a beat cop you've sure got a lot of snitches. Hell! You got more stoolies telling you stuff for nothing than we got in this whole precinct by making deals and paying off. So, how am I supposed to find this bum if you can't? Tell me that, huh!"

The patrolman __out of uniform__ shook his head. "Everybody knows you, Johnny. You're good copy for the papers and they'll do stuff for you they'd never do for me." He smiled and said, "What do they call you? 'The Boffer'?"

Broderick laughed at the newspaper nickname. "Yeah, I was trying to hold out for 'Broadway Johnny,' but it took up too much room." Locknane joined him in laughter and the other denizens of the squad room looked up briefly.

They weren't used to people in the "hot seat" laughing.

Broderick was curious. "So how come you're interested in this guy? I know you're on your own time, but LaGuardia and Dewey are coming down hard on any kind of free-lancing. Would you believe it?" Broderick laughed softly, as close to whimsy as he'd ever get. "An honest mayor, and a wop at that. What'll they think of next?"

Hank sighed a little. "It's his sister, Johnny. She's a knockout, but there's no money in it for me."

"Well, you don't want much, do you. I'll tell you right now, the Times and the Trib won't do it. Probably not the Post either, and the managing editor of the Journal gets his toilet paper in triplicate from Hearst himself, so he won't do anything like this even for me. The Mirror will, if we tell them the News is running it but that's not much circulation."

Hank said, "What about the Daily News then?"

Broderick nodded. "I think I can get them to do it if I promise them a story about a long-lost Hartford heir who's also a one-legged, drunken bum in New York City. Maybe we'll get Weegee to take pictures when we find him. The fruitcake smells like a flop-house but he owes us both big."

"How about flyers, like they do for A & P or department stores? We could use a couple of thousand."

Broderick snorted. "You're asking for the moon." But he paused to consider the request seriously. He said, "We still owe you for turning up Crowley a while back, though. Tell me: What put you on to his old girlfriend anyway? I got the impression it was personal."

Locknane normally figured a cop with a family of women had no right to be a loudmouth, possibly exposing them to retaliation. Still, Broderick always liked getting the credit and wasn't about to spill any beans on him.

"Well, he killed a cop, of course. But the girl was only a neighborhood acquaintance. Mostly, it was that he shot a badman down on my block a year before. The little punk was never charged for it," he explained, "but it was him all right. I kept my ears open after that. Eventually __it was the usual__ the woman turned him in."

"Why?"

"The woman?" Hank asked. "Billie Dunne was scared to death of Crowley. She didn't need much convincing, especially when he showed up with his new lady love."

"No, not her! You? What was he to you? It was more than just his killing the Nassau county cop." Broderick kept his growly voice low for privacy and their heads were bent toward each other almost whispering in each other's ear __the conversational posture of cops the world over.

"Knew the victim as a kid, Johnny. A family thing. That wasn't it, though. My sister Peggy and her husband were standing on each side of the target when Crowley opened up. It was a miracle she wasn't hurt or even killed."

A shadow crossed Broderick's face and he crossed himself; an oddly delicate gesture given the battle scars on both knobby sets of knuckles. The 'Boffer' had his own bad memories about innocent bystanders.

After a moment of reflection, Broderick seemed to find something amusing about the other man's relaxed posture. He grunted a little. Locknane smiled easily and said, "What?"

"You, Hank. I can see you forgiving a grudge, maybe, but never forgetting one. It's always the goddam quiet ones."

* * * * *

HIGHBRIDGE - THE BRONX, N.Y.

Michael Quirk wore one of the outfits that he tended to favor for night work. The three-piece suit was English and dark gray, without any sheen to the fabric, the buttons non-reflective. His dress shirt and public school tie were temporarily covered by a black silk turtleneck dickie. He wore no gloves in the summer heat, although a thin pair of dark-gray suede was available in one pocket.

His face was shaded by a wide-brimmed black fedora.

All in all, the man was invisible within the many shadows of Woodycrest Avenue. His shadow found the right apartment building with two entrances __1031 and 1041__ exactly where he'd been informed it was, at the corner of 165th street.

It was almost midnight and Quirk followed the rest of the instructions that he had memorized earlier. He wove through a surface and sub-surface labyrinth of corridors that brought him finally to a basement utility room a block away, on Nelson Ave.

The men waiting for him there were Earl Browder, Eugene Debbs and William Z. Foster, the leaders of the American Communist Party, along with two other men who were not introduced. Quirk concluded that these were the local brain trust, probably comrade historians from N.Y.U. or Columbia University. Foster, who was Party Secretary, lived in the building on the top floor.

It was he who apologized to Quirk. "I am truly sorry that I cannot welcome you into my home, Mr. Quirk. I understand that you sometimes prefer to use that name for privacy. It is a shameful thing that the son of Eamon De Valera __a great anti-imperialist leader in your revolution__ must be treated this way. It is equally shameful that the Constitution of these United States cannot protect me from microphonic eavesdropping by our tyrannical government."

Quirk observed that Foster favored speeches over handshakes. He said, "I understand completely, Mr. Foster. Please don't concern yourself for my sake. I am quite accustomed to surviving in repressive regimes."

Foster nodded. "I'm sure you are. It's still a chilling thing to realize that everything I say in my own apartment is being recorded by government stenographers. It's not enough for that man Hoover to play hero for the newspapers with his gangsters; now he has to look for conspiracies among honest Americans as well."

Quirk agreed again quickly. "There are dozens of German Nazis, parading in New York's streets these days, with hundreds of your home-grown hate-mongers, and thousands of misled innocents who follow and support them, give them aid and comfort. You'd think he'd do something about that, wouldn't you."

Browder spoke up. "You're absolutely right about that, son." Foster seemed to have a natural reserve, a cold force behind a stuffy facade, but Browder was warming up to Quirk, assured by the familiar rhetoric. "Call me Earl, please. What do you go by, sir? Mickey? Mike?" No doubt about it, there was a warmth to Browder, as well as a certain intellect. By comparison, Foster looked more like a clerical supervisor. He seemed very tired.

Quirk said, "Usually just Michael, sir ____ Earl." Foster made no effort to find a more familiar relationship and Quirk decided to ignore him deferentially, to concentrate on selling Browder and Debbs.

Best to keep a weather eye on Foster, he thought, to judge whether he was overselling the suckers though.

Quirk made his presentation. The audience had already been allowed photocopies of his supporting data; some real and some forgeries, of course. But the forgeries were of more than sufficient quality to be passible as negative prints.

There were questions in plenty, and answers:

"Yes, two treasures. The 'Aurea' mine Columbus found in Veragua, in Panama is one. With very little opportunity for exploitation during the winter of 1503, Columbus managed to accumulate personally, with the help of Diego Gomez, about three hundred kilograms of gold, mostly from the mine. And the treasure of Mona Passage, with perhaps another thousand kilos of gold, was recovered in 1509 or 1510 by Don Diego Colón, his older son, with help of Alonso Sánchez de Carvajal, Columbus' agent and friend." The agent's ship __the Aguja__ had been the only survivor of the flotilla that sank there to reach Spain safely.

Virtually most of Columbus' enemies in the New World died in the destruction of that flotilla, during a time on his fourth voyage __the High Voyage, as he called it__ that the whereabouts of his four ships were completely unaccounted for.

"Over the years of Diego's tenure in his father's footsteps as Governor of Hispaniola and Admiral of the Ocean Sea, it can be estimated that he smuggled 10,000 kilos of gold back to Spain from all sources. That's about twenty-five thousand Troy pounds of gold, gentlemen."

And what did Comrade Quirk want out of all this?

"There's much more where that came from. I want the location of that mine. But it's little more than a hole in the ground somewhere in the more than two hundred square miles of the Veragua grant, still owned by the Colon family as a dukedom. But all of the other sources of gold there are piddling compared to the lost 'Aurea'." Quirk addressed the scholars. "Columbus called it that in his Lettera Rarissima to the King and Queen, and claimed that it must be one of the original King Solomon's Mines. And its location was a secret within the Colon family ____ a secret that apparently died with Columbus's only legitimate son."

And how would you find it, Mr. Quirk?

And then he knew he had them. Next, please!

"Ah! There is a certain prisoner...." He was happy to explain. This time the treasure was in Barcelona, the prisoner was in Seville, now a captive of the Junta.

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You are at Fiction 3, Chapters 3 & 4