The Starlight Club 6: Double Seven Read online

  THE STARLIGHT CLUB 6: DOUBLE SEVEN

  BY JOE CORSO

  Published by Black Horse Publishing

  Cover Art by Marina Shipova

  Black Horse Publishing

  www.blackhorsepublishing.com

  The Starlight Club 6 by Joe Corso

  Copyright 2015 by Joe Corso

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  OTHER BOOKS BY JOE CORSO

  THE STARLIGHT CLUB SERIES

  THE TIME PORTAL SERIES

  LONE JACK KID SERIES

  FLAMES OF FURY SERIES

  THE REVENGE OF JOHN W

  THE OLD MAN AND THE KIND

  THE COMEBACK

  TOMMY TOPPER AND THE PIXIE PRINCESS

  Table of Contents

  Present

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  An Invitation to Book Clubs

  If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone.

  Michael Corleone

  Present

  Bobby looked out the living room window, wondering when the snow would stop. Ten inches had fallen and there was no way he was leaving his daughter Lynn’s home in Darien, Connecticut for Florida anytime soon.

  “Relax, Dad. The weatherman said the snow would stop later this morning. Give it a few days and the highway department will have the roads cleared of snow and you’ll be on your way back home. If you’d take my advice, Dad, you’d stay with us and wait a few more days and not be in a hurry to leave here. Look, if you leave here now, you don’t have any idea of what the roads will be like when you get out of New York. Who knows? The roads in New Jersey could be impossible to travel on, so why don’t you relax here with us and stay another week? The kids would love it and so would I.”

  Bobby knew his daughter hated to see him leave, and he also knew that she was right. He had no way of knowing what the roads would be like once he left New York and began his drive south.

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right, Lynn. I’m too old to be taking a chance of breaking down on a desolate snowy and icy road, so I guess you’ll have to put up with me for a little while longer.”

  Lynn walked over to her father and put her arms around him and held him tenderly.

  “Dad with Mom gone – besides Ted and the kids – you are all the family I have left. I talked to Ted last night and he agrees with me. We’d both love for you to move up here to Darien and stay here with us. You could have the guest room at the other end of the house if you wanted it. It has its own entrance and sitting area with a large-screen TV. I know how much you like your privacy, so the room would be yours and you could come and go as you like. Come on, Dad. Why don’t you move into that room and stay here with us? I promise, you won’t be in the way and the kids could get to know their grandfather.”

  Bobby looked around the house as if noticing it for the first time. This was a large home befitting a successful New York attorney, a partner in one of the largest, most prestigious law firms in the city. And, for the first time since moving to Florida, Bobby was giving serious thought to his daughter’s suggestion. Maybe he should consider moving back to New York because, when his wife died, a part of him died too. There were plenty of widows living in his complex who went out of their way to show their interest in him.

  Even though Bobby was at an advanced age, he still did thirty pushups every day. Then, to keep his arm muscles firm, he would perform three sets of curls with twenty-five-pound weights. Ever since he was a youth, he believed in the axiom of survival of the fittest. Some of the boys he grew up with experimented with pot and harder drugs and when Bobby would invariably be offered some by his friends, he would shake his head and raise his hands defensively. He could never see the sense in drugs. You took a hit, got high, and then what? You had to come BACK down, only to do it all over again. He found out the hard way what drugs could do to a guy when his good friend, Nicky Golden, a guy he had grown up with, tried cocaine for the first time. He said it was the greatest feeling he ever had in his life. He spent the rest of his short life trying to recapture that feeling, only to die of an overdose at the age of twenty-one.

  At the age of nineteen, Uncle Sam drafted Bobby into the army. He served two years in the Far East, sixteen months of which were in Korea. He was only twenty-one when he received his discharge from the army. Most of the guys in Big Red’s organization served in Korea. But unlike him, they chose a life of crime, whereas he chose to be legitimate. He worked six hard days a week, leaving for work at five in the morning and arriving at the 14th Street Meat Market to purchase his meat and poultry for the day, and then making sure he got to the butcher store before seven. After putting the meat and poultry in a room he called the freezer but was just a large refrigerated room. When that chore was completed he would get to work preparing the wholesale orders for delivery later that morning.

  He thought wistfully about the 14th Street meat markets. Back then; it was a man’s world, where a woman would never be seen. Hard men worked in the large meat packinghouses. Men who were released from prisons and were looking for work on the docks found that there was no longer any work for them there. They now found work in the New York City meat markets. The work was tough and although Bobby didn't like the idea of working from five a.m. to seven p.m. six days a week, he embraced it because it afforded him the means to marry his childhood sweetheart and raise a fine family. It was sad, he thought. The 14th Street Meat Market and the Starlight Club are both gone now like they never existed. When he thought about the two places he had he had spent so much time in over the years, it was hard to imagine that they were gone.

  Bobby spent the part of night that came just before sleep thinking of life, which he thought was an illusion, like a kaleidoscope constantly reshaping perception. One moment it was there and the next it was gone, just like watching a magician’s illusion. Bobby was glad he had his two daughters, Lynn and Olivia, and his son, Robert. Olivia lived in Hawaii with her husband Mark. He was the South American Representative for the Intercontinental Hotel chain. His job was to determine the locations of where to build their new hotels, then it was his responsibility to overse
e the hotel’s construction from it’s inception to its completion.

  Lynn’s voice brought him back to the present. “Dad? Where did you go? I’ve been talking to you, but you were somewhere far away.”

  Bobby smiled. “Sorry about that, Lynn. I was just thinking of the old 14th Street Meat Markets and the Starlight Club and how they are no longer here. I keep thinking of how full of life both places were and how vibrant the Starlight Club was. Now it’s as if both places never existed. Amazing,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Dad, now that you mentioned the Starlight Club, why don’t you tell me a little bit more about it?”

  He looked at his daughter for a long moment and then he nodded.

  “All right. Even though I wasn’t part of Big Red’s mob, they treated me like I was one of them. They talked in front of me about things I didn’t want to hear. But the guys never seemed to worry about that. I was the one that used to worry…because if something happened because somebody ratted on them, I was afraid that they’d think it was me that talked. So even though I was a minor player in Red’s daily life, I knew just about everything that happened.”

  “Come on, Dad. There must be some more juicy stories you can share with me. I have the time and one thing is for sure, and that is I’m not going out in this snow. We’re alone in the house now and we have plenty of time, so I’d like to hear more about the Starlight Club.”

  Bobby rubbed his chin absently without realizing he was doing it, wondering where to start. “Okay. I’ll tell you about Bull and his trip to Vegas by car and the problems he had getting there.’

  Lynn’s eyes lit up. “This one sounds a little different than the other stories you told me about the Starlight Club.”

  Bobby smiled. “This story is different Lynn.”

  Chapter One

  Piss Clam knocked on the door to Red’s office, even though it was open. Red was going over the meat order with his friend Bobby, the young man who delivered the meat and poultry to the Starlight Club.

  “What is it, Piss Clam?”

  “We got a problem, boss.”

  Red threw his pen on the desk while Bobby, to his credit, stepped out of the room so he couldn’t hear what Piss Clam was about to tell Red. Red waited until the door closed behind Bobby before he spoke.

  “Okay; let’s hear it. What is it this time?”

  “One of our men, Jimmy the Gimp, threw a cigarette from his third-floor window and it accidentally landed in a baby carriage, and the mother went ballistic.”

  “Dammit! Was the baby burned?”

  “No that’s just it. The baby carriage was empty. But that didn’t make a difference to her. She became hysterical and carried on as if her baby was in the carriage and she just stood there screaming at the top of her lungs.”

  Red leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. “Well, what happened?”

  “The Gimp apologized to her over and over again, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She kept screaming ‘what if my baby was in the carriage?’ Finally, after apologizing a number of times, the Gimp finally told her to go fuck herself.”

  “And?” Red asked.

  “Then she ran home and started ragging on her husband, telling him about how her baby could have died if she was in the carriage and he had to do something about it. The way I heard she told the story was that the Gimp threw a lit cigarette in the baby carriage on purpose and then he told her to go fuck herself. The husband got his gun and went over to the Gimp’s house and shot him.”

  “He killed him?”

  “Shot him dead.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Red murmured under his breath.

  “That’s not the worst of it, Red. When the Gimp’s wife told his brother Tommy about his brother being killed, he got his gun and then he went to the guy’s apartment and he shot and killed the bum. After hearing gunshots, someone called the cops and they came and arrested Tommy. What are we going to do about that broad, boss? Because she wouldn’t accept the Gimp’s apology, two guys are dead and another might spend the rest of his life in the slammer.”

  Red ground his teeth and agreed with Piss Clam. “I can’t have one of my men killed and not do something about it.” He ran his fingers through his thick red hair and sighed. “This is a sorry day when we have to think about whacking a woman. Christ, what’s the world coming to? But I have no other choice, do I? I have to make an example of her, but if I whack the broad, I’ll leave a baby without a mother…or a father?”

  Piss Clam leaned over closer to Red and said quietly, “She’s not a bad looker, boss. We could do like some of the other families do. We could pay her back by putting her to work on the street.” Red looked at Piss Clam for a brief moment and then he waved his hand, dismissing the notion.

  “I’d rather kill her than put her to work on the street. Yip never did that, and I’ve never done that. We always stayed away from prostitution and drugs — and I’m not going to start now.”

  “Well, what are we gonna do with her, boss?”

  “When the heat cools down, I want you to get Charlie Knuckles and Joey Bones and tell them to visit this bitch. I want them to lean on her hard, but I don’t want her killed. We don’t kill women. Before you hurt her, explain to her that because she wouldn’t accept an apology from a guy who accidentally threw a cigarette butt in her baby carriage, two men are dead, and another poor sucker will probably spend the rest of his life in jail. Make sure that she understands that and don’t hurt her to a point where she can’t care for her baby, but hurt her enough so that she understands what she did.”

  “What if she goes to the cops and rats us out when she recovers?”

  “I don’t care if it’s before or after she gets worked over, but she’s got to be told that if she rats on us, we’ll kill her baby in front of her and then we’ll kill her. Let her know that.”

  Piss Clam leaned back in his chair, thinking about her punishment. He would have rather whacked her than lean on her, but like Red said, she had a baby to take care of, and her baby was the only thing keeping her alive.

  “This bitch fucked up my whole day. Now get out of here. Tell Bobby to come back tomorrow. Right now, I have to call Doc.”

  An hour later, Doc was seated opposite Red in his office. Doc didn’t smoke or drink and he refused the cigar Red offered him. Red knew he wouldn’t take the cigar, but he wanted an excuse to light up one of his Cubans.

  “Do you mind if I light this up?”

  “Not if you keep the door open so a little air can get in here.”

  Red opened the door and then sat back down. Doc nodded in appreciation.

  “Now tell me about your problem. It must be pretty important for you to have Piss Clam come and get me this early in the morning.”

  When Red finished explaining what had happened, Doc shook his head.

  “Boy, sometimes these dames don’t know when to keep their big mouths shut.”

  Red agreed. “Some of these broads like to see fireworks so they cause these things to happen on purpose. Gives them a thrill to see their man defend their honor. Only this time, two men are dead and another is in jail. Now, what can you do for the Gimp’s brother, Doc?”

  Doc smiled. “You worry too much. Let things cool down a bit and I’ll have the kid appear before a friendly judge, one who’s coming up for re-election, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  Red took a satisfying drag on his cigar before asking the real question that was on his mind. “You don’t think that Tommy will get the chair, do you?”

  Doc shook his head.

  “He’ll never get the chair. I can promise you that will never happen.”

  “Do you think Tommy will do a long stretch in the can?”

  “There’s always that possibility, but I don’t think so. Things have to simmer down so we can see the whole picture clearly. Right now, everything that’s happened is headline news. Let some time pass and once this is out of the headlines and forgotten about, then you won’t have to worry about
anything. This is my problem now and I’ll take care of this little matter.”

  Reds face twisted into a lopsided grin.

  “This little matter? Is that what this is, Doc? A little matter?”

  Doc looked at him and Red could have sworn he saw a twinkle in Doc’s eyes. Then a smile broke out on Doc’s face and he said philosophically, “In the archives of time, no one will ever remember or give a shit about what that misguided bitch caused. I’ll take care of this little problem when the moment is right.”

  Chapter Two

  Red was sitting behind his desk going over his ledger when a knock on the door caused him to stop what he was doing and look up. He was surprised to see Fat Charlie, a captain of his who ran a crew out of Long Island City, standing there.

  “Red, you got a minute?”

  “Yeah, come on in and have a seat, and then tell me what brought you all the way from Long Island City when a phone call would’ve saved you a trip?”

  “The boys brought in a trailer load of flank steaks and I don’t have a drop for them. We couldn’t do what we usually do and drop the load off and get rid of the trailer because we didn’t have a place to bring the load.”

  Red thought for a moment. “Where’s the trailer now?”

  “We took it to the junkyard on Willett’s Point and hid it in the yard behind some cars and then we locked the gate so no one could get in there.”

  “How long have you had the trailer?”

  “We just got it about an hour ago and, I’ll be honest with you, I’m a little antsy keeping that trailer on our property.”

  “Yeah. It wouldn’t do to have the law find it in our junkyard.”

  Red opened his desk drawer, and thumbed through his address book, found the number he was looking for, and dialed it. “Jimmy, it’s Big Red. How ya doing?”

  Jimmy DeBenatto was a neighborhood guy who worked his balls off in the 14th Street Meat Market for ten years until he made enough money through stolen meats to open his own flank steak house. Jimmy was from Corona Heights and he married Angelina Scarpetto, a beautiful young lady who lived on 41st Avenue, a few houses off of 111th Street. He was legit now that he had his own business except for when he got the occasional call from Red concerning a load of hot beef he could buy cheap. Jimmy chose his words carefully, knowing that in Red’s line of work, his place could be bugged and ears could be listening. “Red, it’s good to hear from you. What can I do for you?”