Book Three of the City Blues Quartet, the setting is New York, late 1947. The mobster in question is Gabriel Levenson, manager of the Copacabana nightspot and fixer of choice for Frank Costello, the boss of all bosses in New York. Gabriel has been on the take for some time, syphoning off cash to fund his escape from New York. He has good reason for corruption: he is sole career for his young niece since his sister's suicide and wants to be able to give her a good, mob-free future. There is also his own skin to be considered. Swindling Frank Costello is bad enough - but Gabriel's business partner at the Saratoga racetrack is Albert Anastasia, of Murder Inc. Gabriel has two weeks before his accounts will be presented to both business partners and the deficit will become clear.
Meanwhile, Costello has a job for Gabriel. The late Benny Seigel, founder of the nightclub scene in Vegas, seems to have raised two million from various senior gangsters to bail out the floundering Flamingo, but the money never made it to his account. Costello wants Gabriel to find the money. Gabriel is also keen to find the money, given it's just about the same amount he has syphoned off. Substitute one for the other and ... who knows?
Gabriel asks around. Apparently Benny was talking about a jazz type called Gene Cleveland.
Meanwhile there has been an awful killing in a flophouse in Harlem. A black guy, a white guy and the female deputy manager. Even the famously corrupt NYPD have no trouble finding a culprit. He was standing over the bodies clutching a bloody cleaver when they arrived. He is a young black doctor with a drug habit, called Tom Talbot. He is now on Riker's Island, being pressed to do a deal by his attorney.
Tom's father Michael is not convinced of his son's guilt. Michael Talbot is a retired gent from Chicago. He is also a former cops and former Pinkerton's agent. He has come to New York to save his son. He is joined there by his former protegee Ida Parker, a recently widowed private detective with a bureau all her own, who has been head-hunted for a secret but lucrative new job in LA. But first... Michael and Ida investigate the crime scene which turns out to have been the room of a black guy now missing. A jazz type called Gene Cleveland.
That is a basic summary of the beginnings of just one of the plotlines. There are several others. Celestin's debut novel was the first of the Quartet yet he has marshalled his storylines with masterly technique. There are dozens of characters, not all of whom are around for long, yet we never lose track or become confused. Information is given us piecemeal across 500+ pages, so that the denouement, when it comes, makes perfect sense. The denouement also happens to be a shootout in the dead of night of the frozen Hudson River, which is prettty damn impressive.
Celestin is great. I shall be reading more.
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