Exile on Bridge Street (19 page)

“Is he gonna die?” Vincent asks, shaken.

“Needs a doctor,” Harry says.

“No,” The Swede pleads. “No hospital. No, no, no. I won't go to no hospital. No doctors. Just take me to my sister, Helen. She'll take care o' me like I know she can. Helen can take care o' me just like she did last time. Dinny? Dinny?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm sorry, Din,” The Swede says, his eyes glassy.

“Don' worry 'bout it, Jimmy. We'll take ya to Helen so ya can get better and be close to ya fam'ly.”

“No hospital,” The Swede begs from the floor.

“Jaysus,” Tommy mutters.

“No hospital,” Dinny assures.

Picking up the gargantuan, crumpled spider by the limbs and torso, Dinny along with Vincent, Tommy, Harry, and even Lumpy go out the door and negotiate the steps in the dark stairwell and are enveloped by the voices of drinkers who find out who caught the shot of a gun upstairs.

And I don't know why, but I do not follow them. I stay. Away from them. For the next hour, I stay in the second-floor room by myself. The empty office. Standing with my hands in my pockets, I look out the shutter windows over the water. The quiet. I hear the city swooshing mildly in the distance, the stable permanence of sound, the invisible human fracas that babbles gently in the background. But in here I feel the quiet. Try and let all of our problems flatten out for a moment, I sit in Dinny's chair. At his desk and close my eyes. Close them.

CHAPTER 13

Scalpeen Memories

J
ANUARY
, 1917

J
ANUARY
AND
THE
BITE
IS
MURDEROUS
. The whipping wind whistles off the water where under the bridges we huddle, hands covering ears. The sky is as hard looking as the cement under our feet, and the same color too. Broken only by the Brooklyn Bridge above us, that sky over the city is as mean and thoughtless as some of the men that show hungry on the docks looking for a day's wage. Same look in the gray eyes of them.

From inside the tenement walls come skirling flue pipes wheezing in the gales, and glims of light flash through crevices as if the tenements, whelmed with many families, were out to sea rudderless. Children bunch in front of the coal fire and the potbelly stove, if they have it. In memories, and the bones of our memories where reside the unconscious thoughts and recognitions in the marrow, is a feeling where remembrances are signaled when our bellies rattle with the hunger and when the weather attacks the skin.

It is a silent song that voices rarely dare to share, and no one cares to disturb the silence of it, for it is no more than a cognizance in our blood. But we all knew it as it truly is: the past speaking to us. Coming out in our eyes and our need for fight. We know, even as most stories were withheld us due to the shame of our caste, we know of and are haunted in the mind's eye of our fathers and our mothers and theirs, the elements hard on our bodies and the hollow yearn for alimentation. Evicted from the land. Evicted from our community and the closeness for which our people so long had found strength. Remember in us the scalps dug in the onset of winter under some stray hill a few miles from the icy Shannon. And the scalps and lean-tos of the shanty emigrants of Jackson Hollow south of the Navy Yard here in Brooklyn. And those shoeless and gaunt in Darby's Patch before Warren Street was ever paved and before Dinny Meehan had come to it. The seasons of cholera and yellow fever that swept through Irishtown from the human cargo dumped on the shoreline, amassed there.

Unsaid. Simply known, we work in the wintry conditions and the empty air that strips the body to a barrenness where survival is top of the mind. Just how we like it. With two bailhooks, I dig into the work. Piercing wheat sacks. Picking them up with my back and legs and thrusting them up into a train car shadowed by the long torso of a transport steamer. Dinny working right alongside us, watching over us and reminding us that in this work we live. Down here. Below the Anglo ascendency and his laws, forever. Forever reminding us where we come from. Forever living by the underbellies of ships, outside in the weather, with memories remembered only in the distance of our blood.

* * *

A
FTER
A
WORD
WITH
D
INNY
, T
OMMY
Tuohey heads south alone. A man of any and all weather, Tommy strides down Columbia Street. Down Furman Street where to the right is the shit-green New York Harbor, and left is the bluff that separates the Brooklyn waterfront from the old Dutch and English mansions of another time, now divided and subdivided for the peasants and the newly arrived. He passes the old Penny Bridge on Montague Street that now brings the workingmen from the street grade above to the warehouse and pier house roofs below to the blacked-out area where the ships let off and the gangs that take to their ways there.

Of course, Tommy knows nothing of such histories, for he lives only in the felt memories of his own blood and in the weather on his own skin too. A free man who lives in the love of the company of others and in the contests of will and individual struggle, ignorant by nature and by choice of the constructs of the settled people, and seeks only work for his next meal and drink and talk.

Tommy turns on Imlay Street in the morning air, an emissary for The White Hand. A late-night drizzle had turned much of the sidewalks to sheets of ice, and men walk gingerly with their hands on wood fences and brick walls for balance as they make their way along the big buildings owned by the New York Dock Company. Not many of the men in Red Hook own gloves or winter-wear in general and instead stand round donning the same coats they wore at summer, but with long underwear underneath and vest and hat, hopping in place. The breath that comes out of their mass gives them the appearance of ranging cattle and heads of beef. Awaiting the line to be called for to pick men to unload, they stand shoulder to shoulder patting down their upper arms.

Walking through their gaggle, Tommy Tuohey looks up and points at the barge just dragged up off the Imlay bulkhead, “Who dat spakin' widda captain?”

“Darby Leighton,” says a man Tommy doesn't recognize.

A tug driver and his son look to Tommy, then turn their backs. The father rushing his son back onboard with a hand under his elbow and quick he is to the throttle and the river.

“Dat right?” Tommy says.

“Ya scared?” says another man.

“Scared o' what?”

“Scared? Are ya scared?”

“I'm not scared of a damn thing. Kinda question's this, ye feckin' sausage?”

“Hey,” yells Joey Behan, Petey's older brother. “Tommy? That you? What are you doin' down here?”

“The fook kinda question's that?” Tommy says again. “Joey Behan? Ya not s'posed be down here s'marnin'. Ya s'posed to be up Baltic way. Dinny know ye here?”

“Nah,” Behan says walking toward him. “Ya gonna tell on me, are ya? Ya fookin' tout. We're takin' over now. Ya can go'n tell ya pikey king that, ya fookin' weaklink.”

“Ye call me a weaklink, Behan? I'll kill ye with me fists I . . .”

“Shaddup,” Bill Lovett says, walking toward the commotion with five or six men round him following in the cold smoke. “'Less ya wanna fight over it. Ya wanna fight over it?”

“I'll fight any man with the fists . . .”

“Then stand up to it then, here I am,” Lovett says, looking up to Tuohey as a crowd gathers round.

“Richie?” Tommy notices Richie Lonergan coming up behind Lovett. “The feck ye doin' down here, eh? And all yer bhoys wid ye? Dis a t'ing yer all doin'? Is it?”

Tommy looks around and sees the golden-haired Mickey Kane who is wearing a fearful gaze on his face, “Mick? What goes here?”

“I challenged ya to a fight, man,” Lovett says as Darby and the captain watch from the deck above, smoke coming out of their own mouths up there too. “Are ya fookin' soft?”

“Fair fight 'tween me'n yerself and ye'd find out what'll happen, but ye got all yer boyos here,” Tommy looks up. “Who da feck's dat tall feckin' gorilla bastard?”

“Who, him?” Lovett says. “That's Wisniewski. And the guy next to him's our new business partner, Silverman. Ya got somethin' against 'em?”

“Silverman's the name o' him? From the Dock Company?” Tommy says. “Ye takin' over? Dat what yer after, Bill? Anyt'in' fer the power is it, Bill? And dis here? James Quilty, fer feck's sake? Ye t'ink ye'll get away wid'is do ye? Ye'll not . . .”

And without listening to another word, Lovett comes up close to Tuohey and swings a right fist that Tommy ducks away from. But it's a man behind him that pushes him back toward Lovett, and Tuohey finds himself within the fighter's circle in the cold.

“C'mon, Tommy,” Lovett says. “You'n me. Right now. One on one. That's what ya want, right? One on one, man to man?”

“Well dis don't seem . . .” Tommy begins, face reddened. “If t'were only you'n me . . .”

“C'mon, fookin' pikey scum,” Lovett yells at Tommy up close, then pushes him with both hands by the neck and face as they both square off.

“With me bare hands, ye know I will, Bill . . .”

“Then let's do it. C'mon.”

And the men of the circle laugh except for the Lonergan kid and his right-hand Harms, who have a sullen look on their mugs. Of them all, Wisniewski is the biggest with a chest on him like a bull ape, though he is dressed in a fine suit with a kerchief out of the coat pocket. And Silverman, who is almost as tall and even better dressed with shiny hair on a hatless head and a long elegant coat.

Lovett pushes a left jab toward Tommy who moves to his right to get away from him, as he once taught myself to do. Looking at all the faces and moving round the edge of the circle, Tommy takes his time. He is adept at skipping sideways like a trained fistfighter and avoids Lovett until Frankie Byrne punches him in the ear from outside the circle. Lovett then makes a move, swings a mighty right though it barely touches the side of Tommy's head, who juts out of the way of it, then lands a quick left to the side of Lovett's face. More of a push than a punch. The circle shrinks more, crowding the two fighters into each other.

“Back the feck up, ye fecks,” Tommy yells. “I'll kill the masses of ye one by one . . .”

And just as he is challenging the entire circle, John Lonergan punches him from behind in the kidney, Joey Behan grabs him by the neck, while Frankie Byrne kicks a leg from under him.

“Take'm down,” Matty Martin yells as Richie Lonergan uppercuts Tommy in the face as the older Behan holds him.

Somehow Tommy breaks free and tries to run through the crowd, punching anything that gets in his way. One man goes down on his ass with his arms spread out, trying to hold himself up by the bodies of others. Petey Behan grabs hold of Tommy's coat from behind, which begins to tear and others tackle him, kneeing him in the nose three and four times so hard that his head and hair jump at each blow.

Jidge Seaman brings the heel of his boot down onto the back of Tommy's head and Sean Healy too winds his leg behind four and five times into his back and neck until Tommy is no longer moving and all laugh as he has begun wheezing and snuffling at each deep breath, smoke billowing, and blood plopping out of his mouth in freezing chunks.

“Great time for a nap, ya stoopit fookin' tinker,” Petey Behan says.

“Shaddup,” Lovett demands, pushing people from his way, then kicking Tommy over onto his back so they can see his face.

“Oh Jesus,” says one man, shocked at the unconscious staring of Tommy Tuohey below.

Looking over their work, Lovett pulls out his .45 and holds it at his hip, “This is what happens when a guy from outside comes into our territory. This is ours. No one else's. Ours. No more do we pay Dinny and them and no more will any of you report to 25 Bridge again. Ya report to me. And that's the end of it. All o' ya's. Anybody comes down here that you don't know about, take 'em to the ground and ask questions later.”

And as Lovett is quiet for a moment, the silence of the men appears still, even as the rest of the world keeps going. The ship captain lifts the hatch as he descends inside the barge and with a clang does it drop. Darby Leighton climbs down a rope ladder at that moment too while the moaning of ships of all sizes and stripes roam out on the harbor in the morning cut.

“Richie?”

“Yeah?” Richie responds.

“C'mere,” Lovett turns his gun round and pushes the handle to him. “You and yours are wit' me now. For good.”

“Right.”

“Finish it,” Lovett says.

Lonergan pulls back the hammer and shoots twice into Tommy's abdomen, who grunts and turns onto his side, waking up for the pain. Lonergan then limps closer, within the circle, points the barrel at the back of Tommy's head and explodes half of it open like a dropped watermelon.

“Mickey Kane?” Lovett yells.

“Yeah?”

Lovett looks behind him with anger in his eyes as Lonergan puts the gun on Lovett's chest, “C'mere.”

* * *

“M
AN
?” B
ROSNAN
YELLS
FOR
D
INNY
ACROSS
the pier amidst the falling snow. “Hello, man.”

Dinny emerges above on deck.

“There's dead down Red Hook way. Yer's, I t'ink.”

Peering down at Brosnan, I see Dinny's face and with this news I see nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing different than ever I'd seen on his face, as if he knew it was coming all along. Knew it.

“Well there ya have it,” Cinders says coming up from behind. “That's where them Lonergan kids went and the rest of 'em. We gonna hit back now, Din? What?”

Fifteen, twenty men stop working and look up to Dinny when they hear the news. Fifty more as it spreads round. At that moment, Harry Reynolds runs up to the pier and stands next to myself and Brosnan, looking up at Dinny.

“Man,” Brosnan yells up. “I can't guarantee what'll be ordered if there's another bloodbath down Red Hook, do ye hear me? The papers'll run wid it. District Attorney'll have to react.”

“Shaddup, Brosnan,” Vincent yells. “Ya got no say here.”

“Where's The Swede?” Brosnan asks.

Dinny's face just looks hard and distant, like he's not listening up there on the deck where I watch him. Like he's not there at all.

“God please don' let it be Mickey Kane dead,” I hear Cinders mumble under his breath.