Exile on Bridge Street (22 page)

And I am happy when I see the light in his eyes again. Ideas sparking. The time has come. We will attack Bill Lovett and his followers in Red Hook. A war will be on. A war within The White Hand. But as I am telling Vincent that Dinny has summoned him back upstairs, I see a smile on Vincent's face. A smile. A smile that tells me that maybe Dinny will not plan a full attack on Lovett, but will instead manipulate the earth and the waterfront winds against him. Turn everybody against Lovett, or at least everybody that Dinny summons. And in order to do that, Dinny will have to make deals with other gangs. But Dinny has always been known to make deals with other gangs to bring them into the fold, as he did in 1913 with the Red Onion Gang, the Swamp Angels, the Jay Street Gang and many others, and eventually the Lonergan Crew too. Into the fold. Under the umbrella of The White Hand. But the gangs of today are different than the gangs of 1913 in Brooklyn. They are unions and Italians and business gangs and such. Up the stairwell goes Vincent smiling. Smiling to himself.

CHAPTER 15

The Black Bottle

A
PRIL
, 1917

A
T
T
ILLARY
AND
B
RIDGE
S
TREETS
WHERE
hounds still circle the abandoned abattoir for the faint visceral smell, Tiny Thomas Lonergan crosses the cobbles. The dogs are bold in their hunger and prancing, stalking. Surly in the eyes and desperate. What once was a great subsistence along the fencing now is left only the scent of rotting sheep heads within. Blind pups chase their mothers' swaying teats while gaunt males maul each other for scraps found curbside in metal cans. As the boy reaches Flatbush, they lick at their rabid, toothy grins, bump chests and thrash at each other. Trying to keep up, Tiny Thomas can hear their horrible mouths popping and throats gnarled with low growls. He yells ahead toward his older brother Willie, “Wait up!”

His voice shrill and panicked, the five-year-old appears to be limping, though the uneven gait is due to his wearing a lone boot, his other foot bare entirely, “Willie.”

It is early April when the wind does not have as much pinch to it and the boys are answering the yaps of other children. Yelping off, for the winter was a long one. Now playing up Bridge Street a few blocks off the Lonergan first-floor Johnson Street room. Looking to the sidewalk ahead of his path for glass shards, passing across the brick facing of factory walls and ground-floor windows, busy with his worrying of being left alone, the blond-haired boy cries forward, “Jeez.”

Up ahead, Willie disappears in the wreckage of a pre-Civil War clapboard building that had fallen amongst itself sometime over the winter. Into the sidewalk and the cobblestones has the debris spilled, a young boy at the top of the rubble with his hands in the air yawping his victorious war cries. Four and five others scrambling up the remains to challenge him. When Tiny Thomas finally reaches his brother's height, he looks down where he sees three children in a close circle.

“They're playin' stink finger down there,” Willie says.

“Stink finger?”

“Yeah.”

Tiny Thomas wipes the snot from his upper lip with the back of his hand, “What's stink fing—”

“Never mind it,” Willie says, slowly climbing down.

“When are we gonna get the carrots and the beans for Ma?”

“Let's play for a while first, then we'll go.”

“Uhright.”

Over a couple of hours, Willie and Tiny Thomas play with the others, becoming knowledgeable of the catacombs in the rubble. Tunnels remaining where hallways had been on the first floor. There is even a hatch door access to the cellar, but Tiny Thomas is too scared to go down. The threshold too much to cross into such a dark mysticism. He refuses it, even as he knows it exists. Disbelieves it, he does. Disbelieves ten-year-old Jimmy Wojtowicz with his brown teeth and awful smile that there is candy below.

“If ya go in dere wit' me fa five minutes,” Wojtowicz says, he with the diminutive head and the billowy belly of a forty-year-old man, “Ethel'll show ya her privates.”

“No I won't!” Ethel screams.

“I'll make her do it, don't worry,” Wojtowicz confides to Tiny Thomas, smiling.

Tiny Thomas looks round.

“And I'll buy ya two candy bars and two sweets too. Come wit' me,” Jimmy convinces, then grabs Tiny Thomas by the shirtsleeve.

“Wait,” Tiny Thomas yelps, pulling his shirt away and leaning back. “I don't wanna go in there. Not even for nothin'. Lemme go. . . . Willie!”

“Here,” Wojtowicz says, handing him a chocolate bar yet to be unwrapped. “Take this. It's yours. Just come wit' me in there.”

“Why do you want me to go in there wit' ya? I'm gonna tell my brother.”

“Ya brotha's nowhe'e to be found. Let's go, c'mon.”

“I'll tell my brother, Pegleg.”

“Pegleg's ya brotha?”

“Yeah. I'm a Lonergan. He'll kill ya.”

“He don' even live around here no more—he's been down wit' Lovett since the gang split in two . . .”

“Lemme go. . . . Willie!” he yells toward his missing brother. “Lemme go.”

And Tiny Thomas breaks free, runs up the wreckage as fast he can. Crawling out from the hole that led to the hallway and the cellar, he skitters upward like a wee spider toward the summit of the heap.

“Ow!” he cries. Stops at the top, sits down, and bends his shoeless foot up to his eyes to look at the bottom of it. He's stepped on a five-inch nail, three inches of which have entered his foot.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!” he cries, tossing his fingers around and covering his eyes with his palms so that maybe it will all stop and go away.

“Thomas,” he hears on the other side of the rubble.

“Anna?” he recognizes his sister's voice. “C'mere, I gotta ouchy.”

“I can't come up there, you come down here. Why haven't ya been to the store? Where's ya brother?”

“Dat really Anna Lone'gan?” Wojtowicz says excitedly and runs up the pile himself to get a look at her, stopping next to Tiny Thomas. “Wow, she's sumpin' special. That's ya sista?”

“Anna,” Tiny Thomas cries.

“I'll help 'em down,” Wojtowicz tells Anna.

Tears tumbling down his cheeks, Tiny Thomas leans on Wojtowicz so he doesn't have to put his naked, pierced foot down.

“Oh my,” Anna says. “We have to take it out.”

Wojtowicz stares at Anna's face. Her lips are so perfect and although some of her strawberry blond hair has fallen out of the bun, it seems to drape perfectly over her shoulder. Angelically. Her skin too, so gentle it looks like a pool of milk or white marble and her small nose and long eyelashes bring a bit of heaven to this ugly earth.

“How do we take it out? Just pull it out?” Anna asked.

“Uh . . . I'll do it,” Wojtowicz says, offering himself as a man.

He puts his thumb and finger around the nail as Tiny Thomas, sitting on his big sister's lap, grits his teeth, mouth crumpled in a cry.

“Count to t'ree, uhright?” Wojtowicz warns.

“Uhright.”

“One,” and he pulls it out quickly.

“Ahhhh!” the child yelps, hugging his sister with his thin arms, pulling himself closer to her in his deep pain, digging his fingers into her back.

“It's bleedin',” Anna says, and takes out a used kerchief from her pocket and wraps it around the hole where blood bubbles up, leaving red droplets on the pavement. “That was in deep. Look how long that nail is.”

“Maybe 'e should see a doctor,” Wojtowicz says.

“No,” Anna says defensively, then holds the child closer. “No hospitals. When we get home Ma'll put some butter on it and it'll all be better.”

Wojtowicz looks at Anna with an amused, confounded look.

She looks back at him, gritting, “It's there they'll give 'em the black bottle.”

CHAPTER 16

Two White Men

“G
IANCARLO
!”
A
TREBLY
,
DEAFENING
SCREECH
COMES
from a window above Union Street in Red Hook.

“Jesus, God . . .” Thos Carmody looks directly above him at the woman with the shrieking voice that pierces the street traffic, splits his ears.

“
Stai attento. Ci sono uomini bianchi nascosti
,” and looks down at Carmody looking up at her.

“
Eh? Va bene, mio amore
,
ok, ok,”
the man named Giancarlo says, then moves off the street while others look around them, move themselves from the area as well.

A trolley passes in front of Carmody's view and he looks at his watch. Across the street, Vincent Maher stops in front of a tailor and looks at Thos, winks at him, then looks west down Union toward the Red Hook waterfront. An extremely short Italian man emerges from the shop. He is so small that when he shakes Vincent's hand in the doorway he must extend it to its full length. In Brooklyn's Little Italy, the tiny Italian man's business is famous by word of mouth for his quality of fabrics and colorful silks and top-grain leather shoes. He smiles happily though and pulls on Vincent's tight pants, then opens his arms as if to say he is in great need of a change of clothing, then touches his small chest and again opens his arms to their length as if saying that he is the best tailor in all of Brooklyn. Together they walk inside. Thos reaches in his coat to touch the .38, but pulls out a rolled cigarette and lights it. He looks above him again, but the woman has disappeared from her window.

From across the street Thos watches as a tall, well-dressed man comes from the opposite direction as had Vincent Maher. Silverman is wearing a tan suit with no hat and his hair has been combed flat on top, the features of his face seemingly pushing outward at a peripheral view.

“Right on time, Silverman,” Thos says looking at his watch, then glances down the street for the next trolley, which is still some blocks away. He notices that there are no longer people walking on Union Street. It has emptied. Again he looks up where the woman had yelled. Bites his lip in concern.

When the trolley is only three blocks away, he walks across the street, jumps over the tracks without touching either one, and opens the door to the tailor.

On one knee, the tailor is measuring Vincent Maher's legs and looks over to Carmody entering. Tilting his head, the tailor thinks it strange that yet another white man enters his shop.

“
Sir, benvenuto
,” he says, struggling to stand from his knee and walking toward Carmody with a big smile.

“Unarmed,” Vincent says to Carmody without looking at him, instead keeping a mean stare on Silverman.

Carmody pulls out the .38 and points it over the head of the small man walking toward him. Points it at the towering Silverman. Looking back at Maher, then recognizing Thos Carmody's face, Silverman runs toward the fitting room behind the counter.

“
Calmati, non fare un suono
, don't make a fookin' sound,” Vincent Maher instructs the small man with the extent of his knowledge of the Italian language. “
Calmati
.”

“
Quello che sta succedendo qui?
”

“
Calmati
,” Vincent says again, not understanding the tailor's question.

“
Cosa hai detto?
”

“
Non fare un suono
, shaddup,” Vincent leans down toward the man's face. Speaking very clearly now in a flat-American accent, then repeats himself, “
Non fare un suono
.”

Thos Carmody walks between them, the small Italian man watching with his eyes as Carmody holds the .38 out in front of him while entering the back room.

Without a rear exit, Silverman is cornered. He stands on a raised area of the fitting room with a three-way mirror behind him. His hands out in front of his face as if to stop a bullet from hitting him.

“Thos,” Silverman says. “I'll talk to Wolcott and I'll tell 'em what we're gonna do, Thos. I'll tell 'em what you guys want.”

Thos stands still and stares with the .38 outstretched, pointing toward Silverman who rambles, “We'll make a deal. You guys can have Lovett. I swear ya can. I'll set it up so ya can get 'em. I know exactly how to get 'em for ya, Thos. Exactly. C'mon, this ain' right. I can make it work . . .”

Thos continues to stand still, holding Silverman at gunpoint while Vincent and the little Italian man wait quietly in the front room.

Outside, the trolley rumbles toward the tailor shop.

“Ya really thought Vincent Maher'd backstab his boss and take money from you to kill Dinny Meehan?” Thos says, squinting toward Silverman. “Ya really thought that'd happen? Ya underestimate the kinship o' the Irish, ya know.”

“No, I didn't . . .”

“Ya see that?” Thos holds a single bullet between his finger and thumb. “That's what was supposed to kill me. Paid for by ya boss, Wolcott. But I'm holdin' it now. Still alive here, now. Ain't I?”

“Thos?” Silverman says, but his voice trails away. As the sound of the passing trolley outside hits its loudest point, Carmody shoots through Silverman's hand, which enters his face and brain. The back of his head smacks against the middle mirror and breaks it. Large shards come down on the body that lies with one leg stuck underneath it, eyes swelling and blood trails branching down from the ears and staining the collar of his tan suit.

Carmody hears the Italian man scream and weep in the front room, “Keep 'em quiet.”

To make sure Silverman is dead, Carmody places a coat from a hanger over the body's face and shoots one more time, then pulls the coat back and throws it on the ground behind him as the trolley rolls down the street, out of earshot. Reaching inside the pocket of the dead man, Carmody pulls out a large wad of bills. Finally, he spits on Silverman, on his cheek and lips. He then walks out toward the front room where the small Italian man is shivering, sitting on a chair by the front door. Carmody hands Vincent Maher the warm .38. Vincent checks it over and feels its smoldering heat, then puts it back into its empty holster inside his own coat.

“
Grazie
,” says Carmody, also with an American accent, handing the large wad of money to the Italian man, then putting a finger over his lips for shushing and using the same finger to give the signal of cutting the throat. “
Grazie da Frankie Yale e Jack e Sixto Stabile
.”

Together, Vincent Maher and Thos Carmody leave the store with caps pulled from back pockets. Run toward the trolley down Union Street.