Exile on Bridge Street (35 page)

“‘I have been chosen to deliver the verdict, your Honor,' stands a small man, who is known as a business owner in the Jewish section of Williamsburg.

“‘What is the determination in the charge of murder against Dennis L. Meehan?'

“Swallowin', the small man looks at the piece o' paper, though he already knows the answer. He then looks over and sees the lion-faced Dinny Meehan. The presiding juror then looks to Dead Reilly, who nods in his direction. The room is held in the small man's hesitation. . . .

“‘Not guilty, your Honor.'

“The crowd erupts and stands and jumps and hugs and howls, and from deep inside the court's bowels is born an Irish hero. The spirit o' the people spoken for by the forsakin' o' the law. Thus is how an Irish hero is always born, is it not? And so the gavel comes smashin' down, and Sadie Leighton holds Harry Reynolds close, who stoically looks on.

“‘He's our man,' a woman screams out.

“‘He'll buck your courts for all time,' another voice yells.

“And Judge Denzinger rings out, ‘What is the verdict for Maher?'

“‘Not guilty.'

“Again the crowd jumps against the slappin' and the whappin' o' the wooden gavel down.

“‘McGowan?'

“‘Not guilty.'

“‘Leighton?'

“The crowd, quieter now but still congratulatin' itself, waits as the presiding juror again looks over to Dinny and Dead Reilly.

“‘Guilty, your Honor.'

“‘What?' Sadie yells.

“‘Oh my,' Rose Leighton gasps. ‘My nephew.'

“‘Whad he say? Pickles's brother Darby demands.

“Chaos havin' taken the court, Judge Denzinger calls to attention, ‘I will remind the crowd of its behavior. We'll meet again in two weeks for sentencing, good day,'

The Bard sits at the end of his rocking chair excitedly and continues, “And although Dinny is proclaimed not guilty, a riot ensues in the courthouse, spillin' into Adams Street and washes through the walled-off tenements toward the old town, horses let loose to their sprintin', bartenders put out of their saloons, taps opened, and the auld home brew brought out for to celebrate. But Jacobs' Saloon at 50 Sands Street, on the corner, below the Crown Hotel, 'tween the great bridges where Maroney held sway over the Brooklyn rackets is stoned. Its windows shattered and fiery bottles o' gasoline thrown within. Burned to the ground as everyone watches in awe. Even over the rails o' the high abutments of the Brooklyn Bridge to the west, the Manhattan Bridge to the east where the fraternal twin giants are only separated by a few blocks at Sands Street. In their hundreds, the parade o' waterfront residents hold Dinny, McGowan, and Vincent up as heroes, luminaries, guardians even. Exponents o' the auld Irishtown way. Paladins o' the poor. Champions o' change that over the next few weeks expelled the I-talians. Tamed the tunics and tossed the touts and pimps in their bawdyhouses out and once again implemented the auld code and its sanctionin' o' silence . . .”

Satisfied with his yarn, the Bard tamps his pipe and sits back. Slowly strikes a match so that we can see the wrinkles on his face and the command his eyes still own in the firelight.

He finishes, “And so t'was . . . just as it's always been with our like. . . . We celebrate against our enemy together—the vanquishin' o' the law that's held us back. For there is one thing we all know deep in us. And we know it from our history . . . the history that lives in us and speaks to us. That no Irish leader can be taken down by the moral indignations o' law, English or American. No reward nor penalty can stifle his silent beliefs. No, the only t'ing that can take down our leader is, of course, our own. From within. And oh how the begrudgers love their work too.”

CHAPTER 29

Tunic and a Big Man

A
SNOW
HAS
BEGUN
TO
CAKE
Brooklyn as the crackling, icy air dips below ten degrees now. A sign, again. Children are covered by fearful mothers. The aged too, tucked into beds for protection. Old shirts jammed along breezy windowsills. Cold, empty fireplaces with broken flues are smothered with anything available. Potbellied stoves, too, sitting idly and without coal fires in rooms. The old working-class, treeless streets and sidewalks with red-bricked and clapboard tenement buildings facing each other are emptied out, whitened by a purity that removes the sick and the weak from this place. This blight of weather forcing the survivors to fight against each other for dominance over the available resources like caged prisoners.

But some see the catastrophic elements on the poor in New York and Brooklyn as a great opportunity. An unintended social benefit of the invisible hand. A divine judgment on the defective aspects of the national character, as they see it. An act of Providence from an all-merciful God against those that are selfish and turbulent in temperament. Their strict adherence to the utility of noninterference as it pertains to governmental economic relief of those suffering is a symbol of their disdain for weakness and dependency. To help is just too closely associated with socialism and Bolshevism. Yet this great indifference is slightly adjusted here and there. Sending agents below, secretly.

Inland, off the waterfront where Atlantic Avenue crosses Flatbush, the harbor winds are not as dialed. Snow has not been cleared of the streets or sidewalks and evenly settles—only footprints making human passageways through the whitening of the ground. In the polar air, Daniel Culkin is wrapped in his tunic and out of jurisdiction, Amadeusz Wisniewski dressed like a mammoth-sized businessman. They are walking together. When the big man Wisniewski speaks, it is so deep and low that it's barely recognizable to the ear. His face blanketed in thick wrinkles and lumbering with bulky strides above, Culkin looks up to watch his fleshy lips moving.

“We not killing 'em,” Wisniewski says, noticing Culkin check his patrolman-issue revolver openly in his gloved hands.

“He already knows who I am,” Culkin says, his neck bent up as they cross Flatbush. “He's a mental case. Got no idear how he'll react to this.”

“He don' know me, dough,” Wisniewski growls. “Wolcott says . . .”

“I know what he says, I was there,” Culkin cuts him short. “I been lookin' for this guy for mont's. It can't go wrong, but if it does, I'll kill 'em. Ya can't trust 'em. Fookin' certifiable, this guy.”

“Ya can't trust 'em, then why we—”

“Just doin' a job's all,” Culkin says. “Someone thinks it's right, I dunno.”

They knock on the second-floor door and a small, handsome female in her early twenties opens it as far as the rusty chain allows. Her eyes are drunk-blazed and her ratty hair matted on one side, she huddles cold in the crack of the door. The chain partially obscuring her view, she looks up to the giant bending down to her.

“Maureen Egan,” Wisniewski grumbles in his chest.

“How do you—”

Wisniewski palms the door and pushes it open, ripping the chain from the wall as she falls backward. Culkin walks through, revolver pointing toward her on the ground, then points it toward the dark hallway inside the room.

“Where's Garry fookin' Barry?” he demands.

“He's dead,” she yelps.

“No he ain',” Culkin says. “Ya lyin', where is he? I know he's alive.”

“Fookin' asshole,” she screams, kicking up at him as he walks by.

“Jesus, man,” Culkin says as Garry Barry appears with James Cleary behind, holding their arms high and stepping out of a doorless closet. “Ya face is fuckt, Barry.”

Maureen Egan comes from behind Culkin with a knife and just as she is about to swing it, Wisniewski grabs her by the back of her red curly hair, yanks her backward and lifts her over his head with one arm, pushing her face into the ceiling. She swings the knife behind her rabidly, but Wisniewski uses his other hand to grab her by the wrist, snapping both the radius and ulna. The kitchen knife dropping helplessly to his feet. Then she is dropped to the floor too as Wisniewski steps on the knife.

Garry Barry's eyes are blank and shameless, murderous. Mouth slightly open, he holds his hands slack over his head, less than fearful of a gun pointed at his face. Unconcerned of pain, it is seen in his eyes that pain has been a bedfellow since childhood and with death all round, always there, it too is no source of concern or urgency. But now, his face has long surgical scars through the eyebrows where his sinuses were reconstructed. His nose having been opened up, then sewn back together crudely, leaving obvious stitch-scars from tear duct to upper lip.

Culkin speaks, “The man that ordered this done to you . . .”

“Is in jail,” Barry nasally finishes the sentence.

“You ands me,” the oddity of Wisniewski's barely intelligible Polish accent and baritone voice fills the room. “We go burn Meehan brownstone on Warren Street, you ands me do now.”

“I ain' goin' nowheres,” Barry mumbles.

Groaning, Wisniewski hands Barry a pregnant envelope, “Ya da new leada o' da Whitehant.”

Barry looks up to the giant. The only thing he ever wanted—to be leader of the gang—and it's handed to him along with an envelope full of cash by a tunic and a big man.

“We go now,” Wisniewski says.

CHAPTER 30

Vin

“V
ISITOR
,”
THE
SCREW
CALLS
OUT
AS
Vincent Maher stands from the cell bench.

“Sixto? Jack?” he says.

Then a third man walks behind Jack and Sixto Stabile.

“Don' say his name, please,” Sixto asks kindly and with the accent of Anglo-American gentry. “It wouldn't be the smartest thing you've ever done. We like you, Vincent. Let's keep it a like-like relationship.”

“Uhright.”

Frankie Yale, the shortest of the three visitors, is wearing a large overcoat and many rings and shakes a pointer finger calmly at Vincent, “You . . . you part Italiano, are ya?”

Vincent comes closer to the bars to see the man he's only heard stories of. “I don' think so.”

“Wid a name like Vincent?”

“No.”

“So, Vin, ya eva been to Chicago?”

“No.”

“Maybe ya should go sometime. I got friends there. In high places. They got lots o' bawdyhouses out there, ya know. Bawdyhouses need guys like ya. Right?”

“I was offered that job once already.”

“Lemme ask ya a question, Vin,” Yale says. “Ya know dey call me the Prince o' Pals, right?”

“I've heard it.”

“I give you a pal's advice, yeah? All right. Here it is. Do ya rememba guy named Pickles Leighton?”

“I know 'bout him, yeah.”

“Still up in the stir to dis very day. . . . How 'bouta guy named uh . . . Non Connors?”

“Yeah.”

“Bill Lovett?”

“I know 'em.”

Yale nods his head in agreement, “What dey all got in common? Dem?”

“You tell me.”

“Not to be rude, he's your friend, Vincent,” Sixto says with a polite smile.

“All t'ree got set up by Dinny Meehan, ain' dat right?” Yale says while looking down at his manicured fingers.

“I don' know no one by that name,” Vincent says bowing his head.

Frankie Yale smiles and points his finger at Vincent again, then gently touches his forehead with it, “He ain' no secret no more. Ya know, someone's gonna have to fall fa dis here Hanan Shoes debacle. Ya know dat right? Well, word is it's you, Vin.”

Vincent does not answer.

“One more name,” Yale says, changing his stance and opening his long coat. “McGowan.”

“What about 'em?”

Yale looks over his shoulder at the screw down the hall behind him, “Ya rememba how McGowan got killt? Eh? Back in 1915? Couple guards I heard, right?”

Vincent looks over at the screw, who can't hear them.

“I dunno,” Yale says. “Bein' on the inside o' da ILA, ya know, maybe gives us opportunity. Ya rememba Paul Vaccarelli, right? He's a VP wit' the ILA.”

“I know about 'em.”

“He knows 'bout you too, Vin,” Yale says folding his ringed hands. “And he likes ya. Just like I do. And uh . . . gonna be a big strike comin' up. The longshoremen wanna raise. Can ya blame 'em? A lotta dime to be made in strike-breakin'. We're gonna need men. Lots o' men.”

Vincent looks at him confusedly, “Ya gonna call a strike and break it too?”

Yale nods at Vincent's openly stating the obvious, makes a smirk on his mouth and lifts his eyebrows. “The dime, Vin. In America, it's all about the dime. Not blood no more. The dime's all. Don' matta how ya get it. Ya wanna future?”

CHAPTER 31

Treasurer, New York

S
LICK
BLACK
HAIR
,
BIG
LOOSE
SUIT
, the drooping and aggressive face of a Rottweiler, King Joe leans back in his rogue throne in the Chelsea Clubhouse on West Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, head of the ILA in the New York Harbor. A man brazenly walks into his office unannounced.

“Thos Carmody?” King Joe says startled, noticing the shrapnel wounds on the side of Carmody's face. “Ya made it back alive.”

“That ain' my title,” Carmody says coldly.

Puzzled, King Joe asks, “What ain' ya title?”

“Ya made it back alive.”

“What?”

“My title's Treasurer, New York. Remember? Before the war?”

King Joe laughs, stands at his desk, and extends an arm for shaking. “I kinda like that. I'll getcha a nameplate says T
HOS
C
ARMODY
, Y
A
M
ADE
I
T
B
ACK
A
LIVE
.”

“Again.”

“Yeah, T
HOS
C
ARMODY
, Y
A
M
ADE
I
T
B
ACK
A
LIVE
, A
GAIN
.”

“Nah,” Thos says. “Just get me the one that says T
REASURER
.”

King Joe nods. “We might do that. We'll have to look over ya resume.”

“I got credentials, and a foothold on the Brooklyn docks ya gonna need before the ILA puts a stop to any loadin' or unloadin' o' ships in New York Harbor,” Carmody says, his lip forever torn along the right side of his pockmarked face. There are tiny bald spots over his ears too where the cricket-ball grenade that exploded near him had sent small pieces of hot metal into his right arm, shoulder, face, and head, splicing open his lip.

“Is that right?”

“Guess who I saw'r in France?” Thos asks.

“Who?”

“Bill Lovett and his buddy, Non Connors.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We made pals, him an' I. He's got the right idears about a general strike. He'll be on our side. Not on the side o' wops like Vaccarelli and Yale down in Brooklyn—ya know what I mean?”

“The I-talian element in the ILA? I think maybe I do.”

“T. V. O'Connor appointin' that Vaccarelli guy VP o' the ILA?”

“Dumb,” King Joe agrees.

“Necessary at the time, maybe,” Carmody says. “But when the day comes that Vaccarelli works wit' the shippin' companies and the Waterfront Assembly to provide strikebreakers, maybe that'll be the nail in O'Connor's coffin. Then the ILA'll need a new president.”

“An' I t'ought ya was a T. V. O'Connor guy,” King Joe says slyly.

“I was, 'til I wasn't.”

“Never really understood why ya made a deal wit' Meehan when he was the one put a hit on ya.”

“Times change an' so do the angles. Some people look to the past to see ahead. Never was a lackey for that way o' thinkin'. I look to the now,” Thos says, staring forward at King Joe. “So does Bill Lovett.”

Standing again from his desk with a big hollow grin, King Joe reaches forward for a handshake, “Treasurer? Welcome back, Thos.”

“Thanks,” Carmody says pulling out the bullet Tanner Smith gave to him back in April of 1916, then looks at King Joe before leaving. “Tanner Smith still around?”

“Yeah,” King Joe says. “He came lookin' for ya once, 'bout a year ago.”

“I'll be payin' him a visit, otherwise he'll be payin' me one.”