Light of the Diddicoy (20 page)

He flung the door open and screamed. Running in complete abandonment with the sticky shit slipping down the inside of his thighs until Richie gave him a tackle that partially knocked Mick unconscious and before he could wake, Richie had his head in a lock from behind and a gun at his temple.

“Jesus, did ya shit on yaself?” Richie asked, and let him loose leaving him on his stomach with the gun pointed to the back of his head and his wooden leg stuck firmly in the small of his victim's back.

Gilligan stayed on his stomach completely unaware of his surroundings. Overcome with shock. He lay there shaking and did not respond to any of Richie's questions. A few moments later and Vincent Maher walked up behind Richie, smiling.

“Look at these huge vats o' soap,” Maher said looking down. “Eight fookin' stories tall. And bubblin' all over the place. Mick?” he said, standing over him next to Richie. “Why ya so fookin' ignor'nt?”

Mick could not respond.

“Mickey?” Maher yelled, then flicked his toothpick on Mick's back. “Open ya fookin' ears, then ya mouth! Fookin' weak.”

No response.

“Whatever,” Maher said, and pulled out the .45 from his belt and reached down, pointing it to the back of Mick Gilligan's head, then pulled it away, turned it around, and gave the butt of the gun to Richie.

“You can kill'em?” he asked.

With his pointy cheekbones and unfeeling eyes, Richie took the gun and with a clamorous bang that echoed throughout, put Mick Gilligan to sleep forever.

Hearing the shot, the manager below stopped his busy work for a moment and looking up, could only imagine what was happening above. Instead, he decided not to think of it. Then licked his pencil and returned to his writing.

Richie at the head, Maher with the feet, the two picked up the body and swayed it left to right on a three count.

“One,” they said together.

“Two.”

“Three,” and with a heave, Richie and Maher hurtled the limp body over the guard rail. With half a head and a seven-inch exit wound in the face, the corpse slowly cartwheeled below and flopped into a boiling silo with a deep plunking sound. The momentum of 146 pounds of dead weight into boiling soap one flight below sent a wave over the side of the vat that exploded on the ground floor of the lobby eight stories below, a few feet from the manager's office.

L
ATER IN THE DAY, A FOG
rolled off the Buttermilk Channel and began to engulf the immense structure on Imlay Street in Red Hook. Above Bill Lovett and Non Connors, the cement sign was becoming obscured in the steam's onslaught, but if you looked close enough you could make out the words, N
EW
Y
ORK
D
OCK
C
O
.

Lovett and Connors stood next to each other in the dirty gray jackets and black ties of the laborman, but with black scarves wrapped loosely around their necks, trailing behind over shoulders. Cap pulled down over the eyes, Connors leaned on the building and dragged from a paper cigarette while Lovett watched the crowd without moving his head.

“What about Strickland?” Connors mumbled, hand in pocket.

“Squeaks on wops, he'll squeak on anybody. Fuck'em. He's a tout.”

Connors dragged, Lovett watched the crowd for the pier house super among the men and women leaving and entering the building at the end of the workday.

“There he is.”

The two pulled their hands from their pockets and wrapped the scarves over their faces, leaving only their shaded eyes to be seen like bank robbers from another era. Across the street, three more men covered their faces and moved toward the center of Imlay Street at Lovett's motioning.

A white man with three olive-skinned Italian men were together crossing the street at that moment. One of the Italian men was carrying a box under his arm and wore tight black gloves that made his hands look small. That man looked both ways before crossing, then took off his fedora to wipe the sweat from his forehead and by doing so, revealed a patch of white-streaked hair that reached from a low black hairline back to the top of his head.

Before the white man and three Italians made it across Imlay Street to the New York Dock Company building amid the traffic of automobile trucks and drays, Bill Lovett pulled a .45 from his coat pocket and aimed it generally at the men crossing the street. Connors did the same. Opening fire as they walk quickly, arms out-stretched, the lead Italian threw his cigar box at the two men firing upon him and ran for the Italian enclaves inland toward Union, Sackett, and Degraw Streets up Imlay. The crowd shrieked, the two other Italians went for their guns, but one of them fell to the street as he was shot in the side of the head from Frankie Byrne, who came from behind him. The white man too, among the Italians, fell to a knee a few feet from the downed man. With the streak-haired Italian running away, it left one more Italian who had yet to fire and before doing so, noticed shots coming from behind him to the side, turned to return fire and was shot three times by Lovett and Connors, two more times by Jidge Seaman and Sean Healy, and then fell to his face, flattening the nose on the cement and loosening the weapon from a flaccid hand.

“Him! Him!” Lovett yelled with a muffled voice at the man running up Imlay.

Shots were fired after the man. Sparks jumped at his pawing feet as all five of the scarved men ran after him, crowd parting and ducking and running for cover. Most were unaware of where the sounds come from and didn't recognize them as gunfire anyhow. One woman backed into Non Connors as he was running after the lone remaining Italian. He was sent sprawling to the ground and angrily cursed her, even before he had stopped sliding across the shiny wet pavement, “Fookin' stoopit slattern . . .”

Connors looked up from the ground and saw the last Italian hopping as he had received a bullet in the hamstring. Looking back at the gang of men closing in on him, the last Italian limped toward the building looking for desperate cover, but was soon overcome with bullets and lay crumpled in an awkward corner obscured by one of the building's columns. Satisfied the last Italian was dead, Connors looked back over to the box on the ground, as his scarf had fallen to his chest without his recognizing it. He picked up the box and read aloud, “Ybor Gales.”

He then noticed a circle gathering around a moaning man. Connors stood up and walked over for the crowd, pushed his way through. It was Strickland still alive, holding his shoulder in pain and pushing with his leg off the pavement as the concerned tried calming and nursing him. None had recognized Connors as one of the killers among them. He walked up to the injured man on the ground within the circle. “Clouts for touts,” he said, pointed his weapon at the back of the man's head, and fired as screams catapulted into the air. The circle of the concerned imploded in all directions, tripping over dead Italians, and before anyone could realize who had executed the injured man, all five killers were running toward the trolley station up Commerce Street on Henry four blocks away.

T
HOS
C
ARMODY WALKED
NORTH ON
H
UDSON
Street in Manhattan and turned in to a building at 310 with his collar high, hands in trench coat. Two men sat at a round table by the door inside, looked up unflinchingly.

“Private club, buddy,” Lefty said.

“So private it ain't even got a name,” Thos smiled, though no one laughed. “Tanner here?”

“Come wit' me,” Costello said standing. “Lemme see ya hands.”

Thos looked at Costello, slowly took his hands from the trench coat. Lefty stood up and took the gun out of the pocket, “I'll hold this for ya.”

Calmly, Thos looked at the door as Costello walked passed him for the stairs. Licking his lips nervously, Thos followed.

“How's T. V. O'Connor doin'?” Costello called back while walking upstairs.

“He's in Buffalo,” Thos said, following.

“Yeah? What about that monkey, King Joe Ryan?”

“Waitin' for me outside,” Thos lied.

“Yeah? Tell'm to come in then,” Costello stopped. “We got drinks for King Joe.”

“Just bring me to Tanner.”

Costello opens one of the closed doors on the second floor where Tanner Smith sits alone at a round table by an open window, a deck of cards peeled open in front of him.

“This guy says O'Connor's in Buffalo again,” Costello laughs, then continues without an answer from Tanner. “Looks like the city is all King Joe's now.”

“Thos Carmody,” Tanner says, shuffling cards as the door closes them in together. “Popular man these days.”

“You back in the gimmick yet, Tanner?”

“Just a dockboss, that's all I am,” Tanner answers angrily.

“Good thing, we need honest guys like you, Tanner. Ya can't trust no one no more. Gangs, sluggin' . . . guys'll turn on their friends to save their own asses. Not like the ol' days.”

Tanner winced at that, grumbled, “What's wit' the Huns, we strikin'?”

Thos laughed, looked away, “Ain't gonna happen, they got cold feet.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

Tanner pulled out a rare Russian Nagant revolver from his breast pocket, a seven-shooter, and opened the cylinder slowly, pulled out the bullet that was next in the chamber, and tossed it to Thos. “Done.”

Thos laughed nervously.

“Here's fifty dime, Thos. Get outta the city for a few months. Go to Buffalo for the summer. On me,” Tanner pushed two twenties and a ten-dollar bill across the table.

The ivy along the walls of the courtyard through the back window was beginning to turn green again even as it was a cold day in April. The sun was disappearing beyond a distant water tower atop a brick building while Thos Carmody nodded his head in acceptance.

“Tell T. V. O'Connor and King Joe I saved ya life. Tell'm to keep me in mind for a job sometime, yeah? I want back in the game, but legit like.”

“Who hired ya, The Dropper?” Thos said, holding the bullet between his thumb and middle finger, then snatching it with the palm of the same hand.

“I don' work for sheenies or wops, you know I won't Thos. I tell you what though, I can turn all o' the longshoremen on the Brooklyn waterfront to ILA,” he said, then raised his eyebrows and looked up. “If only I was a ILA man, of course.”

“We got a guy for that down there to turn them hayseeds around.”

Tanner looked down at Thos coldly. “No ya don't.”

Thos looked back quizzically.

“Garrity? Joe Garrity?”

Thos stared back without answering.

“Marked man, Joe Garrity is.” Tanner continued, “Any o' my guys see you in New York the next six months, they got orders to kill. Don' tell no one ya leavin'. I wanna missin' persons report for ya. G'on then, ya welcome.”

I
T IS BY NOW
8
P.M
. and Paddy Keenan pushes a poteen across as I pull up to the bar in the candlelit Dock Loaders' Club. The dockbosses are lined along the stretch with serious looks on them: Gibney the Lark, Big Dick Morissey, Connolly, and Donnelly with Dance, Dago Tom, the Chiseler, Philip Large, and others standing behind. Only Harry Reynolds missing, gone after receiving his envelope.

I sip the drop like a man and reach into my pocket. The Saint Christopher Mam gave me. I hold it in my fingers, rub it smoothly. I love my mam and I feel so sorry for her. I only want better things for her and I start believing that to become a man means doing whatever it takes to soothe her. If danger provides the path to her peace, I'll gladly take it. And just like Dinny, I'll never complain about it. That's what a man does, I say to myself. Then I look over to Mr. Lincoln on the wall, so proud and honorable. A beautiful man who soothed many.

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” I say. And just like that, I believe myself a warriorpoet because you can't write beautiful words unless you've seen and done terrible things already. “Have you ever heard of a warriorpoet?” I ask Paddy Keenan who looks at me like he always does when I ask him questions, like he is the one supposed to be listening, not talking.

“Warriorpoet, ye say? Not since the ancient glories have they been round, bhoy.”

“Well, at least you don't have to go and get schooling to be a poet.”

“'Tis true, from the blood and the bones does it rise, the poetry.”

Vincent Maher interrupts with concern in his eyes, “Ya seen Lovett? Heard from him in the last couple few hours?”

“I haven't.”

“A'right,” he says, and with a stony face he takes my hand and shakes it like a big brother. “Good luck, kid. You'll be good.”

Walking toward the stairwell he shakes his head in Tommy Tuohey's direction. As he swings up for the stairs, Tuohey looks concerned too. I feel something on my hand and put it in front of a candle: blood has been smeared across the palm. When I look up again, Vincent is already upstairs. I take a sip, but can't get his stony face from my mind.

“Well looky 'ere,” Paddy says as the door opens behind me. “T'ree members o' Brooklyn's own h'opstandin' citizenry. Come to sing us the werd o' the Lord, like t'ree good ‘lil choirbhoys?”

I turn round and see Petey Behan's short little muscular body with the thin hips and wide shoulders. He is wearing my coat, smirking at me. Behind him is the taller, awkward Timothy Quilty, then the nervous but handsome face of Matty Martin. They are all my same age, but have much more experience on the streets than I, working for Lonergan robbing candy stores, jackrolling drunken sailors, and sleeping train riders and such. Not to mention stealing coats from the homeless like myself.

“This oughter be interestin',” Behan says, sitting at the bar as the other two snake around him, taking seats where they'd longed to sit since they were babies.

“Why are you three here?” I ask.

“We're here to make sure you don' fook it up, Dinny says so,” Behan smirks.

“Only payin' customers set at the bar, bhoys,” says Paddy Keenan. “You bhoys got'ny money?”

“What about him, is he payin'?” Behan whines.

“Certainly is. He's a werkin' man, can't ye tell by the werry on his face?”

“Yeah,” Behan said. “He's worried a'right.”

“Let's go then,” I say, leaving a tip as my stomach turns. “We've a job to do.”

As we get up, I see all of the dockbosses looking at me with their wide-shouldered glares and candlelit faces in the dark. I see doubt in them, weary stares. Little Behan then steps in front of me and opens the door for himself, leaving me to catch it. Outside we yell due to the sound of the trolley passing above. “Ya got ya weapon, o' what?” Behan asks.

“I do,” says I, and open my coat to reveal the knife Harry Reynolds gave me. “You three got yours?”

“Sure we do. Let's get goin'.”

It is good weather to hide weapons and though I have no intention of using mine, I do feel a need for it as a precautionary. I look over at Behan as we walk, then away. Realize that I am in a bad situation, though the police and the law seem farther away than ever. I had planned on going alone to meet my uncle. Convincing him to help me. But Uncle Joseph isn't always the agreeable type and now I have these three enforcers.

“I'll go in first,” I tell Behan.

He looks at me hard. “This uncle o' your's, he knows ya workin' wit' Dinny?”

Begrudgingly, I admit he does not. Behan nods his head and I can feel that he sees right through me.

“Let's go in Richie's new bike shop for a minute.” Martin asks Behan, seeing it across the street and pointing.

“No,” is the answer from Behan. “You only wanna look at Anna. We ain' got time for lookin' at goils now.”

Walking up the hill at Bridge Street we move through the neighborhood toward the Manhattan Bridge approach. Cutting through the crowded Sands Street train station, we jump the wooden railings of a long walkway in front of some hurrying travelers and duck underneath the station where only the Lonergan crew would know such a short cut would lead us to the other side by the waterfront. At Court Street, the Fulton El stops above us and I can see people staring down as we three push through the pressing crowd in the dark. I wish I were in that train up there, for I know I am going to a very bad thing. Behind me, up above, the train slowly lurches forward and the clicking is slow at first, but then quickens as it gains speed and is then gone.

“We're gonna see just what kinda man y'are, Garrity,” Behan says. “I don' think ya got it in ya to pull it off. Just don' get us in a pickle? ‘Cause I'll make sure ya get yours, dig?”

“Just follow my lead,” I say daringly.

We stop around the corner from our destination at Sedgwick and Columbia Streets just north of the Italian enclaves of Red Hook where Dinny, Vincent, and The Swede had told me to go. We can no longer see out into the black water behind us, and a cold wind comes from the south and wiggles an aluminum lean-to roof in our ears. It is a barren, industrial-looking dumping ground for rotted wood, useless metal scraps, and fiery barrels with circles of men who have their palms outstretched to its warmth, bottle under arm. This is a place where only the lowest kind hide from some curse or terrible luck. We look down the windy Sedgwick Street where a few men are standing outside a shanty saloon called McAlpine's, a real ornery place.

“That's it,” I say.

“We'll be in there in twenny minutes,” Behan demands. “Make sure ya ready and don' fook it up?”

“Get off it, you've a loud mouth on you,” I snap at him before I realize it.

Behan pushes me against the building. “I'll kill ya if ya fook this up, boy . . .”

“Let go . . .”

“I'll murder ya . . .”

“Yeah,” Martin says nervously. “Don't get us in a bad place.”

“Yeah,” Quilty says, going along with it.

Petey lets me off and I look at the scared faces of Quilty and Martin and try to put a tough face on myself, just like Reynolds taught me.

In practice, I jump for my knife and grab the handle perfectly. Then I do it again. And again. Finally, I make the turn around the corner of the building and start the long walk, one block to McAlpine's. As Behan and the boys watch me from behind, I shiver in the cold breeze. The temperature is dropping, but that's not what makes me shiver. My teeth chatter and chatter against each other as swooshing paper flies by my head, rags tumble ahead of me. My hands shake and they're wet and I suddenly feel hungry. Tucking that hunger away like so many warriors have had to do for so many thousands of years, I keep at my walking with a firm stride. When I come upon the men standing outside McAlpine's, I walk passed them for the door without looking up.

“Who you, kid?” a longshoreman at the door stops me. “No babies allowed in here.”

“I'm no baby,” says I. “My uncle's in there and I need a word with him. Joe Garrity's his name. Mine is William. Go and tell him to let me in.”

He becomes reasonable, “Joe Garrity's ya uncle?”

“He is.”

“He knows ya comin'?”

“Look, me da was involved in the h'uprisin' in Dooba-lin,” I say convincingly and with a thicker brogue than normal. “I needa spake wid'is brudder: Joe Garrity. Goo and get 'em, yeah?”

“Uhright, kid,” says he. “Wait here a minute.”

A few moments later and the same man opens the front door for me. “He's over dere.”

It is dark inside. Very dark. Candles whip and jerk on the wick as the door closes behind me. I walk by the coatrack, leaving myself fully clothed. Even keep my wool cap on nice and tight and close over the eyes. I feel like everything is bigger than me. Like I am in over my head. A notion comes across my mind, a notion that is not only from Dinny's words to me while walking over the Brooklyn Bridge together, but from his own actions too: men make their own destinies. But this is a fleeting thought and soon it is gone, again I feel like I am small. Waiting for the world to take me somewhere so I don't have to force my will on it, I push on in the dark.

I can hardly see a single man's face among the crowd and along the bar and the smell of smoke is enough to choke a child. I don't recognize my uncle among the longshoremen, but I see wiry Italians, sharp-eyed Germans, tow-headed Nordics, whispering Jews, a couple bulky blacks, meat-fisted Polacks, open-necked Russians, and a few Irish among them. Quickly, I am grabbed and hear a clicking back of a revolver's hammer, “Gimme all yer blunt or I'll tear your togs off ya an' sell 'em rag by rag, ye stupid Mick.”

A crowd starts laughing around me like flapping vultures, yet I still have no way of knowing who it is that's grabbed me. My eyes finally focus on the face of the man holding the gun to my nose. It is my uncle Joseph, looking scraggy as usual and drunk on top of it all.

“Well!” he yells, as the men around him continue to laugh. “Hand it over'r else!”

I don't move. I just look in his eyes with the sternness that's so new to me. As a reaction to my stoic response, he pulls the trigger in my face.

“Click,” the gun says to me, nothing in the chamber and the dark crowd laughs it up again.

“Have a seat, bhoy,” Uncle Joseph announces, pushing a man out of the way and clearing it for me. “Come, come. Set down next to yer ol' uncle. . . . Me nephew from Clare!” he announces to the world with his glass high in the air.

I sit to his left, facing him as he looks toward the barkeep. He can't sit still for a moment and continues cajoling the men around him in a state of drunkenness. I notice that he enjoys some sort of status among them. Honorless as it is to me, the men of McAlpine's see him as a leader, just like Dinny said.

“He wants to join the ILA!” he blares. “Works as hard as any man dat ever broke bread, this one does!” then leads a cheer that was popular in those days. “International Longshoremen Unite!”

“A drink fer me nephew!” another grandiose announcement.

Within a moment, a whiskey is placed in front of me. I have no choice but to throw it down as he eggs me on.

“Anodder!” he yells.

“What's happened with my da?” I interrupt. “Do you know if he was in the Dublin rising?”

“Drink yer drink, kid,” ignoring me. “Ye found yerself a new home here.”

“What's happened with your brother?” I demand. “Is he still alive? Have you heard anything since the rising about him?”

Frustrated, he slams his drink down on the bar as it spills over his hand, “And what've ye been up to ye'rself since last we jawed, hey? What is it den? Ye beggin' on the street now? Werkin' fer the Whitehanders?”

“I've been working on the docks up in the Navy Yard where they don't bother me, long as you pay tribute,” I lie, just as Dinny coached. “Red Donnelly's a good guy, he pays his dues and goes about his own up there.”

“Pays dues to the wrong kind. The ILA'll help a man, Whitehanders' days are numbered.”

I don't say anything back and when he looks over to me again his face is awash in shame.

“That's nice then, real nice. I guess ye t'ink I'm a wort'less ol' drunk, do ye? Ye do . . . ! I don't care, bhoy. Fine. I'm sorry I gave ye the boot like I did, I'm sorry fer that. I've been t'inkin' about it and, yeah. I was wrong. Did all go well after that then?”

“Fine,” I said, then lie some more. “I don't hold it against you. I was stupid then, you know? I didn't know anything. I still don't. But I'm trying. I'm trying to learn something.”

“That's a good lad. Yer fadder raised a good bhoy in ye. A good lad!”

I look around the bar. Most men are paying no attention to us any longer. The drunkenness has taken over and there doesn't seem much guard to anyone. We are sitting toward the middle of the bar, only about fifteen steps to the front door through a dense crowd of torn-seamed union men. Smoke settles toward the roof from the many pipes and paper cigarettes and every man holds at least one drink in his hand.

“So, have you any letters from my ma?”

“Yeah, plenty. I didn't open 'em . . . Well, I opened one of them. On accident 'cause I t'ought t'was fer me since the letter had gotten wet so yer name was wiped off it clean . . . So I opened it and after, I realized. . . . Anyhow, she says she misses ye and wants to know if ye can send 'er money, maybe.”

I thought for a moment, almost bubbling up in cry.

“I was goin' to send'er some money, ye know,” he slurred. “But I didn't have much extra on me, so I figured I'd wait 'til ye send some and I'll add to it, yeah?”