Light of the Diddicoy (8 page)

“Bill,” says Gilligan spilling a few drops of whiskey on his shoes. “Bill, ya gotter help me, ol' friend. I heard what ya said in front o' the others, now hear me out would ya? Can we work somethin' out? I gotter family to protect. You know Joey Behan, right? Been checkin' it at my home when here I am tryin' to . . .”

“I heard y'already,” Bill mumbled while standing up, then drank down his beer and looked Mick in the eye close-like, feeling the drink in him mingle and ferment a disgust from somewhere old in him. “I know you. I know ya good. I don' know who sends ya, Dinny or tunics or what, but I know ya better'n ya think, yeah? Ya fuck. Ya testin' me. You're a tout, I know you.”

“Whatta ya talkin' about, Bill?” Gilligan begged as Bill opens the saloon door against another freezing gust and a train clickety-clacking above. “Bill? Whatta hell is ya talkin' about, tunics an' Dinny? I'm tryin' no more than to protect . . .”

“Shaddup,” as the door banged shut.

Men step from Bill Lovett's path when the look comes across his face as it does now. And as he come to the bar with an empty glass Paddy Keenan dumps another in front of him. In exchange Bill pushes forward coinage through the whiskey and beer-puddled mahogany. Taking the frothless drink and barking it straight down, Keenan has yet another on the ready after slicing the head off it with a butter knife onto the floor with a
fap
. Non Connors and Frankie Byrne stand close to Lovett with drinks in their hands too, Connors double-fisting it; a shot in one hand, thin glass of beer in the other.

Elbowing back up to the mahogany, Bill begins to transform. The stories of Bill Lovett's drinking are not just mine. All knew him as a hard worker when sober and a ferocious fighter after drinking. As I see him, he sits on the stool after work at the Dock Loaders' Club, staring into his drink angrily. His face now wearing the wounded staring of the drunk. And as the drink takes his reason, he sees all those round him as traitors and touts. His eyebrows pushing downward over the untrusting orbs, lips thrust outward as if he has just waken, fists clenched, he closes himself in.

Listening to the conversations of dockbosses lit by the ancient yellow of candlelight, he moves his dulling eyes. Hears all the voices as one. He looks back and into the darkness beyond the bar to the guarded stairwell that leads to Dinny Meehan's office above, where the authority of the gang resides with all his protectorates around him counting the day's tribute. Bill knows Dinny is always listening for plots, and plants silent men around him, like Paddy Keenan the tender. Paddy Keenan is known to one and all as Dinny's minister of education because he listens to stories told under the serum of truth at the bar, then debriefs Dinny upstairs. He is a tout, Paddy Keenan is, but a tout for Dinny Meehan is no crime at all within 25 Bridge Street. But Bill sees a tout as a tout, no matter whose side you're on. And as they used to say in this neighborhood years ago when it was only Irish that lived here, “T'is clouts for the touts.” Which vaguely translates to “A hit on the head for the informer,” except it rhymes, as you can see.

Along the stretch of the bar, and highest among the low-going men are the dockbosses and their right handers; Gibney the Lark and his cohort Big Dick Morissey take up a large part of the trough across Bill with wide-shouldered necks like bison propped on elbows. Boxheaded Red Donnelly is there next them, known too as Cute Charlie since he is so ugly and red. The lean smiler Jimmy “Cinders” Connolly sits with his big paws hanging over the bar like a long hound with his fool-mute right hander behind him, Philip Large. And Harry “the Shiv” Reynolds too casts a subtle eye at Bill here and there. Behind them all, Tommy Tuohey the pavee boxer stands at his post in the back by the rear room with his fists folded, guarding the stairwell.

These men are the dockbosses who have their own terminals and report directly to Dinny Meehan each day. Down in the Red Hook, Bill is boss, just as the others are up in the Navy Yard, under the bridges at the Fulton and Jay terminals, and down Brooklyn Heights at the docks that terminate on Baltic Street and Atlantic Avenue. Except Tuohey, who just likes to fight on a challenge. But Bill is the youngest and newest of the bosses, just only months earlier took over with Dinny's nod after McGowan had been sentenced to Sing Sing and then had the life beaten from him by a screw. Again Harry gives Bill a silent lookover, then looks away. McGowen was well-liked and Bill can see it on the faces of Dinny's dockbosses. But Bill has no regard for those men, Dinny's men. And they know it. See in that lack of honor, blame for the death of one of them and their own.

“Bill,” Connors leaned into his ear. “Mick's still onto ya, whadda ya say?”

“Gentle when stroked, fierce when provoked,” Bill threatened like a cornered animal as Mick Gilligan strained to hear him.

Just behind Mick the saloon door opens and the sounds of the screeching city enter again, candles wincing, lanterns tilting, and under the stiff wind a lilting call came out. “Look what I got for dinner!” A man shouts heartily while a cat being held by its tail upside down is at its hissing and making its wicked sounds abound, scratching into the air. Wobbling and warbling like a man on the gibbetnoose.

Wild Bill Lovett turns round, faces the laborer with a sporting smile and tomcat in grasp, immediately pulls the .45 out from his jacket, and claps the hammer with an explosion that sends shoulders flinching, silencing the saloon. Mick Gilligan thought certain the blast was meant for himself, though it was not to be. The power of the bullet knocks the fool Scandanavian cat abuser back into the picks and shovels and coatrack and the old tom sent a flying out of his grasp, flapping across the front glass window and scraping off the edge of a table.

Confused by the scene and out of his element, the tom darts from one side of the saloon to the other as a stampede of gangsters, soused sailors, laborers, and immigrants elbow for the exit but not before they pull their coats from beneath the man with a bullet in his chest behind the door. The dockbosses barely move however, and instead watch Bill while keeping a palm over their own weapons.

With fear sunk into him and honor forgotten, Mick Gilligan gapes upon Bill who holds the metal canon in his small hand and a butcher's stare in his eye among the flying elbows and the heavy tide of patrons frantically swimming and bottlenecked at the front door. At this emptying of order, Bill awakes, and shoving his .45 into the back of his trousers, storms upon Mick without effort like a man finally in his comfort only when chaos churls around him and with the horrid grates of streetcar stoppers screeching through the spliced January air. As Mick sees the intention on Bill he pushes and shoves within the crowd and yelps to get through for the exit, never mind the coat.

Jumping over three men, Bill yanks at the back of Mick Gilligan's shirt with a strength uncommon to men his size and with him go three others to the ground. At the lash of his down-thrusting fists Bill squeezes and grits to break the head off the coward until the crowd unintentionally throws him off balance in their rushing for the door. Standing up with his left hand still holding Mick, Bill swings at any face behind him he can see, then plows into the back of the head of Mick with a feral man's intent.

After losing his grip on Mick, Bill then turns his attention to the tom that has splayed himself across the flooring in a toothy hissing and a ridge of crazed hair standing on-end over his raised back, tiptoeing sideways in a miniature menace. Hoping to coax the poor animal into his arms, the tomcat continues thrashing at the mouth until finally the saloon empties entirely.

As the dockbosses look him over with unemotional stares, Bill busies himself at his own mind's taking. With one hand he keeps the door open while pushing the injured man deeper into the corner, the other hand again holding the .45 across his knee for someone to question him. Ignoring Non Connors's urging until the tom has made its way out of the saloon safely, Bill whispers gentle assurances, “G'on boy, it's right here. No worries, really. No worries, everythin's over now. Everythin's fine.”

T
HE DOOR SWINGS OPEN AND BANGS
against the legs of the dying man. Head Patrolman William Brosnan looks behind it as Paddy Keenan and Patrolman Culkin turn to his entrance. A great barrel-chested man of a powerful build and the height of some three inches above six feet, Brosnan's dark blue copper's tunic and tilted cap contrasts the gray in his short-haired cut above the ear.

“Jaysus,” he booms, then looks to his son-in-law. “Who done this? Ambulance on the way?”

Culkin steps away from Keenan and comes close to Brosnan whispering, “I called for a doctor, but this feller won't talk, won't say nothin'.”

Dropping his hat on the back of his head and wiping the snow from his face, Brosnan walks toward the bar with his hand extended, “Paddy Keenan, is it?”

Keenan looks at the large policeman and lays a hand out for greeting, “'Tis.”

“From what part are ye then?” Brosnan offers while pulling a pack of cigars from his tunic that reads “Na Bocklish.”

“Kilmenagh.”

“Sure, sure, over Kilkenny way,” Brosnan agrees. “Why not give us a drop o' the pure when ye're ready, eh Mr. Keenan?”

Keenan nods.

“That'll be the cure of it,” Brosnan says as Keenan pushes forward the home brewed poteen. “Might as well take the drop while the life is still in ye. I've known me quite a few from them parts. Kind people they are, from Kilmenagh. I'm from Dooblin meself.”

“I know,” Keenan answers not so cordially.

“But Kilkenny! Oh my, lovely place it be. Seat of our ancestors beyond the pale, but close in our hearts still today.”

“'Tis, 'tis,” Keenan agrees.

Leaning across the bar and whispering, “Is Dinny h'opstairs?”

Keenan looks up toward the dark, empty stairwell at the end of the bar, then back to Brosnan, “I wouldn't go up, sir.”

Brosnan though, he only hears a challenge from Keenan's advice. He grinds his teeth inside his mouth, but doesn't show it on his face. Instead Brosnan smiles and takes off his hat, begins to sing where quickly Keenan joins along, Culkin watching by the door and the injured man.

“ There once were two cats liv'd in Kilkenny

Each t'ought dere was one cat too many

So dey fought and dey hiss't

An' dey scratched and dey bit

'Til instead o' two cats dere weren' t'any!”

Laughing along, Brosnan pronounces, “only good t'ings come from Kilkenny, ye must be a good man Paddy Keenan! How long ye been on for Dinny now?”

“Wisha, I just tend bar sir, nothin' more.”

“Ye know what,” say Brosnan, pounding his hand on the bar and pulling the Na Bocklish out of his head. “I believe that! There's a lotta gobshite round here, I'll be the first to reco'nize it. But I believe ye, Paddy. Ye know, we that come from the auld lanes aren't as violent as them that dragged up round the waterfront here.”

“I see it that way too,” Keenan agreed.

“Do ye?”

“I do.”

“Kilkenny cats, Mr. Keenan,” Brosnan said smiling with a finger in the air, Keenan listening quietly and without offering his own opinion either. “Dinny's got 'is day t'day, but these bhoys got the nature to bring down their king. And what a king he be, yeah? King of the Diddicoys, if ye believe them larrikins are wert' presidin' over. Watch 'em, Paddy Keenan! I seen it many time in this neighborhood. Ye t'ink Lovett's got loyalty fer the king? Do ye? Those ol' Jay Street hooligans and their knavery: Lovett, Connors, Frankie Byrne and his boyos, the Leighton brothers and others. They're Dinny's now? Ha! Are they, Paddy? Even with Dinny's gift fer arganizin', ye can't break some, ye can't. These bhoys down by the docks, I seen over many years. Here me,” Brosnan said leaning across the mahogany for a whisper. “They're the Kilkenny cats themselves.”

“Are they?”

“They are! Bill Lovett?” Brosnan announced while staring at Keenan's face. “Wild Bill Lovett?”

Keenan wrinkles his nose but for a moment.

“They'll fight each other outta existence, they will. . . . If I don't take Dinny down meself, as a matther o' fact,” Brosnan warns before blasting down a shot, then looks up the stairwell angrily. “I've done it before, take that Dinny down I did too! Back when he was a tyke and runnin' with that no-good scootch who was nottin' but a fluke, Coohoo Cosgrave before he took to the groundsweat by drinkin' down oxalic acid after he gone off the deep end. That's right. I sent Dinny and McGowan up to Elmira's Reformatory for a stint, and I'll do it again!” Brosnan boasted and blaguarded, then looked upstairs thinking. “Must've been 1905. . . . Then again I sent'm up in 1912 when the yegg Christie Maroney was shot 'tween the eyeballs. . . . Dinny Meehan . . . hmm. Sitting up there like he don't exist like. Too many enemies to keep happy, ye know. Now he's got Thos Carmody and the ILA in his neighborhood over on Sackett Street? And Bill Lovett in the chicken coup? Matther o' time, Paddy Keenan. Time's all. Dinny Meehan huh? King of a class o' low-breedin' diddicoys, he is. Put'em away before and I'll do it again too!”

Keenan smiles.

Brosnan raises a finger again as Keenan pushes another poteen in front of him, “Time,” then turns to Culkin. “Get me Bill Lovett, son.” Turning back, “Thank you Mr. Keenan,” he bellows, drops the shot down his face.

“Not sayin' a t'ing to ye did I.”

“Didn't have to,” Brosnan mumbles then yells for Culkin to come to his side.

The cold enters the saloon again and with it the screeching sounds of the Manhattan Bridge trains above. In with it rushes the ambulancemen finally arrived to tend to the health of the victim who now lies motionless in the corner of the room behind the door.

“Son,” Brosnan stops Culkin with a hand on his forearm, looking away from Keenan. “Ask 'em nicely first, don' go jumpin' in on Lovett. Ye gotta family to care fer.”

“Yes'r.”

“Ye doin' jus' fine son,” Brosnan said pulling the black cigar out from his mouth. “Jus' fine so far. No thug's wert' yer wife's tears. Get Ferris and at least t'ree others to go with ye.”

“A'right.”

“Good lad.”

As Culkin walks away and the deadman in the corner is covered, Brosnan looks at Paddy Keenan and points upstairs, “Ye tell'm. The law will have him, t'will. New Yark won't be run by a band of culchies and diddicoys, mixed blooded tinkers.”

“You and yours sipped the soup didn't ye, ye jackeen ye? Yeer a Protestant are ye not?”

“No, American!” Brosnan thumps.

“Not a Souper, so ye're not? Still nothin' from ye to offer but a law that can't feed a poor gorsoon runnin' shoeless in yer own path!” Keenan yelled as Brosnan opened the door to allow the city sounds over Keenan's voice, closing it as he walks out.