The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (41 page)

J
on Replogle rose
up on his tiptoes, but from where he stood in the Weehawken Ferry parking lot he couldn’t see down to the boats. The ticket station sat on a small rise, which he kept between himself and the docks. He couldn’t see who was down there, but he could hear them blathering flowery epithets in an Irish brogue, at Irish volume, and every few minutes or so a banjo played and they sang a lament, sad as a crippled pony.

The Weehawken Ferry Leprechauns were as drunk as they could be and cooking up a ritual worthy of their calamitous situation. It would be blubbery, in the most manly way, sentimental enough to cause tooth decay, timed to the impending sunrise, and entirely in Irish. These were Galway men who spoke English only to confuse or offend. The crew lay sprawled across the slightly curved passenger benches on the afterdeck of Ferry A, facing Manhattan. Ferry B was sandwiched between them and the shore. A brass inspection plate said: Passenger Limit - 2100.

The fog had lifted enough to create a twenty-foot boundary layer between the water and a dimly iridescent cloud that hung over the ferry. The shortest Leprechaun, a pear-shaped man, stood on the lower rung of the aft railing riding up and into the fog on the rolling tide — disappearing up to his blunt shoulders. The others watched like hung-over otters.

In six hours, passengers would begin to arrive for the
Sunday in America Show
trip to Manhattan, an eight-minute ride across the Hudson. Just a few very important but less pretentious folks who preferred New Jersey. The Leprechauns weren’t banned from Manhattan, but they were as welcome as warts. They understood the long-term strategic value of biding their time, biting their tongues, and keeping their place, but the assassination of Efryn Boyne and the fall of the Hibernian Wall — where did that leave them? How do you keep your place, when you have no place?

Jon Replogle crawled across the floor of the ticket station and crouched below a wide marble windowsill eyeballing the dock, which sat in a bowl-like cove. The ticket station was set into the steep bank overlooking the floating docks which rose and fell with the tide, moored to huge concrete pillars. A wide staircase with handrails on both sides and one down the middle descended from the ticket station. From the ferry, you could see only the ticket station, the steep encircling banks and those concrete stairs. Everything else was above the line of sight.

Jon watched the pear-shaped man riding up and into the fog bank. An old radio phone, about the size and shape of a cowboy boot, its antenna extended and the signal strength light blinking green, sat on the deck beneath him. Sooner or later the veterans massing in the parking lot were bound to tip off the Leprechauns, and the radio would alert every militia on Manhattan Island. Jon stood to better gauge the length of the staircase and determine how quickly they might overtake the Leprechauns at a full charge. No. They’d never make it before the alarm went out. Jon waddled backwards three or four steps, spun and ran back to the parking lot.

He found Madam Beamon clinging to her mink shawl and a large flock of anxious girls. The parking lot had filled with veterans, who were now spilling over into the adjacent neighborhood. Jon whispered in Madam Beamon’s ear and watched the wheels turning in her head. She raised a cautionary finger to her lips then pointed to her girls, each claiming a gripe with these Leprechauns. They moved to the concrete staircase, where they paused to primp.

Jon needed the Leprechauns alive. They operated the ferry and tended the elaborate minefield in this stretch of the Hudson. The dual task allowed them to change the layout of the mines regularly. Hijacking the ferry was suicide without them.

But that was cold comfort to the Leprechauns.

Word of Freddy Cochran’s demise and the assassination of Efryn Boyne had come to them in the middle of the night. They were holding a wake befitting their fallen heroes. A raft of dead two-liter jugs stamped with the golden beehive bobbed in the flotsam at the ferry’s waterline. They’d been up all night developing a mournful indignation in every shade of gloom and sorrow. Some were on the nod, curled into the first two rows of wooden benches. Most were on their third hangover of the night.

From somewhere down below Jon heard a familiar melody plucked on a banjo with a loose resonator, and voices searching for a key slurring randomly — in various tempos. Between the thick brogue, the New Jersey accent, and their blithering drunkenness, they could have been singing “Hail to the Queen”. Jon chuckled nervously at the thought. He skittered to the window again and bobbed around until he found the best angle to watch Madam Beamon and her entourage descend the stairs in regal splendor.

Drunk and feeling sorry for themselves, the Leprechauns fluttered on discordantly, until the pear-man pointed to the women, and spat, “A bit of the ole in-out in-out wipe it on your sleeve! Aye?”

“Bravo!” came Madame Beamon’s harsh voice; she would kill that one first.

“Bravo!” The girls joined in, making as much commotion as they could.

The Leprechauns cheered as Madam Beamon and a dozen gorgeous women strolled down the staircase in stilettos whose click and clack drowned out their applause. These women were known to the Leprechauns, but none had ever been seen here on a Sunday. Madam Beamon led her noisy procession across the dock, over the metal gangplank, and onto the ferry. She made a beeline for the aft deck and leaned against the rail with her back to Manhattan. “I heard about your troubles, back in Pittsburgh,” she said, with sincere condolence.

The men grumbled and raised their glasses.

Madam Beamon brightened, and yelled, “Spread the love, boys.” That got the party started. She seized a two-liter whiskey bottle, unscrewed the cap, filled it, and tossed it back without spilling a drop. “Pogue ma honen!” she hollered, and poured herself another. All the girls joined in, making racket enough to cover Jon and the veterans sneaking down the stairs.

Madame Beamon shouted, “Let’s have some music.” Just like that she’d taken over, and the rinky-dink banjo struck up a flail. The Leprechauns took great pride in their dancing, but each drunken bastard had to satisfy several very wily women, whose dancing involved soft thighs sliding into their crotches.

The pear-man stopped ducking the fog bank. Madam Beamon brought the two-liter bottle to him. He snatched it from her and took a big swig, never taking his beady eyes off her. Madam Beamon had seen such cruel eyes before. Her defenses were up and ready. Beneath her sultry cool simmered a pure rage.

Jon snuck down the concrete stairs, reached the dock and pressed his foot to it to see if it made a noise. The ladies’ heels had sounded like hail on this surface. It squeaked a little, but the noise from the party blotted it out entirely. Jon waved the men on, finger to his lips.

Madam Beamon aimed a sneer at the pear-man, and said, “Well, aren’t we the odd duck.” He smiled darkly. She had to time this just right.

In the middle of the staircase, a veteran tumbled forward, having caught his foot under his buddy’s cane. A hushed panic broke out.

The drunken Leprechauns didn’t respond for a few seconds. Jon and his first rank were only a few yards from the gangplank — it was now or never. They rushed the deck.

The pear-shaped man knew he’d been hoodwinked. “You fuckin’ whores!” he cried.

Madam Beamon had positioned herself directly over the radio phone, and as he bent for it, threw her cap of whiskey in his eyes and lowered a hammer blow on the back of his neck. He was tossed forward, but right onto the phone. She dove onto his back and pinned his hands to the deck, but he shrugged her aside and grabbed the phone. In the struggle, Madam’s platform shoe had fallen off. She snatched it up and laid into the pear-man, hammering him mercilessly with it as they rolled around the deck.

The veterans slammed each Leprechaun onto the deck. Several of Madam Beamon’s girls seized the opportunity to settle old scores, putting their spearlike stilettos to good use. The price of a ride to town had often cost their dignity, and now they’d have it back.
Fair’s fair,
thought the veterans, who were to a man eternal defenders of women.

Madam Beamon grappled for the radio phone, but with his last bit of strength the pear-shaped man lurched free and put it to his misshapen head. She leapt to her shoeless feet, took three wobbling steps and kicked it out of his hand and into the Hudson. He glowered at her, but she landed a left hook on his nose, which burst open like a ripe pimple. An uppercut put him on his ass, and she finished him off with a heel to the chin.

“Who’s in charge here?” yelled Jon Replogle.

“This one,” said Madam Beamon, and she hurled her shoe at a Leprechaun clinging to a banjo and writhing on the deck under the knees of a half dozen vets. “D.J. Riel — Captain Banjo.”

Jon dragged Captain Banjo up by his collar and rammed him into the aft rail. “You’re takin’ us across. Now!”

“Not if you’ve scratched me instrument,” said the snarky Captain Banjo. “You can’t cross here. It’s mined.” Jon slammed him onto the deck. He crumpled, laughing insanely, “Your apology reeks of insincerity.”

Jon hauled Banjo up by his lapels, put him in a strangling headlock and whipped him into the railing, and said calmly, “Just give us a . . . little to the left, little to the right.”

“Now you’re bein’ right rude,” said Banjo. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“Leprechaun Slayer,” said Jon, raising the well-worn banjo and teeing it up to Banjo’s head. “You’d rather die than take us across?”

“When did I say that?”

“I want to know where those mines are.”

“I want my banjo!” The old Leprechaun folded his arms across his chest.

Jon gave a nod and Captain Banjo was stood upright, reunited with his banjo, and resumed command. “We’re off then, lads!” he said, as though nothing unusual was afoot.

Jon turned to the sound of a banjo tuning, and shook his head. “What now?”

Captain Banjo checked for damage amongst its many cracks and scratches, and tossed Jon a dirty look. “You’re lucky, my chalky friend.” He bobbed his head, and said, “We’ll just pull ’em in.”

“How long will that take?”

“Couple hours. It’s ticklish work.”

“We don’t have a couple hours.”

“Well, then,” said Banjo. “Let’s call it a day.”

Jon started to boil. “I want to get across as fast as possible, and I want to do it five or six times, both boats, one right after the other.”

“Well, then. There’s only one way for it.” Captain Banjo coiled the ends of his dusty red mustache. “We yank on the rope so hard, it comes out of the cleat on the other end, way over there on the other side. The line will come out and float downstream. We take off, up-stream, holding our end of the line. Then, we drive across and hook up our end on the now empty cleat. And none’s the worse for wear.”

Jon turned pale, which made his eczema a pinkish blue.

“Granted! It’s a fuckin’ circus. There’s thirty-eight mines on this string. But these ropes is old as Avarice himself. And there’ll be no room for error.”

Jon couldn’t tell if Captain Banjo was putting him on.

Banjo made a scornful face. “They won’t pay for infrastructure, even to save their own lives. The mine-string will either pull off the cleat, or it’ll break.”

Jon winced and nodded his head fatalistically.

The ferry’s engines made a throaty diesel chug, smoke belched, and icy foam sloshed through the little harbor. The vets watched the crew remove the mine-string from a deadeye cleat on the dock and wrap the loose end around the gigantic winch mounted on the side of the ferry. The Leprechauns tended the string with hooks on long poles and grapples on nylon lines, which they could throw with great accuracy.

Captain Banjo pointed at a rusty lever, and once lifted, the gigantic winch began to turn. The line went taut and slowly pulled itself out of the water, breaking the surface farther and farther out into the Hudson. Captain Banjo rotated his fist next to his ear and the engines revved louder. The winch hissed as the line, now wet and straining, slipped on the drum and grabbed, jerking the firmly moored ferry mightily.

The line was out of the water so far across it disappeared into the fog. Then? Captain Banjo heard something no one else could and shot both fists into the air. The line went limp and came rippling across the river, slacking into the water right in front them. The mine-string drifted aimlessly, waiting for the current to take it downstream.

“And we’re off,” said Captain Banjo, aiming his arms like two tomahawks upstream. The mooring lines were tossed and the ferry raced out of the little harbor as the winch wound in the mine-string’s slack, its unseen far end floating aimlessly. Captain Banjo punched both fists in a frantic one-two one-two boxing move. “Keep that line close to the drum, hold the tension. Don’t let it slip off that drum.”

Jon stared at the rust-caked winch with a fatalistic smile.

“This is the drop-your-knickers moment, my pasty-faced friend. When we pull the slack out of the string, if we’re not at the proper angle to the current, the line will go over the top of the drum, jump off the winch and unspool.”

“Then what?”

“Make mine a double!”

Jon thought he might be seasick.

“Never done this before . . . always dreamed I might.”

“So you would rather die than take us across?”

“No. But I’d rather take my chances on all of us dying, than take you across.” He raised his arms parallel to his shoulders, his banjo dangling from his right hand like a plumb-bob. He tilted to the right, starboard, and the stout little ferry sluggishly answered the helm and beat upstream. “And now I get to live my dream. You dumped it in my lap. Haaaaa, ha! Haul in, lads,” he yelled.

Three men with basketball-sized grappling hooks stood at the aft rail and one by one swung them out into the river, catching and hauling in the drifting mine-string. They pulled the line up the side and draped it over the rail, taking control of as much slack as they could.

The current, slow but monumental, was starting to take the free end of the line with its string of thirty-eight mines, each lovingly hand-painted in punkish shamrocks dripping black hearts with the universal motto — Pogue Ma Honen.