We Were Kings (29 page)

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Brighton

NIGHTTIME, AND CITY
lights sliding down the windshield of the van as it banged and rattled over the rail crossing on Commonwealth and along Washington into Brighton, the headlights of an oncoming trolley car momentarily illuminating the interior as the operator blew his horn. The eight men in the back of the van bounced on the bench seats and were thrown against one another, but they didn't mind because they were drunk. And Cal had been drinking as well and he was behind the wheel. Dante, in the passenger seat, shouted over the noise of the men singing in the back and told Cal to take it slow, but Dante was smiling as he said it and there was a glassy sheen to his eyes.

“I'm good,” Cal said, taking one hand off the wheel and raising it in mock surrender as he stared at Dante to convince him, and the van swerved into the gutter and banged against the curb. “I'm all good!” He reached into the well between the seats and lifted a fifth of Powers whiskey, unscrewed the cap, and tipped it back while keeping his eyes on the road.

Dante found out why Cal had called for Willie, Chow, Rolls, and Fitzy—together they looked like they could have made up the defensive line for any National Football League team, weighing in at over three hundred pounds apiece. Even the Pilgrim Security van, a beaten-up, decades-old Plymouth, complained of the additional ton in its rear, the shocks and springs squealing and groaning and the chassis lurching when the large men exited and then climbed back into the van. Throughout the night, every time Cal began a song from the driver's seat, the others could sing along, a discordant and raucous hollering. As the men wound their way through Boston from one bar to another, the van filled with their energy, growing more and more rowdy as they grew more and more inebriated, as if the energy were looking for some manner of release, a safety valve or vent, and Dante had the feeling that Cal was allowing it, pushing it to build toward some type of detonation. At one point, as a song reached a wailing crescendo from the back of the van, Dante looked at Cal and saw that his shoulders were hunched and he was wincing from the reverberating sound in the tin hollow of the vehicle. When Cal saw Dante watching, he winked and turned his attention back to the road, his shoulders still hunched and shaking, and Dante realized that he was laughing and that he was miraculously sober.

Their last stop was just outside Oak Square in Brighton and when Cal parked, the men piled out of the back of the van. Most of the slum houses along the street were frame and clapboard and this one was no different. It had black-painted windows, and if it weren't for the fact that it had the faded name
Cronin's
etched in filigree into the dark wood above the door and music spilling out from within, you might have mistaken the place for a residence. The inside was a long shotgun-style barroom with old, warped wood and a long lacquered bar where men sat on stools. The floor was covered in sawdust and smelled of years of beer spills.

They walked to the end of the bar and claimed the space for their own. There was a music session going on around a table on the opposite side of the room—three men, playing fiddle, tin whistle, and bodhran—and some of the locals were stamping their feet to the rhythm; others were turned away at the bar, leaning in to each other, shoulder to shoulder, talking softly. Cal's men banged the bar jovially and Cal got them singing again, discordant and harsh, and the other patrons in the bar looked at them. Chow put an arm around a stranger sitting next to him as if they were old friends and began to sing along to the melody.

The bartender took his time getting to them, regarded them coldly. “You'll have to quiet down that lot if you want me to serve you,” he said to Cal.

“Ah, there's no harm in them,” Cal said. “It's a bachelor party. You can't begrudge a man that, and I'm not going to be the one to tell them you won't serve them a beer.”

“Which one's getting married?”

“The big fella, Rolls. With the scully cap. The black guy.”

The bartender looked at the man, then at Cal and the others. They were jostling for room at the bar, pushing one another playfully. Chow, having given up on his new friend, was attempting a jig of some sort, oblivious to the stares of the regulars, and the floorboards were creaking under his boots. Fitzy was crooning something that was almost in tune with what the musicians were playing. Cal grinned when the bartender looked at him. “See, they're having a blast.”

“They're right gas, so,” said the bartender. “I'll serve yis as long as you keep them in check.”

Cal ordered them a round of whiskeys with stout, and when the men had put back the whiskeys, he ordered another. After a while the tension in the room shifted but did not dissipate—Cal was aware of the looks and the stiffened shoulders of the regulars, the way they shoved off the stools to head to the restroom, the way they glared at the interlopers. Some began speaking in Irish to hide their conversations. Others openly commented on the group of men, but some of the regulars closest to Cal and Dante's group were pulled either willingly or unwillingly into their jubilant disregard for appropriateness.

Cal took out bills from his pocket and bought one round after the other. Dante was having a deep discussion with the man to his left, who was talking loudly over the music and din of the men singing. Chow was still dancing but had sequestered a thin, older man wearing a cap to show him how it was properly done, and Rolls had his arms over the shoulders of two burly farmer types, and they were laughing as they talked about their exploits with women.

Cal cheered and shouted but kept his watch on the doorways at the front and back. To the right at the end of the bar was a hallway that led to the restroom and an exit. At the back was a doorway closed off with heavy red drapes. Every so often they parted and Cal could see men within, seated around a long table covered with bottles of stout and beer and ashtrays overflowing with cigarettes. The curtains had parted exactly three times since they'd gotten here—twice for the bartender to bring drinks and once for a man who took a left down the hall and didn't come back again.

“This is your last round,” the bartender said flatly as he placed the glasses on the bar top.

“I don't think so,” said Cal. “Pour us another right now.”

The bartender stood his ground. He was a hard case, Cal could tell. There was a purple weal of an old scar across his forehead, maybe the result of a blow from a crowbar, and when he frowned, it grew darker. His eyes were unflinching, bright but tired-looking at the edges, as if he'd spent the better part of his life squinting into the sun. A fisherman at one time, Cal thought. Or perhaps a crewman on a boat, the type that carried cargo back and forth across the Atlantic.

“I said that was your last round.”

Cal continued to smile. “There's more of you than us,” Cal said, “but do you really want this group to start? Look at them”—he gestured to Rolls, Fitzy, and Chow—“those three alone will make sure you don't have a bar to open in the morning. They'll smash up the place so bad it'll take you weeks to clean it up. Never mind that when the cops come, you'll have your liquor license revoked and then the doors will stay shut for good.”

Cal put back his shot and turned the glass over upon the bar. “Another round,” he said, “or I tell them you're cutting us off.”

The Pioneer came in promptly at nine thirty just as Jimmy, who'd trailed him for the better part of a week, had said he would. The Pioneer didn't see them right away, his gaze first catching the session musicians in the corner and then the bartender and then, finally, the rowdy Americans at the corner of the bar to his right. He glanced at Cal's smiling face and stopped. He frowned and his brow furrowed. He didn't seem to know whether he should continue toward the back or go to the bar. He looked at the bartender, and the bartender shook his head. Finally, the Pioneer approached.

“I knew you'd eventually show up here,” he said.

“You did?”

“Of course I did. Sure you've had your man on me the last week. Do you think I'm stupid?”

Cal didn't answer. Instead, he lifted his glass.

Rolls thumped the bar with his big fist. He was bent double, laughing at something one of the farmers had said, and the Pioneer glanced in his direction. He looked at Cal and Dante and then took in their entire company. Cal could tell he was doing the math in his head.

“You'd best be going about your business,” Cal said. “They need you in the back.”

“When we come for you, these men won't help you.”

“I'm sitting here in front of you. We can take care of this right now. Me and you.”

The Pioneer didn't blink or smile. He nodded to the barman and strode to the room at the back of the bar. The barman quickly followed. They stepped through the curtains.

“You're not half as clever as you think you are,” the man beside Cal said drunkenly. His mouth was slanted to one side and thick with spit. It seemed he had difficulty keeping his eyes open and bringing Cal into focus. With the greatest of efforts, he steadied his head.

“Why's that?”

“You know who that man is, the one you just spoke to?”

“I know who he is.”

“Ah, if you did, you wouldn't be talking to him like that.”

“But I did, didn't I?”

“Oh, you did, you most certainly did.” The drunk nodded and cackled. “Sure you're a right mad one altogether. Right mad. Whoever follows you will be having communion with the angels, by God they will.”

The bartender parted the curtains and stepped through, and two men followed. He went behind the bar, spoke to the other bartender, and both reached under the counter.

Cal leaned toward Dante. “It's on,” he said. “Be ready for a brawl. And they've got guns.” Dante watched the men striding the length of the bar toward them. He turned to Rolls and grabbed his shoulder, and the big man looked at him. Cal watched the barmen coming down the line. He said, “Fitzy, Chow,” loud enough for his other men to hear and they looked up, sobering quickly at the sound and measure of his voice. The music from the trio of musicians seemed to swell and rise. The bodhran player was beating the skin so loud and fast Cal could feel the blood rushing through him in a frenzy.

The bartender came up to them, mimicking the smile that Cal had used all night. He waited and when the two other men had positioned themselves at the door he brought the sawed-off up above the bar. “Now, you fuckers—” he began but Cal was waiting and grabbed the barrel at its side, pulled it and the bartender toward him, and struck the bartender in the nose twice with the butt of his gun. The man fell backward, releasing his hold on the shotgun and banging hard into a shelf, knocking bottles of liquor to the floor.

Rolls and Chow went for the men at the door, grappled with them as they pulled out their guns. Rolls grabbed the hand holding a gun and squeezed; the sound of bone splintering resounded loudly in the room and the man screamed. Chow held his man by the throat, thrust him up against the door so hard that the glass shattered. He raised him to the transom, his feet dangling off the ground, and the gun dropped to the floor with a clatter. The drapes parted again and four more men came into the room slowly, young men in dark trousers and jackets, ties loosened and shirt collars open at the neck. Each one had a gun in his hand, held at his side. Fitzy stood between them and all the regulars, who'd risen from their stools, Dante and the others flanking him. The music had stopped and everyone was standing, warily watching the men.

Cal held the sawed-off on the bartender with the purple scar, who was leaning back into the wreckage of wood with a hand to his mashed, bleeding nose. The other bartender had a .38 pointed at Cal's head. “Dante,” Cal said, “take this gun, would you?” Dante came to his side and took the shotgun, kept it sighted on the bartender with the blood streaming down his face, and Cal turned so that his automatic, glistening with blood, was leveled at the bartender with the Smith and Wesson.

“I'm going to blow ye fucking head off, mister,” the bartender said, his mouth twisting with anger.

“Not with that, you won't,” Cal said. “You might try, though, and then I'll shoot you, my friend here will shoot this other fool, and those two big lads over there? They'll tear the others apart with their bare hands.”

“You're forgetting the rest of us.”

“I don't give a shit about the rest of you.”

At the end of the room, the drapes parted and the Pioneer stepped out. He pulled the drapes all the way open so that the wooden hooks rattled on the rail. He looked down the length of the bar at Cal and Dante, the shattered shelves, the splintered door, and his men in a standoff, one with a smashed nose, another in the grip of Rolls, his head bowed in pain, and a third held aloft by his neck, his face swollen and purple. He kept his eyes on Cal and Dante for a moment and then slowly strode down the hallway to the rear exit, and the other men from the back room and the four that had come forward with their guns drawn—a dozen in all—followed. Everyone in the bar listened to the men's footsteps as they walked down the hall and then out the back door. Cal had the sense that he could hear the others breathing heavily about him.

The bartender took a step forward. “Whether it's tonight or not,” he said, “you're a fucking dead man.”

“It's not tonight, asshole,” Cal said, straightening his arm, sighting the man down the barrel of the gun. “You good, Dante? You've still got him?”

“I'm good, Cal.”

“Chow, let him down,” Cal said. Chow released his grip and the man crashed to the floor, gasping for air.

“All right, boys, we're leaving.”

Cal stepped back from the bar and the rest of his men did the same; Dante held the sawed-off aimed at the broken-nosed bartender. Cal kept his gun leveled at the other. When all the men had filed out, Cal and Dante stood before the door.