Edward Brodie began his newspaper work as a reporter on the Sentinel, and later, after Patsy had forced the paper to close, moved to the Times-Union and enshrined himself on Patsy’s high altar by rebutting a federal report that Albany, an incorrigible city of speakeasies, was also one of the most openly sinful cities in the nation, abounding in bawdy houses and streetwalkers. Brodie conducted a survey of civic and city agencies, plus man-in-the-street interviews for his article, and found that in ten years no one had complained of any vice. One arrest had been made for procuring in 1928, along with four transient women convicted of prostitution, jailed, then exiled forever from the city by police. Men on the street told Brodie: “Albany is a clean town . . . Albany is nowhere near as bad as they say.” Three weeks after his story appeared, Brodie was appointed Albany’s commissioner of charities and communication, writing speeches for every politician Patsy allowed to make one. Roscoe called him the Oracle.
“Cutie, I heard you say you wanted to talk to me,” Roscoe said.
“Since you’re the opposition in this election, Roscoe,” Cutie said, “I wanted to warn you we’re organizing heavy attacks. I plan to campaign as Uncle Sam, in a suit of stars and stripes, a beard, and a tall hat, and I will put you and Mayor Fitzgibbon on notice that I mean what I say about good government.”
“Will Uncle Sam make speeches?” Roscoe asked Brodie.
“He will,” said Brodie. “He will insist on lowering the price of meat, for, as you know, Uncle Sam was a butcher in the War of 1812. He will stump for the right of soldiers to get out of the army now that the war is over, and he will demand more shade trees be planted downtown. Uncle Sam will also sing ‘God Bless America’ at the close of every rally.”
“Sounds like this’ll be our toughest fight ever,” Roscoe said.
“Watch out for me, Roscoe,” said Cutie.
Mac came through the open door in hat and shirtsleeves and nodded at Roscoe as he approached. He only looked at Georgie, Brodie, and Cutie, then back to Roscoe.
“Beer, Mac?” Georgie asked, pushing Roscoe’s beer across the bar.
“Vichy water,” Mac said. He didn’t drink anymore, except a little port now and then with Gladys.
Georgie poured Mac’s Saratoga Vichy on ice. As Roscoe paid for a round, picked up his beer, and started back to his corner, a sparrow flew through the door and panicked, soaring the length of the bar and back, corner to corner, lost, trapped.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said a lone middle-aged woman at the end of the bar, a martini in front of her. Roscoe knew her, but not by name: a reporter who covered the Capitol for downstate newspapers. She rummaged in her purse, pulled out a rosary, and waved it at the sparrow, which was still soaring frantically from wall to wall. “It’s bad luck when a bird flies inside the house,” she said, and raised her arm higher to swing the rosary like a lariat.
“He’s just getting out of the sun,” Brodie said. “Buy him a beer, Georgie.”
“You’re right that birds are bad luck inside a house,” Roscoe said, “but never in a saloon.” He watched the crazed bird, which hovered, then changed direction, in quick and aimless flight. Georgie flapped a bar towel at the bird, intensifying its panic.
“Don’t hurt it,” the woman said. “That’s worse.”
“Just waving it toward the door, dear,” Georgie said. “First time we ever had a bird in here.”
“Who you kidding?” Roscoe said. “This place caters to cuckoos.”
Back and forth went the bird.
“Now, everybody calm down,” Roscoe said. “Sit perfectly still and just shut up. Don’t make him more nervous than he already is. Quiet.”
No one moved or spoke. They all watched the bird fly back and forth, back and forth. As the bar fell unnaturally silent and still, the bird perched on a hanging light fixture. It twitched its wings, looked up, down, sideways. Then, with coordinates under control, it zoomed straight down from the fixture and out through the open door. The woman kissed her rosary and put it back in her purse.
“Thank you, sir,” she said to Roscoe. “You understand birds.”
“I know what it’s like when you’re in the wrong place,” Roscoe said.
“So,” Roscoe said to Mac, “tell me about the chicken war.” They were alone in Roscoe’s corner.
In a whisper Mac answered: “Patsy wants to bust the Notchery, with Bindy in it. He wants Bindy in jail.”
“He can’t want that. That’s insane. Where did you get this?”
“O.B. got it from Patsy last night and gave it to me this morning. It’s my baby.”
Roscoe had talked with Patsy and O.B. both at morning and Bindy was never mentioned. So, Roscoe, Patsy doesn’t trust you on this. He’s afraid you’ll find a way to stop the raid before it happens; and O.B. joins him in a second brotherly conspiracy.
“You’re organizing the bust? O.B.’s not going in with you?”
“He’ll be on the outside, but that’s fine,” Mac said. “I wanted a second opinion before I made the move. You’re the only second opinion in town.”
“How do you even know Bindy’ll be at the Notchery?”
“We saw him go in this morning and he didn’t come out.”
“You still have that prowl car out front?”
“Gone. Let him think we left. But we’re watching from two houses.”
“Don’t you think he knows that?”
“He might.”
“You move in with your troops, knock down the door, back up the wagons, and haul off Bindy, Mame, the lot.”
“Right.”
“Who’s in there?”
“Pina, anywhere from three to eight girls, the maids, and Mame’s bouncer and bartender. Plus Bindy, and maybe some customers.”
“You get to bust Pina.”
“Would you believe.”
“But you can’t do it. That’s why you’re here.”
“I can do it,” Mac said. “Mac does what he’s told. But Patsy and Bindy been going at each other like this for as long as I know them. They fight and then patch it up. If that happens after I bust Bindy, where the hell am I?”
“Very astute, Mac. When is this happening?”
“Tonight.”
“What if Bindy’s not there when you break down the door?”
“I don’t know. Buy Mame a new door?”
“Can you imagine how happy the Governor will be over this? And what it’ll do to Alex’s campaign?”
“I’m only a lieutenant, Roscoe. I got an order I gotta go with. Unless you know how to stop it.”
“I’ll go up there with you now. We’ll have a cup of tea with Bindy, talk things out. How’s that sound?”
“Cup of tea.”
“Bindy likes his cup of tea. Four and a half teaspoons of sugar.”
“Something you oughta know, Roscoe,” Mac said, and he leaned closer, spoke in the softest possible whisper. “Pina did the Dutchman. Her prints were all over his room. O.B. and Patsy know this, but nobody else.”
“Nobody except you, now me, the fingerprint boys, Pina herself, who told Mame, who told Bindy, and by this time every whore in town knows.”
“The troopers don’t know about the prints. The FBI don’t.”
“Let’s hope that’s true,” Roscoe said, standing up, once again readying his backbone for a move into the hideous maw of subsequence. Dutiful Ros, should be elsewhere, he’s still here. And the blue devils are running loose.
Mac, Who Was Once a Child
In 1914, Jeremiah McEvoy’s father left his wife with five kids in their rotten house in Sheridan Hollow. Mac was eight and went to work at Bensinger’s Steam Laundry. Heat, stink, lifting, hauling, fourteen hours, buck fifty a week. He came thirty minutes late one day, they docked him fifty cents. Mac broke two plate-glass windows, spread ashes on two rooms of clean laundry. Mrs. Bensinger shoved two dollars at him, saying, “Leave us alone.” Mac danced on the street for nickels and pennies, got a fiver from Jimmy Walker, the assemblym
an, which gave him lifelong affection for politicians. When he was ten, the city took all five McEvoy kids from Mac’s mother, too sick. She moved in with her sister, who had a house. Mac, too old for the orphan asylum, went on the job auction block. This farmer looked at his teeth, no rot there, made him walk and pick up a chair, told him, “Get in the wagon,” and they rode eight miles to one hundred and eighty chickens.
Mac ate rotten smoked ham every day, hates ham, collected eggs, fed chickens, cleaned coops, hates chickens, walked horses to the pond, got squeezed between them, doesn’t like horses either. The farmer cursed Mac for mistakes, knocked him down with the flat of a pitchfork, he’ll kill me, Mac decided. At dawn he turned the horses loose, threw the sleeping farmer’s only shoes into the pond, left on the run, got a ride to Albany with a housepainter who hired him to do first coats, but the weather changed, no painting. His aunt also told him the bank was kicking her and Mama out of the house, three months’ rent overdue, so Mac went to Albany City Savings Bank and asked for President Henry J. Goddard, who was eating a banana.
“You want a banana, young fella?” President Goddard asked.
“My mother is losing her house and I have to help her.”
“How can you help?” the president asked.
“I’m a housepainter,” he said. “I clean and paint houses.”
“A regular contractor.”
“I can fix houses for the bank,” Mac said.
“This is a great, great country,” President Goddard said. “Put the boy to work.”
A bank guy took Mac to one of the bank’s worst houses, three floors, five apartments. “Forty dollars when they’re all cleaned, painted, and papered,” said the bank guy. “Here’s ten on account.”
Cleaning, painting was easy, but the wallpaper was peeling, filthy, Mac ripped it down. How do you put it up? Woman across the street saw Mac going in with armloads of wallpaper, watched him dump the same paper in the trash, something wrong. Woman, Hattie, asked Mac what happened. Mac said he’d put fifteen double rolls on five ceilings but it fell off. Hattie said she’d fix that and showed him the secret: a broom that swept the paper tight and straight. Mac got the knack, collected his thirty dollars, and bought his mother a hundred roses and a toy diamond ring.
Mac moved into Hattie’s house, went to school, got work delivering oysters anyplace for Bill Keeler’s restaurant, including whorehouses. One of the Poole sisters let him in one night, took the oysters, put them in dirty dishwater. She left Mac in the kitchen, didn’t pay him, went into the parlor, and fell over. Mac looked in and saw the four Poole sisters, good-looking whores, all whacked on the pipe, money on the table. Mac pocketed the money and grew out of oyster transport, but not before he got to know whores, and liked a few.
He stayed on with Hattie, quit school after eighth grade, and grew up with chalky teeth and the wrong jobs, housepainter, would-be carpenter. Then, one day, Hattie told him to go see O. B. Conway, the police detective who was king of the night, and Mac became a cop.
Mac Rising
In 1928, after he disarmed, with a garden rake, a one-eyed Polish psychotic wielding a shotgun, an act of indisputable initiative, dexterity, and courage, O.B. persuaded the chief: Take Mac out of uniform, make him a detective.
In 1929, after Pauly Biggers killed two people and took a fourteen-year-old girl hostage and said he’d kill her, too, if they didn’t let him drive to Canada, Mac, unarmed, talked an hour and ten minutes to Pauly, making the Canadian escape arrangements. When Mac and Pauly finally agreed and shook hands on it, Mac shot Pauly between the eyes with a .22 pistol device he had rigged into the left armpit of his coat, in emulation of Albany’s Silent Gunman of 1916. O.B. got Mac a ten-dollar raise.
In 1930, Mac and O.B. found four members of the Polka Dot Gang, who all wore polka-dot ties on the job, raiding a boxcar loaded with alcohol destined for Al Brisbane’s two downtown drugstores. Mac shot two of the three, but O.B. got hit in the leg and went down in the open. Mac stood up and covered him, two guns blazing, pulled him out of danger, shot a third Dotter (the fourth got away), but took a bullet in the side, and everybody went to the hospital. Mac was wearing a silk shirt, and when they pulled the shirt out of his wound, out popped the bullet, no surgery needed. Mac realized bullets don’t go through silk, and after that O.B. also wore silk shirts. O.B. threw a party for Mac, thanks for saving my life, and bought him a new .38 police special with a pearl handle.
Mac and O.B., close as brothers, roamed the city, and Mac met Patsy, who was Jesus, also Moses. O.B. had organized the truck convoys that brought Patsy and Bindy’s beer into town early in Prohibition and was so savvy and ruthless Patsy made him deputy chief of the Night Squad, with orders to keep out hotshot hoodlums and freelancers with beer to sell. Nobody but the organization sells beer in Albany. Let no hoodlum set up shop in our town. Mac and O.B. shot up several trucks of Italian bootleggers who ignored the rules, also several Italians. Patsy thought the world of Mac and his shooting, but O.B. was Patsy’s man, and in 1930 Patsy made him supreme boss of the Night Squad.
Mac and Pina: A Love Mess
Mac met a cute singer at the Kenmore and they married and lasted long enough to have twins. One morning Mac’s wife, in her small black hat and fur jacket, stood in the doorway saying, “If you want me, come after me.” Mac said, “You’re back in two days or don’t bother,” and watched her high heels, her black stocking seams, and the sweet swagger of her ass as she walked to the taxi. The end. Mac bought a two-family house on Walter Street, moved his sister in downstairs, no rent if you raise the twins, Sis. Mac lived upstairs and saw the twins sometimes. One night at Joey Polito’s Spaghetti House (opens 3 a.m., two broads always, no spaghetti), Mac saw Giuseppina serving drinks, just off the boat.
“You like?” Joey asked Mac. “I dress her up for you.”
Joey sent Pina into the ladies’ room with a suitcase and she came out, Madonna santa, too much for this joint. You shoulda seen her. Mac got her a waitress job in a real restaurant with good tips, and then it was Mac and Pina. One customer, a car dealer, gave her a Pontiac. She had no license, but she drove to Atlantic City for a garment makers’ convention, came back, and threw eleven hundred in tens, twenties, and fifties on her bed for Mac to see. Some tips. He could have cried over how great she looked, that long black hair, those perfect calves, those fantastic tits, how she rose so high in the world working for tips, which is what she called it. Do what you know how, was Mac’s credo. Mac and Pina, for months and months. Mac and Pina, this could last.
O.B. got to like Pina’s looks. One morning, after work, when Mac was going to Pina’s place, he saw O.B. come out and get into his car. Some say O.B. should not have done this, and Mac is a member of that club. Pina said O.B. paid for what he got, just another Giovanni. Mac made an effort to believe her. Pina could’ve given Mac the clap, the crabs, and the syph, he wouldn’t mind as long as she was there after work. But then she stayed out. Where? Mac tried patience, but had none. The way his wife left him, bingo, he left Pina, who moved out of her place and in with the Dutchman, upstairs over the Double Dutch nightclub, where the Dutchman had B-girls of his own but none like Pina. Pina liked the Dutchman’s big apartment, nice plants, thick rugs, picture window looking at the river, watch the boats go by. Dutchman played Italian music for Pina, Mac never thought of that. Dutchman gave her a diamond big as the end of a cigarette, Mac couldn’t afford that. Dutchman bent her in two, tied her up, gagged her, Mac didn’t go for that stuff, didn’t know Pina did, a girl’s gotta have her fun. Pina would still screw Mac silly if he came around, but Mac gave up Pina. Everything except thinking about her.
Mac and Jack
Roscoe stuffed himself into the front seat of Mac’s car for the ride to the Notchery, imagining what was happening inside Mac’s head, same old thing, revving himself up with the necessary iron to face the unknown worst the world offered him day after day. But today had substantially more gravity, as Mac prepared to lead the invading army
into a war between the McCall men maddened by the will to excess, power gone berserk, not a first for either brother. When these fellows are wrong they are wrong fortissimo.
Today was also different for Roscoe, the outsider about to become the intermediary; and nobody but Mac knew that yet. There was an antecedent for such a condition: late fall 1931, Jack (Legs) Diamond, still recovering from being shot in the arm, lung, and liver seven months earlier, on bail waiting for his second trial in Troy for kidnapping and torturing a trucker, here he was suddenly in the Elks Club, pulling up a chair to sit down for a little pinochle with Roscoe, Marcus Gorman, and Leo Finn, one of the Party’s aging bagmen, an ex-schoolteacher and still a bit of a literatus, who knew his Yeats and Keats and could call up fragments on cue, which amused Jack.
“So—how are all your bullet holes doing, Jack?” Roscoe asked.
“You don’t have to answer that,” said Marcus, whose fame was in a crescendo from representing Jack in court.
“They’re coming along,” Jack said.
“You don’t seem to mind being shot,” Roscoe said, “you handle it so well and so often.”
“Being shot’s not so bad,” Jack said. “The problem is getting even.”
“My buddies gut-shot me in the war,” Roscoe said.
“Accidentally on purpose?” Jack asked.
“Exactly.”
“Amazing,” said Leo. “Just what Willie wrote.”
“Willie?” said Jack. “Is that one of your old poets?”
“The same. . .‘A heavily built Falstaffian man / Comes cracking jokes of civil war / As though to die by gunshot were / The finest play under the sun.’ ”
“Civil war,” Jack said. “I know about that. It was my buddies who shot me in the back with two shotguns.”
“Your war never ends, does it?” Roscoe said.
“No, but I’m too young to retire,” Jack said, and Roscoe dealt the cards.
Jack was thirty-four and had been an outsize presence in Albany all that summer, turning up at the Elks, at the best restaurants, a regular at the Kenmore’s Rainbo Room, headlines in the papers every day about his upcoming trial and his crushed mountain empire. Since the late 1920s Jack, the best-known gangster in the East, had been the Emperor of Applejack in the Catskills, doing business in eighteen counties, running beer out of the Kingston brewery he took over after Charlie Northrup disappeared, highjacking fellow bootleggers, his specialty. He’d terrorized most Catskill roadhouses and hotels into handling his goods, converted law enforcement to his persuasion—the sheriff of Greene County gave pistol permits to his whole gang, made Jack a deputy with a badge. But then Jack kidnapped and tortured Clem Streeter (burned his feet, hung him from a tree) for refusing to say where he was hauling twenty-four barrels of hard cider, the raw element of applejack. And when Clem told his story next day, well, that did it. We can stand anything but torture, said Governor Roosevelt. And in the spring of 1931, he sent state troopers and his attorney general down to rupture Jack’s empire up the middle and sideways.
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