by Don Winslow
Except the cops are the only people in the neighborhood who don’t know who killed Kenny Maher. Everyone else gets the word, including Eddie Friel, which is bad news for Murphy. Eddie “The Butcher” Friel collects money for Big Matt Sheehan.
Big Matt runs the neighborhood, he runs the West Side Longshoreman’s Union, he runs the local teamsters, he runs the gambling, the loan-sharking, the whores, you name it—except Matt Sheehan won’t let any drugs in the neighborhood.
That’s a point of pride with Sheehan, and a reason he’s so popular with the Kitchen’s older residents.
“Say what you will about Matt,” they’ll say. “He’s kept our kids off of dope.”
Except for Michael Murphy and Kenny Maher and a few dozen others, but that don’t seem to make no difference to Matt Sheehan’s rep. And a big part of Matt’s rep is due to Eddie the Butcher, because the whole neighborhood is scared to death of him. When Eddie the Butcher comes to collect, you pay. Preferably, you pay in money, but if not, you pay in blood and broken bones. And then you still owe the money.
At any given point in time, roughly half of Hell’s Kitchen owes money to Big Matt Sheehan.
Which is another reason they all got to pretend to like him.
But O-Bop, he hears Eddie talking about how someone should take care of that fucking junkie Murphy, and he goes to Murphy and tells him he should go away for a while. So does Callan. Callan tells him this because not only does Eddie have a reputation for backing up his bad words, but Matty’s put the word out that junkies killing each other is bad for the neighborhood and bad for his reputation.
So O-Bop and Callan tell Murphy he should split, but Murphy says fuck it, he’s staying where he is, and they guess he’s suicidal over having killed Kenny. But a few weeks later they suddenly don’t see him around anymore so they figure he got smart and took off, and this is what they figure until one morning Eddie the Butcher shows up in the Shamrock Cafe with a big grin and a milk carton.
He’s like showing it around, and he comes over to where Callan and O-Bop are trying to have a quiet cup of coffee to work on a hangover and he tilts the carton down so O-Bop can see and he says, “Hey, look in here.”
O-Bop looks in the carton and then he throws up right on the table, which Eddie thinks is hysterical, and he calls O-Bop a pussy and walks away laughing. And the talk in the neighborhood for the next few weeks is how Eddie and his asshole buddy Larry Moretti go to Michael’s apartment, drag him into the shower and stab him about a hundred and forty-seven times and then cut him up.
The story is that Eddie the Butcher goes to work on Michael Murphy’s body and cuts him up like he’s a piece of pork and takes the different pieces out in garbage bags and scatters them around the city.
Except for Michael’s cock, which he puts in the milk carton to show around the neighborhood lest there be any doubt about what happens to you when you fuck with one of Eddie’s buddies.
And no one can do anything about it, because Eddie is so connected with Matt Sheehan and Sheehan has an arrangement with the Cimino Family, so he’s like untouchable.
Except six months later, O-Bop’s still brooding about it.
Saying it’s wrong what they did to Murphy.
“Okay, maybe they had to kill him,” O-Bop is saying. “Maybe. But to do him that way? Then do what they did, showing that part of him around? No, that is wrong. That is so wrong.”
The bartender, Billy Shields, is wiping the bar—which is like the first time maybe ever—and he’s getting real nervous listening to this kid bad-mouth Eddie the Butcher. He’s wiping the bar like he’s going to perform surgery on it later.
O-Bop sees the bartender eyeing him, but it doesn’t slow him down. O-Bop and Callan have been at it all day, walking along the Hudson toking on a joint and drinking beer from brown paper bags, so while they’re not exactly wasted they’re not exactly all there, either.
So O-Bop keeps it up.
Actually, it was Kenny Maher that gave him the name O-Bop. They’re all in the park playing street hockey and they’re taking a break when Stevie O'Leary, as he was still known back then, comes walking up and Kenny Maher, he looks at Stevie and he says, “We should call you 'Bop.’ ”
Stevie’s not displeased. He’s what, fifteen? And getting tagged by a couple of older guys is cool, so he smiles and says, “ 'Bop'? Why 'Bop'?”
“Because of the way you walk,” Kenny says. “You bounce on every step. You sort of bop.”
“Bop,” Callan says. “I like that.”
“Who cares what you like?” Kenny says.
Then Murphy busts in, “What the fuck kind of a name is 'Bop’ for an Irishman? Fuckin’ look at him with that red hair. He’s standing on the corner, cars stop. Look at the fuckin’ white skin and the freckles, for Christ’s sake. How can you call him 'Bop'? Sounds like a black guy. This is the whitest guy I ever seen in my life.”
Kenny thinks about this.
“Has to be Irish, huh?”
“Fuck yes.”
“Okay,” Kenny says. “How about O'Bop?”
Except he says it with the stress on the O, so it becomes O-Bop.
And it sticks.
Anyway, O-Bop keeps it up about Eddie the Butcher.
“I mean, fuck that guy,” he says. “So he’s hooked up with Matty Sheehan, he can do anything he wants? Who the fuck is Matty Sheehan? Some lace-curtain old drunk Harp still crying in his beer about Jack Kennedy? I gotta respect this guy? Fuck him. Fuck the both of them.”
“Steady,” Callan says.
“Steady my ass,” O-Bop says. “What they did to Michael Murphy was wrong.”
He hunches over the bar and goes back to drinking his beer. Turns sullen, like the afternoon.
It’s maybe ten minutes later when Eddie Friel walks in.
Eddie Friel is a big fucking guy.
He walks in and sees O-Bop and says, real loud, “Hey, pubic hair.”
O-Bop doesn’t sit up or turn around.
“Hey!” Eddie yells. “I’m talking to you. That is pubic hair on your head, isn’t it? All curly and red?”
Callan watches O-Bop turn around.
“What do you want?”
He’s trying to sound tough, but Callan can hear he’s scared.
Why not? So is Callan.
“I hear you have a problem with me,” Friel says.
“No, I got no problem,” O-Bop says.
Which Callan thinks is the smart thing to say, except Friel isn’t satisfied.
“Because if you got a problem with me, I’m standing right here.”
“No, I don’t got a problem.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Friel says. “I heard you was going around the neighborhood running your mouth about you have a problem with something I may have did.”
“No.”
If it wasn’t one of them murderous New York August afternoons it would probably end right there. Shit, if the Liffey was air-conditioned, it would probably end right there. But it ain’t, it’s just got a couple of ceiling fans giving a bunch of dust and dead flies a lazy merry-go-round ride, so anyway, it doesn’t end right there where it should.
Because O-Bop has totally backed down. His balls are like lying on the floor, and there’s no need to push this any further except that Eddie is a sadistic prick, so he says, “You lying little cocksucker.”
Down at the end of the bar, Mickey Haggerty finally glances up from his Bushmills and says, “Eddie, the boy told you he don’t have no problem.”
“Anyone ask you, Mickey?” Friel says.
Mickey says, “He’s just a boy, for Christ’s sake.”
“Then he shouldn’t be running his mouth like a man,” Friel says. “He shouldn’t be going around talking about how certain people got no right to be running the neighborhood.”
“I’m sorry,” O-Bop whines.
His voice is shaking.
“Yeah, you’re sorry,” Friel says. “You’re a sorry little motherfucker. Look at
him, he’s crying like a little girl, and this is the big man who thinks certain other people got no right to run the neighborhood.”
“Look, I said I was sorry,” O-Bop whines.
“Yeah, I hear what you say to my face,” Friel says. “But what are you going to say behind my back, huh?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Friel pulls a .38 from under his shirt. “Get down on your knees.”
“What?”
“ 'What?’ ” Friel mimics. “Get down on your fucking knees, you little cocksucker.”
O-Bop is pale anyway, but now Callan sees he is like white. He looks dead already, and maybe he is, because it looks for all the world like Friel’s going to execute him right here.
O-Bop is shaking as he lowers himself off the stool. He has to lower his hands to the floor first so he doesn’t just topple over as he gets to his knees. And he’s crying—big tears spilling out of his eyes and streaming down his face.
Eddie’s got this shit-eating grin on his face.
“Come on,” Callan says to Friel.
Friel turns on him.
“You want part of this, kid?” Eddie asks. “You need to decide who you’re with, us or him.”
Staring Callan down.
“Him,” Callan says as he pulls a .22 from under his shirt and shoots Eddie the Butcher twice in the forehead.
Eddie looks like he can’t fucking believe what just happened. He just looks at Callan like What the fuck? and then folds up. He’s lying on his back on the dirty floor when O-Bop takes the .38 from his hand, sticks it in Eddie’s mouth, and starts jerking on the trigger.
O-Bop’s crying and shrieking obscenities.
Billy Shields has his hands up.
“I got no problem,” he says.
Little Mickey looks up from his Bushmills and tells Callan, “You might want to think about leaving.”
Callan asks, “Should I leave the gun?”
“No,” Mickey says. “Give it to the Hudson.”
Mickey knows the Hudson River between Thirty-eighth and Fifty-seventh streets has more hardware at the bottom than, say, Pearl Harbor. And the cops ain’t exactly going to drag the bottom to find the weapon that rained on Eddie the Butcher. The reaction at Manhattan South is going to go something like Someone blanked Eddie Friel? Oh. Anyone want this last chocolate glazed?
No, these kids’ problem is not the law, these kids’ problem is Matt Sheehan. Not that it’s going to be Mickey that goes running to Big Matt to tell him who popped Eddie. Matt could have reached out one ham-fisted hand to the judge and lifted some of the weight off Mickey on this hijacking beef, but he couldn’t be bothered, so Mickey doesn’t figure he owes any loyalty to Sheehan.
But Billy Shields the bartender will trip all over himself to get a marker with Big Matt, so these two kids might as well go hang themselves up on meat hooks and save Matt the aggravation. Unless they can take out Big Matt first, which they can’t. So these kids are pretty much dead, but they shouldn’t ought to stand around and wait for it.
“Go now,” Mickey says to them. “Get out of town.”
Callan tucks the .22 back under his shirt and gets an arm under O-Bop’s elbow and lifts him up from where he’s crouching over Eddie the Butcher’s body.
“Come on,” he says.
“Hold on a second.”
O-Bop digs into Friel’s pockets and comes out with a wad of crumpled bills. Rolls him on his side and takes something out of his back pocket.
A black notebook.
“Okay,” O-Bop says.
They walk out the door.
Cops come in around ten minutes later.
The Homicide guy, he steps over the pool of blood forming a big, wet, red halo around Friel’s head, then he looks at Mickey Haggerty. Homicide guy is just up from Safes and Lofts, so he knows Mickey. Looks at Mickey and shrugs like What happened?
“Slipped in the shower,” Mickey says.
They never get out of town.
What happens is they walk out of the Liffey Pub and follow Mickey Haggerty’s suggestion and walk right over to the river and toss in the guns.
Then they stand out there and count Eddie’s roll.
“Three hundred and eighty-seven bucks,” O-Bop says.
Which is disappointing.
They ain’t gonna get very far on three hundred and eighty-seven bucks.
And anyway, they don’t know where to go.
They’re neighborhood guys, they never been anywhere else, they wouldn’t know what to do, what not to do, how to act, how to function. They oughta get on a bus to somewhere, but where?
They go into a corner store and buy a couple quart bottles of beer and then get under an abutment under the West Side Highway to think it over.
“Jersey?” O-Bop says.
This is about the limit of his geographical imagination.
“You know anyone in Jersey?” Callan asks.
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
Where they know people is in Hell’s Kitchen, so they end up slamming a couple more beers and waiting until it’s dark, and then they slip back into the neighborhood. Break into an abandoned warehouse and sleep there. Early in the morning they go to Bobby Remington’s sister’s apartment on Fiftieth Street.
Bobby’s there, having had another fight with his old man.
He comes to the door, sees Callan and O-Bop standing there and pulls them inside.
“Jesus Christ,” Bobby says, “what'd you guys do?”
“He was going to shoot Stevie,” Callan explains.
Bobby shakes his head, “He wasn’t going to shoot him. He was going to piss in his mouth, is all. That’s the word out.”
Callan shrugs. “Anyway.”
“Are they looking for us?” O-Bop asks.
Bobby doesn’t answer. He’s too busy pulling down blinds.
“Bobby, do you have any coffee?” Callan asks.
“Yeah, I’ll make some.”
Beth Remington comes out of her bedroom. She’s wearing a Rangers jersey that comes down over her thighs. Her red hair is all tangled and droops down around her shoulders. She looks at Callan and says, “Shit.”
“Hi, Beth.”
“You gotta get outta here.”
“I’m just going to get 'em some coffee, Beth.”
“Hey, Bobby,” Beth says. She flicks a cigarette out of a pack on the kitchen counter, slips it into her mouth and lights it. “Bad enough I got you crashing on my couch, I don’t need these guys. No offense.”
O-Bop says, “Bobby, we need some hardware.”
“Oh, great,” Beth says. She flops down on the couch next to Callan. “Why the fuck did you come here?”
“Nowhere else to go.”
“I’m honored.” She gets drunk a couple times and does the dirty with him and now he thinks he can come over here, now he’s in trouble. “Bobby, make them toast or something.”
“Thank you,” says Callan.
“You’re not staying here.”
“So, Bobby,” O-Bop says, “can you hook us up?”
“They find out, I’m fucked.”
“You could go to Burke, tell him it’s for you,” O-Bop says.
“What are you guys still doing in the neighborhood?” Beth asks. “You should be in like Buffalo by now.”
“Buffalo?” O-Bop says, smiling. “What’s in Buffalo?”
Beth shrugs. “Niagara Falls. I dunno.”
They drink their coffee and eat their toast.
“I’ll go see Burke,” Bobby says.
“Yeah, that’s what you need,” Beth says, “to get sideways with Matty Sheehan.”
“Fuck Sheehan,” Bobby says.
“Yeah, go tell him that,” says Beth. She turns to Callan. “You don’t need guns, what you need is bus tickets. I got some money . . .”
Beth is a cashier at Loews Forty-second Street. Occasionally she sells one of the theater’s tickets along with her own. So she has a little cash t
ucked away.
“We have money,” Callan says.
“Then go.”
They go. They go all the way up to the Upper West Side, hang around in Riverside Park, up by Grant’s Tomb. Then they come back downtown; Beth lets them into Loews and they sit in the back of the balcony all day, watching Star Wars.