A Village Voice

by Brian Martin

  “Black guy trying to sell dope to the NYU kids, maybe get laid. This park is a shit hole now. When your dad and I were kids, he would never have come down here.”

  Brian had asked his dad one time why the Irish didn’t like the blacks. His dad put it down mostly to economics. Blacks coming up from the South were cheap labor and that was a problem for the white working class, dock workers, truck drivers, factory workers. No one likes to see their jobs being put at risk. The Irish were hated for the same reason when they came to America. Back then, the Irish were the cheap labor. Also, the Irish were meant to be lazy drunks who let their apartments and neighborhoods fall to pieces, just like the blacks. Now though, it’s even worse because the blacks were not only cheap labor, they got welfare which the Irish never really got. Welfare, his dad explained was when the government came and took money from hard working people and gave it to lazy bastards who didn’t want to work for a living. His dad and men like him were not great fans of Johnson’s war on poverty. They felt sorry for the poor especially, those ‘poor bastards’ in Appalachia but they simply didn’t agree with the redistribution of wealth in general and especially, if it meant taking money from their pockets.

  Brian remembered trying to explain all this to left wing Irish students during his study year abroad. They could not understand how working men and life-long union members could vote for the Republican Party, the party of big business. He could not understand how they could not understand that a man might want a strong union to protect his salary and working conditions and at the same time not want the government to take part of that salary and give it to someone else.

  He shrugged (the old New York, whatta you gonna do, shrug). He wasn’t about to get into a debate about civil rights, modern social mores or any other damn thing. He had plenty of seemingly intractable problems of his own.

  “So your meeting went well and you’re all set?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what you’re going to say?”

  “Yeah, I show him the chart, explain how it could affect their line of credit with the bank. Suggest that he use proxies with connections that are not so obvious and let him know that the chart stays with me. I also let him know that I could be a great asset to them if I was the account executive for their business and any other business interests they might have. I could look out for things like this. I could make sure they were getting the right bank products and not getting overcharged.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Then I just walk away.”

  “That’s right, you just walk away.”

  “How do you think they are going to react to what I have to say? Are either of them hot heads? Are they going to think that I am shaking them down?”

  "Morgenstern will just listen. He is not a tough guy, you’ve met him. I hear he spends his time collecting World War Memorabilia, helmets and daggers and stuff. They say he has got quite a collection. That is when he is not abusing those poor Puerto Rican girls that work the sewing machines. I hear his favorite trick is to take a new girl into his office after hours and sit her down. After he explains that if she wants to keep her job they need to be very good friends, then he gets her to close her eyes and open her mouth. Lousy degenerate, if he wants a blow job he should go and pay for one like everybody else.

  “I can’t imagine Joey is going to get upset. Why should he if you are respectful? He may just tell you to burn the chart and keep your fucking mouth shut. He is not crazy, he is not the kind of guy to smack you around. If he thinks you are out of line, he would send someone to straighten you out, he wouldn’t do it himself.”

  “Uncle Jim, are you sure? Are you sure there is not any other way to deal with this? Talk to my dad, make him understand.”

  “Listen, kid, it’s not like I haven’t thought this over a million times. This is not my first choice. It is the only choice.”

  “I know you told me not to ask about the rest of it, but I can’t help worrying that there might be other people involved and whether we can trust them.”

  “I understand your concerns, but like I said, you will have to trust me to do the best I can. There is nothing more I can say about it. Just show up Thursday at seven, say what you gotta say and leave.”

  “What if he wants to walk out with me?”

  “It’s unlikely. He’ll probably want to speak with Tarantino. Even if he does, no matter what he does, don’t worry about it. You go have your meeting and leave. You don’t see anything and you don’t hear anything. Listen, it’s best if I don’t see you again for a while, probably not until Thanksgiving. I won’t get in touch unless there is an emergency and vice versa, okay? And you know, all going well and I think it will, we never talk about this ever, not to anyone and not even to each other, ever.”

  As Brian was leaving the park, he passed a bench where someone had spray painted a peace sign. He remembered as a kid walking by there when the hippies were out protesting the Vietnam War. The hippies drove his dad crazy. His dad’s generation of Irish American Catholics were fierce anti-Communists. His uncles, Joe and Gerry, had fought in WWII. His father had volunteered for Korea, but didn’t get further than Fort Benning, Georgia. Some of his friends from the neighborhood had been over and had been in some heavy action. His dad thought General MacArthur was a true patriot and that he had been betrayed by Communist sympathizers in the government. For reasons never explained, his father thought Joe McCarthy was an idiot, but that he was right in what he said about the Communist menace. At the start, everyone they knew was for stopping the Communists in Vietnam. He remembered his dad explaining the domino theory, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and then Thailand, God help us. There were lots of Catholics in Vietnam from the time the French were there (useless bastards), and they certainly didn’t want the Communists.

  Then the bodies of kids they knew from the neighborhood started to come home. If the USA was going to fight a war, let us fight it, they could not be expected to fight with their hands tied, what was Nixon thinking? They held a family meeting. Brian heard about it afterwards as he was too young to attend. Two of his cousins were old enough to be drafted (they had not volunteered). Both of them said they would serve if called, both were told that if they were called and changed their minds they would be sent to stay with relatives in Ireland.

  His dad suspected Kissinger was a Communist and that America was about to be betrayed again; he was terribly disillusioned after Vietnam. If the USA was not fighting wars to win then they had no business fighting, and he made it clear that the military was not an option for Brian unless the Russians landed on Coney Island. Having grown up trained in how to handle a Russian surprise attack, (hide under your desk or proceed in an orderly fashion to the school basement), Brian considered himself something of an expert in geo-politics. He pointed out to his dad that if the Russians did attack they would probably just attack with nuclear missiles, they probably wouldn’t bother invading. His dad just smiled and said that if Americans didn’t wise up, the Russians wouldn’t have to do either, the traitors in the government would just hand them the keys and let them walk right in and take our freedom. Freedom was the thing his dad and that generation talked a lot about. America was the land of the free, where people from humble origins had the opportunity to rise up.

  Brian thought his father hated the hippies not only because he felt they sided with the Communists but because they were free in a way that he, his father, had never been. To him, the hippies seemed to be mostly middle class college kids taking a break to protest whatever, smoke pot and have sex. His dad never had the luxury of taking a break. He didn’t have the money to go to college full time or the energy left to go at night. Then here were these kids whose parents had probably worked their asses off to provide opportunities for their children, and the children repaid them by rejecting their values and taking time off to change the world, man (smoke pot and get laid). Brian wondered how he had gotten from the peace sign to children disappointing and betraying their pare
nts. He needed to focus on the dilemma. God damn hippies, get a job!

  He went home, worried sick. He wished to God he could talk this over with someone, anyone just to do a sanity check. His dad was out of the question, and he wasn’t real close to any of his uncles or aunts. He couldn’t tell any friends without making them a part of it. He loved his wife and they were close, but she simply would not understand this sort of thing. His wife noticed that he was preoccupied, but he put it down to work pressures and feeling under the weather. Bless her, she said she knew just what he needed to, as they say in the old country, “take him out of himself.” She said that she had to go down to the basement and do a load of laundry and that he should come with her because she simply could not decide what clothes needed to be washed. In no time at all, they were down in the basement and they had loaded the machine with a basket of clothes they had brought with them and everything she had been wearing. She did insist in holding back a long tee shirt of his and keeping it within reach in case some busybody came down to spoil the party.

  Despite the fun they had that evening, he could only keep the demons at bay for so long. After his wife had fallen asleep, Brian lay in bed going over and over it. Was there another way, could he stay out of it? Was there a way to get his dad out of this? Over and over it went, round and round in his head, always coming back to the same place. Someone was going to be moving on and it was going to be his dad or someone else. Dad was a tough guy but he would not survive in prison, and he would never go for witness protection. It was too late for him to walk away.

  Brian had met many of his dad’s political friends. Most were decent men like his father. Men who were outraged at the treatment of their fellow Catholics by Unionists and the British army. The same forces that their fathers and grandfathers had fought back in the old country. They watched the TV news and saw pictures of the British army kicking down doors and dragging away all males of military age to internment camps. The British had introduced internment without trial. Essentially, on the word of a senior police officer (over ninety per cent of whom were Protestants and Unionist), a Catholic Nationalist could be imprisoned without trial for up to three years. Ironically, senior IRA leadership said many years afterword that internment without trial was the greatest recruiting tool they ever had. If a man was not a Republican before being dragged from his home and thrown in a prison camp, he soon turned into one. They watched film footage of Bloody Sunday, when the British Army parachute regiment opened fire on unarmed protestors. They went to meetings and heard first-hand accounts of what it was like to be a young Catholic teenager growing up in Derry or West Belfast. Most of them were decent men who simply would not and could not ignore the injustice of it all. The few leadership figures Brian had met were in a different league altogether. He supposed that every group needs people who are willing to sacrifice themselves and anyone else for the cause. These were the guys who would let his dad have an accident if it meant keeping the flow of arms running smoothly.

  Brian didn’t sleep much Wednesday night and he had a really hard time getting out of bed Thursday morning. Several times he thought about sitting Noreen down and telling her what was going on and each time he persuaded himself not to. It would not do any good at all and might do a lot of harm. He thought about praying but that didn’t make any sense. Please Lord, give me the courage to do what you certainly don’t want me to do and forgive me in advance.

  When he was a kid, Brian was always inspired by stories about his grandfather and his brother, about their bravery and courage. His dad told him that grandfather used to say, “courage and shuffle the cards.” He didn’t know if his grandfather had come up with that himself or where he got it from, but it really seemed appropriate today. He thought about leaving a note for his wife in case something went really wrong and then decided not to. He could never find a pen in their house anyway; he was convinced that she hid them. He would have to ask her for a pen and then explain why he needed one. Nothing was going to go wrong and what if nothing went wrong and then she found the note. He noticed that when serious shit was about to go down he occupied his mind with ridiculous debates on trivial issues. He wondered if everyone did that or was it just him. Anyway, he kissed Noreen goodbye in the routine manner and made his way to work.

  He worked on a couple of files and had a turkey sandwich at his desk. He had just finished eating when Sal, his boss, stood in the doorway of his office and called him over. Most of the team had gone out for pizza so there wasn’t the usual sniggering and low voiced “oh what did you do,” or “someone’s been a bad boy,” that usually accompanied a summons to Sal’s office. He didn’t have to put his hand behind his back and give the finger to anyone. When he got to Sal’s office, Sal motioned him to come in sit down and shut the door (not generally a good sign). Brian’s mind raced over the files he was working on and what he might have done wrong. With all that was going on it was quite possible that he had screwed something up. Well, screw the clients and the bank and the whole damn lot of them, there was more important stuff going on, he thought. As he was quietly working himself up to be pissed off, Sal leaned forward and in a very soft voice said “Somebody has been asking about you. He wanted to know if he should meet with you or if he should send some people to meet with you instead and explain how things are.” At that moment, he thought the turkey sandwich was going to come up and wind up all over Sal’s desk. Sal, God bless him, saw the look on his face and reassured him quickly.

  “I let him know that you were wise, a smart kid, that you were just ambitious, trying to move up the corporate ladder. When this guy saw that you worked for our bank, he reached out for my brother who reached out to me. You see, it’s a pretty small world after all. I am sure this guy probably knows your uncle too. No, no, don’t say anything. I don’t want to know anything about this. I only want to say two things. First, my advice is to walk away from whatever this is and not to get involved with this guy. Nobody who does business with him has a good word to say about him. Second, I vouched for you. If you do meet with him, don’t embarrass me and say anything stupid. That’s it, go back to work and don’t screw anything up.”

  As he left Sal’s office, Brian noticed that his comrades had returned. They saw the look on his face and assumed that Sal had just torn him a new one. “Oh, get the man a cushion, he doesn’t look like he’ll be able to sit down for a week.” He didn’t even know who said it and when they saw he did not react, the laughter died down quickly. When he got back to his desk, Charlie came over and asked him if everything was okay. Brian told him it was fine and that Sal was just busting his balls over some stupid shit. Charlie assured him that Sal was okay. He said that Sal knew that Brian did good work but like every boss, Sal has his moments and he could be an asshole. Charlie then went on to explain that only last week Sal had complained to Charlie himself about something or other of which Brian didn’t hear a word. Brian nodded politely during Charlie’s long and involved story alternating between waves of nausea, shortness of breath and the desire to run screaming from the building. He was sure they have a name for it, what was it? Anxiety attack, that’s it. He was having an anxiety attack, what do you do for that? He had aspirin and Alka Seltzer in his desk. He could splash cold water on his face or was it warm water? Another ridiculous debate. The day was full of them. By the time Charlie finished his story, Brian had calmed down enough to say ‘what are you goin’ to do’ (an appropriate response to almost any story) and got back to work.

  So, Mr. Tarantino knew who he was, knew about his Uncle Jim. What impact, if any, would this knowledge have? Maybe Tarantino would be more relaxed knowing he was dealing with someone who understood how things are. He remembered Uncle Jim saying that he would not know who he was and that they had a pretty common name. Well, he got that wrong. Tarantino knew who he was and probably knew where he lived or could easily find out. What if he told someone, “Hey I’m going to a meeting in the city with Flanagan’s nephew,” and then he doesn’t come bac
k. Won’t those people point the finger at him or at least want to talk to him? Had Uncle Jim thought this thing out? Maybe before the meeting he would reach out to Jim and find if he knew anything about it. It was too late to meet Jim now and he couldn’t risk calling him at the house. He wouldn’t be there anyway.

  Brian found himself on the way to the meeting, trying to summon up the courage not to turn around and go home. He was thinking about his father, and how he in his place wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to save Brian. He couldn’t pray for success. He would be praying enough for forgiveness, or at least understanding, afterwards. He thought about his ancestors and tried to get courage from remembering their heroism in the face of danger and adversity. If something happens to him, he wanted them to welcome him on the other side and to be proud of him. He wanted to sit by a fireside with them and drink a glass of good Irish whiskey and tell them his story and hear their stories and be welcome for all time, not someone they would be ashamed of, someone who sat in a cold corner alone.

  Chapter Seven

  New York, 1919

  So far, the States had been something of a let-down for the Flanagan brothers. They had never been to a truly large city before in their lives. The furthest away from home they had been was the hundred miles up to Dublin on the train to see a hurling match. Hollywood had a lot to answer for. In every movie they had seen, the people of New York lived in spacious apartments with liveried doormen and spectacular views of the city. They, on the other hand, were currently sleeping on the floor in the apartment of a distant cousin, in Greenwich Village. Instead of beautiful vistas of the great metropolis, their view was an air shaft. Instead of drifting off to sleep to the sounds of a grand orchestra, they were often serenaded by the old lady upstairs who after she had a few would bang on the pipes and insist that the bum (whoever he was) turn up the heat.