by Steve Bailey
"Gotta be a bottom for there to be a top."
LaCroix was upstairs on the other side of a heavy door. He sat at a shining desk, a cigar burning in a brass tray. The carpets were clean, the window didn't have curtains. Books on the walls and no dust. The lamps turned Mr. LaCroix's glasses into mirrors.
"Help you boys? Or I should call my security staff, yeah?" He said.
"Don't recognize us?" Ronny asked.
I watched the door since there wasn't much else that made sense.
"I'm supposed to, mes amis? What you doing in my house, yeah?"
"We're Ms. Rachel Lind's sons."
"Ronny. Michel. It's been…"
"No, my name's—" I said, but Ronny cut me off.
"That's us."
"Christ, why you boys didn't say so? Sit down, now. Ah, sit down, and enough with the club," he said to Ronny, who looked at it and laid it across his lap.
"You boys want a drink? Some food? You look into it, you do."
"Our mother's dead."
"God dammit…" LaCroix whispered.
The lights blurred again and Ronny didn't even look at me hard for it.
There were tears coming out from behind Mr. LaCroix's glasses. "Always knew something like this'd happen. Down there with all that. Never wanted that for your Ma. I'd have done anything."
"Yeah, but you didn't, did you?" Ronny said.
"Weren't for no lack of trying, mes fils."
"Ain't the way I heard it."
"You calling me a liar, boy?" LaCroix tried and failed to lock eyes with Ronny. "Nothing for it now, yeah? You boys are here so—"
"No, we're not. Don't." Ronny held up his hand. "We're here for a little help, a little money. Information."
"What for? Boys, you need—"
"Only thing we need's to set it right. Anybody who was involved. And you owe."
"Boys, you can't be serious!"
I nodded even though I had no idea what he owed Ma or us.
LaCroix shook his head. "Can't talk you outta this?"
"No."
"What you need?"
The apartment LaCroix set us up in was empty except for dust, but it was high up in the building and too far uptown for anybody to recognize us. Ronny put down the other of Curtis' revolvers and rolled his coat up, put it on top of his shoes for a pillow.
"Ronny, who was LaCroix to Mom?"
"Just a man she used to know."
"How'd he know us?"
"Ma talked about us, dummy."
"He called me Michelle."
"That's how those fucked up Creoles say your name. Jesus Christ, little brother, get some rest. My fuckin' head's pounding."
"But…"
He was already snoring. I went into the kitchen and opened the window, the New York chill cutting across my midsection. I smoked and waited for the sun, I didn't tell Ronny about the expensive brooch in my hand. I wish I had.
"Truce-breaking sack of shit," Ronny said. We looked up at the building on the corner of Delancey and Essex where The Boyle kept his office. Traffic was backed up, horses snorting all the way to the bridge and Brooklyn at the other side.
"How are we going to do this?" I asked, but Ronny had already walked into the building. For the first two floors, ladies worked in the doorways and in the rooms. I could hear giggling and groaning, cheap iron beds banging.
On the third, we ran into Cap and Red, The Boyle's right hands. Behind them I could see The Boyle with his Beggar Boys clustered around his desk like sparrows. He was yelling, gesturing to a small pile of coins and bills, fat as ever and lazy-eyed with that scar carving him from hairline to chin.
"You should turn around and leave," said Red, a lanky man with a shock of fiery curls. Cap didn't say anything, arms crossed over his barrel chest and his battered namesake barely staying on his head.
"Something got your dander up, Red?" Ronny asked. Red's fingers twitched at the end of his lanky arms. "Don't we have a truce? We're all friends, right?"
Cap and Red stared at us. Behind them the Boyle had stopped yelling.
"Get the toothpick," Ronny said, and swung his club at Cap.
Red grabbed me and I drove my forehead into his face. He sputtered while I pushed him into the wall, punched him in the ribs once and then again. He sagged and I held him tacked up by his collar. Swung a right over the top and into his face.
Behind me, Ronny's club hit flesh and bone, making dull sounds. Cap was screaming, Red was trying to breathe, and the Boyle was cursing bloody murder.
One of the Beggar Boys, the oldest and tallest, came running into the room with a knife in his hand. As he stabbed, I turned Red, his body taking the blade. The boy jumped away, his knife sticking out of Red's back while Red screamed. A gunshot cracked, and the Beggar Boy hit the ground, a fist-sized hole in his chest. I dropped Red, who shrieked again when the knife hit the floor, the blade rasping across bone.
"Jesus Fucking Christ, Ronny. He was just a boy!" I yelled.
Ronny shrugged. "Comes at my brother with a knife? Today he was a man."
Ronny stepped over the boy's body and into the room where the Boyle stared at us, the boys shocked and silent. I looked at Red. There was a lot of blood pooling under him.
"Boyle. Hands on the desk," Ronny greeted the fat man, turned to the Beggar Boys. "Anybody else a man today?"
They ran, small feet pounding on the floorboards. Red gulped and tried to vomit but nothing would come out. I think he was trying to throw up the knife. Cap was a beaten slump by the window. Red crawled to him.
"Cap? Cap, wake up."
We turned back to the Boyle. "You know why we're here." Ronny said.
"I know."
"We had a fuckin' truce, Boyle. You stupid enough to cross Dolan?" Ronny asked.
"Dolan? Dolan's been hanged for murder." The Boyle laughed. "He don't have time for you anymore."
"Bullshit," I said.
"Bullshit?" Boyle shook his head. "Read a newspaper. Dandy got his neck stretched and his boys're using each other's spines for dartboards. Anthony Commstock and his reformers're gonna have this town by the balls. They got deep pockets and God. The gangs ain't gonna last. Everybody's cashing out. I'm gonna open up a newsboy's lodging house with that city money." He sighed. "Gonna miss my whores…"
Didn't know who Commstock was. Only moral reformers I knew were preachers standing outside our business screaming about the devil until Curtis and Ronny ran them off. But Dolan being dead, well that changed a few things.
"Daddy?"
A pale, slender woman in a white dressing gown stood in the doorway behind the Boyle's desk. She felt her way into the room, hands reaching for the air and the bookcase by the door. Her eyes were milky gray, face a mass of red scars.
"Jesus Christ," Ronny said.
"Mira, get back!" The Boyle started to rise, but we stepped forward and pressed him back into his chair with the barrels of our guns.
"It's okay, sweetheart," he said. "Boys, meet my daughter. Ain't she the prettiest thing you ever seen?" His face was pleading, desperate, his lazy eye tumbling in the socket.
"She's a vision, Boyle," I said and nudged Ronny.
"Yeah. Sure. A beauty."
"Daddy, what's happening?"
"It's fine, Mira."
"No, I want to…"
"Hush, girl," The Boyle said.
"Boyle, you know why we're here," Ronny said.
"You boys wouldn't kill an old man in front of his daughter would you?"
Mira's face twisted under the red scars, her gray eyes reaching out into the room just like her hands. I walked over to her and she flinched at my footsteps. "Daddy?"
"Better cover your ears, sweetheart," I said.
"Boys, I can pay you. I'm about to have more money than God. We all are!"
Ronny and I didn't say anything and Mira shrieked, her hands white-knuckling on the doorway like she was on the edge of something, considering the jump.
"Daddy! No! Don't. Don't, please, don't!"
I lunged and cupped my hands around her head, held her close as Ronny pulled the trigger. She wailed and pounded my face and chest with her hands. Downstairs, the ladies added to the noise and panic, hollering about the gunshots.
I left Mira to kneel and cry alone.
Red was slumped and dead with Cap in his arms.
On our way out I saw the youngster I'd given my handkerchief to. Looking at me like I was the devil himself.
I nodded to him.
We walked out the front door.
Was Mira working her hands across the desk? Was her dressing gown now mostly red and was her father's blood working its way up from her sleeves? I wondered if she slipped in it and what would she do. How would a blind, scarred girl seek revenge in a city like this against men like us?
Ronny shook his head as we left the building. "Can't believe Dandy's dead."
"Changes things a little," I said.
Ronny snorted. "No it doesn't."
LaCroix found the man who planned the job on Ma. It was like the Boyle said. Big moral man of God sitting at the top of his moral little tower up on 32nd.
The city had that hush, when the sky seems too low with the buildings looming overhead and it feels like you're going deaf. We walked past the fancy people of Fifth Avenue. A father held hands with his daughter, his son skipping along ahead. Nobody looked as rich as the people in LaCroix's gambling hall, but none of them looked like us either. I plucked a thread hanging from my coat sleeve like it made a difference.
We got there. Getting the name'd been easy, but so's falling down.
The bottom floor of the building was an open hall with a big red cart loaded with brass water tanks, I could smell the draft horses. Thick men in red shirts milled around swilling from brown bottles.
"Fuckin' fire brigade," Ronny muttered and reached into his coat pocket, squeezing the handle of his club. "How many bullets we got?"
"Not enough."
"LaCroix left this part out," Ronny said.
"Maybe he didn't know."
"Maybe."
"Minute there's trouble, these bored pricks'll come running," I said.
"Yeah."
"Got an idea."
An hour later we were walking back up Broadway from 14th Street, a heavy tin can sloshing against my leg.
"Now we just gotta pick the right building." Ronny rubbed his chin, standing there while I took a grateful rest from carrying that reeking can.
"Got an idea," I huffed.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Take the can and I'll show you."
Ronny just laughed.
"This is perfect," I said, looking through the window of the furniture store two blocks from the fire brigade. We splashed the window and the door. People walking on the street hurried past us as I threw the half-full can through the window and Ronny struck a bundle of matches. The blaze made a hungry, swallowing sound and we circled the block as the screams of fire started to ring out. The fire brigade sprang to and left their whiskey bottles on the ground. Ronny picked one up as we passed, took a strong pull and handed it to me. While I drank, he kicked in the door.
"Dedicated bunch of lads, our brave firefighters." He took the bottle back from me.
We climbed the stairs.
"What are we walking on? Fuckin' clouds?" Ronny asked as our feet hit the plush carpeting of the hallway.
"Help you two gentlemen?" More gatekeepers. Anytime the city ran out of large men who wanted to cave in our skulls, that'd be grand. I looked at the soft floor, wanting maybe to lie down on it for a while.
"Didn't you lads hear? There's a fire!" Ronny said.
"We're not the fire brigade," said one.
"How'd you two get in here?" said the other.
"You didn't hear us kick in the door?" Ronny asked and threw the bottle. We rushed them as they ducked. One grabbed Ronny and the other one bulled forward. His shoulder took me in the gut and would have put me on the floor but we hit a wall. I dropped my hips while he grabbed for my ankles and I tried to slide a hand in against the side of his face, but I kept getting stuck on his collar. He kept close. Man knew what he was about. We struggled for days, hours—fuck, I swear we all missed Christmas twice fighting in that hallway.
I saw the sheen of his hair, rubbed my hand through the oil, and this time it slid in tight against his neck. I worked my fingers around his face while he grunted and kept trying to take my legs. I avoided his teeth, slid my fingers in across his gums, hooked a finger. I yanked and he howled, letting go of my legs.
"Oh, now you wanna lift your fuckin' head up!" I grunted and pushed his face away from me. He stepped back and a cautious hand reached up to feel how much more smile he had. His cheek flapped like wet newspaper in the street. I punched him in his ruined mouth and swung a left wide hook. We stumbled, collided shoulders and faces with the wall. I had my feet under me first with his collar and shirt and whatever else I could make a fist around. I slammed his face into my knee and then the wall. I did it until he stopped moving, and then I did it some more.
I dropped him and turned.
"Ronny. You alright?"
He stood panting, the other guard on the floor.
"Gonna get drunk and sleep for a year."
The office opened. There was a roar—just like I remembered from back when I was eight, standing in the parlor with that old scattergun. This time it was my brother who hit the ground. I didn't have time to scream and the man with the gun didn't have time to aim. I hit him with my hands out and grabbed the revolver, wrapped my hand around hammer. I kicked out his feet, pinned him to the floor with his necktie and twisted my other hand in his clothes. I screwed my gripping fist into the ground with him between and stepped on his gun hand, stood up and stomped.
He screamed and bled.
I stomped again.
I stomped until his face was slippery and his skull was soft. When I looked at him, really looked for the first time, I saw the buttoned up, tight-lipped man who'd sat at Ma's table and set this whole thing off. I picked up his gun and wiped his tight lips away with a pair of bullets. I glanced into the office. There was nobody else.
Ronny was trying to sit up, hiccupping and heaving, choking on the air.
"C'mon. We gotta go." I tried to get him to his feet, but he shoved me away and waved his hand in a weak motion.
"…esk," he gurgled and pointed.
"Get up, godammit!" I tried to lift him by the jacket, but he only slumped. His hand found my sleeve and pulled me back down. He pointed.
"No, we gotta go."
He gurgled and shoved, wouldn't let me lift him.
"We gotta get you to a doctor."
He shoved. He was getting weaker.
"Fuck you." I wrenched him to his feet and the scream that ripped out of him…I'd hear it for the rest of my life.
I dropped him and he moaned, slumped to his side and spat blood that was too dark, almost black.
Jesus Christ, I killed my brother.
There's nobody left.
I killed my brother.
I dropped, knees sinking into that plush carpet. It was too soft…too soft and he'd have hated it. I slapped at his face and pushed at his chest while a loud voice in my head screamed gibberish.
"Ronny!"
I wanted to carry him someplace else and I wanted him not to be dead. The fire brigade boys were back. I could hear them downstairs, swearing and cursing and picking up their bottles. I pocketed the gun that killed my brother and left him on a soft carpet in an enemy's building too far uptown, too deep in water we were never meant to swim in.
I had both Curtis' Colts, and five bullets left in the iron in my pocket. I slipped out the door with the guns up, aimed at an empty street. The fire brigade boys didn't care. Nobody cared. Nobody was left. Nobody would ever know we'd been there. When I told people the story of how my brother died, I was going to leave out the carpet. Ronny died on hardwood, Ronny died on pavement, Ronny died in an alley with a blade in his hand.
&nbs
p; Ronny died.
I staggered into the service entrance at The Golden Stag and they waved me upstairs.
I burst into LaCroix's office and he got up, fluttering at me like a pigeon with a loaf of bread.
"Staggering Christ, boy. What happened, yeah?
"He's dead and Ronny's dead. Everybody's dead. Ma's dead," I whispered.
"Siddown, siddown. Just tell me what happened."
I sank into the chair and it was so soft that I wanted to keep right on sinking, all the way through the earth and down to hell. Maybe that's our last gift before we get taken down to burn, a soft chair like a goodnight kiss from a woman who doesn't mean it.
"Hang on." LaCroix said, "I'm gonna get you a towel and a bottle of bourbon. You're a mess, mon ami." The door closed behind him.
I dug at Ronny's last words and his pointing and I should've done more than leave him there in that too-soft hallway. I should've done better. Something else.
…esk. He'd said esk and pointed.
Sitting in LaCroix's, I felt like a fucking idiot.
Desk. He wanted me to check the desk in that office. I got anxious and couldn't sit still or wait anymore.
LaCroix was gone for a while, probably making sure we wouldn't be interrupted. I looked over his desk. What kind of work does a man need to have, to have a desk like that? What do you plan on a desk big enough looks like you could sail the fucking thing?
Papers across it. Papers, papers, ledgers, ledgers. Books and a fine pen. Newspapers. The Herald sat there, a drawing big across the top. I stared at it and smiled. There was LaCroix, I guess he really was a big man. Then I took a closer look at the people next to him. A tight-lipped, familiar mouth—all buttoned-up, the woman next to him with a brooch pinned to her dress.
My heart stopped. I picked up the paper. Underneath was a letter with Ma's name. I read it…and when I got to where it was signed love and sincerely, I sincerely took out one of my guns and sat down to wait.
The door opened, feeling like a kick to the chest. I was fuckin' fed up being startled.
"Sorry, boy. Took a second and I had to make sure nobody'd…" He paused to sink into his chair and sighed, "…bother us with club bullshit."