He held himself together all that hot afternoon, so that he could tell the police what he had seen. But he was an honest boy, so he admitted that he had not seen the killers’ faces or recognized their voices. He could not even say how many there were because the oak tree that shielded him also blocked his view.
And he held himself together at the wake, when his father’s body lay by the windows in the front room, beneath the framed picture of Jesus that his mother had cut from a calendar, and people climbed the narrow stairs and packed the stifling flat and brought buckets of beer and food, and all told him to be brave because he was now the man of the house.
That night, he and his brother tried to sleep in their parents’ windowless bedroom while their mother kept vigil with the keening lady, a professional Irish mourner who sat by the coffin and chanted the low, haunting song that reminded every Irishman of some windswept Gaeltacht moor, even if he’d never been to Ireland or heard a word of Gaelic . . . a low, haunting, repetitive song that echoed through the tenement and kept everyone awake, except the corpse.
Around midnight, Eddie whispered, “Who’ll help us now?”
“Boss Plunkitt,” answered Tim. “Pa always said if we ever got into trouble and had nowhere to turn, we should go to Boss Plunkitt.”
“Did Plunkitt say anything tonight about that funny old money?”
“He said I should come and see him on Monday. And that Tammany would pay our rent for six months. So we can stay here.”
“Stay here? Who cares about stayin’ here?” Eddie sat up. “Let’s take some of that funny old money and buy a gun. We’ll kill the McGillicuddys and go.”
“We don’t even know if it is money, and we don’t even know where Pa hid it, and we don’t even know if it was the McGillicuddys who killed him.”
“We know. You know. You was there. It was the McGillicuddys. The fuckin’ McGillicuddys.”
“Don’t let Ma hear you swearin’.”
“She ain’t listenin’. She’s keenin’ right along with that old Irish banshee. All that moanin’ sing-songin’ is givin’ me the willies.” Eddie elbowed his brother. “It don’t matter if folks at Tammany saw Strong make peace with Pa. It don’t matter if folks lied and said the McGillicuddys was someplace else when it happened. It was them.”
“Okay,” answered Tim, “say it was. Where are two kids gonna get a gun?”
“I know places. I know guys. We shoot ’em both and leave New York.”
“And go where?”
“Out West. Out where the cowboys are. Out where we can be cowboys.”
“You mean . . . ride horses and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t ride a horse. You only got one foot.” Tim was sorry that he said that as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
Eddie rolled over and quietly cried himself to sleep.
DICK RILEY HAD been a man with a good reputation, an earned respect, so his friends and neighbors turned out for the funeral.
But in a church that could hold hundreds of people, a polished pine box with brass handles could look very lonely unless a crowd surrounded it. And a good ward boss made certain that every loyal constituent got a send-off worthy of a wealthy man. So George Washington Plunkitt put out the call for three hundred mourners.
And a hundred more appeared at the back of the church because a neighborhood lawyer named Sunny Jim Maguire was planning to run against Plunkitt in the fifteenth, and a funeral was a fine place to garner a few votes. With his blond hair and pearl-gray suits, Sunny Jim appeared to some as a source of light, but others said that no man who counted McGillicuddy’s Saloon as a power base could ever shed light on anything. Sunny Jim had put out the word and handed out black armbands, and his “people” had crowded into the back of the church as if Six-Pound Dick had been one of their best friends.
At the end of the service, Father Higgins led the coffin and the family down the aisle, through the fog of sandalwood incense, while the voices of the Tammany Choir filled the church with “Faith of Our Fathers,” a grand old Catholic recessional. Father Higgins waited for the hymn to end, then he performed the final blessing. Then he said to the dearly beloved, “There’s a song Dick Riley loved. We did not sing it at the Benediction, and so I’ve asked a young lady of the parish to sing it for us now.”
And from the choir loft came a voice as clear and clean as a Donegal stream. That’s how people who had actually seen such a stream described it.
Panis Angelicus fit panis hominum
As she began to sing of the heavenly bread that becomes the bread of all mankind, Tim Riley lowered his head and cried.
Dat panis coelicus figures terminum
He cried for his mother and his brother.
O res mirabilis! Manducat dominum
It might have been a miraculous thing, he thought, that the body of Christ nourished the poorest and the most humble. But still Tim cried.
Pauper, Pauper servus et humilis
He cried with the frustration of knowing that the ones who had done the deed were probably somewhere in the church at that very moment.
Pauper, Pauper
He cried for the aching beauty of the song and of the girl who offered it.
Servus, servus et humilis
And he cried because, yes, his father had been one of the Lord’s humble servants, but what a man.
He looked up at Doreen, and she gave him a small wave, and something passed between them in that moment, something as permanent as the church. And it made him dry his tears.
It was good that he did, because then he noticed the checkered suit of Strong McGillicuddy and the squashed-in face of Slick. They were standing at the far end of the second-last row, part of Maguire’s crew of mourners.
And Tim thought that they were smiling . . . the bastards.
So all in the time it had taken Doreen to sing her song, Tim Riley had passed from despair to comfort and then to resolve.
Someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe years from now, he would do what Eddie wanted: He would kill Strong McGillicuddy . . . and Slick, too.
But not that day, and not in the days immediately thereafter.
THOSE DAYS BEGAN with sadness. It clenched in his chest as soon as he woke and worsened at mealtimes, when the little flat seemed somehow smaller with one less inhabitant. His mother cried when she cooked, then wiped her tears and got on. His brother cried when he sat at the table next to their father’s empty chair. But Tim did his best not to cry at all.
It helped to walk after supper. He walked quickly, as if to pound out the sadness. He walked to the west, as if there was more hope toward the water than toward the town. He walked until he found a pier that seemed quiet, where he wouldn’t run into longshoremen or local thugs or hootchstunk bummies cadging coppers to buy more hootch. And he would go to the end of the pier and sit on a piling and watch the sun go down over Jersey.
And with each sunset, the pain grew weaker.
On the fifth evening, he walked onto a pier in the Thirties. It was after seven. The breeze puffed a bit. The water lapped against the pilings. The sky over Newark layered into colors that deepened by the minute. And out in the river, a black-hulled boat with a stack and two raked masts rode at anchor, a sleek silhouette in the setting sun. It was the Corsair, the yacht of J. P. Morgan himself.
The paper said that Morgan was living aboard for the summer. Tim had reread the last paragraph of the story many times: “He commutes each morning to Wall Street and each evening returns to sit on the fantail, smoke a cigar, and survey the city now lit by the Edison lights that, in his wisdom, J. P. Morgan financed. He tells friends that the evening breeze has a most salubrious effect whenever he suffers from the blues.”
The blues. The richest man in New York suffered from the blues.
The yacht turned upstream, into the current, so Tim could not see the fantail. He wondered if Morgan was sitting there now, puffing on his cigar, feeling sorry for himself. Morgan could not have felt wors
e than a boy from Hell’s Kitchen whose father was dead, and that fine floating house would go far toward soothing the pain of a poor family.
So Tim Riley resolved something else: some day, after he had killed the McGillicuddys—or maybe before—he would find a way to get rich. As his father had told him, respect was nice, but money was the thing.
ON SUNDAY, UNCLE Billy came for dinner.
He sent Tim out to get a scuttle of suds at Deegan’s Saloon, and after a few drinks, he told his sister how sorry he was.
Mary Riley took a sip of beer and said, “’T’ain’t your fault.”
Tim noticed Uncle Billy’s face redden, as if, perhaps, it was.
Then Uncle Billy offered to go up to Daggett Tavern and bring back the wagon. “I can take off the tools and sell ’em, I think.”
“Sell the tools?” said Mary Riley. “And what will we do if we sell the tools?”
“I don’t know, sis.” Billy sniffled and dragged the back of his hand across his face. “I don’t think I got the brains to run a business.”
“Well, I do, by God,” she said. “So go uptown and bring the wagon back and put it in the stall. We’ll get two more horses and get back to business.”
Tim had expected that his mother would fight. It made him proud.
And her bravery gave Uncle Billy some backbone, too. He took another swallow and said, “By God, you’re right, Mary. I’m lucky to have a big sister like you.”
“Lucky I don’t hit you with a fryin’ pan for comin’ in here half drunk and weepy. We’re done weepin’. Have a cry, then have a laugh, then get on. That’s what Dick would say if he could.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Tim and Uncle Billy went back to Daggett Tavern and found the wagon stripped. Every tool—including Dick Riley’s six-pound hammer—was gone. So were the wagon wheels, the seat, the tongue, the hubs, even an old oilskin tarp. And the glue man had dragged off the horses.
Billy kicked at the stripped axle. “I hate to say it, but I ain’t surprised.”
“The city of dreams.” Tim sat down under the oldest tree on the Upper West Side and buried his head in his hands. “More like the city of nightmares.”
“It ain’t all nightmares, Timmy boy. It’ll be all right. Wait and see.”
“I heard that stuff from half the people at the wake.” Tim pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and reminded himself what his mother had said, that they were done weepin’. “You gotta tell me somethin’ better.”
Billy looked out at the carriages and delivery wagons passing on Broadway, then he looked down at his big hands. “’Tis the best I got. What about Boss Plunkitt? What did he tell you about them pieces of paper?”
“He told me to come and see him.”
“A boy sittin’ down with George Washington Plunkitt?” Uncle Billy shook his head. “Like Daniel sittin’ down with the lion. When’s the meet?”
Tim knew that he should have lied, but he was not a good liar, at least not yet. “He told me to come see him at Washington Hall this afternoon.”
“Done then.” Uncle Billy put an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “You and me, we’ll meet him together. And there’ll be no outsmartin’ us.”
Tim smelled beer on Billy’s breath, saw bloodshot in Billy’s eyes, and wanted to pull away. But there was muscle in Billy’s emotion, so pulling away wasn’t easy.
“I know what your da used to say about me, Timmy . . . that I was worthless, that I drink too much and talk too much and was never man enough to get a family of me own. But now, me sister’s family needs me. And like she said, we’re done weepin’. You’ll see who’s worthless and who ain’t.”
“I know you ain’t worthless, Uncle Billy.”
“That’s the sentiment I was hopin’ for.” Billy released his grip, then pulled out a hip flask and had a drink. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
“We do, but for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Tim stood, walked over to the great gray trunk, and looked up into the leaves. “When I was hidin’ on the roof, when they was beatin’ Pa, I heard ’em askin’ about the little papers we found. Only two men outside our flat knew about them. Plunkitt and you.”
Billy Donovan’s mouth dropped open, then he closed it, then he tightened it until his face turned as red as his handkerchief. Like a lot of drinkers, he could play offended anger as well as an actor in a Bowery theater. He stood and stalked over to Tim and said, “You listen to me, you little squint, I ain’t a man who blabs, no matter what your da ever said. And if you say that I am, I’ll take my fist to ye, God help me.”
Tim knew he had pushed far enough, so he said, “Yeah, sure, Uncle Billy, whatever you say.”
“All right, then.” The red faded from Billy’s face. He gave a nod, as if he had proved his point. “I’ll meet you at Washington Hall on Eighth Avenue at three o’clock. We’ll go see the sachem together.”
YEAH, SURE, UNCLE Billy, whatever you say.
There was no way that Tim Riley would talk to Boss Plunkitt with Uncle Billy along, acting like the new man in the Riley house.
So, after they left the tavern, Tim took the El all the way downtown.
He got off at Chambers Street and walked a few blocks east to the New York County Courthouse.
The majestic pillars and grand staircase announced that this was a place where men did important business. Inside, the rotunda rose to skylights that poured sunshine into every gilded, marbled, painted corner and announced that the men who did that important business would never fear the bright light of day. But even a boy—if he read the papers—knew that this building was a monument to the most vaulting corruption in American history.
There had been a man named Tweed. He had been an alderman, a county supervisor, and the boss of Tammany. He had invented a thousand ways to make himself and his cronies rich through kickbacks, bribes, extortions, payoffs, and twist-arm contributions to the Tammany cause. The courthouse should have cost a quarter of a million dollars, but New Yorkers had ended up paying out fourteen million for it, and most of the money had gone straight into the pockets of Tweed and his Tammany pals.
Boss Tweed died in jail in 1878, but his name echoed through the halls of corruption like Tim’s heels echoing across the marble floor of the rotunda.
Plunkitt had come on the scene near the end of Tweed’s reign, but he had made himself rich, too, mostly buying land and reselling it to the city when he learned of some new public project. He called it “honest graft,” and if he was challenged, he defended himself in the papers with honest bluntness: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”
Tim followed the echoing pop-plop-pop-plop of a buffing rag down the stairs to the lower level.
His heart was pounding, because he was about to learn the future. If the bonds were good, he would move out of Hell’s Kitchen, buy his mother a new Singer, and see that his brother had the best fake foot that money could buy. If not, he would soon have to leave school and go to work to support what was left of his family.
He rounded a bend in the corridor and came to a pair of chairs on a little platform. On the wall above the chairs were two small American flags, and a sign: GRAZIANO’S BOOTBLACK. BOOTS, 5¢, SHOES 3¢.
On the left, a small dark man with a bent back was polishing a customer’s boot. Pop-plop-pop-plop-pop-plop.
On the right, a man sat with one foot propped on the shining brace, the other on his knee, and the New York Sun open in front of him.
Tim stood close enough to read the Sun headline but not the fine print.
A voice rose from behind the paper. “I thought we was meetin’ later.”
“I couldn’t wait.”
Plunkitt lowered the paper. “You got your whole life ahead of you, son. Learn to wait.”
“It’s just that—” The boy shot a glance at Graziano.
“This here’s my confessional,” said Plunkitt. “No kneelin’. No prayin’. But if there’s secrets to be kept, we kee
p ’em. Even with a kid. Ain’t that right, fellers?”
Graziano said, “Kid? What kid? I don’t see a kid.” He looked at his customer. “You see a kid?”
“Ain’t no place for a kid.” The customer climbed down, dropped a few coins into Graziano’s hand, and walked away
Tim climbed up and sat next to Plunkitt, who pulled out a cigar and bit the end while Graziano struck a match.
As Plunkitt puffed the flame into the cigar, he asked Tim, “So what is it that can’t wait till this afternoon?”
“My pa’s wagon been stripped. And his tools was stolen. And my uncle isn’t too smart. And my ma isn’t up to takin’ in more sewin’. And while we appreciate six months’ rent from Tammany, I’m wonderin’, did you find out about—”
“You’re askin’ about the bond?”
“Yes, sir.”
Plunkitt winked at Graziano, who went whistling down the corridor. Then he said to Tim, “Worthless.”
Tim looked down at his hands and the scuffed tops of his boots. “Worthless?”
“Ever heard the old sayin’ ‘worthless as a Continental’?”
“I heard my pa use it.”
“Well, that bond was printed on the same kind of paper, by the same bankrupt government.” Plunkitt took out an envelope and put it on the boy’s lap. “It’s in there.”
“Who said it was worthless?” asked Tim.
Plunkitt could not have been used to questioning, especially from a boy, but a ward boss seldom showed emotion unless it served a purpose. So he chewed a bit on his cigar, then said, “There’s all kinds of people in the fifteenth, son. Some work with their hands, like your pa. Others wear white collars and ride desks, like a feller named Daniel Daly. He works at Drexel, Morgan and Company on Wall Street, and—”
“And he said it was worthless?”
Plunkitt bit down on his cigar, gave it a good chew, then took it out and said in a voice as calm as that quiet corridor, “Mr. Daly asked a feller in the U. S. Treasury, who said they’ve seen a few of these over the years but never honored one, for a lot of reasons, startin’ with what I just said—they’re too old.”
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