“Watch it, you little snot, or I’ll—” Slick’s eyes brightened. His breath was foul, and he sounded as if he had a bad cold, which came from the crushed sinuses beneath the mashed-in face, which had come courtesy of a six-pound hammer.
“Spyin’ in the windows, are you?” Slick slapped Tim across the face, grabbed him by the collar, pulled him inside. “Lookie here, boys. Look what the cat dragged in.”
All the faces turned. Uncle Billy’s turned red.
“You ain’t a cat.” Strong stood. “You’re a rat who been out sniffin’whores.”
Strong was bigger than Slick, smiled more, meant it less. That’s what Tim was thinking as he looked up into those small eyes.
“You need a job, kid?” Strong walked over and smiled down at Tim. “Like your uncle here?”
“No.”
“No, sir,” Strong snapped a hand and knocked Tim’s hat off. “Hey, Billy, tell him how good we been to you.”
“Oh, yeah, Strong, you been real nice. Real nice.”
“See that?” said Strong. “Real nice. We help them less fortunate than ourselves. Ain’t that right, Ma?”
“Shit, yeah,” said Mother Mag.
“Or maybe,” Strong looked into Timothy Riley’s eyes, “you ain’t less fortunate. Maybe you got some spring of money bubblin’ somewheres, even if you’re out of business and your old man’s swingin’ his six-pound hammer in the heavenly chorus.”
Billy stepped closer. “Now, Strong—”
“Shut the fuck up. If I want anything out of you, I’ll give you a spittoon to drink, just to see you puke.”
And Billy slipped back into the shadows.
“Now remember, kid”—Strong put an arm around Tim’s shoulder, as gentle as a father—“if we think there’s someone in our neighborhood who got their snout in somethin’ they ain’t sharin’, we might have to pay them a visit. So you watch what you’re spendin’, ’cause we’re watchin’ you.”
WHEN TIM GOT home, Dinny Boyle and a couple of his pals were passing a pint on the stoop.
Tim thought about going in by the back door, but they had seen him, so he put his head down and tried to walk past.
“Hey!” Dinny popped up in front of him. “You wonderin’ how come your brother ain’t down here, tootlin’ that fuckin’ harmonica?”
“No,” said Tim.
Dinny pulled the harmonica from his pocket. “Because I took it, that’s how come.”
Tim looked at the shining metal in Dinny’s hands. Tim’s father had given the harmonica to Eddie for his birthday.
“You want to know why I took it?” said Dinny.
“No.” Tim tried to step past.
“Because I think the Rileys is holdin’ out on the Dinny Boyle Association, which means they’re holdin’ out on Mr. Strong McGillicuddy, which means they’re holdin’ out on the folks who’ll elect Sunny Jim Maguire before long and take the fifteenth away from that limp old prick on the shoeshine throne.”
“How can we be holdin’ out,” asked Tim, “when we got nothin’ worth holdin’?”
“That ain’t what I hear, shitstain.” Dinny Boyle slapped Tim across the face.
Tim clenched his fists to fight back. He had taken all the slapping he could for one night. But one of the other boys grabbed his arm, and Dinny smashed him again. Tim saw stars and his right ear started to ring.
Then Dinny brought his boney, pimpled face close to Tim’s. “What I hear is that a big black box cab pulls up right in front of this buildin’ tonight, and a fancy feller steps out and asks, in a real snooty voice”—Dinny struck his nose into the air and talked through it—“‘Do you lads know if a Timothy Riley resides in this building?’”
“Resides,” said one of the others. “Snooty word for a snooty feller.”
“Real snooty,” said Dinny. “And when we say yeah, this fancy Dan nancyboy goes up to your flat, while the driver stays with the box cab so we don’t strip it bare.”
Tim was beginning to understand.
“Fancy Dans don’t come around here unless they’re handin’ out money to the poor unfortunates of Hell’s Kitchen.” Dinny trickled some whiskey onto the harmonica, then wiped it on his shirt, then tootled it a few times. “But after these guys leave, does anybody come down from your flat and give me my dues? Hell no.”
Tim looked at the harmonica. “So you took that?”
“Well, your brother come thumpin’ up the street from somewhere and starts playin’ under the song-girl’s window, like he’s sweet on her or somethin’.”
Tim looked up at the third-floor windows across the street. Sweet on her?
“That’s against my rules. So I took his toy.” Dinny shoved the harmonica into his pocket. “You can get it back from Mr. Strong when you pay. I’m goin’ to tell him now about the fancy Dan.”
And that, thought Tim, would seal the fate of his family. If fancy Dan swells were visiting the Rileys, the McGillicuddys would be visiting soon after.
TIM’S MOTHER AND Eddie were sitting in the front room.
They had heard all the talk on the stoop.
Eddie had a black eye, courtesy of Dinny.
Their mother was wringing her hands, wiping them on her apron, wringing, wiping. When Tim walked into the flat, she pulled an envelope from the apron. “This is for you. A feller in a fine suit and goggle-eye glasses left it.”
Inside was a ten-dollar bill and a note:
I appreciate that you have offered an item. I enclose recompense. Should you come into any more of this sort, please contact me at number 23 Wall Street.
J. P. Morgan.
The mother read over her son’s shoulder. “J. P. Morgan? Glory be to God! He’s more important than Plunkitt himself. And ten dollars? Why?”
“I sold a bond. Morgan collects stuff. So he bought it. We have four more that I know of. But I don’t know where Pa hid the box. Do you?”
“No, darlin’. Your da loved to talk, but he sure could keep a secret.” She took the letter and the bill and went into the kitchen to hide them.
“A sawbuck,” whispered Eddie to Tim. “If that’s your plan, it ain’t enough to get us out of here. And once the McGillicuddys get wind of this J. P. Morgan stuff, they’ll be poundin’ on the door.”
“I know.”
“Only one thing to do.” Eddie took a furtive look into the kitchen, then pulled a bullet from his shirt pocket and held it up.
Tim shook his head. This was not a step he was ready to take. “If we can find the rest of the bonds, we can sell them to Morgan. If he give us ten dollars for every one, that would be two hundred dollars.”
“It ain’t enough.”
“It’ll have to be. I ain’t shootin’ anybody.”
THE RILEY FAMILY sat for the rest of evening in their steaming little flat.
Tim tried to read a copy of the Times that he had found on the street. His hands were so sweaty that the ink turned his fingertips black.
Eddie twitched about, and every time he heard a noise outside, he got up and looked down, as if he might see his harmonica being passed like a bottle among the Boyle gang.
The mother hunched over her sewing machine and got down to her piecework for the night. Her foot pumped the pedal. The big gears turned. The small gears spun. And she stopped only to wipe away the sweat or push her stringy hair back around her ears.
The sound had always been like music to the boys, as calming as their mother’s song. But that night, the steady whir, punctuated by the clicks and clacks and clatters, simply made them more nervous.
Finally, Eddie jerked his head at Tim—let’s go downstairs.
“Unh-unh,” said Tim. “Let’s stay right here.”
“Well”—Eddie got up and clomped to the door—“I’m goin’ to the outhouse.”
“Use the chamber pot, why don’t you,” said their mother. “Then get into bed.”
“I need more than the pot, Ma.”
The mother nodded and kept sewing.
Tim wondered if he should go after his brother. Then he went back to the paper.
Then a thought struck him. If his brother had the bullets in his pocket, where was the gun? He slid his hand beneath the sofa cushion, but he felt nothing. He moved to the other side, but . . .
A train was coming. The picture of Jesus was rattling on the wall. The rumble was growing louder. So, as Tim fumbled among the sofa cushions, he did not know if he heard the sound of gunshot or a leftover firecracker.
His mother did not react, so maybe it was a firecracker.
“What are you lookin’ for?” she asked.
“Nothin’. I . . . unh . . . I must’ve et what Eddie did. I need to go to the privy.”
He rushed down the stairs to the first floor just as Mr. Flaherty poked his head out.
“Hey, Timmy,” he asked. “Did you just hear a firecracker?”
“No, sir,” said Tim, and he kept going.
Down in the yard, there were three outhouses to serve the whole building. Tim pulled open one of the doors: empty.
A second door: empty.
Someone shouted out a window, “You kids better not light off any more of them damn things, or I’ll come down and give somebody a beatin’!”
A third door: Tim jumped back at a sight so terrifying that he almost ran. A man was sitting with his pants at his ankles and a bullet hole drilled into the middle of his forehead. Then Tim realized it was no man. It was Dinny Boyle.
Tim whispered his name, but Dinny just stared straight ahead.
So Tim slammed the outhouse door and looked up into the fire escapes.
Where was Eddie?
Had he gone up? Or had he headed for McGillicuddy’s on the street?
Tim remembered what Eddie had said: no one would expect a crip to walk in and start shooting. So he ran back through the tenement and out onto Forty-eighth and up to Ninth Avenue.
At the corner, he looked down the block toward McGillicuddy’s, but he did not see the silhouette of Eddie on his crutch. Ninth Avenue was quiet, except for a few passing drays. At night, New York lived its bright life along Broadway, or down at Fourteenth Street, or on the Bowery. What night life there was in Hell’s Kitchen lurked in the shadows.
Tim ran down to McGillicuddy’s, but this time he slowed before stepping in front of the window. He pulled close to the wall, took off his hat, and peered in.
Mother Mag was wiping a spill from the bar. Slick was drinking a beer with a foot on the newly polished brass rail. Strong was still sitting at a side table. Sunny Jim Maguire had joined him for a late-night conversation. The other drinkers had gone home.
And there was Uncle Billy, collecting spittoons and pouring the oily streams of brown and silver spit into a single bucket.
Then Tim heard a voice behind him.
“Timmy! Timmy!” It was Doreen.
“What are you doin’ here?” whispered Tim. “Go home.”
“I watched all night to see if you’d come out. I had to tell you . . . I heard what Dinny Boyle said about Eddie bein’ sweet on me.”
Tim made a gesture with his hand—quiet. “Go home. This ain’t a place for a girl.”
“Why? What’s goin’ on?” She tried to step around him and look into the saloon.
Tim grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back out of the light. “Go home.”
“Why? You don’t want me to see your uncle cleanin’ spittoons or somethin’? Everybody knows. The kids all call him Billy-spit.”
“I don’t care what they call him. Just go. Go or I’ll smack you.”
She stepped back in shock. “I just come to tell you, to tell you—”
“Tell me what?”
“That I ain’t sweet on Eddie.”
“Okay. That’s great.” Tim peered again into the saloon.
“I’m sweet on you.”
Tim looked into her eyes and saw tears glistening. “You are? Well . . . I’m sweet on you, too. But if you don’t get out of here, I won’t ever talk to you again.”
“You mean you won’t walk me home?”
He wanted to walk her home more than anything. But he said, “Go on. Beat it.”
That was when he heard a sound vibrating through the iron fire escape above him. He looked up.
So did Doreen.
Somehow, Eddie had gotten across the rooftops and was now climbing down. He had put his crazy plan into motion.
Tim said to Doreen, “This ain’t no place for a girl.” And he pushed her up the street.
She went a short distance, stopped, looked, then went a bit farther, stopped, turned, and faded into the darkness. . . .
Tim thought she was going, and his mind was now turning to his brother. He looked around and saw the awning pipe on the next building.
He could shimmy up the pipe, step on the cornice above the window and . . .
When Eddie reached the last level of the fire escape, right in front of the second-story windows and right above the entrance to McGillicuddy’s, Tim was waiting for him.
“Timmy! Jesus. You scared the shit out of me.”
“Did you shoot Dinny?” whispered Tim.
“I opened the door to go in and take a shit and there he was, so—”
“So you shot him?”
“No. He told me to get out of there and called me a nancy-boy.”
“So what did you do?”
“I said, ‘Oopsie-daisy.’ Then I shot him. He’s dead, hunh?”
“As dead as Lincoln. Give me the gun. We got to get rid of it.”
“I ain’t done with it.”
A train squealed south out of the Fiftieth Street Station. From where the boys lurked, they could look straight into the light that the engine aimed along the tracks.
Tim tried to push his brother up to the next level of the fire escape.
Eddie pushed back and tried to release the bolt that held the ladder that led to the sidewalk.
“Don’t do that,” said Tim
“This is our chance. The train’s comin’. They can’t hear us.”
The rumble was growing into a roar. The light was flickering, widening, sending flashes onto the faces of the buildings on both sides of the street.
Eddie got his fingers on the bolt . . . just as Tim got his hands on the pistol in Eddie’s belt . . . just as the train thundered past . . . just as Uncle Billy appeared below them with a bucket of spit in his hand.
The bolt came out. The pistol came loose. The lights in the passenger cars flashed and flickered. And for a few seconds, the sound of the train felt like a solid thing, heavy enough to crush two boys against the darkened second-story window.
Then Tim grabbed for the pistol. And Eddie grabbed for Tim. Tim fell against the ladder. And the ladder began to slide. Then the pistol fell through the opening and tumbled toward the street.
As Uncle Billy tossed the contents of the bucket into the gutter, the iron ladder dropped behind him. The pistol hit the sidewalk an instant later.
“Fuck!” said Eddie.
Uncle Billy turned, saw the ladder, then the pistol. Then he looked up and dropped the bucket in shock. “Timmy? Eddie? What the—”
Tim climbed halfway down the ladder and held out his hand. “Give me the gun.”
Billy picked it up and looked at it, then he looked again at the two desperate boys on the fire escape.
That was when Slick McGillicuddy appeared at the front door. “What the fuck is goin’ on out here?” He stepped out onto the sidewalk. He saw Tim on the ladder. He saw the pistol in Billy’s hand. And he said it again. “What the fuck?”
And something snapped in Billy Donovan, as if he suddenly saw a way to erase all the insults of a lifetime and all the embarrassment of befriending these thugs and all the shame of knowing that his blabbermouth ways had caused the death of Six-Pound Dick and endangered his whole family.
Without another word, he raised the pistol and shot Slick McGillicuddy right in the forehead.
Slick’s derby flew off and
landed with a rattle on the floor of the saloon.
Slick dropped like a hod of bricks.
Then Billy stepped over Slick and followed the derby into the saloon.
The train was receding quickly now. The city had swallowed the roar, and the last cars sent a clickety-clack-clickety-clack echoing through the rails.
Strong and Sunny Jim were standing as Billy strode in. Strong was pulling a pistol from under the table and was stepping forward. Sunny Jim was stepping away.
Billy put a bullet into Strong’s chest, stopping him where he stood.
Sunny Jim turned and ran for the rear door, so Billy shot him in the back. The politician took another few steps and fell flat on his face.
By now, Tim and Eddie had both dropped to the sidewalk and were watching wide-eyed as Mother Mag pulled the sawed-off shotgun from behind the bar.
Eddie screamed, “Uncle Billy, look out!”
Billy turned and aimed.
But Mother Mag fired first, blasting a spray of shot that tore into Billy and struck the staggering body of her own son, too.
Strong hit the floor.
Billy hit the wall . . . then the floor.
And the room fell silent.
For a moment, the only sound was the distant squeal of the train arriving at Forty-second Street.
Mother Mag broke the shotgun and dropped two smoking shells onto the floor. She was muttering to herself, as if this were no more than a spilled beer bucket, a mess to clean up. “Fuckin’ Billy Donovan tellin’ fuckin’ stories about fuckin’ funny money. So we give him a fuckin’ job and this is the fuckin’ thanks we get.”
As she reloaded, she came out from behind the bar in her trousers and cowboy boots. She looked at Strong and poked him with her foot. “Son? Son?” But he did not move.
So she turned to Billy. His face and the apron covering his belly were splattered with buckshot holes seeping blood. He was gasping for breath.
She pointed the shotgun. “Fuckin’ weasel is what you are.”
And with the last life left in him, Billy Donovan raised the pistol and fired twice. The first shot hit her in the chest and staggered her. The second struck her in the face and blew off the top of her head.
Mother Mag fell backward through the settling mist of her own blood and brain and hit the floor, as dead as her sons.
City of Dreams Page 29