“I just think he needs to pay more attention to you,” Violet said. “Spend more time with you.”
“George’s moods run hot and cold, but he’s a good man,” Lily said. “Never laid a hand on me, and that’s the truth.”
That last bit of news did little to ease Violet’s anxiety. “I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about you once you had that ring on your finger.”
“Always worry about me. I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Lily said as she started her turn onto North Main Avenue. “But trust me. You don’t have to worry about George.”
“I hope not.” Violet worried about Lily, though it was Daisy she was most concerned about. If George had known he fathered her, he was a cad for abandoning Lily in her time of need. If he didn’t know, he might try to claim the little girl if he found out now.
“Look!” Lily pointed to the Silkman house up on the left. “Is that Abigail on the porch?” She squinted. “Should I wave?”
“Pay attention to your driving,” Violet said.
“If it’s Abigail, I should wave.” Lily leaned up over the steering wheel, veering into the middle of the road.
“Watch out!” Violet pulled on the wheel just as a milkman’s horse crested the hill in the opposite direction.
Lily slammed on her brake and skidded to a stop in time to hear an abundance of obscenities streaming from the milkman as he continued down the road.
“Thank goodness,” Lily said, once she got the car going again. “It was only one of the housemaids.”
Violet stared open-mouthed at her sister.
“Don’t be like that,” Lily said. “I just mean it would have been worse if it had been Abigail on the porch.”
“Do you know how serious that almost was?”
“No harm done.” Lily’s relief quickly dissolved into worry. “Not a word of this to George, do you hear me?”
Violet just shook her head.
When they reached the corner of Main and Market, Lily carefully waited until all traffic had passed before making the left-hand turn. “No sense tempting fate,” she said. Halfway down the hill, both sisters saw the picket squad, but it was too late to turn around.
* * *
The noon whistle blew at the Lace Works, momentarily drowning out Eddie Parker’s rant. When the note ran out of steam, he started up again. “I’ll give you one last chance!” Eddie lifted his son with one arm and pointed out the blood-matted hair with the other. The child squirmed under his father’s unyielding grip. “Which one of you cowards done this to my boy?” When no one answered, he turned on Stanley. “Don’t you go protecting that son of a bitch. Hand him over or I’ll kill the whole lot of them!”
“And I’ll help!” someone shouted from behind. Several of the men near Eddie echoed the sentiment.
Stanley scanned the picket line, as if considering the request. “We’ve made our point, fellows. Let’s call it a day.” He motioned for the strikers to clear out, but they refused to budge.
“This is your doing.” Tommy stepped forward and thumped Stanley on the chest.
Stanley’s eyes narrowed. “How do you figure that?”
“You’re a lawyer, not a miner. This isn’t your fight.”
“You don’t say.” Stanley raised his handless arm and pointed the stump at Tommy. “From where I’m standing, looks like I have more of a right than most.”
Both men glared at each other and held their ground.
“I still want to know who done this to my boy!” Eddie yelled.
“Take Buddy home,” Tommy said, “before the troopers get here and start breaking bones.”
Eddie paused. “This ain’t over,” he finally said, but he started up Market Street with his son in his arms. “Not by a long shot.”
Eddie’s departure seemed to take the fight out of the other men who’d been working in the mine. “We have a shift to finish,” Tommy said, still scowling. “Keep this up,” he looked at Stanley, “and someone’s bound to get killed.” He started walking back to toward the cage, but shouted, “And that’ll be on your head!”
“We’re all on the same side here,” Stanley called out as the miners walked away. “Solidarity forever!”
“Solidarity forever!” the strikers repeated with fists raised.
Stanley turned toward them. “An injury to one . . .” he said, his face bright red, and waited for the response.
“Is an injury to all!” the men returned.
Stanley looked over and saw Judson Woodberry, the reporter from the Scranton Times, pull out his pad. “It’s time to stand up to the mine owners,” Stanley shouted, “who profit from your sweat but refuse to pay you fairly for it!” Stanley made sure his voice carried as far as Tommy and the other men still walking toward the cage. “They take your limbs, your breath, your life, but it’s not enough for them! Twelve hours a day, six days a week! And if they could talk the Almighty out of that day of rest, they’d make it seven! It’s time to say, Enough!”
“Enough!” the crowd echoed.
“There he is!” someone in the crowd hollered, and pointed to a blue LaSalle coming down Market Street.
“It’s Sherman, that son of a bitch!” a second man shouted as he lobbed a rock at the car. It skipped past the torpedo hood ornament and disappeared somewhere near the right tire fender.
A more accurate arm launched the next rock directly through the windshield. The automobile shot forward, and the crowd scattered like buckshot.
The driver jerked the wheel, slammed the brake, and skidded off the road toward the embankment and the river below. Screams filled the air—women’s screams—as the car rammed a dying evergreen. The trunk crumpled, and the upper two-thirds of the tree fell backward into the water. The fractured stump alone held the coupe in place, its front tires resting inches from the twenty-foot drop.
“It’s the wife’s car!” shouted Eddie, who was closest to the scene. He put his son down and looked through the opening where the windshield belonged. “Mrs. Sherman and her sister!”
“Violet!” Stanley yelled, already sprinting toward the mangled vehicle. A few men followed at his heels, though most of them either stayed put or slipped away.
With some effort, Eddie managed to wrench the driver’s door free from its buckled frame. Lily sat dazed, but alive. “You hurt anywheres?” Eddie looked her over top to bottom.
“Violet,” she said, turning to her sister slumped against the door, unconscious.
The tree stump groaned as it shouldered the vehicle’s weight.
“Let’s get you away from here,” Eddie said, lifting Lily out of the car and onto the sidewalk.
“Violet,” she called again.
Stanley reached the passenger side and yanked the door open, catching Violet as she spilled halfway out. “Wake up,” he cried. Part of the tree stump splintered under the pressure, and the car lurched forward another inch or two. Stanley eased Violet the rest of the way out and held her in his arms. “Don’t you do this,” he muttered. “Wake up.” He used his sleeve to dab at a thin line of blood on Violet’s forehead, where a knot was beginning to form. “This can’t happen.”
Violet stirred, her eyes still closed as if savoring the last few seconds of a pleasant sleep. “Stanley,” she whispered, nuzzling his chest, breathing him in. “Don’t cry, my love,” she said, opening her eyes and holding his gaze briefly. “Stanley.” She smiled and closed her lids again. Then her eyes shot open a second time, and she blinked to clear them. “Stanley,” she repeated, her voice now thick with confusion.
“Don’t try to talk,” he said, stroking her hair. “I love you.”
“Get . . . away . . . from . . . my . . . wife,” Tommy said, giving each word plenty of emphasis.
Violet sat up slowly, painfully, and took in the scene. The crashed car. Lily, watching a few feet away. Tommy, towering over her.
“I just had to see . . .” Stanley’s explanation trailed off. With Violet sitting on her own, he stood up and backed aw
ay.
Tommy crouched down alongside Violet and inspected the lump on her head. He swallowed hard, damming up the tears. “Are you all right?” he quietly managed.
“I’m not sure.” Violet’s half-smile turned into a wince. “It hurts to breathe.”
“Don’t move.” Tommy looked up as a fire truck from the station at the top of the hill pulled up alongside them on the road. “Help is here.”
“You’re here,” she said. “That’s what matters.”
Tommy pressed his lips against her cheek, and they both started to tremble. “I thought I lost you.” His tears broke loose and dampened both of their faces.
“I’m right here,” she soothed, and watched as Stanley turned and walked away.
Chapter twenty-one
GEORGE FELT UNEASY as he inched his LaSalle across the rutted back road that would take him off mine property and onto Green Ridge Street. It was almost noon, and Stanley Adamski and his gang of rabble-rousers were picketing over at the main entrance on Market Street. It was only a matter of time before the situation boiled over, yet George knew he had to get downtown by twelve o’clock in order to make sure this would be the first and only strike on his watch at the Sherman Mine. Since some of the men had joined that rogue union, they’d started grumbling more loudly than usual, so George had worked out a plan to solve his labor problem once and for all.
Of course, solving the problem meant convincing Little Frankie to buy into the plan, if he could even call it a plan, and that wouldn’t be easy. They hadn’t spoken in almost six years, since the day of the hayride, back when George was a freshman in college. Everyone in the neighborhood had known that Frankie was sweet on Lily, so when George left her on the blanket that afternoon to run after Janetta, Frankie never forgave him. And in a begrudging kind of way, George admired him for his convictions, even if they were wasted on a girl.
Publicly, a man like George, a deacon in his church, a pillar of his community, had no business fraternizing with the likes of Franco Colangelo. But in this case George couldn’t pull his usual political strings, which meant he had to take an underhanded approach. Federal agents were still shining a spotlight on Scranton’s government five years after rounding up seventy-eight men on racketeering charges—a former mayor, the Civil Service commissioner, and a chief of police among them. They had been getting kickbacks from a slot machine syndicate operating within city limits. A syndicate that included Franco Colangelo, though so far the feds had missed his part in it. Frankie had turned out to be quite the businessman, with interests in prostitution, gambling, and untaxed liquor.
It took George almost two weeks to set up the meeting with Frankie. Not that he was hard to find. For someone in charge of such questionable enterprises, he was a fairly visible man. He drove to Mass at St. Peter’s each morning and ate his noon meal at the Electric City Lunch every day but Sunday.
George’s hesitation had to do with an aversion to getting his hands dirty. He’d learned early on to rely on other people for that. He also had a distaste for treating a Guinea like Franco Colangelo as an equal—Little Frankie, the greasy kid with the big ears who used to supply the Green Ridge boys with his uncle’s wine. The thought of it turned George’s stomach.
He pulled up in front of the Mayfair Hotel, directly across the street from Frankie’s usual haunt. The clock at the courthouse two blocks away started to chime the twelve o’clock hour. As George turned off the engine, he had another thought. He hoped he wouldn’t run into his wife and that sister of hers while they were downtown. When Lily had mentioned the shopping trip that morning, George had tried to talk her out of it, but to no avail. Nothing to be done about it now. He reached into the glove compartment for his pistol, then decided against taking it inside. A good faith gesture. He needed Frankie to trust him.
George made his way across the street, inhaling the aroma of hot dogs sizzling on the grill inside the Electric City Lunch. The green-and-white-tiled building anchored the corner of Penn and Linden, with entrances on both streets. A sandwich board usually stood out front with the message, Scranton’s Best Texas Wieners, but someone must have swiped it again. Probably one of the cooks from Coney Island, George thought. Coney Island was a wiener joint down on Lackawanna Avenue that made the same claim.
Although George had only been in the restaurant a handful of times, he loved to watch Gino, the cook, at work. Gino stood behind the counter, slicing each hot dog lengthwise, careful to leave the halves hinged, so when he tossed them on the grill, they’d land facedown like half-read books. No one waited on you at the Electric City Lunch. You could sit in a booth, at a table, or on one of the stools along the counter, but if you wanted to be served, you had to stand in line. Fortunately for his customers, Gino moved with a speed that seemed inconceivable, given his girth. He tucked the finished dogs into their buns, smothered them in mustard and onions, and finished them off in a chili sauce so spicy that Gino would often hand a plate across the counter and say, “Now tell me that doesn’t have a bite.” Thanks to Gino, people from all walks of life frequented the place—businessmen, shopgirls, beat cops . . . and Frankie.
* * *
Franco Colangelo did more than spend time at the Electric City Lunch. He owned it, and the second-floor betting parlor too. The house always made a healthy profit, but unlike some of his competitors, Franco threw a few more wins in the direction of his customers. “Keep ’em happy,” he’d say, whenever someone in the organization questioned his methods, “keep ’em coming back.”
The afternoon regulars. Franco stood in the doorway of his office, surveying the dozen or so men scattered about on rows of wooden chairs that faced the racing board in front. Black Mike, nicknamed for his Sicilian heritage, adjusted his earpiece as he worked the board, calling a horse race out of Kentucky. Over to the left, two men stood behind glass, ready to take the next round of wagers.
Not bad for a kid from Bull’s Head. A gambling parlor, the wiener joint, a couple of whorehouses down in the next alley over, a few dozen slot machines, and a stake in the liquor trade—all by the age of twenty-three. And if he played his cards right, a chance to expand his territory into Jersey by early spring. Money equaled power, and lucky for Frankie, he had both. Police departments, local politicians, and pillars of the church in his pocket. Everything a man could want.
Almost everything.
One of Gino’s sons, the younger one with the knock-knees, came pounding up the steps and over to the office. “That fellow you’re waiting for just walked in, Mr. Colangelo.”
“Mr. Colangelo,” George echoed from the top of stairwell. “Has a nice ring to it.” He paused to inspect the scene, and nodded. “Not bad.” He crossed the room and tousled the boy’s hair.
Franco tipped his head, prompting Gino’s son to leave the men alone.
“How are you, Frankie?” George’s extended hand hung in the air.
“George Sherman.” Franco’s lips curled up as he finally took the proffered hand. “Look what the cat dragged in.” The men locked eyes and laughed guardedly. “Come on in.” Inside the office Frankie gestured for George to sit on the leather club chair. Frankie moved to a mahogany desk on the opposite wall, stopping briefly to shut a door to a small adjoining bedroom. “What brings you here, George?”
“No beating around the bush, Frankie. That’s what I always liked about you.”
“And here I thought it was my uncle’s vino.” He laced his fingers and cupped the back of his head. “What do you want?”
At that angle, George couldn’t help but notice the perfect seams on Frankie’s black serge suit. Expensive. Custom-made. Italian, most likely. And that lining peeking through—pure silk. George had to hand it to Frankie. He’d figured out how to dress the part. Had anyone else been sitting behind that desk, George would have asked for the name of his tailor.
“You know why you don’t like me, Frankie?” He reached toward the edge of the desk and mindlessly picked up a gold-plated tabletop cigarette lig
hter. “Because I knew you when you were poor.” He pressed a square button on the side of the lighter. The top automatically glided open and the flame ignited. George shook his head. “Nothing you can do about that.”
Frankie pushed a matching cigarette case forward. “I wish I had time to reminisce,” he said, opening the lid, “but my father doesn’t own a mine. I have to work for a living.”
George glanced back at the betting parlor. “Is that what they call it?” He laughed as he waved off the cigarettes. “I suppose pulling a trigger is work.” He placed the lighter back on the desk. “Of course, it’s not my place to judge.”
“You flatter me.”
“My mistake.”
“You know why you don’t like me, George?” Frankie tapped a cigarette out of the case and lit it. “Because I’m a self-made man.” He took a drag before adding, “That’s something you’ll never be.”
“Well, you have me there, Frankie. Then again, I’ll never be an alligator wrangler, and I don’t imagine I’ll miss that either.”
“Is it a loan you need, Georgie? I’m not used to giving handouts,” Frankie stood up and pulled a money-clipped wad of bills out of his pants pocket, “but I can make an exception in your case.”
“Here’s the thing,” George’s tone deepened, suggesting a seriousness of sorts, “according to my sources, the feds are sniffing around your operations.”
“And here I thought your sources were doing time for racketeering.”
“Nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” George pressed his lips into a smile. “You need me, Frankie. You know you do. You can pay off the cops from here to kingdom come, but once the federal government moves in, you’re on your own. Unless . . .”
“Unless?” Frankie slipped the bills back into his pocket and took his seat.
“Unless,” George nodded to a black rotary telephone on Frankie’s desk, “I call a buddy of mine in Washington who can put the feds on a completely different track. A Maryland track, for example. Or better yet, Florida. I’m sure that kind of sunshine makes them do all sorts of things that need investigating.”
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