Tiernan tightened his grip along the edge of the jacket. His large knuckles dug into the boy’s throat. “You didn’t do nuthin’, what, you little guinea bastard.” There was a dangerous edge to Tiernan’s voice. His eyes searched the upturned face for something to confirm his suspicion.
Angelo DiSantini was a dark-browed, black-haired boy of about seventeen. He breathed through slightly parted lips and his white teeth flashed, then clenched tightly over the words which nearly slipped out. Brian caught it all: the naked fury, the burning anger, the held-in rippling power of the compact, well-built body.
Thick black lashes closed over his eyes, which had filled with hatred, then opened slowly. With careful, obvious control, in a voice just inside the thin line between respect and contempt, Angelo said to Tiernan, “I didn’t do nuthin’, Mr. Tiernan.”
Tiernan shoved the boy away from him and laughed shortly. “Your father didn’t do nuthin’ to your mother to bring you into the world.”
Angelo’s body tensed; his breath came in a slow, whistling intake, and without moving, he seemed to rise and swell. One of his friends, seated on the step above him, reached out, pressed a stubby hand on Angelo’s shoulder, warned him, cautioned him, held him.
Tiernan’s stick tapped the knuckles of the restraining hand sharply and the hand was withdrawn. “Someday, you little wop bastards. Someday.” It was a promise and a warning. Tiernan’s eyes ranged over them for a moment. Then he reached out at random, pulled one of the boys to his feet and told them all, “Okay, get lost, you little bums. I’ll be passing this dump again in five minutes and I don’t want to see none of your greaseball faces around here.”
They moved silently, single file, through the crowded street. The bright shiny colors of their jackets appeared and disappeared, flittered like butterflies through the grays and blacks and then they were gone.
Brian’s mouth was dry and he didn’t know what to say or think.
When Tiernan spoke to him again, his voice was friendly, pleasant, informative, instructive. “Ya see, kid, ya gotta keep on top of them, know what I mean? Them little bastards, they’d take over if you let them. Bunch a’ little thieves and fuckers is all they are. That kid Angelo, his big brother’s doing time for stabbing a guy with an ice pick. Their old man was an iceman and he was a hard-working sonuvabitch. Poor bastard slipped one day in the icehouse, musta been a heart attack. Went down like a ton and fractured his skull. Down on Fulton Street, you know? By the fish markets. They never did figure which killed him, the heart or the head. Far as I’m concerned, you can’t hurt a guinea if you crack his head and he got no heart to begin with.”
Tiernan laughed at his own joke, then continued. “Yeah, he was a hard-workin’ guy. But the kids are nothin’ but garbage. One of them will end up in the chair; my money’s on Angelo. The mother can’t manage them. Four more besides the first two. Christ, one time last summer, I caught that little bum helping himself to some plums offa old lady Weissman’s fruit stand. Well the mother musta been at the window and seen it too, because she comes runnin’ down and gets to the kid the minute I grab him. We was like pullin’ him between us back and forth. She gets him loose from me, and Christ, she got one of them big heavy wooden spoons they use to cook their spaghetti. And she began beating the kid with it. She’s hitting him on the head and on the back and on the ass and she whacked him one on the face and split his eyebrow. I thought she’d kill the kid. I finally got them into the hallway and told her, okay, I wouldn’t take him in that time. See, that’s what got her so scared, you know. She’s got one up; she don’t want to see another go.”
Tiernan rolled a piece of Juicy Fruit gum into a wad and shoved it into his mouth. He sighed philosophically. “The kid’ll go one day, though. You can make book on it.”
He strolled along, nodded at merchants, fingered bolts of material idly as they went. At a fruit wagon, he selected a small pear, offered one to Brian, who refused.
Brian watched Tiernan pocket another pear for later. He thought about Angelo DiSantini and the encounter left him with a roiling uneasiness which he did not like. There were far more years between him and Tiernan than between him and Angelo DiSantini.
He felt a flash of anger, a sudden sharp understanding and empathy and an awareness that he had been made a party to something which left him vaguely ashamed. He also realized that Angelo DiSantini had displayed not only self-control but a street wariness that Brian would not have been able to manage under similar circumstances.
There had been a hard look of pride in the boy’s dark face, and Tiernan’s triumph, though on the surface obvious and undisputed, did not really exist for Angelo DiSantini. He had just done what he had to do under the circumstances. Brian felt that the boy was more than the contemptuous punk who Tiernan dismissed so easily.
It was something Brian had seen for himself; something Tiernan hadn’t pointed out and didn’t know himself. It had been his own first private street lesson, self-observed and self-learned. He felt a little better and turned his attention back to Tiernan.
“You see that old guy there, the real old guy all dressed in black? They say he’s ninety-three years old. Old Man Moses they call him. Sharp as a tack though and tough as hell.”
The clothing hung on the emaciated frame and seemed to have aged along with the body. There were greenish spots and gray patches and the elbows of the thin black suit were shiny. The small yarmulkah was a black spot set on the top of a full head of yellowish white hair. Bobby pins held it in place along the edges.
“So, nu, vas machst du?” Tiernan asked the old man solicitously.
“Ah, so who got good things to say?” The old man blinked rapidly and his hand trembled as he wiped his reddened eyes with a filthy handkerchief. “You need maybe some needles?” He dug into the cardboard carton which rested precariously on an orange crate.
“Not today, Pop, thanks. See you in schul.” He told Brian, “The old man’s got three sons who are all rabbis. You know, that’s like priests. And each of them got three sons, and about half of them are rabbis. Very religious people, them. Now, all of them wanted the old man to come and live with them, but he’s a very independent guy. He won’t go live with nobody. He lives in a room on the first floor, across the street there, at 121. What I do is, if I don’t see him for a day or two, and the weather is nice and all, well, I give a tap on his door. See, once about five or six years ago, the old man had a heart attack. He was all alone and his landlady found him. That’s how I know about the family and all. See, I had to get in touch with them and notify them. So, I kinda keep an eye on him. Apartment two. It’s what’s called a mitzva.”
“What’s that?” Brian asked.
Tiernan smiled. “They call it a good deed, the Jews do. You know, like one you do for free. I don’t know if it counts for us, but what the hell, it can’t hurt, right?”
Tiernan pointed out different precinct landmarks. Up there, top floor, that’s where “Three-Finger” Louie Klein got caught by the feds during Prohibition; over there, see that corner bar, that’s where Ed Kelly, you know Ed Kelly, that’s where he took two gunmen, shot it out with them, killed them both but not before Ed got a slug in his right leg.
“You notice the way Ed Kelly walks? He got a slight shuffle. They never did get the slug out of him.”
They came upon a quadrangle of weathered benches, occupied by heavy old women and thin old men and women with baby carriages and toddlers.
“See that park over there? You ever heard of Lefty Quinn? Ah, you’re just a kid, but Lefty Quinn, Jeez, he was an old-timer. A con man, Christ, the guy made and lost a million bucks in his lifetime and never done a day’s work. Well, one time Lefty got mixed up with some heavy stuff. I don’t remember exactly; it was to do with passing off some hot money. These were strong-armers, you know, and Lefty got chicken shit and wanted out when he realized he was playing in the wrong league.
“So Lefty played canary to the feds. See, it was a bank caper, and the feds
was able to round them all up. It was planned that Lefty would take a fall too, you know, so the strong-arm pals wouldn’t think he’d crossed them. Well, he wasn’t a kid no more, and at the last, he did a disappearing act, but it was a dumb move because he tipped his hand to his partners’ buddies. Right over there”—Tiernan pointed with his stick—“right where the old woman is sitting, they found old Lefty Quinn. Christ, they left him all propped up, tied him into a sitting position. His head was half blowed off, and they left a bunch a’ dead birds in his lap and in his pockets.”
Tiernan laughed suddenly. “Jesus, we had a guy then, Kelcy, a real nut on pets and animals and stuff, you know. He seen Lefty Quinn sitting there like that and you know what he says? He says, ‘What a fucking shame they had to go and kill all them poor innocent little birds!’”
When they came upon a drunk, more often than not Tiernan knew him by first name if not by last, and in some cases he had a fairly comprehensive history of the man.
“Sometimes we just let them sleep it off,” Tiernan told him, “but tonight the sergeant said to round them up. See this here guy, Brian? Would you believe that this bum was once the vice-president of a bank? God’s truth, O’Malley. When the crash come, this guy lost everything. His wife walked out on him and his grown kids, just left him.”
They peered down at the bundled body; it might have been a heap of old clothing tossed against some garbage cans until a long sigh emanated from beneath what appeared to be folded arms.
Tiernan pushed against the man with the tip of his shoe. “Hey, Johnnie, you okay? Hey, Johnnie, how’s tricks? Let’s get a look at you.”
The man tried to scramble along the sidewalk in a series of frantic, ineffective movements. Tiernan squatted beside him and his tone was surprisingly soft and gentle. “Easy does it, Johnnie, take it easy. Nobody’s gonna hurt you.” He looked up at Brian. “Take a good look, kid. Ain’t he a beaut?”
There were raw patches on the man’s forehead and nose. Blood was caked and matted along the stubble of his cheeks and chin. His lips were swollen and dry and split and his eyes, staring into Tiernan’s flashlight, were glassy and frightened.
“You ain’t gonna be sick on me, are you, pal?” Tiernan drew back slightly. “Don’t he smell good, Brian? What’d you do, pee in your pants, Johnnie? Relax, nobody’s gonna hurt you. But if you stay here, someone’s gonna come along and take them shoes right off your feet, you know that. Tell you what,” Tiernan said reasonably, “how about we take you in, judge gives you some time to clean up? McFee is sitting tonight.” He turned again to Brian. “He’s a real honey. Always asks these guys what they want. You know, how much time they need to straighten out. Johnnie here, from the looks of him, could use sixty days.” He winked at Brian.
The man pulled at Tiernan’s arm and made an attempt to rise. “Nah, nah, not sixty. Too much. Thirty do me fine. Thirty.”
“Atta boy, Johnnie.” Tiernan held the man at arm’s length and helped pull him to his feet “You don’t smell so good, ya know?”
They rounded up twelve derelicts, sat them on the quadrangle of benches where the infamous Lefty Quinn met his bloody fate and waited for the wagon to collect them.
For days, Brian tried to get the pervasive odor of corroding flesh from his nostrils and skin.
TWENTY
ON HIS FIRST SOLO four-to-twelve tour, Brian O’Malley was assigned to lock up Molly the Pretzel Lady.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of himself as he strode past the plate-glass window of Ratner’s restaurant. He looked pretty damn good in his uniform. He was getting a little accustomed to the strangeness of the Lower East Side; it was at least as different from his own world as the Hack Harlem to which Francis Kelly had been sent and they consciously collected bits of information to exchange with each other.
Some of the other policemen taught him some essential Yiddish phrases; McGarry and his partner Flynn were both old-timers and both fairly fluent. However, what they taught Brian was a collection of the filthy phrases in the language, with instructions to make friends with the nice old Jewish lady who ran the bakery on Sheriff Street. Her face had gone first white and then red before he realized not what he was saying but that he shouldn’t be saying it in the first place.
He hoped to God that Molly the Pretzel Lady spoke English. Even more emphatically, he hoped that Molly the Pretzel Lady had packed her wares and gone somewhere off his post.
She stood with her two huge cartons of thick doughy pretzels against her body and successfully blocked the entrance to the BMT subway station. She was a short, fat, round-faced old woman whose shapeless body was covered by various layers of garments. A faded babushka covered her head and most of her forehead. As people approached the subway entrance, Molly’s hand reached out swiftly, grasped a sleeve, jammed a pretzel into an unsuspecting hand. While the one strong hand clung to the sleeve relentlessly, the other turned palm up and waited impatiently for the demanded two cents. Most people gave it to her as the price for their release. Those who refused had the pretzel snatched from them and were given a slight shove along with a few muttered words.
It was five-fifteen, exactly the time Sergeant Weber told Patrolman O’Malley to apprehend Molly the Pretzel Lady.
“Okay, lady,” he said quietly, feeling just a little embarrassed. “Business is over for today.”
She ignored him completely and continued her operation. She sold three pretzels and snatched back two. Brian finally planted himself firmly between Molly and her prospective customers.
“Look, go avay now, come back lader, den I got my day’s in, but: not now! Out of my way, move!”
Brian wished she would stop leaning around him and offering her wares for sale. “Sorry, lady. You’re in. Right now. Let’s go.”
Without warning, the old woman threw her head back and opened her mouth and screamed. Brian looked around, alarmed. People stopped along the street and on the subway stairs to watch. Molly’s hands clutched at the babushka, pulled it from her head, which was covered with scanty gray hair which she started to pull and yank.
Brian leaned close to her. “Hey, look, lady, calm down, will you?”
Her small eyes blinked rapidly and she squinted up at him. She motioned for him to come closer and Brian caught a whiff of onions and fish and garlic, a sour staleness, as she whispered frantically at him.
“Look, I give you a liddle something, for you should come back one hour, yah?” When he shook his head, Molly clenched her dirty fist at him and screamed over her shoulder to her audience, “This shmuck, he wants I should give to him five dollars, this shmuck. He should rot in hell, from an old woman he would steal. Gonif! Gonif!”
As she spoke, she collected her cartons, wound ropes securely around them; she stopped, reached around Brian and sold two more pretzels and jammed the pennies into the bulging, jangling pocket of her heavy gray sweater. She looped the rough cord through her arms and dragged the large boxes. She stopped every few feet to smack her ample bust, gasp, wheeze, roll her eyes. Brian, towering above the old woman, felt the angry glances around him.
“Here, lady, gimme those damn boxes.”
She dropped them, shoved them toward him and muttered, “Sure, sure, he takes from me my living, what does he care?”
At the top of the steps to the precinct, Brian put the cartons down and told Molly to carry them. He was not about to march before the desk with cartons of pretzels dangling from each arm.
Molly shrugged, hoisted them easily, as though they were weightless, and shoved the heavy door open with her shoulder.
“So, Weber, is you den?” she addressed the desk sergeant in a loud, friendly voice. “What’s da madder, you got no crime to send your policemen to? They gotta bodder old ladies?”
Sergeant Weber peered over the top of his eyeglasses. “Molly, stop complaining. You ain’t been in for a month. Be fair now, you had a nice long run.”
She raised her hands to the high desk and strained forward. “So it makes yo
u sleep good you gimme a collar at five-fifteen? I don’t pay enough you should let me earn the rush hour?”
Brian waited uncertainly for Molly to finish. She shoved a few pretzels at Weber, but he shoved them back.
“So who’s sitting tonight, I should know how much a fine?”
Weber said, “Ya got Glittsman, Molly. Big deal, two-buck fine and you’re done for the month.”
Reconciled now, Molly turned to Brian. “So, nu, what’s the matter? Ya don’t know what to do next? Come on, I’ll show you.”
She practically booked herself: Molly Weisfogel; female; white; 64 years; born Kraków, Poland; 5’ 2”; 173 pounds; 120 Sheriff Street; peddler; no scars.
She sank down on a bench, leaned noisily against the wall and reached for a wrinkled copy of the Journal-American. One of the detectives glanced in, waved casually to Brian and continued on his way. Brian opened his tunic, ran his hand inside the collar of his heavy plaid shirt. Sergeant Weber stopped at the doorway, coffeepot in his hand.
“Relax, O’Malley, you gotta long wait until Night Court.”
“Yeah, you coulda let me have my rush hour. Weber, you’re a regular no-goodnik sometimes I think. So, you got some coffee ya gonna give me?”
Sergeant Weber said, “I’m just making it, Molly. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
About a half hour later, the detective Brian had seen before motioned him from the outer room. Brian gestured to Molly to get ready, but the detective shook his head. “Nah, the wagon’s not here yet. Listen, could I see you a minute, kid? Come on out here.”
Brian looked doubtfully toward Molly but the detective assured him, “Molly ain’t going nowhere, are you, Molly?”
The old woman waved an impatient hand at their nonsense and kept her face down into her newspaper, which she read, word by word, finger and lips moving steadily.
The detective was shorter than Brian by several inches, with a balding pate and worried forehead. His eyes moved constantly, alert, on guard against danger from any direction.
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