Law and Order

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  Because of his age, the old man’s case was dropped by an understanding judge.

  Because of his lack of integrity, that young district attorney was informed that charges of malfeasance would be brought against him unless he resigned forthwith.

  He resigned, forthwith.

  Joseph, the bookkeeper, also resigned.

  None of the Tulisis was ever heard of again.

  Patrick Joseph Crowley was heard of again. On several occasions, he proved his usefulness to Tommy Doolan in various ways. He handled himself with style; he knew when to lean without leaning too hard and without bringing attention to himself. He never asked questions beyond the scope of any given assignment. Not of Tommy Doolan, that is.

  What he did was ask questions of those who had no way of knowing that he didn’t already possess the information he sought; he gave the impression that he was “checking up” among those eager themselves to be cooperative. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Crowley collected facts and names and an understanding of how the city was really run. When he felt he had a strong enough foundation, he approached Tommy Doolan, with style. No threats or demands, just a statement to the effect that Patrick J. Crowley wanted more than just the odd job thrown, the bone tossed, to a reliable man. He wanted something steady that would lead to something worthwhile.

  And he wanted something that wouldn’t involve too much sweat for he’d sweated enough in his life already.

  A conference was held among those whose affairs had been handled, one way or another, by Pat Crowley. It was pointed out that it would be a perfect waste to get rid of Crowley through an unfortunate accident. The guy had sense and he had balls and he wanted his; as long as he knew the rules and played by them, well, God knew, a good loyal man was worth something. There was a job needed filling in the Building Department and that was where they sent him.

  Nine months after he left Knockraha, Patrick J. Crowley was on the payroll of the City of New York.

  Within a short time, Tommy Doolan decided that what Pat Crowley needed was a wife and the girl he had in mind just happened to be the daughter of his wife’s sister. Elizabeth McNamara, twenty-two years old and newly arrived from Dungourney, was strong and healthy and accustomed to taking care of a home and a family. Since there was a serious shortage of marrying men in Dungourney, she’d come to America not so much to seek her fortune but to find a man to marry and take care of.

  While he didn’t think much of the girl herself, the whole idea didn’t seem too bad to Pat. After all, for most of his life, his mother looked after him and it would be good to have someone to cook a hot meal and see that the holes in his socks were properly mended. It was true that she was a bit beefy but it was all muscle as Tommy Doolan pointed out. Her nose was far too small and turned up besides, but her eyes were a clear and honest blue, when she raised her face long enough for him to catch a glimpse. All in all, she seemed sensible and didn’t have much to say for herself.

  Of course, with a wife, he’d need a bit more money to put by and an opportunity to prepare for the responsibilities of a family.

  Doolan was ready for Crowley and it worked out fine all around. There was a bit of land, not a large amount at all, in fact it was a wedge-shaped scrap of land up in the Bronx, more of an alley than anything else, and it was up for bid at city auction and could be had dirt-cheap. Of course, no one could know that within two years the city would be building a magistrate’s court right at that location and the scrap of land would be essential for the project. But Tommy Doolan knew that particular information for a fact. The parcel was Tommy Doolan’s wedding present to the couple.

  When his first daughter was born a year later, Pat was too involved in various assignments to acknowledge the slight disappointment that his first-born failed to be a boy. His wife was young and healthy and there would be a son the next time.

  Before the first girl could walk steadily, the second daughter was born, and before the first girl could talk clearly, the third daughter was born. By the time the fourth girl was born, the first girl was able to keep her little sisters amused by pushing them around the apartment in the baby buggy which each had tenanted for such a short period of time.

  By the time the fifth girl was born, Elizabeth McNamara Crowley had lost the fine hearty, beefy look and had instead a thin, frantic body topped by a pinched, terrified face. She confided to a cousin who came to give her a hand for a few days that her husband, when he viewed the newest girl, went purple, as though he finally realized what it was she was doing to him.

  “Goddamn it,” he told her, “why the hell can’t you get it right, you jackass?”

  She didn’t know. What Crowley’s wife did know was that her husband was possessed of a growing determination that he would have a son. He ignored the house filled with little girls and concentrated on providing himself with a son with a fury that no sooner was spent but that it renewed itself.

  Elizabeth prayed constantly for Patrick’s son; her lips moved over her prayers as she scrubbed and cleaned and polished the floors and walls of the fine house Patrick had one day moved them into, far up in the country section of the Bronx. She didn’t know how they were able to live in such a grand manor house but she wouldn’t dream of asking. She took her tasks much to heart, kept the girls clean and out of sight as much as possible when their father and his friends were at home.

  Her sixth pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and she knew wearily that it was God’s will, as all things are: the unborn child of five months was another girl.

  When the sixth girl was born, the first girl was a fine helper and could, at the tender age of nine, practically run the house herself and knew when to round up the girls to keep them from bothering their dad.

  At the end of their twelfth year of marriage, Elizabeth miscarried a perfectly formed little boy; at seven months, all the tiny fingernails and toenails were pink and white. Patrick nearly went mad with grief: he’d lost his son.

  In all the years of their life together, through many an emotional storm, Elizabeth had never seen him grieve. She vowed and promised on her life that she’d deliver a son to him before she died. The doctor said she couldn’t carry another child. It took two years before she became pregnant again, and by the time their seventh and last child, Mary Ellen Crowley, was born, their first-born, Veronica, had declared her vocation. She was hardly missed when she went off to the convent on Long Island since her next sister in line performed all of Veronica’s chores with easy capability.

  Patrick could never tell them one from the other. They were a bunch of skinny, pale-faced, blinking, silent wraiths, forever marching off to some special novena or other. He hardly knew which of them it was off to join the others in that convent out on Long Island. The one thing that Patrick Crowley finally decided was that his line was not about to come to a complete and fruitless halt within the stone walls of a nunnery.

  It came to a choice between the last two and there really was no choice at all. When Kathleen Crowley was barely twelve years old, it was clearly marked upon her frowning forehead and tightly pursed lips exactly what she was to become. The child could hardly wait the year out to bid them a hasty good-by.

  That left Mary Ellen. As luck would have it, she was the only beauty among the lot. Somehow, she’d inherited a modification of all the prominent features of the McNamara and Crowley lines. Whereas half her sisters had sharp beaky noses and the rest had little pugs, Mary Ellen showed up with a delicate, finely tipped nose that seemed slightly elegant. All the others had watery gray eyes; Mary Ellen’s were green and blue and slate, all at the same time. Instead of tight pale lips, hers were red and soft and full. Their straight mousy hair was not for Mary Ellen; she had a mane of thick hair that reminded Patrick of his sisters and his cousins back home. Clearly, Mary Ellen was a Crowley product, and of all of them, the only one to bear him a Crowley grandson.

  She was the only one he took any interest in at all. He let it be clearly understood that she was headed for no con
vent. The rest could go and be damned to them. This one had to carry on his line.

  Besides being pretty, she was a good girl, not too clever at her books, though the Sisters always stressed that she tried hard. He was satisfied, for too many brains were no advantage in a girl. The problem was to find the girl a right husband.

  The mealymouthed sons were poor advertisements for their tough, energetic fathers, and Crowley wondered sometimes what the benefits of success were if one were to judge by the products he’d seen recently. The girl was about to graduate from her fine school and go on for a year or so at the Sacred Heart Academy, but what the hell, it was only until a suitable lad turned up.

  The college boys who paraded through his hallway were a sorry lot who stumbled over their own tongues if he asked a direct question, turned purple at the sight of the girl and sweated a lot, hands and face. They’d been prompted by anxious fathers and showed it. Crowley knew that a great many men in high and low places would count themselves fortunate to be allied with the Crowley name. He was a power; he was a man to know. He wasn’t about to hand his daughter over to just anyone; he didn’t have to.

  Patrick Crowley sat for a long time, bent over his walking stick, shoulders and knees aching with arthritis. He stared thoughtfully into the ashes of the huge fireplace and watched a quick flame lick to life for a burst of flame among the ashes. It burned brightly before it died out completely. He thought of new life emerging as the flame had from the ashes. From crippled old age, new vital youth. The soft chimes of the grandfather clock in the hallway interrupted his reverie.

  The lateness of the hour never occurred to Patrick Crowley. He stood up painfully, his weight on the knob of the stick, crossed the massive room to his desk and picked up the telephone receiver. He dialed a certain number, was annoyed that it took five rings before a sleepy voice whispered into his ear.

  “This is Crowley,” he said abruptly. “Find out what there is to know about this young Brian O’Malley.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS A MUGGY, noisy, hot June morning when Brian found the murdered body of the man known as Old Man Moses. Checking on the old man was routine, as automatic as testing a shop door on a midnight. Yet Brian could never say if he had a premonition or if his tense wariness was strictly in retrospect.

  He tapped lightly with the end of his nightstick against the wooden door, then a little harder because the old man was slightly deaf.

  “Hey, Mr. Moses? Everything okay in there?”

  There was something ominous, almost inevitable, about the door opening at Brian’s careful touch on the doorknob, something almost expected about the terrible chaos of destruction that confronted him within the confines of the tiny flat.

  He had seen a few murder victims, but this was the first time he was first on the scene. The undefined area of crime encompassed him. The walls and floor and ceiling were splattered with the old man’s blood. The frail old peddler was a grotesque corpse, slashed and stabbed and hacked as though it was his blood which had been sought. It congealed in a stagnant pool beneath the wooden chair on which he had been tied and gagged. The dead eyes stared in a last, unimaginable passion, and among the thoughts that seared through Brian’s brain was, Christ, the poor old man didn’t want to die.

  The detectives arrived and complimented Brian; he hadn’t ruined anything; he had preserved the integrity of the murder scene. That had been his job and he had done it properly.

  There was an air of subdued rage among all of the men; not even the Homicide detectives were unaffected. Anyone who lived for ninety-odd years had a right to die unviolated.

  “Jesus,” one of the Homicide men observed, “how the hell could anyone think this poor old man had anything? All he had was one suit of clothes besides what’s on his body now. Jeez, look at all the family pictures, prayer shawls, graduation certificates of his sons and grandsons.” He scratched along his jaw and shook his head. “This is gonna be a rough one to tell to a family.”

  There was nothing but rotten cotton wadding inside the slashed old settee. There was nothing but horsehair stuffing inside the old mattress. There was nothing but old goose feathers inside the worn comforter and stained pillows. Under the pulled-up linoleum there was nothing but rotting wooden flooring. There had been no fortune hidden inside the old man’s poverty.

  Neighbors cried and pulled their hair. He was a holy man, the father of rabbis, the grandfather of rabbis. The old man had been seen the day before, on the street, with his box of needles. There was no carton of needles anywhere in the small flat. Apparently that and whatever loose change the old man had on him had been taken.

  Brian stood back and watched as the experts worked, methodically, professionally, enviably. They photographed the corpse from various angles, though he didn’t know why. The old man was dead from wherever you looked. They dusted for fingerprints, circled the room with tiny brushes and envelopes into which they scooped fragments and invisible bits and pieces. Carefully, they scraped black filth from the fingernails of the dead old fingers, and finally gave the okay for the body to be removed from the chalk circle they had drawn.

  The stench in the room nauseated Brian but they couldn’t open any windows until the lab men were finished. Even then, it wasn’t a good idea. There were too many loose feathers to fly around.

  The Department brass came and stood and surveyed the scene. Brian was introduced to a deputy inspector, who nodded solemnly, clicked his teeth, curtly complimented Brian for having checked on the old man. The D.I. clicked his teeth, muttered an obscenity and told the men to get the sons of bitches who did this. Then he left.

  It was obviously the kind of crime some young punks would pull. The detectives rounded up every kid who had ever been arrested or who had given anybody lip for whatever reason or whose face they didn’t like.

  By ten o’clock, Brian was exhausted from the reports he’d had to prepare, from questions he’d had to answer and from the endless hanging around. The precinct would throb with activity in brief bursts of noise, then would fall silent Angelo DiSantini, along with three of his cohorts, was shoved up the stairs; loud voices called him and his kind nothing but bums and trouble. There were some loud scuffle sounds, a couple of smacks, then a good deal of feet sounds thudding down the iron steps in response to the command, “Get your ass the fuck outta here!” Angelo DiSantini and his friends were only too happy to comply.

  Brian walked into the ready room, lit a cigarette, rubbed his sore eyes and wondered if anyone would think to tell him to get his ass out of there. He’d been on duty since eight in the morning and had an eight to four the next day. He looked toward the door and an elderly man with dark bags beneath his eyes, dressed in the strange black outfit of the Orthodox Jew, came to Brian and put out his hand. He was one of the old man’s sons.

  Brian felt a shiver at the wet, cold, smooth palm which grasped his hand.

  “I’m Rabbi Schulman,” the man told him. “Thank you very much. Thank you very much for checking on my father. The other policeman, the sergeant—you are Patrolman O’Malley, yes?—he told me how kind you were...to...to...check on my father.”

  “I’m...I’m very sorry for your trouble, Rabbi.”

  “Yes. Yes, thank you very much for everything,” the man said irrationally, with great, warm fervor, as though he had no control over the flow of words. “Well. So. That’s how things turned out. Well. Thank you very much.”

  All the time he spoke, the rabbi held Brian’s hand in an iron grasp; he pumped it up and down sporadically.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Rabbi? We have some hot.”

  “Coffee? Coffee? No, no, thank you very much. I have things to look after. For my father. The feathers,” he said suddenly, and finally released Brian’s hand. He raised his arms in a wide empty gesture. “The feathers were all over the place. Did you see the terrible mess in my father’s house?” His voice broke into a deep, half-stifled cry. The rabbi ground the back of his hands into his eyes for
a moment, regained control and said, “I’m very sorry. I just wanted to say, on behalf of my family and myself, thank you very much for looking after my father. We know you’ve all looked in on him, and if there’s ever anything we can do for you, please, you let me know.”

  Brian waited until the rabbi walked out of the ready room and across the outer room. Then he went into the bathroom and threw up.

  It was nearly one o’clock when the sergeant told him to go home. The air was crisp and clean and Brian didn’t get enough of it before he plunged into the clammy dankness of the subway station. He tasted the sharp black steel dust, leaned over and spit onto the tracks. From the receding rumble, it was apparent that he had just missed a train and would have a long wait.

  He walked down to the center of the platform and stretched onto the wooden bench. He unrolled the Daily News, scanned it for the hundredth time. It was so familiar he could quote paragraphs from memory. He rubbed his eyelids lightly and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth; became absolutely still, listened. He gave no indication whatever that he was intensely aware, alert; he seemed to be dozing.

  He saw the shadow first, then the dark quick movement as someone slid from behind one pillar to the next, moved steadily toward him. He was ready to move in whatever direction he might have to but he didn’t have to move at all. When the figure came to the pillar directly to his left a voice called him by name.

  “Hey, Mr. O’Malley. Could I talk to you?”

  Angelo DiSantini stood uncertainly in the shadows.

  “Yeah, you can talk to me, Angelo. You got something to say to me?”

  The boy scanned the station nervously, even though the platform was deserted. “Look, don’t get me wrong, Mr. O’Malley, but, well, I don’t want to be seen with you. You know? See, I got something you should know, about that old man. Shit, that was a bad thing, but, see, I don’t want nobody should see us talking, if you understand what I mean.”