And All the Saints

by Michael Walsh

  Here’s something about roofs in them days. Like the yards, they was filled with junk, and you had to watch your step if you didn’t want to trip and break an arm, or worse, trip and stumble and go plunging over the side of the building into the courtyard below, which let me tell you happened to more than a few, especially them what had been tipplin’. So we stepped carefully over the fat belly of Mr. Wagner, who was snoring fit to beat the band, and just dodged the head of Mrs. Brancusi. Then Freda stepped right on Marty’s hand and he woke up and started in to whining and whimpering. I got my hand over his mug right quick and stifled him.

  “Shhh,” says I, quietly I thought, but I guess it wasn’t that quiet, ’cause May stirred beside my brother and looked me right in the eye. Unlike Marty, when May awoke she was really awake and you could shake her in the middle of the night and ask her to do the seven times tables and she would, and no mistake. “Owen,” she said, and smiled at me.

  “Hello, May,” says I, wobbly. “Say hey to Freda. We’re going to be married.” Freda just giggled, for truth to tell, in her state talking was not such a good idea.

  May took this news without batting an eye. “That’s swell,” she said, but even in my condition I could tell that she didn’t really mean it, that she was just humoring me. “Wait till Ma hears.”

  May snuggled up tight against her Ma, and even Marty had stopped making noises. Freda and I set ourselves down against the low rooftop wall which, before I put the things of childhood completely behind me, I used to pretend was the crenellated wall of a castle, and me the intrepid defender. Sometimes I was Ivanhoe and sometimes Brian Boru and sometimes just plain Owney Madden of Tenth Avenue, the North River was the moat and the Palisades were the fortifications of the enemy. Freda and I cuddled ourselves up together, pulling Branagan’s big coat around us in case it cooled off before sunrise, which was unlikely, but in New York you never knew.

  I looked at Freda, her blond hair loose now and tumbling down to her shoulders. Her head had fallen onto her breast and she was breathing slowly and deeply. With her figure covered up she didn’t look like a woman anymore, but like the child she still was. Sir Owen of Tenth Avenue, gallantly protecting the youthful Lady Homer from the likes of the wicked Branagan clan. I drew closer to her, and watched the few city lights that I could see glinting and glimmering behind us, like a magic kingdom in which lay vast riches just waiting for the taking, and where anything was possible, even for an Irishman, and right then and there I laid claim to it all. The rail yards were quiet and still, and across the river there was no sign of an invading host, nor even any coppers, just the water lapping gently against the piers, whispering that all was well.

  I kissed her once, tenderly, on the cheek, closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. Then I saw May, looking at me with that look of hers.

  “Whaddya want?” I muttered.

  “Not much,” she said. “Just everything.”

  Chapter Five

  The knock on the door was followed by Branagan, coming through it in his braces and a big bandage around his head. “Where is he?” says he, barging in, and right away I knew that he could only mean me. Marty’s breakfast fell out of his open mouth as he confronted the majesty of the law, and Freda let out a yelp, but May’s eyes were shining. Ma tried to get some words out, which I didn’t hear because Branagan was already well into the parlor, whereas I was already well out the window and down the fire escape.

  I had no idea which crime he was pursuing, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I thought I could trust Mr. Callahan, especially after giving him most of his money back and all, and I knew there was no way the copper could have seen me, sneaking up on him from behind like that.

  But Fats had got out of hospital a couple of weeks earlier, after being there for about a month. I suppose I had hit him harder than I knew, or perhaps it was just in the right place, thus contradicting the boxing maxim that you never hit an Irishman or a nigger in the head because they don’t have any brains to harm. But it didn’t take many brains to figure out that the bastard had ratted the Killer out, triggering God knows what sort of suspicions and memories in Branagan’s bean, and as I was scrambling down the fire escape, I recalled I’d seen Moore on the street the day before and it must have been the cap he remembered because I was wearing it the same way I had worn it on that day, pulled low and over my left eye, which I was beginning to consider something of a signature look.

  I got to the bottom and dropped the last half-story, not knowing quite where to go. I started this way and then that, and thought briefly of trying Ginsberg’s but he would be there by now and even blind he couldn’t miss me running in like a demon was chasing me and for sure he couldn’t miss Branagan the bull, but that moment of hesitation was my downfall. For here came Branagan, charging down the stoop stairs like an enraged buffalo, so off I went in the opposite direction when I run smack into another copper, Branagan’s partner he must have been, and then his hand was on my collar and I found myself hoisted into the air. I took him for a kraut, for he was a big square-jawed sonofabitch, even bigger than Branagan, and he had my feet kicking futilely for purchase on the ground as he held me aloft.

  “Where might you be going in such a hurry?” he asks.

  I twisted around to get a look at him. He had hard brown eyes with a tinge of green in them. “Out,” says me.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I’d say you were headed in.”

  A small crowd of neighborhood types—kids, punks, drunks, housewives, fishwives—had already managed to gather, soon to be joined by my Ma and my sister. I felt acutely embarrassed by my arrest, for the shame of it all, and although I knew even then it was a feeling I would get used to over the years, it didn’t make it any easier that first time.

  “Is this the incorrigible?” asks my captor.

  “The very one, Charlie,” says Branagan, puffing like one of the locomotive engines parked across the yard.

  The cop called Charlie set me down earthward and with an ease that I could only admire, and slapped the cuffs on me just like that. “You’re in the soup now for sure.” I knew I was in trouble, but I almost didn’t mind because it made me feel dangerous.

  They frog-marched me over to Moore’s house and up the stairs to their flat. A pounding on the door soon enough brings the missus front and center and, right behind her, hanging on to her skirts like the coward he was, comes Fats.

  “Is this the mug what hit ya?” asks Branagan, and Moore steps out of his ma’s shadow long enough to nod yes. I could see the humiliation writ large upon his map, and him a foot taller than me and fifty pounds heavier, brought low by yours truly, so I made like I was going to clobber him again, no matter the odds, and he retreated pronto.

  “Owney Madden,” says the missus, looking daggers at me. “May God have mercy on your soul, for sure you’re a bad one and it’s to no good you’ll come.”

  “It’s already to no good he’s come,” chimes in Branagan, giving me a shake. He turned his ugly puss toward mine, and I could smell garlic on his breath, like he was an Italian or something. His hair was bloodied and matted and his clothes were dirty, and I realized he must have spent the night in the alleyway, unconscious. Which only served to worsen his mood.

  “Said his name was the Killer,” pipes up Fats in a tinny little voice.

  “Well, this is one Killer that won’t be doin’ much killin’ for a while,” says the copper named Charlie, whose surname was Becker. “It’s the reformatory for him.”

  For some reason I was more afraid of Becker than of Branagan, perhaps because I had already put Branagan down. Becker looked altogether a more formidable foe, and I knew right away that brute force wasn’t going to cut much mustard with him.

  After gettin’ me positively ID’d, they jigged me up the street. Some of the neighbors turned out to see the all-too-common spectacle of one of the lads being hauled away to face the music, but I kept my head held high and worked up a small smile for Freda’s benefit. She sque
ezed herself between the two bulls and kissed me as I whispered “Callahan.” Then she was off, to report the news of my misadventure to the gang.

  Whereas we were heading for the West 30th Street station house, in which we soon found ourselves. Those of you who think New York today is the epitome of wickedness must bear with me a bit, for back then the old town was far wickeder than she is today, and even though I’ve been away for these thirty years, it beggars the imagination to think that any of your modern vices could be worse than what was going on all around us back then: teenage whores, thieves and murderers who couldn’t have cared less about the “value” of human life, muggers, sluggers and second-storey men, dusters, gonophs, blowens, bludgets, cows, divers, forks, figure dancers, bingo-boys, danglers, high pads, lush workers, moll buzzers, pigeons, turkey merchants and wires, and worse.

  All of them and more were in the station house with yours truly, being monitored by a rotund little man sitting behind a great high desk and scribbling away at a great big book as if his life depended on it. The moniker of this man was recorded on a nameplate to one side: McDougal.

  “Name?” asks the man.

  “Not guilty, Your Honor,” says I.

  “I’m not a judge, just the booking sergeant,” says he, barely looking up. I wanted to make a good showing at my first arrest, and here I was rushing things. He shuffled some papers on his desk, grabbed a pen and made as if he were starting in to write. “Charge?” he said.

  “Mugging wit’ a club,” says Branagan, gleeful.

  “Name and address?”

  “Owney Madden of 352 Tenth Avenue,” I supplied.

  “Native or foreign-born?”

  “I was born in England,” says I. This intelligence brought the first kindly look from the sergeant my way.

  “Then my condolences to you, lad,” he said, looking at me over the edges of his spectacles, “for sure there’s nothing worse than to be from England, and nothin’ better either, for now you’re here and not there.” He took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, perched them back on his nose and stared at me for a nonce.

  “Juvenile,” says he. “Who speaks for Master Madden, then?”

  “I do,” says Mr. Mike, coming through the door. I looked over to Branagan and saw him blanch.

  “Mr. Callahan,” says the desk sergeant, “do you know this here lad?”

  “I do, Pete,” says Mr. Mike. “He works for me.” Now, if that wasn’t strictly speaking God’s honest truth, it was certainly close enough under the circumstances, considering I had taken a bit of remuneration from Mr. Mike for getting him his money back.

  “I’m not saying you’re fibbing, Mike, but many’s the time I been in your saloon and I never seen this lad before.”

  “He works out back,” says Mike. “Or down cellar.”

  “Out back,” repeats Sergeant McDougal. “And might he have been out back on the afternoon of…” and he names the day I slugged Billy Moore.

  “He might very well have,” says Mr. Mike. “Or down cellar.”

  This brought forth a derisory guffaw from Branagan. “Well, now, that’s a he and I’ve got witnesses who can prove it,” says he.

  “You’re out of uniform, Roundsman Branagan,” says McDougal, as if he had just noticed.

  “That I am, sir,” admits Branagan. “But—”

  “It’s far from the first time,” pipes up one of the drabs, a girl named Molly who worked the Circus with her mother and three of her four sisters; the other sister was a nun. “Why, most of the time I’ve seen him, he don’t even have that much on.”

  Branagan’s face started to turn even redder than normal when Black Betty ruffles her skirts and cracks, “I’d recognize that hairy arse anywhere, even in the dark,” at which point pretty much pandemonium its own good self breaks loose and McDougal is hammerin’ for order, but he’s beet-red as well and it’s just about this moment when Ma comes bustling in with May by her side, taking in the scene and making the sign of the cross some several times.

  “And why might that be?” asks the sergeant, finally regaining control of the situation. He had a little twinkle in his eye the way my Da did when he would slip me a ha’penny back in Leeds, so pleased was he with something I had done.

  “Sir, I was set upon by ruffians such as what’s been plaguing our streets in these sad and parlous times,” interposes Branagan.

  That was all Ma needed to hear. “And just who do you t’ink yer callin’ a rooffian?” she demanded as May tugged at her hand.

  McDougal gaveled Ma into temporary submission and turned back to Branagan. If the copper was looking for sympathy, he got only scorn. “I’m gettin’ sick and tired of seeing you officers of the law come trooping in here having let punks like this Madden—”

  “And just who do you think yer callin’ a punk?” says I, but luckily he ignored me.

  “—get the best of you. If you can’t maintain the dignity of your uniform, then perhaps you’d be comfortable in some other kind of work clothes.”

  “Like stripes,” a bat named Brown Bess, who was black, cracked wise.

  “Makin’ little ones outta big ones,” perks Black Betty, who was white.

  “Wish we could make big ones outta little ones,” said Molly, who’d started the whole thing.

  Ma clapped her hands over May’s ears just as Branagan turned on Molly like he was going to smack her a good one when up pops Mrs. Moore, her pudgy weeping fat boy by her side, and damn if they both don’t try to lay the finger on me. “’Twas Owney what hit me,” says Fats, “with a piece of lead pipe.”

  This news seemed to disappoint Sergeant McDougal. “What makes you think so?”

  “I know it was him because he’s of the same size and build plus he wears his cap exactly the same way, over his eye like that, like he don’t wanna see outta one eye or sumpin’ I dunno…”

  “You don’t know nathin’,” says I. “It coulda been anybody.”

  “Or nobody at all,” says my sister, and I coulda kissed her. “It coulda been an accident.”

  “You coulda fallen down the stairs,” says Molly.

  “Or banged your head on the sidewalk,” says Black Betty.

  “Or tumbled down the coal chute,” says Brown Bess.

  “Happens all the time,” says my little May, turning to her Ma.

  But that old hoore Moore wasn’t buying. She started into brandishing a scrap of stained newsrag. “See, here’s the newspaper he wrapped it in,” offers the missus, “still stained with the blood of my boy.” I didn’t see what that ugly old thing, all torn and ripped, proved, but I made a note to myself never to leave evidence lying around again, either that or eliminate all the witnesses one way or another.

  The sergeant inspected the paper like it was fish wrap and then tossed it aside. “Are you sure positive this here is the lad who assaulted you?” he asked Fats, who nodded. “I heard his voice,” says he, and I knew I was sunk.

  This left the sergeant in a confusing position, what with two contradictory stories, not to mention my own denial, so he returned to scribbling in his big book once more. “Unless there are any objections,” he said, “and absent any contradictory testimony, defendant is remanded to custody pending a hearing before the magistrate.”

  I could see my gangland career ending before it had begun, doing ignominious juvy time in the jug before I had got right and proper squared away. “Why don’t you ask Fats about stealin’ my Ma’s money!” I yiped as Branagan made a move for my arm. “Why don’t you ask this dirty copper about shaking down Mr. Mike?” I yelped, which pretty much brought the place to a standstill. Sergeant Pete’s head whipped up from his ledger and stared at Branagan, who had stopped dead in his traces and was looking daggers at me. “I seen him do it! Tell ’em, Mr. Mike. Tell ’em.”

  I don’t know what would have happened next if what did happen hadn’t happened. I was too young then to understand Mr. Mike’s reluctance to testify against Branagan, for the same reason that sal
oon keepers across the city would later not wish to testify against me. The principle of force majeure, so beloved of politicians, was new to me. In any case, Mr. Mike never had to open his gob, for at that moment the front door of the station house flung itself open and in walked the most frightening personage I had ever seen in my life.

  Branagan’s eyeballs started bulging, and Sergeant McDougal’s brow started waggling and his pen stopped moving, and just about the whole of Frog and Toe, which is what real gangsters back then called New York, most of their argot deriving from good old familiar Cockney rhyming slang, don’t ask me why, came to a dead stock standstill, the dusters, gonophs, divers, figure dancers, danglers, moll buzzers, pigeons, turkey merchants and wires suddenly as quiet as tombstones, and I alone the center of attention as the hideous creature made a beeline for me.

  Now, when I say hideous, I do mean hideous, uglier even than Humpty Jackson was ugly, because Humpty, whose face looked like somebody mashed it with an iron, at least was conversant with Shakespeare, which gave him a certain air and animation. This fella, on the other hand, had a face that when seen from the side looked like his mother had given birth while lying up against a hot stove. His head was mashed flat front and back; if he’da had a third side, he’da been the Flatiron Building of crime.

  He was short, like an ape. The biggest thing about him was his stove-in head, which had a flat schnozz and a forehead that stretched all the way up to his receding hairline, where a black oiled thatch defined the top of his skull. His ears were probably his best feature once upon a time, because they didn’t stick out like a railroad mail catcher, but now they was thick with cauliflower, as if he were a prizefighter. He also had a weak chin, which sloped down to his Adam’s apple like the Inwood cliffs tumbling into the Spuyten Duyvil. To top it all off, his face was crisscrossed by so many scars, nicks, boils, teeth bites, whatnots and what have yous that it looked like the road map to Palookaville, and him the mayor.