And All the Saints

by Michael Walsh

  “Hey, lookit if it ain’t the banty little rooster from Hell.” He leered a little, or at least I thought he did. He was bigger and fatter than when last I’d seen him, neither of which development favored him particularly. “Gettin’ any, Madden?”

  “Not unless you count your mother, Fats, and I don’t, even if everybody else does,” I said. My quarrel wasn’t with him at this moment, and I didn’t want him interposing his fat Irish gob between me and Luigi.

  Even Fats was smart enough to spot this for an insult. He stuck out one big mitt and tried to clobber me with it, but I dodged around him to get face-to-face with Luigi. I thrust the pear right in his puss. “You forgot something.”

  He stood there real cool. “Take it easy, Fats,” he said to Moore. “Madden didn’t mean that nasty crack about your mother…”

  I could feel Fats relax a little behind me, but just in case, my left hand was sneaking into my back pocket and coming out with a fine blackjack Loretta had given me for a present.

  “…because everybody knows that Madden don’t have to leave home to get his.”

  From this point on, as far as I’m concerned, whatever happened, happened in self-defense. One of the things you may recall the great Eastman teaching me was how to fight with both hands, and had that ever come in handy on more than one occasion.

  I wheeled and caught Fats behind his right ear with the Bessie and he went where he belonged, down at my feet. I think Fats puked as he fell, and so now I was even madder when his meal landed on my shirtwaist. Which incident gave Luigi a chance to scoot, for sure didn’t he see the Reaper in the aggrieved person of me coming for him at that very moment.

  He barreled across Eleventh, heading for what he thought might be the safety of the North River, but I was too quick for him, and tackled him in a few steps. He came up begging but I came up swinging and I caught him a glancer just to the right of his jaw, which dazed him a bit so that he stumbled back and his heel hit the curb and down he went again.

  “I didn’t mean nothin’, honest I didn’t.” The same dreary excuse mugs always have when they know you’ve got ’em dead to rights.

  I had to make sure he didn’t get up. I couldn’t let that kind of talk float through the neighborhood, in and out of the mouths of every layabout, mort and mab and so pulled my Smithie and put a hell of a shanty on his glimmer, to wit: I shot him in the head. Luigi died right there on the spot, on the street, blood oozing out one of his ears, where my bullet had gone in, and a big gaping hole on the other side of his head, where the slug had gone out, and it served him right.

  I was still breathin’ easy as I looked around. Luckily for me, Eleventh didn’t have a lot of people on it, not like. Tenth, but there were still a few passersby, drunks mostly, and one or two of the more incautious had actually stopped to watch my dance with Luigi and were standing there gaping at me like fish flopping on a pier.

  We looked at each other for a nonce, me with my gat still in my hand, them with their parcels and packages. God only knows what I woulda done next except that Art and Johnny miraculously appeared at my side.

  “Beat it, everybody,” said Art.

  “You didn’t see nothin’,” added Hoppo. “All of youse.”

  “Sure they did,” I said, still in a daze. “They saw everything. They saw this punk die, which is what’ll happen to any mug crosses me on my turf. Which is what’ll happen to them if they so much as open their gobs. They saw me: Owney Madden of Tenth Avenue.” I was shouting now, full of inseparable rage and pride. “Owney the Killer!”

  Police whistles brought me to. I have a dim recollection of Art or Johnny or both of ’em dragging me away quick time, of ducking down into the stairwell of one of our cribs and into the railroad tunnel that ran over to Pennsylvania Station from Death Avenue and finally poking my head aboveground a block or so from 352, the coast clear.

  I heard later that the bulls showed up and grilled everybody who’d thought he mighta seen something. I heard later that one or two of ’em might have mentioned my name in a temporary fit of civic rectitude. I heard later that one or two of ’em vanished to Hell or Connaught before they could give any evidence. I heard later that nobody else said a word. I heard later that I’d retrieved the pear as we ran. I heard later that I ate the whole thing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  You may have got the notion along the way that I was hell with the ladies, which was true. Maybe my head was swelled by all my successes, but I held the notion that pretty much any dame I fancied was mine on my say-so, and you know what? I was pretty much right. Not wishing to crimp my style, I was spending most of my time at the Winona, although I still looked in from time to time at 352, to make sure everything was all right there, but May and Ma were doing fine on their own, and Marty, well, I didn’t see much of him, largely because around this time he got sent up the river for three years on an assault charge.

  I’ve never understood why fellas that don’t have no talent for it still want to be gangsters; it would be like wanting to be Paderooski without knowing a do from a re from a mi. I knew I was born to the life from before the boat, but the plain fact of the matter was that Marty was never going to amount to much in the gangland department. Neither was Georgie, but him I let hang around because I liked him and because the girls liked him. Even Georgie, though, had found more profitable occupation tea-cozying with the East Side married ladies up at the Plaza Hotel, where he could put his talents as a gigolo to splendid use. There was another guinea he worked that racket with, name of Valentino, of whom you’ve probably heard. To hear Georgie tell it, the bloomers was rainin’ down on them thick and fast, and I believed him.

  We were having a beer one night at the Winona after he got off what he called work. There was two kinds of lipstick across his cheek, and his collar was blotchy with sweat and tears and perfume and God only knew what else, plus he smelled like kisses and cigarettes.

  “Got an idea,” says Georgie.

  “Who you kiddin’?” I asked. We was friends, so I could talk to him like that.

  “Rudy’s idea, actually. Has to do with the picture business.”

  “You mean them nickelodeons over in Jewtown?” That would be Second Avenue south of 14th.

  “They don’t call ’em nicks anymore. They’re photo-dramas. Picture shows…Anyway, Rudy’s heading out West, thinks I should join him.”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “You think?”

  I looked at Georgie. He was a good-looking kid, no doubt about it. “Can you act?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  He had me there. “Give it a few years. Let’s see if folks take to it in a big way.” His face fell a little. “Besides, you’re too young for California. Not to mention small. Do a little growin’ first, why don’t ya?”

  “Rudy says all them nickels add up.”

  “Let’s count our nickels here first.”

  Anyway, there I was one evening, holding court at the Winona. Freda and Margaret were both there, as was most of my boys. Billy and Chick had landed jobs with the Tiger, so they came around only once in a while now, and Eddie had got himself sent to college for a stretch for doin’ I forget what, even though he was of course innocent. Which meant that Art and Johnny had more or less become my bodyguards. After that business with Mollinucci, I hardly went anywhere without ’em, except to some young lady’s chambers, and even then I sometimes had them standing guard outside, to make sure I wasn’t disturbed in my ministrations by anything as inconvenient as a father, brother or husband.

  We were going over some business, namely, the amount of money the gang could earn by various malefactions. The income of the Gophers was mainly derived from safecracking, second-storey work, stickups and holdups, shakedowns and collections for Tiger, of which we got a piece.

  “Punching?” asked Art, who was the one who could write.

  “Couple a bills.”

  “Blacken both eyes?”

  I thought a second.
“Two bucks apiece.”

  “Nose and jaw broke?”

  “Call it ten.”

  “Ear chawed off?”

  “Gotta be at least fifteen.”

  “Slashed cheek?”

  “Anywhere from one to ten bucks, depending on whose cheek it is.”

  “Shot in the leg?”

  “Let’s say up to twenty-five.”

  “What about the arm?”

  “Same, only start countin’ at five.”

  “How come?”

  Johnny smacked Art in the shoulder. “It’s harder to hit an arm,” he said.

  “Maybe for you. Bomb-throwing?”

  “Five bucks to fifty bucks.” Pineapples were expensive.

  “The Big Job?”

  I thought about this for a moment. My first Big Job had been done gratis, but that was on account of my temper. This was business.

  “A hundred simoleons and not a penny less.”

  Art and Johnny both whistled. To any chump on the street, a hundred bucks was a fortune—a month’s wages—and here they could earn that in a day. I woulda thought it was a fortune too at one time, but not anymore.

  We was so wrapped up in all this business that none of us noticed that Loretta Rogers had sat down and was havin’ a glass of whiskey a couple of tables over. Normally I woulda been alerted to such a development, my standing order being that I was to be notified whenever one of my babes was on the premises, to avoid unpleasant situations, but I also had declared I was not to be disturbed while discussin’ matters financial, which in the minds of the boys clearly superseded order number one.

  There was something else that might have had something to do with it. To tell you the truth, I was tirin’ a little of Loretta. She was sweet—nicer than Freda by twenty city blocks—and she had a set of lungs on her that a fella would kill to get his hands on, but she was awful light upstairs, and I had found out what every guy discovers sooner or later, which is that you can’t stay in bed with ’em all day, much as you think you’d like to.

  The first I knew of Loretta’s presence was that she was standing next to our table, a glass of rye in her hand and looking none too chipper. The color had gone out of her face, her hair was mussed and unwashed and frankly she didn’t smell too good, like she’d been sick not long earlier and I mean English sick, not American.

  “What’s new, what’s blue and how do you do?” I said as jaunty as I could muster.

  “Not so good.”

  I remember the room getting very quiet right about then, something it never did, except it was just my luck.

  “Owney,” she blurted, “you got me in trouble.”

  We had a bell system at the Winona, manned by a lookout. One pull meant it was a gang member, two signified somebody from the Tiger, three indicated the visitor was someone we had to do business with, even if we didn’t like him, and four meant an inquisitive copper. Repeated clanging meant run like hell.

  Before I could say anything, the bell rang. We all stopped counting at five.

  Loretta screamed as the bulls’ battering rams started pounding down the doors. This was no time for yelling, though, and so, quick as sewer rats, up jumps me and Art and Johnny and we start pushing furniture against the entrance right quick. Mugs started dashin’ this way and that, especially down the back staircase to the cellar, where they could disappear into a dozen tunnels beneath the streets.

  Our tables and chairs was losin’ the battle against the cops’ pile driving. “What about the clunker?” asked Art, referring disrespectfully to the piano. I shook my head no, because in my opinion you should never use a fine instrument as a doorstop.

  My desire to preserve my Steinway, however, is what lost us the battle, ’cause the rams were tougher than Keating’s cheap front door and down the latter came, followed by a host of coppers led by a big sergeant.

  Most of the gang had hightailed, leaving just me and a few of the boys to deal with the situation. Before you go thinkin’ that was cowardice, though, let me say that it was more like prudence, because a footloose gangster is far to be preferred to one caged in the Tombs. There was nothing for it but to stand and fight.

  I yanked my gat out of my waistband. “I’ll shoot the gizzard out of any copper what tries to come in!” I shouted, but those Irish pigs were crazy-brave, and they kept on coming until somebody whistled a bullet and that somebody mighta been me.

  That was the signal for some several minutes of general fracas firing. Bullets went poking through walls, shattering glass windows and busting up the appointments until we all more or less ran out of ammo about the same time.

  As often happens in these kind of wild gunfights, nobody got hurt serious. The sarge mighta got winged a bit, but it was your basic standoff, except we was outnumbered and presently they fell upon us, clubs at the ready. One of the dirty bastards tried to take a swing at Loretta, which naturally had me runnin’ to protect her, especially in light of her recent information, which meant I had to turn my back on the bleeding sergeant for a moment and that’s when he caught me alongside the head and down I went, face-first into the floorboards, and once again had the ignoble experience of waking up in durance vile.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  This time the charge was violating the Sullivan Law, if you please. I was informed of same by none other than my old friend Becker, who had risen to the rank of lieutenant and normally wouldn’t be connected with punks like me, except for he’d made an exception.

  Becker was standing outside my cell in the Tombs with another fella, a well-dressed little Jewman who didn’t say nothin’, but I could tell they was chummy. “We’ve got you now, Madden,” says Becker, a cigarette hangin’ from his lips. “We know all about Mollinucci and you’ll fry for that, sure as hell, witnesses or no witnesses.”

  I didn’t like his tone but there wasn’t much I could do about it, on account of I was still spittin’ up blood from the beating I took. I coulda sworn my head was busted into a baker’s-dozen chunks, and I wondered how it was that I could even move my fingers, so sore were my arms. My right leg wasn’t feelin’ none too good, and there were bruises across my chest and back. I’d looked better, that’s for sure.

  “I’m only sorry I can’t let you step outside so I can knock you down again,” he said. “But I guess all good things come to him what waits.” He crushed out his cigarette on the bars and tossed the warm stub at me. “Let’s go, Herman. We got business to discuss.”

  He walked away, chuckling to himself like he was funny or something. The fella Herman, though, hung back just a bit and quick as a flash he too tossed something at me, except it wasn’t a fag butt but a card. A business card, with a name on it: “Joseph Shalleck, Esq., attorney-at-law,” which I grabbed before it could hit the deck.

  When I looked up, Herman was giving me a fisheye. “Be smart, kid,” was all he said. Then he scuttled along in Becker’s wake, with Becker none the wiser.

  I got to spend the night in City College, courtesy of the City of New York, and the next morning found myself in a holding pen at the criminal courts, waiting my turn. Ho-hum. There wasn’t a gangster worth a tinker’s damn who hadn’t been here a million times before, including my own good self. Bein’ in the Tombs or the pen was like a class reunion at one of them nancyboy schools, only tougher, but I wasn’t much in the mood for greeting at this point because to tell the truth my schnozz was out of joint on account of I hadn’t heard boo yet from the Tiger nor any of its minions.

  There I was, waitin’ till they called my name, startin’ to despair of any good Christian soul’s ever turning up to commit a corporal work of mercy when along came another little Jewman, like the first one, only littler. I liked him straight off: he was dressed plenty swell, like he was almost somebody, right down to his spats, and he carried something I’d never seen before, a briefcase. There weren’t many briefcases around the Kitchen in them days.

  “Joe Shalleck,” he said, and I recognized the name. “Herman Rosenthal sen
t me.”

  “Herman the friend of that dirty bull Becker?”

  “He ain’t no friend of Becker’s, don’t worry about it, in fact you can put your mind to rest on that score, so let’s get down to brass tacks here, but like I said don’t you worry none ’cause I got it all fixed, arranged, what have you, and all you gotta do is do exactly what I tell you to do is all you gotta do, do you get me?”

  Of course he said that in a tenth of the time it takes me to write it down.

  “Tammany’s left you up the creek, teach you a lesson and whatnot, and if it ain’t for your good luck in runnin’ into Rosenthal, who happens to be my uncle Hyman, they call him Herman here, Hyman too old country, too Jew if you catch my drift, anyway if it weren’t for the luck of the Irish, black Irish I’d say by the looks of ya, well then you’d not only be up the creek you’d be up the fucking river, if you take my meaning, which I’m sure you do.”

  I looked at him blank, but it was beginning to sink in. This is the way the Tiger learned you a lesson but good and that lesson was, who’s boss.

  “You are one lucky harp, Madden. Hey, screw!”

  The screw in question opened the cell and let us out. We made our way into the courtroom, where Becker was standing with a smirk on his ugly kraut mug, and Shalleck whispered to me: “Uncle Hyman’s in gambling, and he pays off to Becker like a Tenderloin whore. Hates the sonofabitch, but what’s a yid to do?”

  “Is Rosenthal really your uncle?”

  “They’re all my uncle, if you go back far enough, to Poland I mean, and boy do we ever. Go back to Poland. Not that I would, you understand. England, maybe. You’re English, ain’t ya? I hear Bob’s your uncle there. Kind of a fixture of speech—”

  The judge called my name and little Joe shuts up and steps up like David facing Goliath.