So I ran and ran, the cops’ voices growing ever fainter as I put some distance between ourselves. I hopped from one address to another, sailing above the streets, trampling on the rooftops, shouting with joy, and I wished my sister might hear me and share my pride.
I’d managed to make it all the way to the west side of Eighth at 39th when I figured it was safe to come down now. The whistles had long since been silenced, the footfalls quieted; the noise of the city wafted up from below, but there was no danger in it.
I halted and holed up between a chimney and a vent pipe, tucking my legs beneath me like some Buddha. Perched above the town in makeshift rook I must’ve nodded off, for when I came to, the sun was setting, which meant it was high time I stopped fooling around and went to work.
I rose and scooted down the fire escapes, the usual tableaux unfolding behind the curtains. Here a man in his undershirt was busily polishing shoes. A floor lower, a couple of children played in a room by themselves, their mother fast asleep on the bed, one hand clutching a sack. On three a couple was arguing loudly; the woman had a big red welt across her back but she was giving nearly as good as she got and I found myself rooting for her as I passed by.
On two there was an old woman sitting by herself, staring into space and listening to a phonograph whose needle had finished its job in the matter of sound reproduction and was scratching away at the interior of the record.
I rode the sliding ladder halfway the length of the first floor and dropped to the sidewalk.
I shoulda knowed Becker would be there, waiting for me. He emerged from the shadows like the very divvil himself, the flame of a match signaling his malevolent presence.
I made to flinch and run, but instead of clobbering me Becker just held up his hand. “Smoke, punk?” he asked.
I allowed as how I wouldn’t mind, but you can bet I was pretty leery accepting the fag, in case he tried to sucker-punch me. “What’s the angle?” I said, inhaling.
“Taking the night air.”
“What’s the beef?”
Becker took a long drag like he was in no hurry to reply. “Who said anything about a beef?”
We stood there like a couple of pals, puffing away, saying nothing.
Becker threw his fag down and ground out the butt. “Kid named Henshaw got himself killed last night.”
“I’m all broke up about it.”
“Rumor is you did it.”
“Impossible. I was home with my mother.”
He reached into his side pocket and I caught a glimpse of some heat under his armpit. My own cannon was in my pants and I wondered if I could get to it before he shot me down.
His hand came out of his pocket. Matches. “The hell of it is, the only witness fell down the stairs this afternoon and broke his neck.”
“Guess things are tough all over.”
He lit another cigarette. “Heard Hymie steered you to Shalleck.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’ll stop by the Winona tonight to refresh your memory.”
“So I can refresh your bank account.”
“Guess you’re not as dumb as you look.”
I had to hand it to Becker, playing both sides of the street like a pool hustler fleecing the house. “So what was all this hugger-mugger about?”
“Exercise. I like to keep my boys fit.”
“They still ain’t faster than me.”
Becker flicked his fag into the gutter. “Pretty tough guy, aren’t you, punk?” he said.
“If I have to be.”
He buttoned up his coat. “Know what’s the difference between us?”
I did, but I didn’t say.
“Some folks may hate me when they see me in the street, but more of them like me, because I’m all that’s standing between them and mugs like you. Which means I can pretty much expect to be visiting Mrs. Becker in the comfort and safety of our marital bed every evening. Whereas it’s precisely the opposite with yourself: some of the yeggs in this shithole of a precinct may like you, but more of them hate you and what’s worse they fear you, and there’s damn few’d shed a tear if you was to disappear tomorrow. If I was a betting man, I’d wager that my chances of expiring with my boots off are a lot better than yours.”
“I’ll take that bet,” says I.
Becker turned and walked away, confident as all get-out. “I thought you might,” he said over his shoulder, and disappeared back into the shadows.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Businesswise, everything was jake. The swag was rolling in. As long as we kept delivering at the ballot box and stayed out of the newspaper headlines, just about anything the Gophers did was okay by the Tiger. The Winona was renowned far and wide as the best clubhouse on the West Side, with the choicest onions and tomatoes—which is what we called dames back then—the most scrumptious chow and the best music this side of Broadway. I demanded it.
Speaking of which, I was spending more time on the White Way than before, as the theater was exerting an increasing fascination on me, as was the prizefights at the Garden, not to mention the picture shows which were now all the rage; maybe little Georgie had something there. I figured there was dog biscuits to be made in both them rackets if only I could figure out how, and so I decided to start working on that problem right after the elections of 1912.
First thing was we had to get Jimmy Hines elected district leader over Ahearn, and so Joe Shalleck and I threw ourselves into that particular task. Now, here was the problem: Jimmy Hines was a good-looking lad, but he was a by-God-terrible public speaker, as tongue-tied a paddy as ever lived.
Joe and I tried everything we could think of to improve Jimmy’s speechifying, but he was still a blacksmith up there on the stump and you woulda thought he was after shoein’ horses instead of tryin’ to win votes. Even with this handicap, Jimmy had lost to Ahearn by only twenty-seven measly votes the previous election, which to me was an indication not so much of failure of delivery but lack of muscle at the polling place, which I was in a position to deliver and how.
“Okay, so Jimmy, you gotta be more effective is what I’m trying to tell you, more mellifluous. You can’t just stand up there waxing platitudinous and whatnot when your audience is down below looking up at your trousers and half the men are wonderin’ if you’re packing and half the women are wondering how much you’re packing, if you get my meaning, which I’m sure you do ’cause even you Irish must have sex once in a while, otherwise how could there be so many of you?”
“What Joe’s trying to say—” I began.
“What Joe’s trying to say is exactly what Joe is saying,” said Joe. “You gotta look the part. Why the hell should a bunch of dumb Jews and Irish elect you to anything if you rodomontade like the village smithy or maybe the village idiot? People don’t want their pols to look like them, they want them to look like pols, but not too much, you understand, you still gotta have that man-of-the-people crap, makes ’em feel better, makes ’em feel that any one of them could be standing up there on the stump flapping his jaws, except that you look a little too much like any of them, if you catch my drift, and that’s what I’m also here to fix, besides and in addition to your speech patterns.”
“Plus you lack muscle,” I said edgewise.
“Plus you lack muscle, which is what Madden’s here to fix. Their sluggers have been better than our shtarkers, but that’s gonna change. Heads gotta be busted and I’m talking theirs not ours, right, Owney?”
I nodded.
“I mean fer chrissakes, that’s the American way of story and song, do unto others before they can do unto you. So we’re gonna do unto. Think of Ahearn’s head as one of those anvils you used to pound on.” Shalleck’s head rotated and looked at me. “What’s that big mug’s name what runs Ahearn’s gang?”
“Spike Sullivan,” I supplied.
He spat. “Jesus, don’t you micks have any imagination? Spike Sullivan, for crying out loud. Who thought that up, his mother? Anyway, here’s what
we’re going to do—”
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” I took over, because if you didn’t remind Joe who was the shyster and who the client once in a while, he could get confused about the relative positions of each. “We’re going to tie up Sullivan and his gang forty-eight hours before the votin’ begins. Your mistake in the past was going after them after the polls opened. Let me tell you, that’s too late. We gotta put him out of commission long before that.”
“How’re you going to do that?” asks Jimmy. For a Tammany fella he pretty much didn’t know his arse from his elbow sometimes.
“Why, have a drink with him of course,” I replied as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “Bury the hatchet on your behalf down at Degnan’s saloon. Tell him no hard feelings and so forth, we’re all Irishmen here and what the hell’s the difference between a Ahearn and a Hines, and business is business, we can work together no matter who wins.”
“Then what?” asks Jimmy.
“He’ll agree if he’s smart.”
“Then what?” asks Joe.
“Then the boys are going to come in and beat him to a pulp. The night of the election he’ll either be in Hell or attended by the Sisters of Mercy, unconscious. And who votes for a dead man unless we want them to?”
Jimmy’s speeches improved. His organization improved. A couple of days before the voting, I met Sullivan for a drink; Spike wound up in hospital minus one ear, with two broken arms and a concussion. On election night Jimmy won by fifteen hundred votes, most of them cast by the living. I gave Johnny and Art a bonus, which was election night off.
Which is what I was intending to celebrate when Loretta spoke up. I’d gone home after it was clear that victory was in the bag, intending to change and then step out on the town with Margaret, who was pretty much cleaned up by this point.
“How come I never see ya?” my wife whined. “We’re married, ain’t we? All I get from you is the old frozen lamp.”
“You oughta know.” I went over to baby Margaret’s crib and looked down at her. I loved the way she gurgled when I picked her up. She seemed to like me, but I didn’t know enough about kids to be sure.
“Well, what choice did I have? You know you can’t get a girl in a condition and not act like a man.”
“Maybe I shoulda thought a that. Maybe you shoulda too.”
Loretta poured herself another drink. Truth to tell, the sauce wasn’t agreein’ with her. She was starting to get that puffy look dames do what drinks too much, and her beam was most definitely broadening.
“You promised to take me out on the town tonight.”
“I changed my mind,” I said, jiggling Margaret, which always made her smile. “Besides, I gotta go back uptown, for Jimmy.”
She started throwin’ things. Loretta always chucked whatever was handy, which is why I kept the breakable furnishings to a minimum. It mighta been an ashtray, I forget. I covered the baby’s noggin just in case her aim had improved.
“Oh Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy. You’d think he was a dame the way you spend so much time with him.” She stopped flingin’ stuff and flashed me a little smile she must have thought was sexy, but wasn’t. I put Margaret safely back in her crib, and couldn’t wait to get out of there.
“Don’t ya love me no more?” she whispered.
Didn’t that make me feel like a real heel? I sorta did love her, in a sisterly way, and while I sure preferred the company of my old girlfriends, I still had a little tiny soft spot for Loretta, because after all she was the mother of my girl child.
She put her arms around my neck and pushed her chest close to mine. Baby or no baby, she still had swell headlamps and I was always a sucker for a healthy pair of lungs. The next thing you know we’d done it, the kid none the wiser, and now she was up and getting dressed I could fully appreciate how wide in the beam she had got, and began to feel disgusted with myself and her and us.
Loretta pulled her best dress—and with my money let me tell you it was plenty good—over her head and wriggled into it. She spun around and modeled it for me as I was shaving.
“Where we going?” I asked, because I knew I was stuck. With any luck, I figured we could step out for an hour or so, by which time she’d be stinko and then I could have one of the boys wheel her home and go have some fun.
“The Arbor,” she said.
I don’t know which is worse: that I wasn’t paying attention or that I was. The Arbor was at 52nd Street and Seventh. Used to be called the Eldorado but then one of the waiters, a Tammany man named Dave Hyson, bought it and fixed it up nice with some Tiger boodle. Even way back then there was drinkin’ laws, closing times and such, which tended to crimp a lad’s style, but they was easy to get around as long as somebody formed a social club. So the Arbor’s attraction, in addition to its dance floor, was that it was the Dave Hyson Association, which meant it could stay open to all hours, and it did.
“For sure I ain’t goin’ to that ballum rancum,” says I.
“Aw come on,” she wheedled. “Gimme a little cush.”
I wasn’t crazy about going to a racket like the Arbor, but I figured Hyson knew which end was up and there wouldn’t be no trouble. To tell ya the truth, there was one other reason I said yes to Loretta, which was that the Arbor was a hangout of Little Patsy Doyle, who’d taken Freda away from me, and I figured that if I ran into him, it wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened. Which just goes to prove that even I could figure wrong from time to time.
I rang up May on the telephone and she came over to sit with baby Margaret, and Loretta and I got into the car and drove uptown.
“This is going to be swell,” said Loretta.
“If you say so,” I said.
She nuzzled my neck with her head and rubbed her bosoms against my arm. They may not have been what they were before the baby, but they were still something.
“Trust me,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After Becker let me skate for waxing Willie, people were plenty scared of me. There was hardly a place on the West Side I’d walk into where some mug or other would start quakin’, like I was going to pop him one right then and there. I wasn’t just Owney Madden of Tenth Avenue anymore. This was when I realized that a reputation is a mixed blessing: it could bring you respect, sired by fear, and it could bring you attention, whose dam was curiosity.
The thing about the Arbor was it had an entrance on 52nd that led to a long bar on your right and a big dance floor straight ahead. Food was served at tables upstairs, which ringed and overlooked the dance floor on three sides, so you could dine on and fancy a dish at the same time.
Loretta headed straight for the floor to turkey-trot and bunny-hug and grizzly-bear and whatever dances was popular back then; I left the light-fantastic stuff to Georgie. I was hungry, though, all that electioneering and lovemaking having put a hole in my stomach, so I made for goin’ upstairs for a bite to eat and something to drink.
There was a hush when the crowd got a load of us. It started at the bar, spread across the dance floor, and pretty soon the whole damn room was quiet as the grave and all eyes were on me, as if they expected me to make a speech or something, but that was Joe Shalleck’s department, not mine, and so all that I said was: “Go ahead and have your fun. I ain’t going to bump off nobody tonight.” Nobody seemed particularly relieved.
I settled into a table above the floor, lookin’ down. I was trying to sort out how I felt about the various dames and drabs currently inhabiting my world and my bed, and to tell you the honest truth, I didn’t really have a clear idea of what I was going to do. On the one hand, I’d done the right thing by marrying Loretta, because that’s what a man does when his little friend gets him and a lady into trouble, but I’d already had plenty of cause to regret the rashness of my honor.
On the other hand, I still plenty fancied Freda, which was pretty remarkable because I’d been knowing her for some several years, and yet she was one of those dames you never quite go
t tired of. Her figure was a Wonderland ride of never-ending delight, and she had a sweet disposition that’s rare in a dame, in my considerable experience.
From time to time I glanced down at the floor, where Loretta was cuttin’ a rug with some mugs, but I recognized them and I knew that they recognized me and wouldn’t think of gettin’ fresh with her.
A pretty waitress kept my glass filled. After about the third drink, I started to chat her up, just for the practice. “What’s your name, dearie?”
“Mary. My name’s Mary. I’m from Mayo.”
“That’s what they all say.”
She blushed a little. “What’s wrong with ‘Mary’? It’s the name of the Holy Mother of God.”
“Holy Mother of St. Patrick!” I exclaimed. “You don’t say?”
“She does say,” pipes up a voice behind me, and I could hear trouble straightaway.
Mary from Mayo sidled away, her task accomplished, which was to keep me distracted for a minute while the three Dusters who were even now surrounding me had got themselves into position. She flashed me a little look of regret and farewell as she went.
I turned to face the speaker, but he was talking to somebody else behind me. “Hey, Patsy, whadda you t’ink of a mug what calls a lady a liar?”
“I think he needs to be taught some manners, is what.”
I knew that voice, so even before I turned and came face-to-face with the ugly gob of Little Patsy Doyle, I knew who it was. Because the hell of it was, Little Patsy was none other than my old friend Fats Moore, even bigger and uglier than before, and with a memory as wide as the river.
“Hello, Madden,” says he. Drink had gotten the worse of him, but not as worse as the dust. He had this crazy look in his eyes, like he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind and was halfway thinking about both, if you could call that thinking.
And All the Saints Page 17