I caught myself with my left hand as I hit the sidewalk. The cops were almost upon us now and Art and Johnny were both firing out the windows. “Step on it, George!” I shouted with the last of my strength, but I don’t think anyone could hear me.
Falling down behind the car gave me just enough protection to grab a quick breather. I knew the bulls would grab me, sure as shooting, but I wanted to see my antagonist and give him what for before they nabbed me.
Then a shape stepped out of the shadows across the street and I knew right away it was the punk I’d seen in the bar, the one who’d clued Fats in to my presence.
Somewhere along the line I’d dropped both my .45s so I yanked Monk’s .38 out of my pants. I came up firing as the cops poured out of their paddies. I could hear the mook grunt in pain as I slammed one into his leg.
I tossed the Smith to Johnny through the open window. “Scram,” I cried, and this time they heard me. Little Georgie hit the pedal so hard Art and Johnny almost went flyin’.
Then the cops were on me and that was pretty much that.
I held my hands up to show I wasn’t armed. Luckily nobody shot me. I took one last step in their direction, punch-drunk, and went down for the count.
Chapter Thirty-Two
My first stop was back in the hospital, where the docs sewed me up again, like regular piecework I was gettin’ to be, and when I came to from the surgery, one of them stuck around long enough to have a little chat with me. A couple of big bulls stood in the doorway, like a matched pair of iceboxes, which is how I figured I was under arrest.
“Not a helluva lot we can do, I’m afraid,” he said. “We tried the first time and we tried this time, but there’s no way to get those slugs out of you. Two of them are near your lungs, two buried in the walls of the stomach and the fifth one we can’t even see, it’s sunk so deep in your gizzard.”
“How long I got?”
The sawbones gave me one of those Jewish shrugs, like Shalleck’s only not so confident. “Up to you.” He fished in his pocket for one of those pieces of paper docs always seem to have handy. “Can you read?”
I didn’t see what that had to do with the price of tea in China, but managed a nod. He thought for a moment, then wrote something down: “Dr. Sweet,” it read.
“Tell him Dr. Mendoza sent you. He’ll take good care of you.”
“You didn’t say what hospital he’s at.”
Dr. Mendoza got up to leave just as, wouldn’t you know it, Shalleck comes charging in, followed by a couple of mugs in white smocks pushing a couple of carts. “He’s not at a hospital,” said Mendoza. “He’s at the prison. Sing Sing.”
Shalleck caught that last bit as he skidded to a stop in front of my sickbed. “I hate that word, so harsh, so unnecessary, so positively penitentural fer cryin’ out loud, jeez, Doc, have a heart, why don’tcha, the future this boy’s got in front of him.”
I didn’t like the sound of Joe’s last remark.
“What’s the disposish?” I croaked.
“Soup for you, steak and dessert for me.” Joe snapped his finger at the two men in white and before you knew it they was whipping dishes out of the carts. They weren’t doctors, they were waiters. “We got business to discuss.”
Joe grabbed a cup of soup and started ladling it to me. “You’re in the soup now, an ill wind blowin’ nobody no good, least of all you, like I said, really in the soup—mmm, speakin’ a soup that’s not bad, I had Delmonico’s send it over—and while I’m doin’ my damnedest, Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints in Heaven, as you goyim say, are you ever in Scheissdreck.”
He stuck the spoon in my mouth again and I sucked down some bisque. “What’s the beef?” I asked.
“Murder One, maybe Two, we’re hondeling.”
“Dusters?”
Instead of answering, Joe sprang up and started bawlin’ at the bulls. “Hey, beat it outside, you bozos, this’s privileged conversation, as in you don’t get to hear it, eavesdrop it or poach on it in any wise whatsoever, get me?” Like a sheepdog, he herded them outside the door and slammed it shut. “Where was we?”
“Dusters?” I prompted.
“Tragically deceased.” Joe tucked into the steak.
“Witnesses?”
“Plenty.”
“They’ll never yap.”
“You might be wrong there.”
“Who they got? The bartender? I knew I shoulda—”
“Worse.”
“How much worse?”
“Real much worse. Margaret and Freda.”
“Which one’s singin’?”
“You like duets?”
I could hardly believe this terrible news. “What’s in it for them?”
Joe tossed the soup spoon aside and lit up a cigarette. He blew some smoke in my direction and it tasted good.
“How about not having to cuddle up with Old Sparky on a cold winter’s night, for starters? As opposed to you, if they make the Big One stick.”
“What about the Tiger?”
“Sittin’ this one out until they see which way the wind’s blowing out of City Hall’s ass.” He stuck the cigarette in my mouth and let me have half a drag. “You are some little lulu—can’t you keep your mug out of the papers? ’T’snot like Tammany didn’t give ya fair warning.”
He plopped open a copy of the Graphic. “Shame of the Streets,” squawked the headline. The picture was worse. There was I, lying in the gutter, looking about as close to dead as I ever hoped to see myself. I was glad my mother took the Sun.
“Art and Johnny?”
“The girls ratted. Bulls picked ’em both up an hour ago. Art was in bed with his girlfriend; Johnny was drunk in a blind pig. They’ll fry if you do.”
“Georgie?” I was worried about little George. The boys could take care of themselves, but George was just a pretend tough guy.
“Amscrayed.”
“When do we go to court?”
“Soon as you’re able.”
“We got a strategy?”
“We always got a strategy. Problem is so do the other guys.”
“Anybody we can buy?”
He wolfed a piece of cheesecake. It looked good. “Workin’ on it.”
“Work harder. Somebody must owe us somethin’, or be eatin’ cherry pie where he oughtn’t.”
“If he is, we’ll find him.”
It was right then that I realized somebody was missing. Somebody important. “Where’s May?”
Now it was Joe’s turn to shrug. “Dunno. Prob’ly with your Ma.”
“Find her,” I barked, mad. I could feel the stitches pull.
“Take it easy. You wanna bust a gut fer chrissakes, Jesus,” said Joe, reaching for his hat.
I felt awful, the shadows coming back over my brain, my chest on fire, my heart cozying up to the lead.
He yanked the door open. “Try to stay out of trouble, will ya?”
In such a state as I was it’s hard to say when and if you pass out, nod off or just blink for a moment, but whatever it was I did it and then I smelled her, felt her cool hand on my forehead, sensed her dark curls brushing across my face, restoring some of the life that was leaking from my heart.
Chapter Thirty-Three
My trial was in all the papers that month of May 1915. To hear them tell it, I was personally responsible for every bad thing that occurred in the City of New York, as if I’d do anything to hurt the only place that had ever let me call it home. I made a little vow then and there that I’d never speak to a reporter as long as I lived and I’m pleased to say that’s one covenant I never had the slightest trouble keeping.
The state, in the unpleasant form of D.A. Perkins, wasn’t takin’ no chances. Judge Nott’s courthouse was ringed with bulls from the Elizabeth Street station house, and they wouldn’t let any of my friends or well-wishers into the courtroom except for George DeMange, whom I insisted was my business manager. Big Frenchy, who always did have trouble finding a suit that suited him, looked a little goofy s
tanding there, his wrists and half his forearms shooting through his cuffs, but Shalleck vouched for his bona fides and there he was, bigger than life.
While I’d been on ice at the Tombs, Art caught eighteen and Hoppo won lucky thirteen up the river, and they both took it like a man, with nary a peep. Which was good, because Joe’s strategy was to paint me as a kind of victim myself, not only of the Dusters’ slugs heretofore but of my own lads’ hotheadedness.
You may object that was a mean and low-down sort of thing to do, double-crossing your own as it were, but it was done all the time, and no one thought the worse of you for doing it. For that was the prerogative of the boss, to get his flunkies to dangle for him if they had to, that was part of what they were paid for, and like I said, my boys sucked it down good and hard and silent.
The girls both testified against me, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get me a little hot under the collar to see them both sittin’ there on the stand, crossing and uncrossing their pretty limbs and ankles, batting their peepers at the jury johnnies, mixing a how-do-you-do with a come-hither whenever it suited their purposes, which was more or less all the time, for the sole reason of settling my hash. Such as:
Q: Is it true, in your experience, that the defendant is a no-good, low-down, no-account lowlife?
Margaret: You said a mouthful, bud.
Q: Do you recognize said lowlife?
Margaret (pointing at me): That’s the selfsame bastard right over there.
And:
Q: Would it be fair to say that this here bum in the dock is the same churl who relieved you of your virginity?
Freda: And how.
Q: Which was more or less against your will?
Freda (confused): More or less.
Q: Which is it?
Freda (thinking): I coulda never tole my mama on account a da shame.
Q: But you loved him?
Freda: Sure, I guess.
Q: Why are you testifying against him now?
Freda: On the Saturday before Easter I made up my mind to tell the truth, because I wanted to go to Communion, and I knew I couldn’t if I lied on the stand.
Q: And did you?
Freda (flummoxed): Did I what?
Q: Go to Communion.
Freda: I forget.
I wrote ’em both off on the spot, which frankly I was glad of in the case of Margaret, but a little wistful in the case of Freda, owing to how far we went back and all. One thing was for sure, which was as a consequence of all this gunplay, I was shedding dames at an alarming rate.
Shalleck didn’t much bother with either of the broads, asking only a few perfunctory questions, mostly regarding their indubitably checkered pasts, until the judge had to gavel him and remind all and sundry ’twas me on trial here, not the frails.
Then it was my turn in the box, but in Joe’s hands I was merely standing in for the late Little Patsy, and my testimony was mostly to elicit what a great and grand shitheel the little punk had been, right down to the extent of his filling me full of lead on the last occasion of our meeting, which I could tell scored some points with the twelve good and true.
“In other words, and in your humble estimation, would it be fair to say that the late unlamented, excuse me lamented, decedent Mr. Moore aka Doyle was more or less asking for the fate what befell him at Nash’s, to put it another way, did the dirty sonofabitch deserve what he got or even more?”
Needless to say, I was ordered not to answer that particular query as the district attorney did his imitation of a Mexican jumping bean and the judge pounded away at his desk like he was pickaxing for gold or something and somewhere in the back of the courtroom the ancient drab that was Moore’s ma got loudly weepy.
“Shut up, ya old biddy,” I shouted, which got me gaveled good and pronto.
Shalleck waved aside the interruption. “So your testimony is, if I may paraphrase or indeed phrase, what’s the difference, that at no time during the recent unfortunate gunplay in the matter of the lamentably late Fats did you have in your possession any kind of firearm, gat, pistol, revolver, sidearm or what have you, nor did you employ, use, utilize or otherwise handle said, or check that, unsaid, heater in the course or noncourse of any such activity in any wise?”
I took my best guess. “Are you kidding?”
“No further questions.”
The smirk on Perkins’s face told me he didn’t believe a word of what I just said, although frankly that made two of us. He was a clever bastard, I have to give him that, needlin’ me about the girls, implyin’ that maybe I wasn’t man enough to handle them the way a man should, which frosted me something fierce.
“They say you’re quite the lover boy, Madden,” he cracked, and I coulda cracked his skull for it.
“That’s for them to say and me to prove,” I replied.
He fussed with some papers, the phony. “You seem to have lost your wife somewhere along the way. Hard thing to do.” He took off his glasses and glared at me. “Lose one’s wife.”
“Only if you call Yonkers lost,” I said, and that got a laugh.
Perkins got kinda huffy. “I’ll have you know I’m from Yonkers,” he said.
“I rest my case,” said I, which got an even bigger laugh.
That made him plenty sore, so he started in on me but good, draggin’ up all sorts of ancient history regarding my various arrests and so forth, paintin’ me plug-ugly till I couldn’t take it anymore and I got up and started yelling that I was being railroaded, that they might as well just take me outside and shoot me for all the chance I had to get a fair jig.
“Objection on various and sundry grounds, Your Honor,” shouted Joe, finally coming to my assistance.
Bang! “Sit down, Mr. Shalleck.”
“…true that your brother Martin Aloysius Madden has also been arrested for the crime of…”
That tore it. I jumped out of the witness box and caught Perkins square on the kisser with a roundhouse right. “You can needle me all you want,” I bellowed at him, “but you leave my family out of this, you dirty shyster!”
I coulda sworn I heard some applause as they subdued me and started carting me back to the icehouse.
“The state rests,” sputtered Perkins, picking himself up off the ground.
Seven hours later they dragged me back into court to hear the verdict: guilty of first-degree manslaughter. Judge Nott asked if I had anything to say before he pronounced sentence, and before I could open my beak Joe was up on his feet, pleadin’ like hell, sayin’ what a splendid lad I was…but let him tell it:
“Your Honor, this here is a very fine boy. Oh, sure, he done some wrong things here and there, but I must perforce remind Your Honor that this here immigrant lad come to our shores nearly an orphan and has he become a public charge or throw himself upon the dole? He has not. He has not, Your Honor. And furthermore, he has prospered in our great City of New York, taken care of his brother and sister and above all his beloved Ma in a manner befitting their prospective station, for being Jewish I don’t know much about this, but I’m told on very considerable authority that the Maddens was royalty back in Ireland, until the late lamented English occupation of that sceptered, er emerald, isle—”
The judge spoke up. “That was more than six hundred years ago, Counselor.”
“The limeys are still there, ain’t they?”
He had Nott there. “You may proceed.”
“Owing to all these extenuatin’ circumstances, not to mention of course the fact that my client is absolutely innocent of all charges, we ask for mercy.”
“Thank you. The court will now pronounce sentence.”
Nott shuffled some papers, pretending to ruminate. Joe sat down and whispered to me, “Would you believe this guy don’t have a single vice? Ain’t human, you ask me…”
I got not less than ten and not more than twenty in Sing Sing. Shalleck leaned over and said, “Don’t sweat it, we’ll lean on the girls, knock some time off, you’re out in eight or my name
ain’t Joe Shalleck.”
I could see from the look on my Ma’s face that she was taking it hard, but I knew that eight was easy time I could do standing on my head. Her head was down and she was sobbin’, but my sister, May, was looking straight ahead, not at me but at the judge, her eyes full of vinegar. I tried to flash her a glance, but she kept looking daggers straight ahead.
“Lawes is okay for a warden and I hear they got a great doc up there, a regular Hippopotamus of a sawbones.”
I remembered the card Dr. Mendoza gave me as a bull or two slapped the cuffs on me. The judge in his black robes departed and Joe went sprinting after him, but I neither wondered or cared because my sister, May, was runnin’ to me. “Owen!”
“Where ya been?” I breathed, even though they was starting to drag me away.
Ma was right behind her, as black of raiment as the judge, but her sable was widow’s weeds, sorrow and heartbreak a decade on, not phony dispassion.
Then May managed to interpose her sweet form between us and the bulls, which wasn’t easy. “Lay off, ya big apes. Can’t you see he’s talking to his mother? You got mothers, ain’t ya?”
I wasn’t too sure about that, but it seemed to work. “You always told me I was going places, Ma,” I said with as much courage as I could muster. I thought my insides were going to explode. “That I was going to be a big man. Well—look at me now.” I held up my shackles. “A big man.”
My mother’s tears were terrible to behold. I suppose if I’da been wiser at that point, I would’ve realized she wasn’t crying for me, but for all of us, the whole family, the living and the dead.
“I won’t be after visitin’ ya,” she sobbed. “I don’t t’ink me poor heart could stand it.”
I threw my arms around her as best I could. “Don’t worry about me, Ma.”
“Come on, punk,” said one of the screws, “the Big House’s waiting for ya.” He tapped me on the shoulder hard, and I woulda clocked him if I hadn’ta been holdin’ on to my Ma.
“May’ll take care of ya,” I breathed to her, “and I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”
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