Before me and the screw even made the door Shalleck was there again, waving some kind of magic document in his mitt. “Mr. Madden has been classified as a Class C prisoner—restricted prolonged tractable group.”
“Huh?” said the bull.
“That means you should only take it easy.” My lawyer thrust the piece of paper under the screw’s nose, which made him relax his clutch a little, for which I was thankful. While the guard puzzled out the writing, Shalleck said to me:
“While you’re in college, I’ll be workin’ on the girls getting them to change their stories, and like I say don’t worry about it even a little bit because everybody changes their story from time to time, even the four evangelists, you’re surprised I read the New Testament, well don’t be, it’s my job to know what they’re sayin’, and as for dames, well you knew about dames, they’re changeable.”
“Hey, Harry, c’mere and take a look at this,” the guard called to the bailiff and the two of them studied the order like it was in Egyptian or something.
“So that’s why what’s happenin’ to ya ain’t so bad because there’s no dames up at the Big House, just mooks, and since you’re not one of them fairies actually pines for a stretch up the old river, hell, you got nothing to worry about. Keep your nose clean and Lawes’ll take care of you and before you know it you’ll be runnin’ every racket in the joint.”
I must have grimaced in pain from my wounds. May clutched my arm.
“Look at it another way,” said Joe. “It’s like medical leave or something, like you was shot up in a war and now you’re recooperatin’ at the state’s expense. The meals’ll all be catered and that Doc Sweet is some kind of wizard with a scalpel, Jesus he’d have to be, what with all the shot-up mugs he sees.”
The uniformed clowns had finally finished reading the order. “Seems okay to me, but it’s outta my bailiwick,” said the screw. He gave a yank on the cuffs. “Get moving.”
Big George was still standing in the spectators’ area but I could hear his voice boom: “It’ll all be here when you get back, Owen. And more.”
I nodded at May, who was comforting my mother. “Make sure she is too.”
As they finally pulled me away, I could have sworn I saw Mary Frances standing at the back of the courtroom, a silent sentinel blessing my passage to the other side.
The next time I saw the sidewalk the year was 1923.
PART TWO
Dutch
Chapter Thirty-Four
Joe came to see me nearly every week. “You’re doin’ great, huh, how’s the health, don’t worry about a thing we’re workin’ on it, and lemme tell ya the Tiger is pleased and proud as punch at the classy way you’re doin’ this time, Owney, just you keep on doin’ it and everything’s going to be okay—okay?”
“Okay,” I’d say, and then little Joe would go waltzing off, back to Manhattan in one of my cars, at my expense.
As Shalleck predicted, Lawes liked me, made me a trusty even. I pretty much had the run of the joint and believe it or not, it didn’t cost me a penny. I’d never met somebody so straight before and at first I assumed Joe or Frenchy was cheapskating me, but no, Lawes couldn’t be bought and that was that. He let me have my pigeons in peace, grow flowers and whatnot. For the head screw, he wasn’t so bad.
One day early on in my incarceration I got the shock of my life when the Warden and I were taking the air together in the yard when I saw somebody that looked awful familiar. My face must have betrayed my emotions, or maybe I even said something, which I didn’t often do around Lawes unless he asked me a question.
“What’s the matter, Madden? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“A specter for sure, Warden,” I responded politely. For wasn’t I looking right at none other than my old nemesis Becker, the copper. He didn’t look so grand now, chained to a gang.
The Warden let out the merest puff of a laugh. “How the mighty are fallen, eh, Owen? The great police lieutenant Charles Becker, brought low by a common gambler named Rosenthal. Don’t you read the papers?”
“I musta been havin’ some troubles of my own just then. What happened?”
Warden Lawes looked at me like he was a little surprised I didn’t know. “Mr. Rosenthal penned an ill-advised article in the pages of the World detailing the, er, interest of certain members of the force in his affairs—”
“You mean shakedowns?”
Lawes didn’t seem to mind my rudeness. “—the upshot of which two days later he, Rosenthal, met a most violent demise.”
“Becker popped him?”
“So the jury decided. He and some others.”
“Well, did he?” I thought of poor sad Hyman, and how he gave me a break when nobody else was likely to, and I felt sorry for him.
Lawes gave me a wise look. “It’s not my job to settle such questions, boy,” he said. “Wiser men than I have already done so. I simply carry out their decisions.”
“Whether or not they’re right.”
Lawes gave me a little smile, as if we were both, at that moment, on the same side. “We all have our jobs, son.”
I looked back Becker’s way. He’d lost a lot of his hoity-toity hauteur; he was just another mug at the moment. A couple of screws stood near him, watching his back.
I jerked my head in their direction. “What’s with them?”
That got a broader smile from the Warden. “Insurance,” he said. “Becker wouldn’t last ten minutes in the yard or the workhouse without someone’s sticking a shiv between his ribs. It’s my job to keep him alive.”
“How long?”
“Until he sits down with Old Sparky.”
I could hardly believe my ears. The thought of a police lieutenant going to the chair flabbergasted me. The chair was for mugs, not cops. That was a real eye-opener, let me tell you.
“Who else took the rap?” I was curious.
“Gyp the Blood, Dago Frank, Lefty Louie and Whitey Lewis. They all walked the last mile, just before you got here.”
I let out a low whistle. Gyp the Blood! Becker was running one of the toughest little gangs in New York.
I looked at Becker and saw a dead man. “When?”
“He goes to the chair tomorrow, by order of Governor Charles S. Whitman—the same man who, as district attorney, convicted him. A fearful symmetry, eh?”
I didn’t know much about symmetries. “Ain’t that some tough luck.”
Lawes surveyed his yard, his empire. “This institution is full of object lessons for the wise lad who will heed them.”
That night I bribed a screw to let me visit my old friend Charlie with some of my leftovers from the meals Delmonico’s was sending up the river. It was very late, well past midnight, but I knew that a fella on death row don’t get much sleep the night before he meets his Maker, and sure enough, Becker was sitting bolt upright on his cot.
I was packing some cigarettes. “Smoke, punk?” I whispered. No sense rousing unbought screws.
He didn’t even bother to look up as the guard opened his cell door. “What’s the angle?” he said.
“No angle,” says I. “No beef either.”
Now he looks up. What a difference a uniform makes. “Looks like they caught up to both of us.”
“Know what’s the difference between us? I’m out in ten, maybe less…”
“And I’m out in one,” he finishes.
I took the smoldering fag out of my mouth and offered it to him. He wasn’t responsive, so I stuck it in his mouth, man-to-man.
“Never figured you for the big hike.” Nobody ever does. “How come?”
Becker puffed for a while, sucking his last breaths through the weed. “No choice. Once you’re in…”
I let it drift a sec. “Long time ago a wise man said something to me.”
“So what?” He was almost finished with his cigarette.
“So it’s wisdom. He said, ‘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.’ ”
“Smart fella.”
“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 used to be a betting man.”
“So was Rosenthal.”
I clocked him right on the point of his jaw, plenty hard, knocking what was left of the cigarette out of his mouth and sending a trickle of blood down his jaw. Becker, though, never moved, never flinched, but took my payback like a man. “Have a nice ride, Charlie,” I said, motioning to the screw.
“See you in Hell, Madden,” he said. “There’s always room there for one more.”
The next day I wheedled myself in behind the guy that threw the switch, and so it was that I got to watch Becker fry. I half thought he’d go yellow, kicking and screamin’ and beggin’ and pleading and calling for his mother like most of the other so-called tough guys, but he didn’t. He shook off the hood, and as they strapped him in and put the magic beanie on his head, he just sat there, staring into space, trying to catch Fate’s eye and maybe a break too, and in that instant I looked at Becker I beheld Monk Eastman.
The first jolt didn’t kill him, and I heard through the vine later that they underpowered the juice a little, just for laughs, on account of everybody hates a crooked cop, especially one who gets caught. So they overcompensated on the second jolt, which nearly took off the top of his head. His hair on fire, Becker bucked and jerked, his eyeballs bulging, the veins on his forearms popping, until his tongue turned black and a trickle of piss ran down his pants leg, and that was the end of him.
Most of the witnesses averted their gaze at that point, but me I’d seen men die before and so it wasn’t a big deal, except for his eyes, his dead eyes, dead before the second wave crashed over him, dead before he’d even sat down, dead like Monk’s, dead.
I’d been so focused on Becker that I hadn’t bothered to eyeball the witnesses, who I’d made for screws and reporters. I shoulda known that little Joe would be there. He was sitting near the back of the witness chamber, for once emotionless, and I had the sense I was peeping in on him in a private moment, but I couldn’t help it. Joe kept his hat on the whole time, even when the prison surgeon checked Becker’s pulse and listened to his heart. The doc carried a clipboard in one hand and when he’d finished giving the late Charlie the once-over, he made a few notations and handed it to the warden.
“Sentence carried out on this day, July 7, 1915, by order of Governor Whitman,” said Lawes. “Charles Becker, rest in peace.”
It wasn’t Becker whose rest I was worried about, though. I chanted as much in hebe as I’d glommed from Monk for poor Rosenthal, who was good to me when he didn’t have to be, and then sneaked back to my cell.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Such was my last view of Becker and my first view of the great Dr. Sweet, who I got to know pretty good and pretty often. Them damned Duster slugs was makin’ my stomach ache something fierce and after enduring a lot of jokes about my bellyachin’, I got an appointment with the sawbones. First thing I did was mention Dr. Mendoza, which turned him kindly on the spot. He put me up on the table and started feeling around.
“Is it worth it?” he asked while he was pokin’ me. Dr. Sweet spoke in a low monotone, as if everything was more or less the same to him, which it more or less was.
“Is what worth it?”
“This,” he said, and pressed down hard. I thought my head was going to fly off and hit the ceiling, the pain was so intense. “And this.” More torture.
After a while he let me up. “Yours isn’t the worst case I’ve seen, not even this month,” he said.
“Case a what?”
“Lead poisoning.”
“Gee, I feel better already.”
Dr. Sweet stepped back to get a good look at me. I wasn’t much of a sight. I’d lost at least ten pounds, more like a full stone, what with all my adventures recently, and my strength was shot. I wasn’t cuttin’ much of a figure, gangsterwise.
“Had a prisoner in here the other day, a lifer,” said the doc. “Thought he was a hunchback. Had been treated all his life as if he were a hunchback. I got his shirt off and had a look. He wasn’t a hunchback. He had a huge cyst that had never been treated, never even properly examined, and it had grown and grown until it was bigger than your head. I removed it and you know where that man is today?”
I said no.
“Playing center field for Sing Sing baseball team.”
I whistled.
He was writing as he was talking now. “Missing ears, missing noses—last year I reconstructed practically an entire face for one poor unfortunate.”
“What was his name? Maybe I knew ’im.” But the doc wasn’t listening.
“It’s not the bullets they left in you which are causing your distress,” he said, handing me the slip of paper, which he had folded over on itself. “It’s the ones they took out. How many did you say? Six?”
“So I’m told.”
Dr. Sweet shook his head in deprecation. “Surgery has come a long way in just a few short years, and we’re continuing to make advances at a rapid pace. Your wounds are ulcerating.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Suppurating. Becoming necrotic.”
“Say again?”
“They’ll kill you if we don’t fix them—soon.” He pointed at the piece of paper in my hand. “Take that to the Warden. It’s a request for a pass, for medical emergency.” He handed me back my prison stripes. “I want you in surgery tomorrow morning, seven A.M. sharp.”
Well, Dr. Sweet was every bit the artist with a scalpel as I’d heard, and after he got finished with me I was better if not perfect, and from that moment on I knew I’d never go to another doc but him as long as I could.
One of my regular visitors after I got out of recovery was Georgie Ranft, and was I ever glad to see him. Each week or so, Georgie would fill me in on the gossip, who was deceased, who just shot up, who was banging who, that kind of stuff. He got handsomer every day, Georgie did, and he still hadn’t given up the idea of being a gangster, but now his main notion was to become one of them Hollywood actors in the picture shows. His buddy Valentino had done it and Georgie figured so could he. Why the hell not? Didn’t seem to take any brains.
“Only one problem,” he said one day.
“What’s that?”
“What if they find out about, you know, us?”
“How they gonna do that? Your name never came up at the trial.”
“Yeah, well…” Georgie seemed fretful that his Hollywood career was over before it even had started.
“Tell ’em it’s just rumor. Innuendo. Insinuation—and that kinda stuff don’t have no place in the United States of America.”
Georgie didn’t seem too sure. “What if they keep asking?”
“Tell ’em it was research.”
Well, if that wasn’t the old open sesame. From then on, Sing Sing was one big stage to Georgie, and as we wandered around, he’d be after asking me what’s this and what’s that till I wanted to slug him. I took him all over the prison, to the laundry room, the library, the exercise yard, the hospital—he pretty much saw the whole shooting match, took it all in too.
Another mug I was pleased to see was my own brother. Marty had been after makin’ it in a variety of occupations, including dancer, hod carrier, ditch digger, stableboy, handyman and a bunch of others, but had come a cropper at each and every one of ’em, thanks to his love of horseflesh, dogflesh and girlflesh, each one of which is expensive.
Marty had been doin’ some other stuff too, namely time. In the past four years he’d been nicked for burglary on a couple of occasions, breaking and entering, and violating the Sullivan Law, which malfeasances won him a stretch in stir.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I yelled at him. “You know somebody’s gotta take care of Ma and May.”
He looked sheepish an
d stupid. “Sorry, Owney. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn right it won’t.” If there weren’t screws around, I woulda smacked him. But he’d brought me some cigarettes—the real kind, not the prison kind—and a pie that Ma’d baked, so I was feeling kindly.
“You gotta help me, Owney,” he said, and he said it so pathetic that I couldn’t say no to him. A man’s got to take care of his family, as everybody knows, and since my family was now in Yonkers and might as well have been on the moon, I had to revert to my original group of relatives, which was okay by me. “I mean, look at you—”
“Yeah—look at me,” says I. “Doin’ a stretch for manslaughter, like a cheap hood.”
“But you ain’t no hood—nor a cheap one neither. This thing here, this is just a howdyacallit, a passing fancy. You’ll be righter than rain when you get back on the outside, you can count on that.”
“You’re the one who’s counting on it, I’ll bet, ya bum.”
Marty looked real sad, and I realized I didn’t have to insult him anymore, that he was going to be a friend in addition to being a brother.
“Sure I’m counting on it. And why not? We’s brothers, ain’t we?”
“Always have been, always will be,” I said. “When I’m out, I’ll need ya. Just like, right now, I need to count on ya. Think ya can manage that?”
I swear to our dear departed Da there were tears in his eyes. “Lay a bet on it,” he said.
“I will—but you won’t. I want ya to lay off the ponies and the mutts and the twists, hear me? Sure, go ahead and have a good time, but don’t blow nothin’. George—Frenchy—will give ya what he calls a stipend.”
“What’s that?”
“Bread. Moolah. Dough. Hang on to it. All I ask in return is—”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing. You’re my brother.” I reached across the table and we shook on it. One of the guards thought we might be passing something between us and started over to take a look.
“Whaddya lookin’ at, ape?” I snarled. I pointed to my trusty stripes. “You see these? The Warden himself gave ’em to me, and let me tell you, brother, I earned ’em. So back off, you smackoff.”
And All the Saints Page 21