“He’s stealing the money,” Old Jack said.
“Of course. He must be taking four thousand dollars home, nobody knows about it. He says he couldn’t come up with anything. They were screaming about ghosts. He had to put in full crews. He said. The fucking liar. I told you, Jack. I checked. They had full crews for a couple of weeks until everybody calmed down and then he started ghosts again. But he told me that the crews still was full.”
“He thinks you wouldn’t check?”
“He’s a fuck.”
As Junior drove toward the Bronx, Old Jack said to O’Suilivan, “I’d love to get that rat bastard kid of his right here tonight.”
O’Sullivan held up a hand. “I told you, that’s personal between you and him. You want him, he lives ten fucking blocks from you. I’m here on business. I’m going to pick on one of Morrison’s silent partners and that’s the end of this here particular job tonight.”
“What time is it?” Owney said to Danny Murphy.
“Quarter to six.”
“The fights start what time?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“They got a bar there?”
“Big bar.”
“Then I’m going there now.”
“I’m having one more,” Murphy said. When he opened his mouth to swallow, he showed missing teeth.
“You got your car,” Owney said.
“Absolutely.”
“Then I’ll bring these to my father,” Owney said, tapping the fight tickets in his shirt pocket, and he left the bar.
A couple of minutes after Owney’s car pulled out, it was replaced by another, which shuddered to a stop a full three feet from the curb; parking was never Junior’s strong suit.
One drink later, Danny Murphy walked to his car in the shadows of a side street. He unlocked the door and paid no attention to the footsteps coming along the sidewalk and out into the street after him.
O’Sullivan did not break stride. He walked up to Murphy and with the same motion brought the bat whizzing in the darkness and against the side of Murphy’s head. Leave them in shock, baby, O’Sullivan told himself as he walked away.
When Owney arrived out in Queens, at Holy Child High, the school parking lot was filled and the streets facing the school were solid with cars. He parked a few blocks away. Bayside was a neighborhood of attached, two-family brick houses that ended at streets of old, expensive frame houses that sat under high, full trees. The Golden Gloves boxing show was being held in the gym, with the added feature of a bar one flight downstairs, which consisted of cafeteria tables tended by men from the Fathers’ Club, who wore plaid wool shirts and white aprons. A couple of steps away was the entrance to the school locker room, which ordinarily was a sanctuary for lithe bright white Queens young men.
On this night, though, the locker room was being used for the Golden Gloves fighters, which created the sight of young black kids in mirror sunglasses and huge sneakers with the laces untied bouncing the length of a bar crowded by Bayside whites, bouncing along as if they belonged in the place, the more sensitive of them trying to show that they owned the place, causing the crowd in the bar, both Holy Child Fathers’ Club bartenders in their white aprons and Bayside men drinking in basketball jackets with names of their parishes on the back, to shudder with their beer, jerk actually, as standing on a power line suddenly turned live.
Owney’s father and Chris Doyle, from the job, were at the end of the bar along with Willie Clancy, Owney’s cousin. Clancy had a good job with the Fire Department, driving a battalion chief. Owney always hoped that Clancy would have an accident, and the battalion chief emerge unscathed. As Owney approached them, he told himself not to talk, that he had been drinking too much, and so he went into his shirt pocket and took out the tickets and gave them to his father. A small bandage covered a butterfly stitch in the corner of Jimmy Morrison’s right eye. It was the last of seventy stitches that had been put into the face, which now looked like a cracked windshield.
The father held a soft drink in his hand.
“Want one?” he said to Owney.
“Not one of those. I want a beer.”
“Hey. We said we’d both lay off everything, even beer, until you got straightened out with her.”
“I tried that.”
“You called her?”
“Today.”
“And it’s no good?”
“No good.”
“Then what am I doing with this in my hand?” the father said. “We went and stopped drinking and she still didn’t care, did she? Well, that takes care of that. Hup! Give us a couple of beers.”
They had the beer first and then Chris Doyle ordered shots with the next beer. Willie Clancy signaled that he wanted only beer. Now he looked at Owney haughtily and said, “Too much drinking for her, huh?”
“No,” Owney said.
“Had to be,” Clancy said.
“Never.”
Clancy pointed to the shot glass. “You don’t have the control.”
“What do you mean?”
“One time you had the most control in the world. I’m telling you now, you got none. She might have seen you going to pieces on her.”
Owney wanted to smack him in the face. Instead, teeth clenched, he said, “You don’t know why she left, so why do you keep talking?”
“I can see why she left.”
“Your ass,” Owney said. “She left for another reason.” Now his mind was as hot as his eyes and his only desire was to beat this Willie Clancy somehow.
“What are you talking about?” Owney’s father said.
“She’s got a personal problem with herself,” Owney said. “She wouldn’t sleep with me because of it.”
“She told you that she wouldn’t sleep with you?”
“Told me? She wouldn’t come near the bed.”
“So she’s frigid,” the father said.
“She wouldn’t come near the bed,” Owney said.
“Never happened before in the whole family,” the father said.
The cousin ran a hand through his red hair as he thought. “We don’t know that, account of there’s things people don’t talk about. Even in the family.”
“She just got mad at me,” Owney said.
“Over sex?” the cousin said.
“She sure did.”
The father jammed a cigarette in his mouth. “We never had a woman leave the house.”
“Didn’t Uncle Richie bust up with Aunt Eileen?”
“That was him doing it,” the father said. “I’m talking about the woman leaving. This is the first time I ever heard of the woman walking out. You expect that from a guy. The woman never should leave.”
“She should be home in my house with my kid,” Owney said.
“I thought she was a smart girl,” Owney’s father said.
“So did I,” Owney said.
“She shows me no fucking sense at all,” the father said.
The cousin, looking around, saw that they were being overheard by others. He put his head down and had Owney and his father lean over.
“I got to ask you one thing,” the cousin said to Owney.
“What?”
“You been running around on her?”
The father’s head went straight up. “That got nothin’ to do with it!”
Owney turned in disgust from the question and held his hand out to the bartender.
“I got to have a beer to get over that.”
“The woman’s supposed to be home and that’s all there is to it,” his father said.
“She’s supposed to be home in my house with my baby,” Owney said.
“Absolutely,” the father said.
“Now she’s so smart, maybe she doesn’t get me back so fast,” Owney said.
“That’s one way,” his father said.
“She’s not home in my house with my baby, then I don’t go home to her,” Owney said.
“Do her good to fucking wait for a while,” the father said.
He took a large swallow of beer and stared at the plastic glass, shook it as he thought, then drained the glass, put it down, and placed a hand on Owney’s shoulder.
“As long as we’re talking, we might as well go all the way.”
Owney listened.
“I’m going to ask you one question and that’s all.”
Owney nodded.
“You’re telling me she left you because you wanted her to sleep with you like a wife should.”
“Yes.”
“Now I got to ask you something and I want you to think before you answer.”
“All right.”
“Has she been seeing a lot of women?”
Owney frowned. “You mean are people telling her things?”
The father shook his head. “No, no, you don’t listen to me. Has she been spending time maybe with one particular woman and now she don’t want to go to bed with you?”
Owney slid his shoulder from under the father’s hand. “That’s nuts.”
“I said I’d ask you once. Say no more about it.”
“That’s really demented,” Owney said.
Suddenly in the doorway to the locker room was a small black man in his sixties who wore a red trainer’s sweater. He had both hands up and was talking to somebody inside the room.
“Yab!” the trainer said, in a Puerto Rican accent.
A black fist covered with bandages came out of the locker room and slapped one of the trainer’s hands.
“I say, ‘Yab,’” the trainer said. “You didn’t yab. You push. Snap the yab.”
The fighter inside mumbled something, which caused the trainer to drop his hands in disgust and walk back into the room.
A priest, dark hair slicked straight back, stepped through the crowd and touched Owney.
“Excuse me. I know who you are. The lad from West Point said he’d certainly be honored to meet you.”
“He’s here already?” Owney’s father said.
“Oh, the lad’s in the first fight. He has to drive all the way back to the Point.”
“Oh, boy, are we counting on him tonight,” the father said.
Owney looked at the full beer in his hand.
“Go ahead, I’ll be right in.”
“Oh, no, you come now with us. He wants to meet you, not us,” the father said. He took the beer from Owney and handed it to the bartender. “Here, hold this for him.”
The priest led them down the hall to an office. The priest walked in first and immediately a big kid with light brown hair, wearing a black robe with gold trim, jumped up. A bandaged hand saluted Owney. Two West Point cadets, in white T-shirts and gray uniform pants, stood at attention and saluted.
“This is Cadet George Lenane,” the priest said.
“Good luck to you,” Owney said.
“I don’t know if I can live up to you, a Medal of Honor, but I’ll try,” he said.
“Sure you can,” Owney said.
“Whack the guy around like you’re supposed to,” the father said.
“Who are you in with?” Owney asked him.
“I believe his name is Winston Sheffield.”
“Some big nigger,” Owney’s father said.
The priest shook his head. “We like to think we talk a little better than that. We also like to think that dignity and order will prevail out there tonight and set an example for our youth.”
“Yeah, let ’em see a good West Point Irishman ready to put down his life for his country insteada wrecking it can punch out any nigger alive,” Owney’s cousin said.
The cadet smiled. “Oh, I don’t know if it makes much difference what he is. Once you’ve run plays against Notre Dame, with those big black bears they had playing front four, then I don’t think anything matters. If I could gain ground in a football game against Notre Dame, then I don’t think a Golden Gloves bout is going to be too much for me.”
“We gave you the only private place in the building for a dressing room,” the priest said. “Now just win one for us.”
The fighter smiled and one of the cadets stood behind him and kneaded the muscles in the back of his neck. Lenane rolled his head.
“Let’s go, I want to see this one,” Owney’s father said. He and the cousin left and went to the staircase. “I’ll be right up,” Owney said. He wanted the beer he had left at the bar.
He had the plastic glass to his mouth and was swallowing hard when he saw Navy, eyebrows up, looking for somebody.
Owney brought the glass away from his mouth.
“You don’t want me tonight.”
Navy smiled. “I’m not bothering you. I was just looking for Danny Murphy. I owe him.”
“I saw him six o’clock at Brendan’s. I thought he was coming right here.”
“If you see him, tell him I’m here and I got my money for him,” Navy said.
“You’re mad at me,” Owney said.
This caused Navy to smile. Someday, he told himself, he was going to have a new conversation with a drinker. “I’m not allowed to get mad at anything. Because if I get mad at you, then I got to reach out for a drink. If I get mad at you, I kill myself.”
“I got a little trouble at home, that’s why I’m like this tonight,” Owney said.
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me anything. You mentioned it to me before, you know.”
“When I get through tonight, I think I’m going to stop drinking for a while,” Owney said.
“Good,” Navy said. “If I can help you, just give me a wave.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to stop by myself,” Owney said.
“That’s a little hard,” Navy said.
“I got the guts to do anything,” Owney said. “I’m tough Irish. I can do anything I put my mind on.”
“Oh, I know the Irish are tough,” Navy said.
“Bet on it,” Owney said. “Bet on me being tough.”
“Oh, I know that.”
Owney glanced over Navy’s shoulder as one of the cadets walked past. He carried a gleaming pail that contained a green water bottle with a fresh tape around the neck. Then came Lenane, the fighter, in the imposing black robe. The cadet behind him was massaging Lenane’s shoulders. Lenane’s eyes closed, and he rolled his head.
“Here we go,” Owney said.
Lenane’s eyes opened and he winked broadly at Owney. Then he went upstairs to the auditorium.
“See that?” Owney said. “That’s tough Irish.”
“Oh, I can see he’s tough,” Navy said. “Now let me get upstairs and watch him show it to me.”
“What does he have to show?” Owney said. “You just saw for yourself.”
“But I want to see the man fight.”
“You couldn’t see just standing there that he’s tough?”
“Oh, sure. But let me see the man demonstrate it.”
“You probably think I’m not tough,” Owney said.
Navy laughed. “No, I think you’re a pretty tough fella.”
“You hang around me like I need a nurse,” Owney said.
“Owney, I want to go upstairs. I don’t want to hang around here. Let me go. In fact, I’m going right now.”
Navy walked away. “I can do anything I want by myself,” Owney said. “When you see him fight upstairs, think of me. He’s a tough Irish and so am I.”
Out of the room alongside the bar came the black trainer in the red sweater and behind him a big lazy-looking black in a cheap red bathrobe. On the back, a couple of letters were missing from his club name, “Brownsville Housing Tenant Patrol.”
“What are you doing?” Owney said to the trainer.
“Walking my boy.”
“Why don’t you rub his neck muscles like they do for the other guy?”
“A good fighter don’ need a rubdown, a bad fighter don’ deserve one.”
“This guy a good fighter?”
“Who know?” the trainer said, starting up the staircase.
Owney finished his drink and he was reaching out to
put the glass down so he could go up to the Golden Gloves fight when at this moment his own fight began. The opponent was there, all right. A lot older than these Golden Gloves kids upstairs; a nose broken and bent, the front teeth long missing, the scar tissue over the eyes turning pasty in the fluorescent lights. Old soggy gloves beckoned. Owney was alone at the bar, with customers and bartenders gone up to the fight, and nobody saw or heard the punch that Owney took. He stumbled behind the bar and got a hand on a bottle of Fleischmann’s and he was about to pour it into a glass and then he simply began to drink from the bottle, as if it were a soft drink.
Upstairs, there were a couple of great roars. Then a long wail. Suddenly out of the silence there came footsteps pounding down the stairs. The big black, his red robe over his arm, came jumping out of the staircase.
“Go get mah pussy!”
He went into the dressing room. The trainer, smiling, now appeared.
“I say yab, he say laf hook,” the trainer said to himself. He shook his head. “He wins. Laf hook hurt. Wow!”
Now Owney heard somebody talking in the hall. “Watch yourself now,” a young, clean-cut voice said. “Just a couple of more steps and we’re all right.”
Owney’s eyes went over the top of the bottle he was drinking from. The tough Irish fighter, Lenane, with liberal support under each arm, still walked haltingly. His eyes, numbed by the left hook, looked at Owney, and Owney, the wires in the back of his eyes short-circuited by alcohol, looked at the cadet and neither of them saw each other.
Sharon picked up the glasses that Owney, his father, and three others had used for their last drink.
“Geez, they were mad,” Chester Doolan from the Post Office said.
“So mad they went home so they could drink more beer and tell each other how mad they are.”
“You think that’s all?” Doolan said.
“No. Then they go to bed because they can’t even walk.”
“And this is the same guy did it to you?”
“Baseball bat. Same guy, same thing. Baseball bat.”
“Do they know where he is?”
“They say they do. You know, you think about it. When it happened last time, his old man told me, Owney went flying over to the city with a gun, to that bar the guy hangs out in on Eleventh Avenue. He didn’t want to know from nothing. Now, you seen him here tonight. He’s mad enough to kill the guy but the guy has to be right here. Owney’s drinking so much he can’t even get over to the city to do to this guy what he should do.”
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