“Some toast Liam?” She whispers, then moves for the coal stove. “I’ll wet some tae fer ye.”
“No bother, I have to be going.”
“Yes, going,” her mouth squiggles as behind her Abby and Brigid reposition in the squeaky spring bed they share until soft sighs quieten them.
“Yes, yes, going,” she repeats, a mother’s mockery. “Between yer father, yer brother Timothy an’ yerself, ye were the only one that never rose an hour before dawn. My how things change. What type o’ longshore werk is done this early?”
Murder, theft and intimidation.
Guilt wriggles through me like eels under the skin. “We’re uh. . . to meet at the Atlantic Avenue Terminal this morning. Last night a ship from China arrived and requires unloading. Since there aren’t as many ships as there were during wartime, our uh. . . closest friends are doing the job.”
She gazes out the kitchen window through the lace curtains where beyond are shadows of rooftops and obscured water towers and the fingers of leafless treetops swaying in Prospect Park. I reach for the door in desperation to exit, but hold my hand over the handle.
“Do you have trouble sleeping, Mam? With all the noise round here? I know you’re accustomed to the silence of Tulla and—”
“Are ye associated with a man named Wild Bill Lovett?” she asks all of a sudden.
Even she’s heard of him.
“I know who he is.”
“I. . . I read an article in the daily about him a few days ago. Did ye know he beat a Swedish man with a razor-ring awhile back, before he went to the war? The man’s blinded fer life,” she says with sympathy in her voice. “There are consequences in life when violence flares up ye know, Liam. Here ye can read it yerself. It’s called Tilda’s Tears,” she points at the newspaper.
“You are being naive, Mam.”
“He can’t werk an’ his mother, her name is Tilda, she’s facin’ the poorhouse. But this Lovett man walks free. In fact he’s a war hero just returned an’ has a new longshoreman gang that’s taken over the Red Hook section. Do ye work in Red Hook, Liam?”
“I don’t,” I say over a shoulder, wanting nothing more than to slip out the door.
“So what happens if yer maimed like Tilda’s son? Eh? Or worse. I read that the gangs control all o’ longshoreman labor. Been that way fer many years an’ it’s too dangerous fer a citizen to enter the maze o’ docks an’ piers an’ storehouses along the waterfront because the gangs hate outsiders an’ strangers. An’ when they kill the people, no one ever talks with the police fer fear o’ bein’ called a ‘tout.’ Now the unions support the gangs, the article says. But king o’ all the wild ones is this Dennis Meehan fella. Dinny, they call him.”
Whatever happened to our code of silence? Who’s behind this article?
She comes close through the darkness, “He steals t’ousands o’ dullars werth o’ merchandise from ships an’ local fact’ries an’ sells it fer profit. He’s the leader o’ the White Hand. . . Killed many men. An’ fer no reason t’all, it’s said. Other than talkin’ with the wrong person. Do ye work with this Meehan man, Liam?”
“I don’t know any man with that name,” I say by rule and rote.
“Don’t ye?” She whispers in resignation, though it screams of disbelief. “They’re enemies, those two. Which side is yerself on, Liam?”
“Mam, the newspapers don’t tell the all of it.”
“The newspapers lie? It’s all lies then? The whole thing? Tilda’s Tears an’ Lovett an’ Meehan? I’ll have ye know that I'm not one fer believin’ whole-heartedly in anythin’ most men say, particularly in newspapers. But there are kernels o’ truth in everythin’. So I ask ye, Liam. Concernin’ this business o’ murderin’ men. Have ye been involved in any murders round here over the past t’ree years? Have ye?”
A soft rap comes to the door.
“It’s Burke,” she turns to me as Abby and Brigid sit up in bed. “We always know who t’is by the coded tappin’, don’t we? Him with the fearful eyes. An’ if it’s not him it’s the stoney stare on Harry Reynolds, is it not? My god Liam, what price must we pay fer our passage to New Yark? Eh? The noise round here is not what keeps me awake, son. It’s the werry.”
I dig into my pocket and pull out the Saint Christopher she had given me back in October of 1915 as I was being sent ‘way for reasons untold to me. “Remember this Mam?” I hold it up to her face.
“Of course I do—”
“Not to worry, you told me. That I’d be grand with it. Safe-keeping, you said. May trouble be always a stranger to you, remember? That’s what you said. I was a boy then, sent on a man’s journey—” Burke taps on the door a second time and my sisters are now out of bed. “I had no idea what grief and woe was in store.”
She cuts in, “But I wanted only to pass the virtue o’ safe travel to ye. It wasn’t my decision to—”
“I have kept this on me the entire time, Mam. Everything I have done since coming here has been for us. Everything. I survived the crossing and overcame all obstacles. Just to bring you and the girls here. I was a boy and ill-prepared for any of it, yet I have prevailed and you stand here in front of me now, safe and sound.”
That’s a lie, no one is safe here, but I can’t stop now.
“All of this I have done only to have you question me? Question my decisions and the people I associate with? I won’t have it. No I won’t. Especially since all you know about them and what I do is what you’ve learned through the willful lies of the owning class and the deceitful gossip they curry up as yellow news.”
“Now ye sound like yer father,” says she.
“But I’m not him, am I? He’s gone, missing. Goes off to fight and leaves his family for a teen to care for everything.”
Abby and Brigid watch by the doorway with tousled hair.
“Don’t ye speak ill o’ yer father. I knew what I was gettin’ into when I married the son of a Moonlighter.”
“Is that why ye never worry about him and put it all on me? You think it’s easy? What I’ve done? What I have to do everyday?”
“What have ye done? Are we in danger here? Should we leave?”
All three turn their eyes to me. But I look at the wood floor we refurbished, the new hearth, the table Harry built and the lace curtains.
I created this with the same people she would have us run from. No, no way.
“There’s not enough money to go round. Especially with the rich people who hoard it all up in their mansions. The only way immigrants like us can make it is by working together,” I come closer with bitterness on my face. “Work with us, Mam. You’re supposed to be an ally. Do not be an enemy.”
“Liam—”
“There’s nothing else to be said, Mam. It is not a bad thing to want what I want.”
“It’s not what ye want what scares me, it’s what drives ye, Liam. That engine inside ya chest that pushes into danger further an’ further an’ then further still.”
“Aye, apparently I am my father’s son after all.”
“Don’t ye open that door!” She screams.
I open it quickly and come into the dark hallway where Burke jumps from my way. As we step down the stairwell shame rushes through me like the clouds in my dream. And it’s only then, as Burke and I step into the wind that knifes across the gray slate sidewalk that I realize I’ve left her worse for wear with my words.
I’m not really asking her to be an ally, am I? No, I’m convincing myself to keep what I created, against my own instincts. I truly am the fool.
I twirl a pebble between my fingers and stop in the street and look back to the third floor room. Back to the window where assuredly my mother looks out over the dark streets.
“What? Ya goin’ back?” Burke asks.
But I just exhale and throw the pebble against the cobblestones as we cross the street and head toward the waterfront.
Then a strange feeling washes over me. A feeling that we are being watched. I turn my eyes u
p and see something slip behind the line of cornices along the row houses.
“Are we goin’ or what?” Burke asks.
But I can’t speak to him. He has his fill of anguish already. And I with shame. I just want to get to the Atlantic Terminal for the meeting.
When the train rumbles in at Ninth Street I can feel the eyes watch me again.
Am I mad?
Ace in the Hole
“This where the Waterfront Assembly is? Wall Street? Jeez all the sidewalks’ve been shoveled out already. How come they get the white gloves? Even wit’ Enright’s new retirement system he got for us, I could never afford to live around here.”
Detective William Brosnan looks round himself at the winding, cavernous streets canopied by rows of gargantuan buildings that shadow this part of the earth, “Well, now that Europe fought against itself to ruins, this. . . this is the new empire, isn’t it?”
Ferris laughs, “Sometimes ya’re a straight talker, Brosnan. Then other times I think ya’re haunted by mad theories o’—”
“Ferris,” Brosnan stops him.
Patrolman Ferris turns as behind him paperboys yell out the morning’s headlines, “Yeah?”
Brosnan stares up to the top of the looming skyscraper in front of him, “From here I have to go it alone.”
“Yeah?”
“The things I told ye?”
“I know, I know, don’ repeat it. I’d never get people to talk to me if I betrayed their trust. I’ll keep it zipped. Don’ worry ol’ fella.”
“Not even to yer father-in-law, Captain Sullivan?”
Ferris scratches his chin, “Thing is, the captain wanted me to follow ya, Brosnan. He says ya been actin’ strange the last week or so an’, ya know, I gotta agree wit’ him. Plus there’s that report ya gave him yesterday—”
Ah, I see, I suppose you were being nice to set the bait, now you close the trap.
“It’s, it’s just information, in case. . .” Brosnan trails off.
That’s my ace in the hole. Hopefully I don’t have to pull it out.
Brosnan then changes direction. “I’ll go to him this very day an’ tell him if I want it to be officially filed or not.”
“Uhright, what did ya spend all that dirty money on then?”
“A house.”
“A house?”
“In Peekskill,” Brosnan admits, though what he says next is a lie. “I don’t want to retire in Brooklyn, I’m goin’ upstate.”
Ferris purses his lip again and backs off a bit.
“I thought you were bein’ friendly all along,” Brosnan sheepishly looks at the patrolman.
“I was,” Ferris leans back on his heels and looks up to the gargantuan buildings above. “Big things are comin’ Brooklyn’s way. The captain an’ me, we’re worried for ya.”
They shake hands and Ferris walks backward while staring at Brosnan, then turns and walks along the five-foot high snow banks until crossing Wall Street.
Brosnan peaks up one more time at the great height before walking in.
Wolcott’ll be up there working, I do not doubt.
Jonathan G. Wolcott may be of ill repute in Brooklyn, but no one could say the fat man born into old money is lazy or lackadaisical. No, Jonathan G. Wolcott prays to the god of efficiency. He will be up there now working harder than ever, hatching schemes to win the bounty of the Brooklyn waterfront from the old longshoremen gangs and unions that own it.
I’m not mad. I’m not mad, Brosnan tells himself. You can do this old man, You must. Daniel must be released of the fat man’s clutches, otherwise. . . Death is due.
Inside the warm elevator Brosnan struggles to undo the buttons on his tunic. He stares down at them with his bottom lip sticking out and growls. The scent of rusty water comes to him as he rubs his itchy and dry nose. The electric boilers that warm the newer buildings are a marvel, for certain, but far too hot for a bear’s liking. In Irishtown, such luxuries are unknown. Only but a few of the tenements along the waterfront where he lives even have electricity. The people there warm themselves by the hearth or at the foot of coal-fired stoves in the pre-Civil War wood-framers. There is even less coal than there is wood these days in Irishtown.
But Wall Street never suffers the elements. Oh no. Brooklyn does though. Brooklyn will freeze even though the boilers are manufactured in the smitheries and forged in the waterfront industries there.
The heat in the office on the twenty-eighth floor hits Brosnan like thick soup. A wide, uncommonly clean fireplace gently crackles in the waiting room even though the radiators under the row of windows are in perfect order.
Over the tight bun of the secretary are perfectly placed letters that read “New York Waterfront Assembly.” He smells fresh paint and brewed coffee, and the carpet looks as if it had been laid that same morning.
“Hot as hades in here,” Brosnan bellows to no one in particular.
The secretary observes him with flinty eyes. His soiled boots. The darkened ring at the bottom of his tunic. The swollen knuckles upon bent fingers like winter branches. The mannerisms of a commoner. “How can I help you?”
“Ye know who I am, Detective William Brosnan,” he announces in his North Dublin accent. “I am here to see Mr. Wolcott, President o’ the—”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Listen, I need to speak to yer man—”
“My man? I am not Mr. Wolcott’s—”
“I don’t need a bleedin’—” he stops himself and grunts. “I do not have an appointment, but he—”
“Is busy, I do apologize,” she reaches for a large black book and opens it. Without looking at him again, she withdraws a pencil from her tight bun and sedately wipes the page clean with the back of her pinky finger. “I suggest you make an appointment. Which ward are you from?”
Brosnan steps back, shoulders out of his tunic and drapes it over an arm.
“Sir? What ward are you from?”
“An’ I apologize to yer grand self. . . In advance, that is,” Brosnan briskly walks passed her desk. With a whoosh he swings the door open where he remembers meeting Wolcott previously.
The secretary slams the big black book closed, “Sir!”
Inside, Wolcott sits at his executive desk with two bespectacled men at each corner.
“I need to pull on yer ear, now,” Brosnan folds his arms high on his broad chest; a low and threatening growl simmers within it.
One of the men who sits opposite Wolcott is dressed in a suit reminiscent of the gay 90s with a polished silver watch-case hanging from a waistcoat pocket.
Vandeleurs, Brosnan recognizes. The Leech landlord.
The other man is Charles Pakenham, a reporter Brosnan has seen many times down at the Adams Street Courthouse in Brooklyn, as well as the Poplar Street Station.
“I see Brooklyn is well-represented on Wall Street these days,” his booming voice breaks the mousy hush in the executive office where a wheeled chalkboard in the corner partially obscures the view east toward lower Manhattan with Brooklyn in the distance.
“Complete with honest cops and all,” Pakenham says. “I’ll have you know that it was me that—”
“Ye don’ have to talk about yerself, Pak,” Brosnan interrupts him. “We’ll do it for ye after ye leave, get it?”
The reporter sniggers as he walks by with papers under his arm. At the coat rack he drops a beige boater cap over his comb-back hair and pushes out the door, the Leech Vandeleurs worms behind him.
“Bleedin’ bowsies, them lot,” Brosnan grumbles toward Wolcott. “That’s the feller wrote about me in the article on police corruption a while back, is it not?”
“Might be,” Wolcott shrugs as the door closes behind Brosnan.
“T’was yerself told him to write it, I’d wager.”
“You would win that bet,” Wolcott retorts. “You simply needed a gentle nudge to join the right side. Or at least to accept money from the right side. Simply put, you were in need of civilizing. It was for
your own good. I’m sure you realize that now, don’t you?”
This isn’t going to be easy, Brosnan sighs.
“I never wanted the White Hand’s money. Same goes for the money yerself gives. Which reminds me that ye owe me a nice handful for lockin’ up Dinny Meehan on the boot theft gimmick.”
“Gimmick?” Wolcott’s face turns sideways. “Strange word.”
“Ye owe me.”
“I remind you, sir, that no payments are exchanged here. You will meet Mr. Wisniewski at the agreed-upon Union Street location. That being said, Hanan & Sons is more than appreciative for bringing those thieving little monkeys to justice,” Wolcott motions toward the door. “And now even the newspapers have joined the right side. I’m sure you have not missed the recent editorials concerning the gangs and their misdeeds.”
A cock fight you want, is it? I can play that too. First one to get mad, loses.
Brosnan sits in the wooden chair across Wolcott and leans forward. “Why not tell us how ye pulled off the miracle o’ yer sudden rebirth? Go ahead then. Go ahead. Riddle me that one, at least. Why not?”
Wolcott rolls his eyes and folds his fingers to allow the old Dubliner his say.
“Dinny Meehan an’ his troupe o’ turf cutters wiped ye up clean in both battles when ye was with the New York Dock Company. So they fire ye for it. Now look at ye. Sittin’ up here like a god representin’ all the waterfront businesses in Brooklyn. Down in the workin’ class neighborhoods where I come from, it’s a strange notion; to receive somethin’ ye’ve not earned,” Brosnan’s jaw moves under his angry eyes. “I started out with next-to-nothin’ when I came to this country. An’ I still got most o’ it. But yer-very-self? The truth is ye’ve never had to earn a thing in the whole o’ yer life, have ye Johnny G. Wolcott? An’ here ye are now, a man well into the winter o’ his days still workin’? It’s not for the money, that’s plain to see, I never knew a fat man to be poor. The only reason I can come up with is pride. Pride, it must be then. Because if ye died this very day, ye’d be forever known as a man who never once succeeded on his own merit. Ye’ve failed yer entire life, yet ye were given more opportunity than the great many o’ us. Isn’t that the truth of it?”
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