Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  The words bubble in Barry’s throat as if he were gargling pus.

  Why doesn’t he clear his throat? I fucking hate that. Instead, Daniel asks, “What does that mean? Solve the demon?”

  “It don’t matter now. I’ll say more later. But ya should know,” He turns his fractured face to Daniel. “God placed his mark on me.”

  The only god around here is Jonathan G. Wolcott, you fuck, Daniel scratches his jaw and muscles out a smile. He has weighed that kingdom, found it wanting and will name you a mere client king while he divides its riches between the haves and the have mores.

  But Barry goes on, “A saint is accepted everywhere, but not durin’ his lifetime in his hometown, that’s in Luke 4:24. Ya’self an’ Wiz an’ Wolcott. . . Yaz were brought before me. An’ for good reason.”

  “That bible quote. I think it’s a prophet ya’re referrin’ to—”

  “No!” Barry grabs and pulls Daniel so close that he can see the candlelight flicker in his black eyeball. “A saint!”

  Daniel feels the cold blade against his neck. But before he can reach into his coat for the police issue revolver, Barry snatches his wrist.

  Daniel bites at his lip, “Should we appreciate ya now, while ya’re alive. Would it make a difference?”

  Barry lets him loose and falls back into the barstool, “Nah. No one can appreciate what I do. Only when I’m gone. They’ll write about me. Someone will.”

  Daniel looks out the front door as if to expect the walrus-mustachioed Captain Sullivan to walk in.

  That’s not going to happen, he tells himself. Maureen just wants to scare me because she knows I need to be punished. No, Sullivan is not coming for me. I’m coming for him. But if he comes I’ll have to beg mercy. No. . . I’ll have to kill him.

  The tender looks away when he sees distress on Daniel’s face. That shoots boiling blood through Daniel’s veins.

  We need to get this done and over with soon.

  “Where is that fookin’ big lump,” Daniel mumbles. “This shit’s makin’ me jumpy. What if these fucks in here talk?” Daniel spreads his arm along the bar’s patrons and whispers angrily. “Why didn’t we get rid o’ them before draggin’ her upstairs?”

  “They won’t talk,” the tender assures with unsure eyes.

  “You don’ say nothin’,” Daniel almost jumps off the stool to rip the man in two, but sits back and waves a hand toward the bar. “Gimme a whiskey an’ water.”

  He sits back on the stool, seething. When a whiskey is handed him, he takes a sip and drops the glass in a puddle on the bar and looks at the men leaning elbows on the mahogany.

  They’re going to say something.

  Daniel turns to Barry, “It’s time we do this now. We can’t wait no more.”

  “Do what?”

  “Are ya fookin’ slow? Lemme spell it out. The plan includes me becomin’ Captain at the Poplar Street Station. Police Commissioner Enright an’ Mayor Hylan are pressurin’ Sullivan into their new retirement system. But I can’t become Captain if everyone finds out what this red slattern knows.”

  “That ain’t my plan, it’s yours,” Barry answers.

  “It’s Wolcott’s plan you cunt-faced imbecile. You’re as useless as a man’s nipple you fucking mental cripple.”

  Barry nods, “I don’ give a fuck about that. It don’ do me nothin’ to kill her. Kill her ya’self.”

  Daniel feels the stab of anger. He rubs a thumb against the revolver in his coat and stares at Barry, who has turned to face him.

  “Ya’re refusin’ an order from Wolcott?”

  “Wolcott don’ even know about this.”

  “We don’ see the same future then, do we?”

  Barry leans across the bar and takes Daniel’s whiskey and water and shoots it down and runs his tongue along the open cut on his upper lip, moving the fleshy, bleeding flaps back and forth, “Nah.”

  But just as Daniel is about to draw his police issue revolver he hears a huffing sound upstairs, behind him. Then again, whoooosh, and a gust of oxygen is sucked out of the room. Daniel turns round on the stool and looks up. A man is walking calmly down the stairwell as flames lick the ceiling with forked tongues above and behind him.

  Who is that?

  Before Daniel can react, the man reveals a glass bottle and lights the fabric that hangs from the opening. In stride, he throws it over Daniel and Barry and Cleary where it explodes against the rack of liquor bottles, lighting them afire with a crashing sound and a third whoosh of flame. Halfway down the stairwell and the man pulls out a handmade metal shiv with a wooden handle and a .32 pocket pistol and fires while descending the stairs. A blood red splotch bursts out of Garry Barry’s hip next to Daniel. Barry covers his face and the next shot goes through his wrist, ripping his left arm over his right shoulder and dropping him to the floor. The third shot takes him under his left arm and leaves him crumpled under the bar among the peanut shells.

  On the third-to-last step Cleary flies at the man. But he is quickly thrown off and holds his face in shock as the shiv had made its mark down his temple, slicing his left ear in half.

  Daniel reaches with his right hand into his shoulder holster and touches the police issue, but before his palm can grasp it or his finger can wrap round the trigger, he finds himself sprawling across the floor as chairs clatter to the ground next to him. While staring at the ceiling, Daniel touches his jaw and realizes it feels out of place. His tongue runs across his back teeth but he only feels blood and gums and a hole. He then swallows and realizes something hard and pronged had gone down his throat.

  Was that a tooth?

  The man is above him with a fist wrapped over his ear while an entire shelf of burning liquor crashes to the ground behind the bar in a glass heap. But just as the man is about to swing, he is lifted off his feet high and tossed across the saloon. Daniel comes to his elbows and watches as the stranger bounces off the hardwood floor and jumps and is on his feet quick as a rabid dog.

  A woman’s laugh comes to a cackle behind Daniel like some rancid, gap-toothed witch. Dazed, he turns to look out the front door to see his red-haired prisoner back in her clothing with a hand on the doorframe and black tears on her face. His manacles have been snapped and hang like crude jewelry upon her upper arms above the cast. The chain that was wrapped round her chest and fastened to the radiator upstairs is somehow still bound to her body within her clothing and bends her back into a grotesque crouch, while the remnants of the snapped chain drags on the ground between her legs like a clangorous tail.

  “Fuck,” Daniel mumbles, then turns back to the fire and brawl within. The stranger is overshadowed by the giant, Wisniewski, who had just thrown him like a burlap bag of coffee beans. The fires crackle on two sides as they brawl while Daniel wobbles to his feet, watching the fight. Wiz the Lump is grabbing at air and obscures the man so that Daniel cannot get a good look at him until a punch whips the giant’s head back and drops him to one knee.

  Daniel is holding himself up like a man of an age of senility, his hand wrapped round the back of a wooden chair next to an overturned table. Suddenly the stranger walks round Wiz the Lump and is upon him again.

  Harry Reynolds?

  As Daniel is lifting his other hand to cover his face, the squalling cackles of Maureen Egan come to his ears one last time, moments before a fist fells him onto his back again, spinning him like a turtle in a tunic. With the top of the chair still in his left hand, he raises his head from the ground to see Garry Barry’s sightless eyes staring back at him. Wobbling worse now, Daniel grabs two handfuls of Barry’s coat and drags him backward out the door while flames still lick with long red and yellow tongues all along the walls behind the bar and the ceiling. Black smoke chases up the stairwell.

  Behind him the ceiling caves in, blocking the doorway. When Daniel lets Barry loose, black smoke fills his lungs. He stumbles. His arm goes through a glass window, next to the entrance. Then he feels a trouser-leg burning. He sits on his rump and slowly
, lazily pats at his leg with his palms when he realizes he can’t breath, and he begins to fall asleep until he is grabbed.

  “Daniel, let’s go,” Patrolman Ferris yells. “The rest o’ the roof’s about to cave in. C’mon!”

  Daniel dreams. He dreams that he is looking at himself in the mirror with the same old-timey walrus mustache as Captain Sullivan. Then he coughs, but reaches into the mirror and touches the big white mustache. He can feel the hairs between his fingers, but when pulled, he does not feel pain, though he hears someone yell out. Through the mirror, he looks behind and sees the tangle of Maureen Egan’s red hair hovering above. When he turns round, the side of his face rubs against cement.

  “Daniel, Daniel?” A voice is yelling. “Daniel, Daniel. Patrolman Culkin!”

  He looks back toward the mirror again and sees the mustache, but it is Captain Sullivan’s face this time, not his own.

  “Patrolman Culkin, can ya hear me? Can ya hear me? What is ya badge number?”

  It really is Captain Sullivan, Daniel thinks. It’s not a mirror. It’s actually him, just like Maureen said.

  Only then does Daniel realize he is laying on a sidewalk outside, and Captain Sullivan is on top of him.

  “Daniel!”

  “Get away from me,” Daniel screams and punches at the captain’s hands. When Sullivan lets him loose, Daniel stands and lurches down the sidewalk alone. Across the street firehoses are shooting streams into the wood-framer. As the rest of the roof collapses, the sound of studs popping in the fire turns to great creaks and crashes and suddenly the entire structure shifts to one side and tumbles into Hoyt Street on top of two motorcars and a dog who scuttled away too late. Their headquarters now but smoldering wood in the cobbled street.

  “Get him,” Daniel hears, but the street is falling away and he can’t seem to keep his balance. When he stands again after falling on his knees, five men in tunics are holding Daniel upright against the glass door of a women’s clothing store.

  Why am I crying? What happened?

  “It’s ok, Culkin,” another tunic hugs him.

  Ten more tunics surround and protect him from the eyes of outsiders and onlookers. Then another patrolman dabs at Daniel’s eyes with a kerchief awkwardly. It’s his partner Patrolman Ferris. Daniel hugs him, bawling, coughing and bawling.

  “It’s not ya fault, Culkin,” Ferris says to him. “I loved him too. I miss him everyday. Every-goddamn-day.”

  Daniel pushes Ferris away from him, “Who? Who do ya miss?”

  “Brosnan,” Ferris says.

  Another voice says, “He don’ know where he is, uhright?”

  “Who don’ know where he is?” Daniel asks the strange voice, but he does not get an answer.

  “Just keep him safe,” another voice calls out. “Let’s move. Move him out. Ferris, is that ya motorcar?”

  “Yeah.”

  Daniel coughs. He notices his hands are blackened by smoke and that he is between two large shouldered men in the back seat of a car that Ferris is driving.

  “Where are we goin’, will ya just tell me where are—”

  “Fookin’ animals, fookin’ animals,” Ferris yells as he rounds a corner. “These fookin’ gangs are tryna bring down New Yawk. Sully, ya gotta take the manacles off o’ us so we can fookin’ get control o’ the streets again. They take down one o’ our own, then try to murder Culkin t’day. What the fuck are we doin’?”

  Culkin then realizes that Captain Sullivan is in the passenger seat of the motorcar when he turns round with his big mustache, “Daniel. Daniel, do ya hear me Daniel? Who was in there, Daniel? What in the hell were ya doin’ in there? Who torched the saloon?”

  Daniel realizes his mouth has been open this whole time. He closes it and straightens up in the backseat between the others.

  “It was Harry Reynolds. I mean. . . It was Dinny Meehan, yes, it was Meehan,” he sits forward in the seat and points a finger in Sully’s face. “Ya named me to head the investigation into Brosnan’s murder, now let me do the job!”

  “Disappearance,” Captain Sullivan corrects. “He’s disappeared, remember? An’ anyhow, I only named ya ‘cause o’ outside forces made me.”

  “Ya named me to head the investigation an’ ya don’ let me question suspects.”

  “Question suspects?” Sullivan indignantly repeats. “Is that why they end up with broken bones and missin’ fingernails? Oh no, if ya can’t establish probable cause, then they ain’t suspects.”

  “So if he was proven dead, then I could question them, I see.”

  “Ya’re too fookin’ eager, boyo,” Captain Sullivan roars. “In cases as dangerous as this one, it’s best to commit to nothin’.”

  Daniel grabs at Captain Sullivan’s tunic as the motorcar turns on the rocky cobblestones, “If ya don’ let us loose we’ll lose these streets to the gangs an’ the union Bolsheviks. It’s ya legacy ya should worry about, ol’ man. Ya let us loose. Are ya American? Or are ya a seditious Red?”

  Captain Sullivan turns and catches Daniel’s eyes, “One man. I’ll allow ya to question one man. Make it worth ya while, Culkin.”

  Ferris gives a half turn toward Daniel as he pushes in the clutch on the floor and shifts into second gear on the tree.

  He was following me, Daniel realizes. Captain Sullivan had my own partner, Ferris follow me all along. He saw everything.

  The Trap Slams

  The ballroom band playing My Country T’is of Thee suddenly becomes louder as Paul Vaccarelli opens the door to the back room and steps in. When he closes the door and looks at Thos Carmody sitting at the table, he hits the floor.

  “Jesus fookin’ Christ Carmody, put the gun down.”

  “Ya should knock before enterin’.”

  “I’m Vice President o’ the ILA,” Vaccarelli protests. “Ya’re nothin’ but a treasurer.”

  “He’s more than that,” King Joe barks and kicks out a chair. “Come sit down, Paul.”

  Thos keeps his stare on the deck of cards in the middle of the table as he tucks the pistol in the back of his trousers. After Vaccarelli slinks into a chair across from him, Thos looks up.

  With a gap between his teeth and hair parted down the middle, slicked back wet and greasy, Paul Vaccarelli looks like a street prince. Once known as the prize fighter Paul Kelly, leader of the Five Points Gang, he taught Frankie Yale everything he knows about the underworld, who taught Sixto Stabile, the Young Turk. Eventually he changed his surname back to what he was born with, Vaccarelli, and became a businessman. Albeit a coarse and crude silhouette of one.

  Vaccarelli sits cautious as a cat across Thos, keeping an eye on both he and King Joe.

  A coded knock comes to the door that Thos recognizes, “Open that door.”

  “Who is it?” Vaccarelli looks behind him.

  A voice on the other side responds, “A bird from Brooklyn.”

  Vaccarelli turns to Thos with lowered eyes, “What’s that mean?”

  “It means open the door.”

  King Joe opens the door and a small man with a hat over one eye comes immediately to the side of Thos’s face and whispers, “The mole in Bill’s ear says T.V. O’Connor’s on the tug. . . with Wolcott. He was seen.”

  Thos keeps a poker face at that news, though his thoughts make sense of it. O’Connor’s a politician, that’s all. If democracy is the illusion of capitalism, then politicians are official magicians.

  Another whisper comes Thos’s ear, “Lovett’s foray into Coney Island was a failure. The Scarfaced fella lives. But the show o’ force will prolly mean he’ll be sent to Chi-town.”

  Thos turns his eyes to Vaccarelli and smiles, then whispers back, “Word on Tanner’s whereabouts?”

  The little man shakes his head.

  Thos’s stomach turns, He could be anywhere. Waiting for me.

  Under the table he holds a twenty-dollar bill between his middle and index fingers, which the small man balls up and fists without anyone noticing.

  Thos
turns his eyes back to Vaccarelli, “We’re here to talk Brooklyn. Most o’ ya people are out in Bayonne an’ the city dump in Staten Island. Ya got no dog in this fight.”

  Vaccarelli’s finger follows the small man who discreetly heads out the door, “Who is that? What did he say?”

  Thos shrugs.

  Vaccarelli lights a guinea stinker from a cigar box that has a sketch of Frankie Yale’s face on it and the words “The Prince o’ Pals,” scrawled underneath, then speaks out of the side of his mouth, “I got interests all over New York. Even in Brooklyn, ya know that. Welcome back, Thos. . . Sorry about ya face.”

  Though he dresses with a crude notion of wealth and with cruder ideas on power, Vaccarelli has succeeded in jumping up off the street and into the boardroom when O’Connor named him Vice President. Feeling under-represented and threatening to create their own union, the Italian element in the ILA got their man in Vaccarelli. With a bowler cap too small for his head and a pinstriped suit with slippers over his sock-less feet, Paul Vaccarelli cuts a mean figure. In South Brooklyn, he is close to Yale in Coney Island and Stabile in Red Hook, who have an undertaker’s business together.

  King Joe slices through the tension between Thos and Vaccarelli, “Don’ worry about him, Thos. He represents half o’ the ILA in Brooklyn, ain’t that right Paul?”

  Wordless, Vaccarelli lowers his eyes over bejeweled knuckles.

  “The lower half,” Thos snarls.

  T.V. O’Connor bursts into the room, “Wow, what a slew we have t’night, eh? What a night! Thos ye gotta work on yer presentation though,” O’Connor laughs at his own joke.

  He unbuttons his coat like a gentleman would and pulls up a chair at Thos’s left. Out of a pocket he withdraws a spectacles case, opens it and places a pair of round-rimmed Windsors over his eyes and wraps the earpieces round each ear. The Edwardian sack suit style of dress O’Connor wears had fallen out of fashion of late, but the Irishman in his early fifties hadn’t noticed. These were the suits many Englishmen wore when O’Connor had visited Trinity College in Dublin in the months before he emigrated to Buffalo and Albany, upriver. It was a story O’Connor was fond of telling. So fond, in fact, that Thos concluded O’Connor wished he was an Englishman. Instead he is stuck with his Irish lilting mouth and a wilting English heart.