Later I sit on an old chair by the fire with a Burke toddler asleep at my chest, cozy and warm. Mam and Abby and Brigid dozing. Only Beat McGarry, Thomas Burke, Cinders Connolly, and a few other men still awake, children sprawled across laps fast at their slumbering.
The Bard slowly sits back in his rocker. And so, a pillow behind him, warm tea, and his rubbing his workingman’s hands together, pushes back his long white brows, tilts the candle to redden his cuddy and leans forward to a place where myths still carry.
“There was a murder in Brooklyn one time, where there often was before and I s’pose there will be again,” he began to my surprise. “Dinny Meehan and t’ree others shot an’ killed the tout Christie Maroney to bring the men o’ the Irish waterfront together as one band, for there was a time in Brooklyn when street kings were so plentiful ye could hardly t’row a stone without raising a lump on one o’ their heads.”
I look over to Beat, who is smiling, which lets me know the old man is allowed to speak Dinny’s name when so many others are not.
He nods toward myself. “I see the newcomer here has missed the last few stories leadin’ up to where we are now, but we’ll keep movin’ forward. Son, ye can come back to me some day for the others, that all right?”
“That’ll be fine,” I say.
“Well then, t’was 1913 and Dinny along with his childhood friend McGowan and a young Vincent Maher and Pickles Leighton had been detained by Patrolman Brosnan o’ the Poplar Street Police Station, as it were. And doesn’t it sound familiar to ye? Doesn’t it? Dinny and his men detained? Well the timing couldn’t be better, so off we go. Just like today, t’was the papers that had a great time of it with the sensation of the trial and in great big bold letters they wrote:
“Jury Ready in Gang Killing:
Great Gathering, Riot Expected after
Deliberation of Sensational Trial
Not Since 1873 During the Great Whiskey Wars of Irishtown have the Marines Last Been Summoned from the Navy Yard to Keep the Peace’
“Could ye believe it? The Marines again. For what the police were callin’ ‘the most dangerous and eagerly awaited trial in Brooklyn since the turnin’ o’ the cent’ry.’
“‘All rise,’ the bailiff announces. ‘For the Honorable Judge Francis Denzinger of the Kings County Court.’
A plume surrounds the Bard as he pulls the pipe from his face and continues, “Our men, youthful as they were in 1913, stand to pay the price for what is termed their ‘dark roguery.’ Can ye see them now? Can ye? Dinny, McGowan, Vincent, and Pickles. Four gorsoons bitten at the wrist by manacles and for what? Takin’ down Maroney that paid the police to let him alone to his druggin’ and enslavin’ o’ the women o’ our neighborhoods? Oh no. And don’t ye know if Maroney didn’t personally hand out invitations to the I-talian to come to Irishtown? He did too. And is it any wonder he was shot in the women’s entrance—to his dismay no doubt—of a saloon, fer givin’ information to the tunics at his own betterment? Is it? No, it isn’t.
“Well, back to the great trial of 1913 then. . . . In the gallery of the court’s front row, Harry Reynolds stands next to Sadie Leighton and her mother Rose. And a cousin too, Darby, right behind ’em as Dinny Meehan himself looks over blank-faced and cuffed. And full o’ nerves Sadie smiles for ’em, her hands shakin’, for although she is with Harry, it’s Dinny Meehan that makes her feel the eternal tingles o’ love and melancholy. Dinny then looks at Harry, who stares back, placin’ his arm round the girl they both were courtin’ after.
“‘Dinny!’ Sadie sings out.
“‘Quiet,’ the bailiff demands.
“And the courtroom is filled with gamely patrons. Disfigured rowdies from wild childhoods, young and old. Associates o’ the murdered Maroney, oh yes, and o’ course t’was them that’d like nothin’ more than to give a high-hangin’ to the four accused Whitehanders, and on a windy day too. But mostly the crowd was filled with devotees o’ this band o’ youngsters led by Dinny Meehan, that in the broth o’ their generation long to take back the streets o’ Brooklyn from the Maroney-led loogin pimps and gold-toothed larrikins that profit from the port city’s great transience o’ libidinous sailors and lascivious merchant marines and the deluge of bawdy immigrants. It was this new brood o’ Irish American ruffian that sought to renounce the graft Maroney’s ilk applied to the body o’ our lasses. To clear the way o’ touts and their tunic masters. And to wall off the world once again along the waterfront where strangers don’t dare set foot beyond where the pier sheds and the docks begin. The White Boys, as their like was once called in the hills and stretches o’ rock-strewn fences o’ Ireland. Silence their biggest weapon. The silence. In their silence they are here to bring us together again. As we were when the casket schooners and the coffin ships fell into the port o’ New Yark back famine-way when our like first came to New York. These young men of The White Hand sought to overthrow Maroney and bring us together again in our old customs kept dear and secure in auld Irishtown for so long. Against the invasion o’ the I-talian Black Hand that Maroney courted into our neighborhoods, himself the most egregious breed o’ stoolie and informant. In Brooklyn this new generation was created by one lad. Their leader a lone man, young as he was then. A chieftain among men. Aquirin’ gangs like an entrepreneur does comp’nies. Piecin’ ’em together like, from the smithy o’ his soul. A creator o’ pride and remembrance, yes. And a spirit, is he. More than anythin’, he is a spirit. Who inherited a silent past. Whose history is obscured in lies by victors. And in the shame o’ victims. Dinny Meehan was his name. The spirit of the auld ways, is he.”
And listening to the old man, I know that I will tell this story too. That I will not allow it to be gone like so many other things in New York. In Brooklyn. Gone and forgotten. That I’d save the words that this man caught like birds. And store them away to be used afterward when it came my turn to tell stories. Beat McGarry sees it on my face too, and it all comes together. But I’ll not tell it the same way as The Bard, because for him the rising of The White Hand in Brooklyn is an age-old lore. For me it is a scar, having lived through my springtime years during its heyday under Dinny Meehan’s reign.
But before I can consider retelling the stories, I must seek this old man for the stories I’ve missed. That lead up to the arrest of Dinny, McGowan, Vincent, and Pickles. The stories that reveal the deepest motivation of our leader and the egg of our ways. But for those stories we’ll have to circle back another time.
I look to my sleeping sisters, Abby and Brigid. And my mother dozing, her folded hands resting in her lap. And I am pulled away from The Bard for a moment. My mind taken from the gangs toward my family. And I know that all I’ve done is for them. We’d all do the same, of course. Any of us. Because we are human. Because we love people. Especially our family. That we will do anything we can to help them. Everything we can. For their survival. For their happiness, and when they are suffering and in need, we are there for them. And we give a piece of ourselves for them. Give everything we have to make up for their suffering. Throw ourselves into the suffering in order to relieve theirs. And I love my mother. And I want to tell her, but can’t. I want to her to know it, but can’t say it. Instead, I show her. And so I’ve shown her that I am willing to do terrible things to relieve her suffering. But now I see her contented. A home, she has. Food, she has. A church, she has. Safety from war too, she now has. And with these come a time for reflection on where we are to go next, our family. And I must make time for my own deliberation on who I consider family. I look back at my sisters, Mrs. Burke and Joseph and, finally, to my mother again . . . and the words come rushing to my mind: the gentlelife.
And I notice that my mother is not asleep at all, in fact. She is feigning sleep. Listening to the Bard’s story all along, and knowing.
The Bard continues, “Guardin’ the doors and standin’ round the rim o’ the courtroom are men dressed in military uniforms armed with bayonet rifles and pistols and blackjacks. And outside t
he Adams Street Courthouse there are seven hundred residents awaitin’ decision. And round them too are a core o’ two hundred riot-ready marines. The stand has been made. The line drawn.
“Nicely situated above all else, Judge Denzinger sits back onto his throne and speaks, ‘Full house, we have. Let me remind all of you here today that regardless of the outcome, we are to remain respectful citizens to the flag of the Unites States of America and anyone seen to act in a less-than-dignified manner today will be hit with the full force of the law.’
“The crowd giggles among itself, grumbles too.
“‘Quiet,’ the bailiff demands.
“‘Jury, are you ready?’ Judge Denzinger requests.
“Timid nods respond from the jurybox.
“‘Dennis L. “Dinny” Meehan,’ Judge Denzinger announces, then asks the bailiff. ‘Wait, which one is Meehan? He’s the deaf and dumb one, right?’
“‘The state of New York has determined he is an idiot, your Honor.’
“‘Idiot. That’s right,” Judge Denzinger remembers.
“‘He is unable to speak, is all,’ Dead Reilly stands, insists.
More giggles from the court gallery.
“‘Well, get him to rise when I say his name,’ Judge Denzinger admonishes.
“Dinny is looking elsewhere, off in his own world as if he weren’t there at all. Playing along, Dead Reilly touches him on the shoulder and points for him to stand.
“‘Vincent J. Maher,’ Judge Denzinger announces.
“‘Charles M. McGowan.’
“‘John F. “Pickles” Leighton,’ Judge Denzinger finishes, then whispers to the bailiff, ‘The loudmouth.’
“‘The leader, your Honor,’ the bailiff reminds.
More giggles are hushed by soldiers and patrolmen.
“The judge scans the rake o’ mugs fillin’ the courtroom wall to wall, raises his voice again, ‘These four men are charged with the murder of one Christopher Lawrence Maroney one year ago on the morning of March 13, 1912. Jury?’
“The jurybox looks over.
“‘Who will preside?’
“‘I have been chosen to deliver the verdict, your Honor,’ stands a small man, who is known as a business owner in the Jewish section of Williamsburg.
“‘What is the determination in the charge of murder against Dennis L. Meehan?’
“Swallowin’, the small man looks at the piece o’ paper, though he already knows the answer. He then looks over and sees the lion-faced Dinny Meehan. The presiding juror then looks to Dead Reilly, who nods in his direction. The room is held in the small man’s hesitation. . . .
“‘Not guilty, your Honor.’
“The crowd erupts and stands and jumps and hugs and howls, and from deep inside the court’s bowels is born an Irish hero. The spirit o’ the people spoken for by the forsakin’ o’ the law. Thus is how an Irish hero is always born, is it not? And so the gavel comes smashin’ down, and Sadie Leighton holds Harry Reynolds close, who stoically looks on.
“‘He’s our man,’ a woman screams out.
“‘He’ll buck your courts for all time,’ another voice yells.
“And Judge Denzinger rings out, ‘What is the verdict for Maher?’
“‘Not guilty.’
“Again the crowd jumps against the slappin’ and the whappin’ o’ the wooden gavel down.
“‘McGowan?’
“‘Not guilty.’
“‘Leighton?’
“The crowd, quieter now but still congratulatin’ itself, waits as the presiding juror again looks over to Dinny and Dead Reilly.
“‘Guilty, your Honor.’
“‘What?’ Sadie yells.
“‘Oh my,’ Rose Leighton gasps. ‘My nephew.’
“‘Whad he say? Pickles’s brother Darby demands.
“Chaos havin’ taken the court, Judge Denzinger calls to attention, ‘I will remind the crowd of its behavior. We’ll meet again in two weeks for sentencing, good day,’
The Bard sits at the end of his rocking chair excitedly and continues, “And although Dinny is proclaimed not guilty, a riot ensues in the courthouse, spillin’ into Adams Street and washes through the walled-off tenements toward the old town, horses let loose to their sprintin’, bartenders put out of their saloons, taps opened, and the auld home brew brought out for to celebrate. But Jacobs’ Saloon at 50 Sands Street, on the corner, below the Crown Hotel, ’tween the great bridges where Maroney held sway over the Brooklyn rackets is stoned. Its windows shattered and fiery bottles o’ gasoline thrown within. Burned to the ground as everyone watches in awe. Even over the rails o’ the high abutments of the Brooklyn Bridge to the west, the Manhattan Bridge to the east where the fraternal twin giants are only separated by a few blocks at Sands Street. In their hundreds, the parade o’ waterfront residents hold Dinny, McGowan, and Vincent up as heroes, luminaries, guardians even. Exponents o’ the auld Irishtown way. Paladins o’ the poor. Champions o’ change that over the next few weeks expelled the I-talians. Tamed the tunics and tossed the touts and pimps in their bawdyhouses out and once again implemented the auld code and its sanctionin’ o’ silence . . .”
Satisfied with his yarn, the Bard tamps his pipe and sits back. Slowly strikes a match so that we can see the wrinkles on his face and the command his eyes still own in the firelight.
He finishes, “And so t’was . . . just as it’s always been with our like. . . . We celebrate against our enemy together—the vanquishin’ o’ the law that’s held us back. For there is one thing we all know deep in us. And we know it from our history . . . the history that lives in us and speaks to us. That no Irish leader can be taken down by the moral indignations o’ law, English or American. No reward nor penalty can stifle his silent beliefs. No, the only t’ing that can take down our leader is, of course, our own. From within. And oh how the begrudgers love their work too.”
CHAPTER 29
Tunic and a Big Man
A SNOW HAS BEGUN TO CAKE Brooklyn as the crackling, icy air dips below ten degrees now. A sign, again. Children are covered by fearful mothers. The aged too, tucked into beds for protection. Old shirts jammed along breezy windowsills. Cold, empty fireplaces with broken flues are smothered with anything available. Potbellied stoves, too, sitting idly and without coal fires in rooms. The old working-class, treeless streets and sidewalks with red-bricked and clapboard tenement buildings facing each other are emptied out, whitened by a purity that removes the sick and the weak from this place. This blight of weather forcing the survivors to fight against each other for dominance over the available resources like caged prisoners.
But some see the catastrophic elements on the poor in New York and Brooklyn as a great opportunity. An unintended social benefit of the invisible hand. A divine judgment on the defective aspects of the national character, as they see it. An act of Providence from an all-merciful God against those that are selfish and turbulent in temperament. Their strict adherence to the utility of noninterference as it pertains to governmental economic relief of those suffering is a symbol of their disdain for weakness and dependency. To help is just too closely associated with socialism and Bolshevism. Yet this great indifference is slightly adjusted here and there. Sending agents below, secretly.
Inland, off the waterfront where Atlantic Avenue crosses Flatbush, the harbor winds are not as dialed. Snow has not been cleared of the streets or sidewalks and evenly settles—only footprints making human passageways through the whitening of the ground. In the polar air, Daniel Culkin is wrapped in his tunic and out of jurisdiction, Amadeusz Wisniewski dressed like a mammoth-sized businessman. They are walking together. When the big man Wisniewski speaks, it is so deep and low that it’s barely recognizable to the ear. His face blanketed in thick wrinkles and lumbering with bulky strides above, Culkin looks up to watch his fleshy lips moving.
“We not killing ’em,” Wisniewski says, noticing Culkin check his patrolman-issue revolver openly in his gloved hands.
“He alre
ady knows who I am,” Culkin says, his neck bent up as they cross Flatbush. “He’s a mental case. Got no idear how he’ll react to this.”
“He don’ know me, dough,” Wisniewski growls. “Wolcott says . . .”
“I know what he says, I was there,” Culkin cuts him short. “I been lookin’ for this guy for mont’s. It can’t go wrong, but if it does, I’ll kill ’em. Ya can’t trust ’em. Fookin’ certifiable, this guy.”
“Ya can’t trust ’em, then why we—”
“Just doin’ a job’s all,” Culkin says. “Someone thinks it’s right, I dunno.”
They knock on the second-floor door and a small, handsome female in her early twenties opens it as far as the rusty chain allows. Her eyes are drunk-blazed and her ratty hair matted on one side, she huddles cold in the crack of the door. The chain partially obscuring her view, she looks up to the giant bending down to her.
“Maureen Egan,” Wisniewski grumbles in his chest.
“How do you—”
Wisniewski palms the door and pushes it open, ripping the chain from the wall as she falls backward. Culkin walks through, revolver pointing toward her on the ground, then points it toward the dark hallway inside the room.
“Where’s Garry fookin’ Barry?” he demands.
“He’s dead,” she yelps.
“No he ain’,” Culkin says. “Ya lyin’, where is he? I know he’s alive.”
“Fookin’ asshole,” she screams, kicking up at him as he walks by.
“Jesus, man,” Culkin says as Garry Barry appears with James Cleary behind, holding their arms high and stepping out of a doorless closet. “Ya face is fuckt, Barry.”
Maureen Egan comes from behind Culkin with a knife and just as she is about to swing it, Wisniewski grabs her by the back of her red curly hair, yanks her backward and lifts her over his head with one arm, pushing her face into the ceiling. She swings the knife behind her rabidly, but Wisniewski uses his other hand to grab her by the wrist, snapping both the radius and ulna. The kitchen knife dropping helplessly to his feet. Then she is dropped to the floor too as Wisniewski steps on the knife.
Exile on Bridge Street Page 31