The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  “I’ll land on my feet,” Martin said, half turning his face away from Chester.

  Chester drained his highball and traced the glass in a circle over the bar, indicating another round. “Look here, you’re either too cocky or too stupid to see how far you’re going to fall—and how long it’s going to take you to work your way back up.”

  “I’d like to make this an amicable parting of ways, Chester.”

  “So you don’t like the music I play? You don’t like the way I play it? It’s not hot enough? Well, screw you, kid, you know-nothing sack of shit. I’m a king in this town—hell, in this whole country! Every week, coast to coast, people are listening to my music. My music! But that’s not good enough for you?”

  “Look, it’s nothing personal. It’s just not what I want to play.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re the fella who wrote that song that’s driving the Negro hordes wild up in Harlem. Is that what I hear? Just don’t expect it’s going to lead to anything. You might be black Irish but I’ll tell you this: Those Negroes stick by their own. Maybe you’ll see a few pennies from heaven, but in a week or two, when that colored bandleader—”

  “Benny Carter,” Martin said.

  “—when that colored bandleader has rearranged some other nobody’s song? You’re in for a long dry spell—unless you’ve got another hit song up your sleeve, something you’ve been hiding from the rest of the world all these years?”

  “Like I said, don’t worry about me. I’ve got plans—”

  “I’m not worried about you, you dumb shit.” Chester sipped from his fresh drink. “You’re a family man, aren’t you? Got kids? A wife? That’s who I’m worried about. That’s who you should be worried about. You’ve got mouths to feed and you just gave away the best gig of your life.”

  Martin bristled. “Don’t tell me how to—”

  “Because I’ve been there. I tell you, I’ve been there. And not because I did something as stupid. No, sir. I had the rug yanked out from under me by the goddamn kaiser himself.”

  “Okay, Chester. You’ve had enough.”

  “Klaus Klemperer,” he said. “Did you know that was my name? My real name? Nobody does, and it’s a good thing, what with the shit that’s about to come raining down in Europe.” Chester swirled the ice in his glass like dice in a cup. “My first band was the biggest thing ever to hit the Jersey Shore. Cape May to the Palisades, Poconos into the Catskills—oh, we were something. Klaus Klemperer and his Royal Bavarian Band. Oompah, waltz, polka, Dixieland—we did it all. This would have been nineteen and thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Sky was the limit, right?” He took another drink. “Wrong. Goddamn Wilson sent the boys over there—‘Over There’!—and in one summer, it was all gone.”

  Chester’s eyelids fluttered, and Martin thought for a moment that his brief autobiography would end with a headfirst dive into the darkly polished bar. It was just as well. Hadn’t he been out all day trying to gin up a plan B? He didn’t need life lessons from Chester or Klaus or whoever he was.

  “But I got it back,” Chester said, his head snapping to attention. “I got it all back, with interest. You think any of that was easy? Chester Kingsley? The Kensington Hotel? You have no idea what it took to make that happen, you spoiled goddamn brat. You’re marching in the parade at the end of the war but you don’t know the first thing about being a soldier. And now look at you—quitting with no next thing? Tell your wife I’m sorry she married such a Dummkopf.”

  “I’m not done yet,” Martin said, more defensively than he’d intended.

  “You’re young and you’re stupid,” Chester said, “and you don’t know this, but life will get you. Sooner or later, life will punch you full in the face. It’ll kick you in the balls and clean out your pockets. That’s what life does. So I gotta wonder, why are you doing it to yourself?”

  HELL’S KITCHEN

  FRANCIS HAD BEEN STEWING in this room for God knows how many hours. It was clear that he wasn’t the first man to be consigned to this ramshackle oubliette: a scuff line along one wall marked where other men had angled their chairs, hoping for a few moments of repose before whatever it was that awaited them. It was equally clear that some men had not bided their time with the composure that Francis sought to affect, or else hadn’t been left alone for quiet contemplation. Another wall was marked with divots in the plaster that roughly matched the circumferences of fists, heels, heads. The concrete floor was spotted with rust-colored drip trails that Francis had at first thought to be paint before realizing their true provenance. The heavy wooden door, which bore no knob on this side, was scratched and scuffed all over with the signs of futile aggression. A single bulb burned overhead.

  The sound of cars, of engines turning over and chassis squealing on their springs, infiltrated the room. Car horns honked in short taps and long, angry bleats. The air was hot and close, thick with the smell of petrol, scalded rubber, and grease. Men shouted not in anger but to be heard over the din of the cars and the hoods slamming and the heavy overhead doors rolling up and rolling down. A tailpipe backfired and the voices fell silent for a moment, followed by laughter, more shouting, men giving each other a hard time. Someone must have flinched, he thought, and now his mates were taking the piss out of him. The voices ebbed, overcome by the grind of gearboxes, revving engines, the clear ping of a wrench dropped on the concrete, the clatter of hubcaps spilling from a precarious stack.

  From his ladder-back chair, Francis faced the cell’s one brick wall, course over worn and flaky course. He followed the mortar, its network of right angles turning and climbing. The cell in Mountjoy had been built of sterner stuff: quarried stone blocks irregular in size and stacked impenetrably. He had spent hours, days, weeks staring at those walls, wondering how long it would be before he saw the outside again. His sentence was three years but he had known men to have months or years tacked on for misbehaviors intentional or otherwise. From the bottom left corner of his Mountjoy cell, the lowest course had run short block, short block, long block, then long, short, long, long, short. The course above that one went long, short, long, short, short, short, long, long, short. A random assortment, he knew, but over time he started to wonder if maybe there wasn’t a pattern—a message, even—in the masonry. Shorts and longs. Wasn’t that how Morse code worked? He still carried the sequence in his head.

  Steady now. These were the moments when he saw how easy it was to slip into madness. A code in the masonry? The old-timers who walked in circles around the prison yard mumbling to themselves—no doubt they were working out the codes embedded in their cell walls. Anything to occupy the mind, to rescue you from the second-guessing and the desperate loneliness and the endless interrogation of what you shouldn’t have done, or what you should have done with greater aplomb to avoid getting caught. Those thoughts could eat you up, turn you inward with never a way out.

  But now this place. One brick after another. The pattern was brick, brick, brick, brick. The message was brick, brick, brick, brick. It would be neither an escape nor a diversion. There was only what you had done wrong, whom you had left behind, and who stood to get hurt.

  He had known he was being pursued. Of course he had. Hadn’t he been running since Ballyrath—and running even faster after the cock-up at the safe house? But he had allowed the immediate and robust success of the FC Plan to lull him into a state of calm. He thought again of the explosion, the disintegration of the farmhouse, the plume of smoke, and the stones and pieces of timber littering the site. And the bodies: three of the men from inside the house. Corpses, really. And then Michael. As soon after the blast as Francis was capable of yoking thought to action, he piled Michael’s battered body into the automobile and threw the strongbox into the boot. Before he could crank the engine, a voice called his name—a raspy, death-soaked holler, proof that someone else had survived the disaster. He thought, for a split second, of giving aid, but the crack of gunfire erased that notion. Each volley of his name—“Dempsey!”—was punctuated
by the report of a pistol. So he had left Ballyrath pursued by the church and the state, and he arrived in Cork with the IRA joining the chase. Was there anyone who wasn’t hot to run him to ground?

  And now Martin and his family were exposed to this danger. The man with the gun had named him. He knew where Martin lived. How could Francis warn him? And how could he protect Michael?

  Ach! He had to shake himself out of this stupor! He had not given up when he was brought in chains to his father’s funeral. He had not given up when the bombs laid waste the farmhouse and nearly killed Michael. He couldn’t fold now. Hadn’t he survived worse? Hadn’t he, in fact, prospered?

  A bolt was thrown and with a squeal the frame released its grip on the door. It was the big fellow from the museum, only now he had company: a smaller black-haired man with a face like a hatchet blade, all angles and planes, and standing behind them a truly old one dressed as if for a funeral in a gray suit, a coal-dark waistcoat, a flat spade of a necktie, and a plump gray fedora.

  They brought Francis into a cluttered office furnished with a battered wooden desk, dusty stacks of carbons, cardboard boxes for auto parts, hand tools, greasy rags, and a map of the city pockmarked with pins. To the right of the desk was a pin-up calendar: April 1938, an apple-cheeked brunette carrying an umbrella and wearing nothing but a pair of bright yellow galoshes—just the sort of item Francis might have procured for a client in Dublin.

  The old man lowered himself, with some effort, into the chair behind the desk and glared at Francis. “Do you know who I am?”

  “As far as I can tell,” Francis said, “you’re some geezer who sends his thugs to snatch an innocent man off the streets. I’ve half a mind to set the police on you.”

  The old man’s lip curled, almost a grin. “You do that, Mr. Dempsey. And then you can explain to the police how you escaped from prison, killed three men, stole their money, and entered the country on false papers.”

  “That’s quite a story,” Francis said. “You could take that to Hollywood.”

  The smaller man cuffed him across the mouth. Francis lunged at him, but the big fellow stepped between the two and pressed Francis flat against the wall. The old man’s laugh was syrupy with phlegm. “You think you can fight your way out of here? My friend there made a name for himself in Spain, and Mr. Cronin, who you met yesterday, well—let’s just say that his hands have been dirty since you were in short pants. Now sit down. You might have gotten the best of those mopes in Ireland, but I assure you we are a different breed in New York.”

  As if to prove that he had the situation in hand, the old man told the other two to give him a moment alone with Mr. Dempsey. The two stood outside the windowed door, the little one keeping an eye on Francis and Cronin with his arms folded across his chest.

  “So now what?” Francis said. “You’re packing me off to Ireland? Sending me back to prison?”

  “Who said anything about prison? You belong in front of a firing squad, but the difficulty of transporting you back to Ireland makes that impractical.” He let that sink in—let Francis believe that he was getting a reprieve—then continued: “So instead I’m going to have one of our friends there cut your throat and dump you in the river.”

  Francis looked at the two men standing outside. The big one was thickset like a storm cloud ready to burst, while the smaller one looked like a whip about to crack. He had a feeling it would be the little one.

  “You and I both know it’s only the matter of the money that’s keeping you alive. But I am not a patient man. I’d sooner see justice done than wait to recover what you have stolen.”

  “I didn’t steal—”

  “You stole! And you murdered men fighting on your behalf!” He hacked loudly into a handkerchief. “How I wish your father could be here to see this. His own son, a thief and a traitor. It would serve him right.”

  First in Mountjoy, then at the funeral, and now here—the mention of his father’s name brought with it benedictions and curses. When he saw Martin—no, if he saw Martin again—he would tell him for certain that Da had been up to his eyeballs in some kind of IRA business.

  Gavigan coughed into his fist again and mopped his mouth with the handkerchief. The heat was rising in his face, but why lose his temper in front of this boy? He would be dead in a day. “That money belongs to a cause greater than yourself—and you are going to give us back every penny. It’ll be the last honorable thing you do.”

  “What has that money got you but a houseful of eejits who blew themselves to pieces? That’s who’s going to liberate Ireland?”

  “What do you know about it? A boy who plays dress-up with a pocketful of stolen money? When I was your age I was taking over this city.”

  “Look here, I’m not a week in this country and every door is open to me. I’m dining with millionaires! I’ve been invited to meet the goddamn king and queen! They’ve practically given me the key to the city. Any of your thugs—your soldiers for the cause—managed that?” He ought to shut his mouth now—Don’t involve the Binghams, keep Anisette clear of this mess—but he had worked with men like this in Dublin, in Liverpool, in Belfast. Underworld bosses who sharpened their grudges to a razorous edge and who kept on the payroll hard men tasked with settling scores. They respected strength, a clever man who lived by his wits, but as in all things, you had to watch how far you pushed.

  “More lies,” Gavigan said.

  “Ask the big fella. If he’s been following me around, then he knows where I was on Monday night. A feckin’ castle. And who do you think the family asked to escort them to their audience with the king?” He should have been more cautious, but the words kept pouring out.

  “If you think this is going to save you—”

  “Saturday at the World’s Fair, close as I am to you. Though I expect the setting will be a little more… royal.”

  Gavigan remembered the folded newspaper, Russell and McGarrity, the arrest, the king just across the river. “Are you working for Russell?” he said. “Is this what he’s been cooking up?”

  Francis was baffled. Whatever he’d said had set off the old man. And who the hell was Russell?

  “What’s he planning?” Gavigan said, his voice stormy. “Is this why he was in Detroit?”

  Francis swallowed hard. He had Earl of Glamis’d it again.

  “I’ll get the truth out of you.” Gavigan snapped his fingers and pointed to one of the men in the hall. Within seconds, Jamie was standing over Francis. “Now I’m going to ask you again: Are you working for Russell?”

  “And I’m telling you—”

  At this Gavigan nodded to Jamie, whose fist caught Francis full in the mouth. He tried to rise from the chair but Jamie hit him just below the eye, and when he tried again, a punch to the gut sent him in a heap to the floor.

  “Take our guest back to the closet,” Gavigan said. “I need a minute to think.”

  Gavigan was fuming. He was ready to cut the bastard’s throat himself. But then he thought of his Sunday prayers, about having the smarts to make the most of whatever luck threw his way. Wasn’t this some kind of answered prayer? Hadn’t he asked for one last big score? Now, at the end of his life, God was saying, Here you go, John. I’m making this one easy for you.

  Because if what Dempsey said was true—that he was going to stand within bowing distance of the king—then he could be very useful. Useful? He was a godsend. He could be the instrument by which Gavigan showed them all how it was done. Russell, McGarrity, the IRA Army Council, those Clan na Gael choirboys who took his money but would never let him enter the rolls of their little club, the whole lot of them. You understand, Mr. Gavigan, that we can’t give the authorities reason to suspect… Yes, Mr. Gavigan, but the practicalities… Of course, John, but the situation is delicate… Thank you, but the time isn’t right. He had carved a slice for himself out of the toughest city in the world and defended it against all comers. Could any of them say the same? Businessmen with clean hands, second-generation soldiers
who had been children when the real fighting happened—that’s what they were. But when men like Russell and McGarrity looked at him, they saw only a bagful of dollars, and they acted like it was a privilege for him to let them—these generals, these geniuses—make all of the decisions. They would see what a blow he could strike. It would be his last bold act, a lifetime’s work culminating in a thunderbolt. This was bigger than the plan to bomb the cabinet, a louder rallying cry than a countryside uprising. Dempsey would hold the gun in his hand, but it would be the will of John Gavigan that pulled the trigger.

  ONCE JAMIE LED Dempsey back into the room, Gavigan explained how it would happen. Francis would follow through on his plan to meet the king and queen, and when he reached the front of the line, he would level a gun at the king’s heart and pull the trigger.

  Even Cronin flinched. He looked at Jamie, then back at Gavigan. Had he heard that right?

  “Are you completely loolah?” Francis said through his busted lip. “I’m not going to shoot the king.”

  A gargling noise rattled in Gavigan’s throat. Pure disgust with this whinging pup. “If it wasn’t for men braver than you, Mr. Dempsey, Ireland would still be in chains. Your father was one of those men, until he turned traitor. This is your chance to redeem him.”

  “You’re mad,” Francis said.

  “No,” Gavigan said. “I’m furious that the sons of the revolutionary generation won’t lift a finger to finish the job. That given the chance to strike a blow that will echo through the ages, they fidget like schoolboys. I’m giving you a choice that you were too cowardly to make during your own short, wasted lifetime. You can step up to that so-called king, and you can end his life, or your entire family will pay for your crimes. Your family tree rotted when your father turned his back on his comrades, and that rot has stained you and your brothers. You can purge it by taking action, or I will purge it in the best way that I know how.” Gavigan wiped his spittle-caked lips, his sweat-greased brow, and explained: If Francis refused to participate in this plan, Gavigan would be forced to apply added pressure. First, he would bring in the younger brother—