Innocence Lost

by Sherilyn Decter

  Maggie thrusts the plate at Tommy. “Here then. Make sure to bring the plate back inside.”

  Once in the house, she feels Mickey's eyes follow her progress across the room. She turns to him. “Are you sure I can't get you anything, Mr. Duffy?”

  He gives her an amused smile and shakes his head. “I'm good, thanks, doll.” Maggie is certain he's seen the showdown on the sidewalk. Grown men in saloons and little boys on sidewalks, they all seem to get the better of me when he's around.

  Maggie resumes her position, standing rigidly in the doorway between the two rooms, well within sight of Tommy and his friends outside.

  “He’s just upset, you know,” says a well-dressed woman next to her. Maggie looks at her, confused. Is she referring to Tommy or that other boy?

  “The boy’s death has hit him hard. It bothers him when one of his men’s children get caught up in any trouble,” the woman says.

  “I’m sure it does. It bothers us all,” says Maggie.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Duffy,” says Clara, as she passes by Maggie and the well-dressed woman.

  “Mrs. Duffy?”

  “Please, call me Edith, hon. How’s Alicja coping? With all those kids, and her own man away. Talk about rough,” says Edith Duffy.

  “We’re here for her,” Maggie says quietly, looking back into the kitchen. “There but for the grace of God go any one of us.”

  Edith looks at Maggie more closely. “Are you a neighbor? Does your husband work for Mickey?”

  “I’m Maggie Barnes, a neighbor. Oskar was a good friend of my son’s.”

  “Poor kid. And how is he feeling about all this? Your son, I mean. It can’t be easy to explain something like this to a boy that age.”

  “I’ll say. I’m finding it hard trying to explain it to myself,” Maggie says. “It is so senseless.”

  Edith and Maggie stand together on an island between two storms. The men in the living room, and the women in the kitchen; each group dealing with grief in their own way.

  An easy intimacy grows. It surprises Maggie. “This has been hard on Tommy, but I’m hoping he will be fine in a few days. I try and keep him safe and, since it happened, I hold him tighter than I used to. Before all this.” Maggie gestures to the room in front of them. “It’s terrifying to have something like this happen to someone you know, especially a little boy. And it’s so random. So frightening.”

  Edith stares into the room, her eyes settling on Mickey. “Hon, it’s something you never get used to. Doesn’t matter who it is.”

  Maggie studies Edith and then Mickey. “How do you cope?” Maggie asks her. “I’d be scared to death worrying about him all the time. I read the papers, and guns seem to be part of the life when you’re in that kind of business.”

  “It’s not like we have a choice, doll. It’s the same for soldiers’ wives, and the gals married to cops, I guess. You cope because you have to. I go to too many funerals, that’s for sure. And spend too much time consoling widows. And then there’s the wives left behind when their men get put away. Mickey’s men are our family. He helps them out with cash, and he leaves it to me to dish out some comfort.”

  The emotionally charged afternoon seems to invite confidences. Maggie draws closer to Edith. She’s fascinated by the woman standing next to her. “What kind of business was Mickey in, I mean, before Prohibition? Did he run a saloon?” Maggie knows bar owners had been quick to seize the opportunity to keep their bars open and increase their profits when Prohibition started.

  “Oh Lordy, no, Mickey was a mechanic back then. He had dirt under his nails and talked non-stop about maybe owning his own garage someday. He’s always been a whiz with the cars. And he loves business.”

  More people are arriving at both the front and back doors. Edith and Maggie move into the hall, out of the traffic, looking to find a space a bit quieter.

  “Prohibition was an opportunity, really, for a self-starter like Mickey,” says Edith. ”He saw a need and figured a way to meet it. And he’s good at it. As the business grew, he got more men working. Running the booze put money in their pockets and food back on their families’ tables. They’d follow him anywhere now.”

  From where she’s standing, Maggie can just see Mickey sitting in the chair. There is a circle of men around him, but they’re at a slight distance. She can’t tell whether the barrier is created by friendship or respect. Or maybe fear?

  “He just wants to be successful,” Edith continues. “It’s important to him. To have Philadelphia look up to him. It’s a long way from the days of being a grubby mechanic.”

  “But what of the risks?” Maggie asks. She's beginning to warm to this petite woman.

  Edith smiles. “I guess the rewards are worth it, but I’d rather have Mickey safe than a giant house, or a closet full of shoes.”

  “I’ve met him, you know. Your husband, Mickey.” Maggie notices the eyebrow arch on Edith’s suddenly still face. Maggie hurries to finish her story before Edith can misunderstand the nature of the meeting. “I was someplace I shouldn’t have been, and there was a man—”

  Edith laughs. “Ah, there’s always a man, doll. There’s always a man.”

  During their conversation, the talk in the front room has grown noticeably louder and more forceful. With every shout, the men shift to look at Mickey, to gauge his reaction. He seems content to let the situation develop.

  “I hear Stan, the kid’s pop, went nuts when he heard about it. It took more than a couple of the screws in the joint to hold him down. Raving, he was,” a man says.

  “I say we go now.” Ernie, Oskar’s oldest brother shouts. “We can’t let them get away with this. Come on, let’s take a ride and show ‘em they can’t go around shootin’ little boys.”

  Maggie has been trained well by the Inspector. She takes in Mickey’s nuanced look at Ernie, then glances at two of the men who had been standing quietly against the wall. One of the men has an ugly scar running along his forehead. Something passes between them, and Mickey gives a slight nod of his head to acknowledge it.

  He stands and the room falls silent. “I think that there’s been enough sadness for one day.” He looks around the room. “Ah, Edith, there you are,” he says, locating his wife in the doorway where she and Maggie had been listening. “Come, let’s pay our respects to Alicja, before we head home.”

  Alone, Maggie watches the two men who have been standing by the front door quietly turn and leave. Several men who have been sitting in the living room, including Oskar’s brother, file out after them. From her vantage point, Maggie can see Tommy and his friends, who have been standing on the sidewalk, also watch the older men climb into a couple of cars and head off.

  I bet there’s trouble somewhere in town tonight.

  Chapter 27

  “I think we need for the boys to let off a bit of steam,” Mickey says to Henry Mercer. The two are seated in the warehouse. Night has fallen and, for once, the place is quiet. “So, Henry, ya think Boo-Boo’s good for it? The murder thing, I mean. They’re looking to make things square for Stan, the kid’s old man, and it would be handy for us to have Boo-Boo lined up.”

  Mickey pours each of them a glass of the premium Canadian whiskey he keeps on hand. “You’re even quieter than usual,” says Mickey. He clinks Henry’s static glass with his own. “Drink up. Come on. It’s Canadian.” Mickey pushes the glass closer to Henry.

  Henry shakes his head, but can’t look Mickey in the eye. “It’s bad, Mickey, really bad. I shoulda told ya sooner, but I just couldn’t, ya know?” Henry says, talking to his untouched glass of whiskey more than Mickey.

  “Look. It was me. I’m the one that found the kid.” Henry’s head hangs low, his hands rest on the table on either side of his glass.

  “What do you mean, Henry? The cops fished him out of the river.”

  “Yeah, and I put him there. After the raid. I came back, ya know? To check on the booze. And I found him.”

  “Henry. No way. Was it the cops that s
hot him?”

  “Who knows? He caught a stray bullet. Someone fired it.” Henry shrugs. “The kid was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nobody’s said they saw what happened. Nobody’s said they saw who done it. It coulda been one of them cops who done it.” Henry lowers his head. “Or it coulda been one of us. Coulda been me. No one else in the group’s come forward to say he did it, or came back to move a body they knew was there. That’s why it really coulda been me. Oh, God forgive me, it was probably me.”

  “That’s just crazy talk, Henry. You can’t know. And it’s not like it happened on purpose, for God’s sake. From the sounds of it, there was lots of bullets flying that night. It was just a shame that the kid walked in front of one of them.” Mickey takes another sip, considering. “Look, if none of the boys don’t know it happened here, we should keep it that way, Henry.”

  Henry sits motionless in front of his untouched glass of whiskey.

  “Come on. Pal. We’ve been in tough spots before. We’ve stolen apples to cars, Henry. Always together. We can’t let it fall apart now. You remember that time that you and me had to have a chat with a couple of the Eye-talians? It was a good thing you had my back then.” Mickey looks over at Henry, who is motionless, lost in the bottom of his glass. “Maybe a run over to Boo-Boo’s isn’t such a bad idea. We can knock a few heads. Just like old times. What do you think?”

  “I think I shouldn’t have dumped him, Mickey. I mean jeeze, he was just a little kid. Coming back into the warehouse after the cops had left. Seeing the crates and barrels destroyed, a week’s worth of inventory smashed and spilled on the ground. I was pissed off when I saw it, but it’s just stuff, ya’ know? I called the boys in to clean up the mess later but, before I did, I found him. That small crumpled body face down in the dirt, in the middle of all the broken boards and glass. A kid, Mickey. A little kid.”

  Mickey downs his glass, pours another one. “Yeah, that was tough, but you did good. I mean, what do you think would have happened if the cops had found him here? It was a lucky thing you came back, pal.”

  “His body all limp, arms and legs dangling. It was like putting a baby in the backseat of the car. I never wiped a child’s face before, Mickey, but I had to. I cleaned dirt off the poor boy’s face.”

  “Henry. Don’t let your mind go there. Drink up.”

  “That face. Sweet, innocent, sleeping. Mickey, I swear to you it was the loneliest sound in the world when he splashed into the water. ”

  “Henry, ya gotta stop this. I hear what you’re saying. It was bad. But it’s not the end of the world. He shouldn’t have been here. His bad luck. But it’s done. Drink up. Please, Henry. Drink up.”

  Henry is immobile, lost in a dark place.

  “Henry. We faced worse in the joint. Remember that ape that came at me with the knife. You stepped right in. Gave him what was comin’ to him. Nobody sweated it.”

  Henry looks for answers in his untouched whiskey.

  “Now, don’t you be getting soft on me, Mercer. For God’s sake, it was an accident. You did what you had to do.”

  “It coulda been me. My gun. My bullet. I did a lot of shooting over that way. The cops started too early. Something tipped them off. Probably the kid. A little boy.”

  “Pull yourself together, Mercer. Come on, Henry. Drink. You don’t know it was you. As for the other, you were only doing what you had to do.”

  “You’re right. We’ve been through a lot.”

  Mickey nods, “And we can’t have dead kids turning up on our doorstep. It would be bad for business. You know what I’m sayin’? It was an accident, and you moved him. There’s no harm in that. Self-preservation. The boy was already gone.”

  “Already dead. Right. Gone when I moved him.”

  “We’re all stressed,” says Mickey. “Organize the boys and blame it on Boo-Boo. The boys need something else to think about. And so do you.”

  Henry looks up at Mickey.

  “Go find some of Boo-Boo Hoff’s boys for some target practice. And then haul the fellas over to Freddie’s to celebrate. It’ll make you feel better.” Mickey drains his glass.

  “Okay, we’ll get something organized for Tuesday. Something fast, in and out. They won’t know what hit ‘em.” Henry says. He looks over Mickey’s shoulder. “And then we’ll all feel better.”

  “Stop staring at that spot,” says Mickey.

  “I can’t help it. That’s where he was.”

  As Mickey drives out of the warehouse, he looks in the rear view mirror. Henry is framed in a weak cone of light from an overhead bulb, the rest of the garage in darkness. He remains clutching his untouched glass of whiskey, staring at a spot in the distance.

  Chapter 28

  S upper in the Barnes’ household following the funeral is a somber affair. Afterwards, Maggie takes comfort in tidying up her kitchen. So different than the kitchen down the street with its sadness and the press of people. There’s relief to be away from it and regret for feeling that way.

  Standing next to her at the sink, Joe is wrapped in an apron with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He has a dish towel in hand, drying the dishes Maggie passes to him.

  “Growing up in a houseful of sisters, I’d have thought that you’d be the last person to tie on an apron and help in the kitchen, Joe,” Maggie says.

  “Me Mam was a trailblazer,” Joe says with a grin. “An equal opportunity chore assigner. But you know, doing dishes was always my favorite part of the day. It gave me a chance to talk with her about whatever was on my mind.”

  Maggie smiles at him. “So then, is there something on your mind?”

  Joe chuckles. “No, nothing in particular. Although, I’m worried about Tommy. He’s a great kid, but all this has been hard on him.”

  “I know. I’ve seen it, too. He was so quiet at dinner tonight. He didn’t eat a thing.”

  “And for a chow hound like Tommy, that’s always a sign that something’s on his mind. I think you’re right. Just give him time.”

  “I suppose. And you, Joe? How goes the battle? Is our side winning?”

  “I wish I had more to report, Mrs. Barnes—Maggie. We just get one joint closed down and padlocked, and the court throws out the warrant on a technicality. Before you know it, they’re back open for business. Half the cops on the force have their hand in a bootlegger’s pocket. The crews know about our raids before we even leave the precinct. It’d be a heck a lot easier to do my job if I could figure out whose side everybody’s on.”

  “That’s got to be frustrating.”

  “Colonel Butler calls Philadelphia a cesspool, which doesn’t go down well with Mayor Kendrick. He told the newspaper that trying to enforce the law here was worse than any battle he was ever in”.

  “What do you think of Mickey Duffy? He was at Alicja’s house this afternoon. I heard that Oskar’s father and his oldest brother are part of Mickey’s crew.”

  “He’s a slick, dangerous criminal. Stay clear of him. He’s been in and out of courtrooms a bunch of times, but his lawyer is always too slippery and he gets off. I heard Duffy gunned down one of the liquor inspectors while the guy was out walking with his wife and family. Shot him right there in front of them.”

  “That’s awful. Although that doesn’t sound like the man I met. He didn’t seem the cold-blooded killer type.”

  “Make no mistake, Maggie. He may have a nice wrapper, and lots of charm, but at his core he’s as rotten as they come. You don’t get to be one of the most powerful bootleggers in Philadelphia by being a nice guy. If you’d seen the things I’ve seen, you wouldn’t be so taken by that snake. The guy’s nothing but a ruthless thug.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. You know, I’ve had my quota of gloom today. How about a sunnier subject, then. Have you seen much of Fanny these days?”

  “What a gal. But no, I’ve been busy at work and she’s been busy with family things I guess. We are going out on Saturday. I have someplace special in mind.” Joe pauses and then adds shy
ly, “I think that I might ask her to marry me.”

  “Oh Joe, that seems a bit sudden.”

  Joe looks at Maggie, puzzled. He hands a plate back to her. “You missed a spot.”

  Maggie immerses the plate into the sink, suds spilling on the counter, and over-scrubs it. “What do you really know about Fanny?”

  “I don’t get it. I thought you two gals liked each other, and now it sounds like you think maybe I’m making a mistake. I’ve known her and her family my whole life. We grew up together in Ardmore. Sure, she’s a bit of a wild thing and has some of these foolish flapper notions in her head, but really, once you get to know her better, you’ll see she’s a great gal,” Joe says.