Be that as it may, I presented myself at Morrissey's door. Not his townhouse, mind you, but what he styled his office. The townhouse was uptown, on Riverside Drive near Grant's Tomb, but the office was a storefront social club in Hell's Kitchen, the Auld Sod, after a fashion, where both Irish Republicans and the Hannah mob still found willing recruits. Morrissey had named his enterprise after that recalcitrant old rascal John Devoy, a stern model, but going inside, I found it had much the flavor of a Tammany ward heeler's.
There were widows and war veterans, out-of-work laborers and bored punks, loafers, hangers-on, and drunks. A catalogue of the unfortunate, the deprived, and the dispossessed, every one with a story to tell and their hand out. Altogether, there was that air of favors sought and favors given. I felt right at home.
This was, of course, simply the outer circle of petitioners at Morrissey's court.
There were others, some of whom strode indifferently past the human debris in the anteroom, some of whom scurried, hoping to pass unnoticed. The better-dressed men were there to offer influence, or buy it, and they had easy entrée. The ferrets were informers and dogsbodies. It was exactly like Young Tim Hannah's. Any organization is lubricated by patronage and by a working knowledge of the street. If you went to City Hall and waited an audience with Hizzoner, the silver-haired Bill O'Dwyer himself, you'd find the same mix of condescension and despair, better packaged, perhaps, but the need just as raw. Here at Des Morrissey's, you found the bottom of the barrel.
This was political power at its most intimate. These were the utterly disenfranchised. Tammany could buy an individual vote for a glass of whiskey, but what was the need when whole precincts were for sale? The mob took no interest in them, they were only background, people who'd already been squeezed, too poor to be squeezed any further. The Church had abandoned them to their fate because fate it was, the destiny they deserved, or how else would it have overcome them? There were few social services to cushion these luckless souls from the indifferent brutality of merchant capitalism. They'd fallen through the cracks. And here was Des Morrissey sweeping them up, answering their needs, looking for the occasional diamond in the rough, an angry, underfed man he might shape to his own importunate ends.
I would have waited my turn with the rest, but somebody had taken notice of me. Whether it was the cut of my clothes or the cut of my jib, I must have seemed somehow out of place. A quiet boy materialized at my side and asked if I had business with Morrissey. He was polite and soft spoken, with the lilt of Derry in his voice, but I knew him for what he was, one of Des Morrissey's hard fellas, not long off the boat, who'd learned his trade in the slums of Belfast. You'd think there was no shortage of muscle to be picked up here in New York, but the IRA were a mistrustful bunch, even of their own, and this one was a minder, dispatched from the mother country to keep Des Morrissey true to the cause. An unnecessary precaution, I imagined.
Des would know me, I told the boy.
He looked apologetic. “Would you be carrying a weapon?” he inquired.
Aye, that I would.
"We'll step in here, where it's more private."
He let me go first, a sensible courtesy, since he then had me boxed in. It was a small room, no bigger than a closet, with two others before me and him behind. I allowed them to search me, taking the Colt from my shoulder holster, the weighted sap from my hip, and the straight razor from its leather-lined pocket at the small of my back. I could have gone unarmed to my meeting with Des, but that would have confused them.
The boy from Londonderry safed the Colt I always carried cocked and locked. “Thirty-eight Super, long-slide,” he remarked. He slipped the magazine out, and his eyes narrowed when he saw the jacketed hollow-points with their copper plugs.
"Ankle holster,” I said to him.
He nodded to the other two, and they patted me down for the second time. This time they found the little hideout auto.
"Kraut gun,” the boy from Londenderry said. “7.65 Luger."
He was speaking to himself, not to me, half smiling. “I had one of these once. Very reliable. Germans know good work."
The IRA had taken money and guns from the Nazis during the war. I decided I wouldn't bring it up.
"What do we call you?” the boy asked me.
"Mickey Counihan,” I said. “It's my name. What do we call you, then?"
"Oh, make it Paddy,” he said. “We're all Paddys, here."
"Ain't it the trut',” I said, mimicking his accent. But of course it wasn't quite the truth. We were all Paddys, right enough. We would have killed each other for our socks. The boy from Londonderry knew full well what I meant.
The two who'd missed my backup gun the first time had it in mind to handle me roughly, out of embarrassment, but the boy gave them a soft glance, up from under, and they retreated like the tide. He had them disciplined.
I was ushered into the presence.
The back office was neat, if cramped, paneled in a light bleached chestnut that had darkened with age and tobacco smoke. But there were tall casement windows that gave on a tenement courtyard in the rear, and at that hour of the day some sunlight refracted in, giving the wood some warmth.
There was no warmth in Des Morrissey's gaze.
His eyes were dark, set deep under a slab of brow. His hair was black and curly, perhaps the legacy of some forgotten Spanish mariner, when the Armada, stormwrecked, crashed on Ireland's shore. He was a big man, almost as big as me, thick through the chest, with lungs for powerful oratory, but when he spoke now, his voice was a low growl. Pushing sixty, he still had a banked, feral energy that radiated physical authority, and no little menace.
"State your errand,” he said.
Now, his use of the noun errand was calculated to put me in my place. It may even have been unconscious, although I doubted Des did anything without thinking it through. On the other hand, I had no clear idea of what my errand was, and I had no reason to take offense.
Feigning patience, he leaned against the front of his desk, folding his arms. “Words fail you?” he asked.
"No,” I said. “Just getting them in order."
"Oh, it's a verbatim message, is it?"
"No,” I told him again. “The words are my own. The sense of it is Tim Hannah's, though, right enough."
"Spit it out, then."
It wasn't just the two of us. The hard-eyed lad from Derry had taken up station at my back to protect his master. Or was Des really master here? I wondered. It was the girl who'd caught my attention, although I tried not to let my interest show. She was sitting behind the desk, studying me, silent as death itself, her expression watchful. There was a calculating intelligence in her look that made me uneasy, as if my worth had already been weighed, and found wanting.
"Here's a fine broth of a boy, Rose,” Des Morrissey said to her. “A sheep in wolf's clothing, you might say."
"He'd benefit from a shearing,” the boy from Derry put in.
If I hadn't mistaken him, it was a gelding he meant.
But then the girl unexpectedly spoke up. “Was it County Antrim your people came from, then, Dermot?” she asked. “I've heard that in the more benighted small holdings about Lough Neagh, farmboys castrate the young rams with their teeth.” Her voice was husky and her tone languid, almost amused, but there was a silken edge to it, like steel drawn across a whetstone. “Is that exaggeration, or were you wanting a mouthful of balls?"
Des cut a look at her but held his peace.
"Michael James Counihan,” she said, turning her unwelcome attentions to me. Her eyes were the color of slate, like dirty weather. Girl, of course, was an inadequate description. She was deceptively slight, perhaps no more than a hundred pounds in wet clothing, but I now put her at a few years above twenty. Her hair had the same thick, dark, ungovernable profligacy as her father's (because I'd realized who she was, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it before); her skin as translucent as porcelain, with the blush of strong emotion giving her an innoce
nce Des had lost over the years, his complexion thicker, coarsened with too much necessary compromise; and the selfsame flame burning inside her, fierce enough to purify all doubts. I felt awkward, faced with such unwavering certainty.
"You've yet to explain yourself,” Des reminded me, bringing my thoughts to heel.
"Tim Hannah wants a sit-down,” I told him.
"Whatever for?” Rose Morrissey asked.
I shrugged. “To discuss matters of mutual interest, I'd imagine,” I said. “It's my understanding that your father and Old Tim, himself that was, were agreed on what you might call an entente cordiale, less partisan than pragmatic."
Rose smiled, tilting her head to one side. “Entente?” she inquired. “Your vocabulary doesn't quite suit your manner. I'm thinking you have unexplored possibilities, Mr. Counihan."
"My manner suits the streets, Miss Morrissey,” I said. “My vocabulary comes from the company of my betters."
Rose Morrissey grinned. “We're all equals here,” she said without irony.
I didn't believe that for a moment, and neither did her dad or young Dermot. There was a dynamic at work I didn't fathom.
"I never took blood money,” Des Morrissey said stiffly. He turned from his daughter to me. “Nor do I mean to start now, with the squalid leavings of cutpurses and pimps."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Des,” I burst out. “It's all blood money. You've got your fingerprints on dozens of killings.” I jerked my head over my shoulder at Dermot. “Who supplies them with weapons to ambush the Garda? When they gun down Prods or backsliders or their political rivals, whose name is on the bullet? There's a coffee can in every Irish bar in New York by the cash register to put your change in for the brave lads."
I felt Dermot stir dangerously behind me. “The brave lads.” I hawked a gob on the floor. “Cowards, hiding behind a cause, any excuse for mayhem. At least I admit I'm in it for preferment."
I'd gone too far, but my blood was up, and I'd warned Young Tim, after all, that I wasn't a temperate man.
And a curious thing happened. Des and I were at daggers drawn, the boy from Derry behind me ready to strangle me with my own shoelaces, and then Rose stood up.
It was no easy matter. She struggled, using her arms and her upper body, forcing herself out of the chair, leaning across the desk for leverage. Her face was swollen with effort, and sweat leaked from her hairline, but she recovered her composure. I could see her father ached for her.
"Factionalism,” she whispered, hoarsely, her breath rasping in her throat. “Enmity, history, tribal feuds.” Her voice was getting stronger now, fueled by righteousness. “We have common cause."
She was holding herself up with her elbows locked. I saw the chair she'd been sitting in had casters on its feet, like Roosevelt's. Her legs were withered, from childhood polio, perhaps, or a car accident, a spinal injury that had left them useless. She was a cripple. Fury kept her standing, black fury with herself, with her weakness, fury with our intransigence.
"History,” Rose said, stilling herself to calm, “is a trap. If we use our hatreds to fuel our differences, we're lost. We need the lessons of the past, but we need to put them to use, to undermine the class warfare that pits us against one another."
It sounded like an argument she'd made before.
"I'll not make common cause, as you choose to call it, with thugs such as Tim Hannah,” her father snapped.
"I'd like to make that choice for myself,” Rose said. “Why not hear what he has to say?"
"Look at this bully-boy,” Des retorted with a contemptuous gesture in my direction. “He's what you'd get in bed with."
"I hear Tim Hannah wears better suits,” Rose said. “I mean you no offense, Mr. Counihan,” she added, smiling demurely.
I said nothing, but my smile in return was complicit.
"The likes of Tim Hannah aren't the oppressors,” Rose said to her father. “The oppressor is capital, working hand in glove with a political system that feeds on its own corruption."
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Des muttered, capitulating. He glared at me, hot with anger. “Name a place,” he said. “I mean to bring my daughter. Is that proof against assassination?"
I shouldn't have been startled that personal risk entered into Des Morrissey's calculations, but I was fairly sure murder wasn't on Young Tim's mind. “You name the place,” I said. “And name wherever you like.” I glanced back over my shoulder at Dermot. “I'll answer for your safety and that of your daughter, if you'll answer for mine and Tim Hannah's."
"Done,” Des said. He spat in his hand and we shook on it.
* * * *
You might suppose that my fit of temper had done me no good with the Morrissey clan, but in point of fact I'd learned two things of value, perhaps three, although whether I could put them to use was another matter entirely. First of all, I now had a better idea of what Young Tim was up to, and at first blush it seemed daft enough. He'd set his cap for Rose. Whether he hoped for a love match as well as a dynastic marriage was of no importance. And he'd picked me for the simplest of reasons. It made his approach appear to be the offer of a gangland truce.
The second thing I'd discovered was at odds with the first. Rose Morrissey was animated by a different passion altogether.
I met Johnny Darling for a drink at a bar near the edge of Chinatown. It was close enough to the financial district, where he worked, but far enough off the beaten path for him not to be noticed. It would do him no credit to be seen with me, although Johnny would have brushed that aside like the gent he was. We'd done each other a service or two in what you might call another lifetime, but in the normal course of things our paths no longer crossed. Johnny wasn't in the rackets, which is why I'd sought him out. He was the only person I could trust. Nothing we said would find its way to somebody's long ears on the West Side.
I asked about his wife, of course, but he knew it wasn't a simple social occasion, and I got down to cases, telling him what I knew about Des Morrissey's active political sympathies, and trying to explain Tim Hannah's curious overture, both in method and what I took to be his object. Johnny heard me out, putting one or two pertinent questions, but by and large letting me shape the narrative.
He nodded when I was done and ordered us another round of drinks. “Sláinte,” he said, smiling, raising his glass.
We clicked rims. Nobody in my family had spoken Gaelic for three generations.
"I don't doubt your instincts, Mickey, but it seems kind of a reach,” he said. “Montagues and Capulets."
"You haven't seen her,” I said.
"Rose Morrissey.” He turned his glass on the bar, thinking it over. “Your guess is she and Tim Hannah have already met."
"That's my suspicion."
"When would they have had such an opportunity?"
"Thursday night Bingo at Saint Xavier's, for all I know,” I said. “I haven't worked out the details. I'm telling you what I felt in that room. Rose Morrissey has good reason to see this through. Her father has no idea."
"Well, fathers so often don't,” he remarked.
This wasn't a line of talk I wished to pursue. Johnny's own father was a dangerous man whose enmity I'd managed to richly earn. “I mean that her father sees her through his own eyes,” I said. “Perhaps a victim of circumstance, who knows? I do know he doesn't see her as a sexual creature."
Johnny sat back. “A sexual creature?” He grinned. “You surprise me, Mickey. I thought the Irish imagined all women to be virgins or whores, with nothing in between, but you're saying Morrissey's daughter has honest desires?"
"Ach, take a flying leap at the moon, you barstid,” I said.
"You're all the same, bleeding Episcopalians, winking at sin."
"Sodom and Begorrah,” Johnny said, lifting his whiskey.
We clicked glasses again.
"There's something else about Rose,” he suggested.
I'd told him she was lame. Johnny himself had a piece of Japanese shrapnel in his lef
t leg, which left him with a limp. I'd been using him as a sounding board to put my thoughts in order, but now I was venturing into deeper waters.
"Tim Hannah's mob and the IRA,” I said.
"Montagues and Capulets?"
"A marriage of convenience, certainly,” I told him, “even if Des Morrissey can't see it, or abide it. He's got a hard boy for muscle, name of Dermot, but our lad Dermot looks to be less in Morrissey's employ or under his discipline than he appears to be the eyes and ears of the Emerald Isle."
"The military wing of Sinn Fein."
I nodded. Johnny was quick.
"So, what you're suggesting is that Morrissey would resist the match for personal reasons and for reasons of principle, but the men Dermot represents would see an advantage in it.” He sat forward. “Why are you telling me all this?"
"I've no one else to tell,” I said. It was the truth.
He circled back, as I expected he would. “What is it about Rose Morrissey, then?"
"I can't penetrate her motives."
"Easy enough to fathom, I'd imagine,” he remarked, smiling. “A girl who wears the shamrock on her sleeve."
"I was thinking more Red than Green,” I said.
I'd thrown him a curve, and it took him a moment to recover his aplomb. “You're not serious,” he said.
"Do you know any Communists personally?” I asked him.
He stared at me in pure astonishment. I should explain that Johnny came from money; his family was in railroads and an abiding power on Wall Street. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “A few Parlor Pinks. People who voted for Henry Wallace. Hell, my dad still thinks Roosevelt was a tool of Stalin."
"No, the real thing,” I said.
He waved it away. “You know there's a Red Scare,” he said. “There's always a Red Scare, in my circles."
"Not just in yours,” I said.
He saw I was in earnest. “What are you saying?” he asked.
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