by Con Lehane
Whisking by the security desk, I was lucky enough to grab an uptown elevator as the doors were closing and in another stroke of fortune happened to remember Barney’s room number. I woke him up, and that’s where the “Jaysus!” came in—actually a couple of them, followed by a long probing look into my eyes.
“Bejaysus, McNulty, you’re a terrible whoore.” He said this gleefully, so I took it as a term of endearment. “Bejaysus, we’ll have to take the bastards on now. It’s time I got meself out of here.”
Barney began squirming around on his bed, so I thought he would jump right up and go running down the hospital hallway, his tubes and wires flailing out behind him. I lunged at him to keep him from getting up just as the nurse arrived. She let out a scream. Not only was I an intruder in the hospital in the middle of the night, it looked like I was trying to strangle Barney. Fortunately, this being New York, no one paid any attention to the scream, and Barney and I were able to calm the nurse. Barney, who wasn’t really planning on jumping up out of bed anyway, settled back in. I assured the nurse I would leave quietly that minute, and Barney said he would ask his doctor in the morning when he could leave the hospital.
The picket line was a bit scraggly when I arrived shortly after six the next morning. The first objective of a strike, I learned at Pop’s knee, was to make sure no one went into work. This wasn’t as easy as it might seem, so I figured I should get there early. The longtime union members would be okay, but others were new to the hotel, to the union, to the country. They were scared. However badly the Savoy might treat its employees, for most of them it was a better place to be than the one they left behind. Many of them were illegals. They certainly didn’t trust the company to have their best interest at heart, but they didn’t trust the union, either. They’d got to where they’d gotten by relying on their own wits and weren’t going to change now.
Francois, the French chef who’d gotten us into this mess in the first place, had the good manners to show up at six also and, as he spoke Spanish, kept the kitchen crew solid. Some of the kitchen crew knew some of the housekeepers and brought most of them along. The main problem areas were a contingent of Russians who worked in the housekeeping and engineering departments, the front desk clerks, who all hoped to become hotel managers, and the lunch dining room waitstaff, a collection of ballet dancers, concert musicians, and budding actors and actresses keeping a roof over their heads until stardom. When the first of the actors arrived, a gay guy who was a dead ringer for Adonis, I showed him my Equity card and told him I’d have Equity pull his card if he scabbed on a strike. He passed the threat on to the rest of the crew as they arrived, so they stayed out, too, milling around 48th Street as if they’d arrived early for a casting call. The Russians gathered around the employee entrance, waiting to see how things played out before they decided which side they were on.
MacAlister and the other managers came to the windows every few minutes to watch worriedly what was happening outside. We didn’t care about the folks checking out, and check-in wouldn’t be until the middle of the afternoon. The managers had their hands full just checking people out, moving baggage, and hailing cabs. As long as we kept the workers out, we were okay.
We spent the morning getting ourselves organized, picking out leaders, and shoring up those who doubted the wisdom of the strike. Around eleven, as we were herding the last of the lunch crew into line, Eliot and one of his henchmen, the weasel who’d been in the bar the night Barney was attacked, arrived on the scene, climbing out of a Lincoln Town Car. True to form, Eliot looked disdainfully at the picket line, then went inside to talk to the bosses.
Before long, I was sure, Eliot and MacAlister would get their act together and come out and address the workers with the unimpeachable sincerity of a couple of Louisiana snake oil salesmen. When that happened we’d have to convince our fellow workers—using hand signals with most of them, as far as I could tell—that a couple of waitresses, a bartender, and a chef could take on and win against the corporation that ran the hotel and the gangsters who ran the union. What would we say? Why should anyone listen to us? We didn’t know half the people working in the hotel. We didn’t know what the hell we were doing.
Then, at the moment of my deepest gloom, our rescuer arrived—not on a white horse and wearing a white hat, but riding a Yellow Cab and wearing a scally cap. Out of the cab climbed Barney Saunders, holding his damaged paw like a blunderbuss in front of him. Everything stopped. The picket line collapsed around him.
“Y’er a heluva crew,” said Barney. “I’m proud to be one of ye.” He spoke softly, yet his voice carried, as everyone leaned closer to listen. His little speech cheered everyone, making us all feel stronger and braver than we thought we were. We had to stay strong, Barney told everyone. If we stayed strong, we’d win. That was all there was to it.
It was good to have Barney back and good to hear him. We all knew there were a couple of holes in this theory of solidarity winning the day—as there might soon be holes in some of its proponents—but with a little luck we’d beat back the first assault by Eliot and MacAlister when it came.
And it did. Around twelve thirty, MacAlister came out and set up the portable banquet-room sound system under the canopy in front of the hotel. Eliot spoke first. His attempt to sound like a tough labor leader who had pushed through a deal fell flat. When he began talking about how the union couldn’t “countenance insubordination”—two words, some of us figured, that had entered his vocabulary that very morning—a few of the assembled started to boo. By the time he got to the strike being illegal, he was drowned out, sound system and all, by boos, catcalls, and Bronx cheers. I stood off to the side, not much of a catcaller myself, but he found me anyway and glared in my direction.
MacAlister took the microphone then, but before he could say anything, Barney, who stood next to me, hollered, “You’re a beaten man, MacAlister. Your days are numbered.”
MacAlister froze. He heard what I heard in Barney’s voice. It sounded like more of a threat than I thought Barney meant it to be, yet when I took in the hotel manager’s stunned expression and Barney’s steely-eyed glare, I wasn’t so sure. MacAlister looked stricken, as if Barney had threatened his life, and Barney’s expression did nothing to dispel this notion.
Eliot looked around uncomfortably, with that “Who are these people and what do they want?” expression, as he turned away toward the hotel entrance. His departure elicited a good-natured cheer from the workers, causing him to pick up his pace as he headed back inside.
Around three, when the guests began arriving to check in, the next shift of cops showed up, too, and began setting up blue sawhorse crowd-control barriers in front of the hotel. We’d been doing a pretty good job of stopping the would-be guests before they got out of their cabs and sending them on their way. Some of the desk-clerk crew had made a list of other reasonably priced hotels, and the cabdrivers, some who supported the strike and others who didn’t want their windshields smashed, were taking off before their startled fares had much of a chance to think our proposition over.
The sergeant in charge was a no-nonsense, stocky black guy, with a habit of jerking himself around and grabbing the handle of his baton every few seconds, as if he were tired of talking and ready to sap someone. Luckily, it turned out he knew Sam, so they had a quiet conversation, and his attitude improved. When Betsy and Mary Donohue, both cops’ wives, showed up, we put them in charge of the evening picket line, and, good-natured and chatty as they were, they had the uniformed cops eating out of the palms of their hands in no time.
I figured for once Betsy’s husband would be an advantage for our side. This bit of optimism lasted about an hour until I saw one of the cops watching Barney and Betsy cuddling together at the corner of the building. Whatever else you can say about cops, and from my perspective the less said the better, they’ve got an unerring instinct for things that are not as they should be. On top of this, they don’t trust anyone who isn’t a cop, and they especially
don’t trust other cops’ wives. So this cop, clocking the scene between Barney and Betsy, has his ears perked since she’s introduced herself to him as a cop’s wife. What was going on between Barney and Betsy was the tenderness and solicitousness of as-yet-unacknowledged puppy love. If I could see it, this cop could see it. Whether he’d pass this information on to Betsy’s husband was anyone’s guess, but if hubby showed up on the picket line, fur would fly. So Barney the Innocent had a lot more trouble than he thought he had just for letting sweet Betsy caress his damaged paw as he talked to her and brushing a few wisps of her golden hair back from her eyes when she spoke to him. The cop was gawking like he’d caught them in the sack.
Later, uptown, when Barney and I stopped at Frank’s Bar for a ten-dollar steak and a couple of beers, I bit the bullet and broached the topic of his indiscreet behavior. I hated to bring it up. For one thing, it was none of my business, and Barney hadn’t asked my advice. For another, Barney blushed like a schoolboy at the very mention of relations with the fairer sex. On the rare occasion when I spent an evening making a fool of myself over a pretty lost soul scoffing up rum and Cokes at the bar, Barney acted like he and I were strangers. On the even rarer occasion when I’d wander off into the night with one of these pretty waifs, he’d cast his eyes down, so as not to notice we were leaving together, and never ask where I’d gone or what had happened. So barging into his love life was something I did with great reluctance.
After hemming and hawing through the steak and a couple of beers, I managed to say. “Look, Barney, it’s none of my business. Betsy’s a sweet kid, but she’s trouble. She doesn’t mean to be. It’s just the help she needs brings with it big problems. That guy she’s married to is a wacko.”
Sure enough, Barney’s face turned bright red; his eyes sought out the ceiling and then the ground. He seemed to be gasping for air as he tried to speak. When no words came, he stared at the table, then looked at me in disbelief. He was so mortified I couldn’t face him any longer and dropped my gaze to my beer glass.
We sat there in silence. I started to say, “I mean—” Of course, he knew goddamn well what I meant. And he might have begun some kind of denial. But we both knew that wouldn’t wash. So there we were. Frank’s was a brightly lit joint and not especially noisy, so there was no place to hide. We were sitting at a booth, also, so we were right across from one another. When you sit at a bar to talk to a guy, you can turn to look at him if you want. If you don’t want, you can stare straight ahead at the mirror or the bottles, or the tropical fish, or the lady bartender’s ass if you’re in that sort of joint. Here, there was only down at the table, up at the ceiling, or across at poor Barney suffering acute mortification on top of his throbbing-with-pain reattached fingers.
Finally, I said, “Look, like I said, it’s none of my business. You just should know I’m not the only one noticing.” Then I changed the subject back to the strike, and after I’d speculated on this and that possible development, Barney caught up with himself and found his tongue.
“It’s that whoore MacAlister that needs something done about him.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Done about him?”
No embarrassment now. “He won’t see reason, Brian. He’ll have his own way. Eliot’s not man enough to stand up to him, and MacAlister’s not the man to give in.”
Neither was Barney, I saw now. Remembering the troubles in the north of Ireland that Barney grew up into, I realized that as much as we had in common, he’d fought his battles under different rules than the ones I was used to.
“Other bosses have given in,” I said. “If we keep the strike together, we’ve got a shot.”
Barney shook his head. “Ah, Brian, you’re as good a man as they come. I wish we had a hundred like you. We’ll stay on the picket line then as long as you like.” His expression grew serious, his blue eyes intense. “Two men stand in the way of the good we might do—Eliot and MacAlister. We can’t take our eyes off either of them. And, Brian, me good-hearted friend, some one of us will need be as ruthless as they are.”
chapter seven
When I got back to my apartment, I noticed the cat-food bowl was empty and the litter box had been used. I still hadn’t seen the cat, though; he’d been hiding under the couch since he got there. I threw myself on the bed thinking I was exhausted and would just conk out, but I didn’t. My mind started whirring. I was scared. What the hell was I doing? Barney already had his fingers chopped off. Did I think these guys were going to say, “Well, gosh darn it, McNulty, it looks like you got us beat. Come up tomorrow, we’ll turn the union over to you”? Since I was a kid on Pop’s picket lines, I’d known that strikes were often life-and-death struggles. People got killed, and people killed. And I didn’t want any part of being killed or killing—in that order. Eliot was a stone-cold gangster. Now here was Barney, reliving his IRA days. What the hell was I going to do when bodies started dropping around me?
My body was rigid with the tension I’d talked myself into, so when the phone rang, I sprang out of bed like I’d been catapulted.
It was my ex-wife.
“Kevin’s been arrested,” she said breathlessly.
“Jesus Christ!” My heart fell at my feet. “What? What happened?”
“Your son was caught smoking pot in the playground across from your father’s apartment building.”
This is my ex-wife true to form. When Kevin does something good, she says “my son Kevin” or, if she’s feeling generous, “our son Kevin.” He gets picked up by the cops, and it’s “your son Kevin.”
“Is he okay? Is he out of jail?”
“That’s right!” she screeched. “That’s just like you! Kevin’s ruining his life, and you sound like a goddamn hoodlum lawyer.” There was a pause until she screamed, “Your son has been arrested. He’s a goddamn criminal. What are you going to about it!?” Her voice was like an air raid siren in my ear. Karen doesn’t handle crises well. She’s like Chicken Little crying, “The sky is falling.” She’s borderline hysterical because she’s worried about Kevin. I understand that. She still drives me nuts.
Truth be told, I was at least as hysterical as she was, if not more. I’d been in jail, and I’d tear my heart out of my chest with my own hands to keep Kevin out of there. “Listen to me, Karen!” My volume was now close to matching hers. “Where’s Kevin? Is he locked up?”
“A lot you care. Where were you when you could have stopped this from happening? What good is it doing anything now?”
“Karen,” I bellowed, “where’s Kevin? If he’s in jail, we need to get him out right now. Now!!”
“Maybe it would be good for him to stay in jail. Maybe the stupid kid will learn something if they keep him there and scare the pants off him.”
I tried to keep my voice calm. “Karen, no kid should be in a New York City jail. Things happen in those cells that kids never recover from. Kids like Kevin are tossed in with every kind of deranged misfit.” My voice started rising again in spite of myself, not because of anything Karen was doing but because I was picturing Kevin in a cell and it was driving me crazy. “Please tell me where he is,” I pleaded.
“What do you think you can do to help now?”
I told myself to be calm, to not get mad. When I thought I was ready, I tried again. “Karen, please tell me where my son is.”
A pause and then, “He’s here.” Relief flooded through my body. I could have cried.
“Can I talk to him, please?”
She hesitated, but seemed to be losing her enthusiasm for the fight, because the next thing I heard was Kevin’s bored, angry, insolent voice. “Yeh, what?”
“Kevin,” I said, hoping to communicate by the sound of my voice the anguish in my heart.
“Oh, c’mon, Dad. It’s only a ticket. It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal!!?” I screamed. “Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? You can’t get arrested. You can’t smoke pot. Are you nuts?”
“Right,” said Kevin, the kid
with the chain around my soul. “You never smoked pot. You never got arrested.”
Ah, the sins of the father. I must have known this would happen, that all I wished for for Kevin would crumble to dust because of his no-good father. A child of divorced parents, with a father who couldn’t find a place in the respectable workaday world, who spent his life in bars and dreamed he was an actor one audition away from the part that would make him a star, what did I expect? What the hell kind of role model was I? What happens to a poor kid with a bum for a father? I didn’t need Karen to browbeat me. I could do it fine without her.
After hanging up, I lay back down on top of my bed, remorseful and despairing. Kevin, my heart and my soul, was headed for more trouble than he could imagine. I’d been in jams in my life; I’d been scared for myself, plenty scared, but never like this. This time it was my kid. I pictured the cops coming for him—the boy I’d always been able to comfort ripped out of my hands, the steel door slammed shut between us. Tears gathered in my eyes. I didn’t have the right to ruin a kid’s life.
When I got to the picket line early the next morning, Sam Jones, the day bartender, saw me and walked over. As usual, he was energetic and cheerful, pumping my hand and clapping me on the back. “Awright, Brian! I never seen you up and around at this hour before, ’cept maybe you on your way home from the night before.” He laughed heartily. “Better watch out for this daylight. You don’t look natural.” He clapped me on the back again, then spoke softly. “Eliot call me last night, sayin’ he want to meet me. I told him I didn’t know about what was coming down here. He need to talk to you.”
“What about Barney?”
Sam squinted, scrunching up his face as if he were in deep thought. I didn’t think he really was. He’d already made up his mind, I suspected. This pause for deep thinking was for my benefit. He had this habit of making believe he treated things said by white folks with great seriousness.