by Brian Martin
A Village Voice
Brian Martin
Austin Macauley Publishers
A Village Voice
About the Author
About the Cover
Dedication
Copyright Information ©
Acknowledgement
Chapter OneNew Jersey/New York, 1987
Chapter TwoIreland, 1919
Chapter ThreeNew York, 1974
Chapter FourNew York, 1955
Chapter FiveNew York, 1987
Chapter SixNew York, 1987
Chapter SevenNew York, 1919
Chapter EightNew York, 1920
Chapter NineNew York, 1960
Chapter TenNew York, 1949
Chapter ElevenNew York, 1987
Chapter TwelveNew Jersey, New York, 1987
Chapter ThirteenFlorida, New York, 1987
Chapter FourteenIreland, New York, 1988/89
Chapter FifteenCharlotte, North Carolina/New York, 1989/1990
Chapter SixteenCharlotte, North Carolina, 2000
About the Author
Brian Martin was born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University. He currently lives with his wife and son in Atlanta, Georgia. A Village Voice is his first novel.
About the Cover
Brian Flanagan, grandson of Irish immigrants, has just landed a job with a leading bank in New York City. Like so many others, he hopes to make his family proud while chasing the American dream. Brian is aware of his family’s ties to the Irish Republican movement and to organized crime in the city. He is determined to write a new chapter in the family history.
Just as Brian believes he can see a brighter future, his family’s past reaches out and pulls him into a world of secrets and violence. He is forced to risk his career, his marriage and even his own life in order to do the right thing.
A Village Voice tells the story of three generations of the Flanagan family. From their early involvement in the struggle for Irish independence to their struggle in order to survive and make a new life in America.
Dedication
For Lucy, Brian, and Paul. Your love and support make all things possible.
Copyright Information ©
Brian Martin (2019)
The right of Brian Martin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528959063 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Publisher’s Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgement
I would like to express my thanks to the editors and production staff at Austin Macauley Publishers.
Chapter One
New Jersey/New York, 1987
When something goes wrong or you think it may be about to go wrong, your first instinct is to look around for someone or something to blame. Maybe it was your parents’ fault for passing on all that bad DNA. Perhaps, they didn’t love you enough or maybe they loved you too much. Was it the mean streets of your neighborhood, or the stifling impact of the sterile suburbs? Nature or nurture, what is more important? What makes us what we are, what leads us to make the decisions we make? Is it the environment in which we were brought up or is it really just the DNA? Of course, blame could be shared but that’s not very satisfying. Just like in those detective novels when it turns out that all the suspects had a hand in murdering the guy.
Brian Flanagan was looking for someone or something to blame if the decision he had made turned out to be a bad one. He was thinking this over while his wife was making coffee and he was pouring a bowl of raisin bran. Then a little voice in his head reminded him that coulda, woulda, shoulda was all bullshit and that you do what you got to do in this life and you move on the best you can. His little voice, what he liked to call his Village voice, was right. He wondered if you can get raisin bran in prison. How would it work? Do they leave a card for you to fill out the night before? That’s right, make light of it, make a joke. He had promised himself to try and act normally this morning as if nothing had happened. A good idea but his hands were starting to shake, not too bad, but enough for his wife to notice if she looked around. He tried closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Closing his eyes was a mistake as it just made him feel dizzy. He headed straight for the bathroom.
Safely inside, he splashed some water on his face, sat down on the edge of the tub, and stared up at the ceiling. Born and raised a Catholic, now would ordinarily have been a good time for a prayer. However, given the circumstances he felt it might make things worse. To pray for help, he should also pray to be forgiven. To be forgiven, he had to be sorry. He did think about his grandfather who was surely up in heaven. His grandfather would understand and would put in a good word for him. His grandfather had told him that adversity would come in life and that there was no avoiding it. ‘The measure of a man was how he responded to adversity when it did come.’ Brian was very young when his grandfather had passed on that advice. He had no idea what it meant at the time but it certainly made sense now. He hoped to Jesus, he could measure up for everyone’s sake.
Okay, showtime. He knew he could not hide out in the bathroom forever, although maybe it was not the worst option. No, no quit friggin’ around, he thought, it is time to be measured. He flushed the toilet, washed his hands and opened the door. Just act normally, just a normal morning, nothing happened, make a joke. He returned to the table, looked over at his wife, Noreen, and tried his John Wayne line from The Quiet Man, “Woman of the house, where’s me tea?” This got the usual raising of the eyebrows from his wife. Good, that was the normal response. Irish born and bred, Noreen didn’t like The Quiet Man, and preferred coffee to tea. Brian was the second generation of his family to be born here in the United States. His family drank tea, morning, noon and night and The Quiet Man was one of their favorite family movies.
He put some water in the kettle and switched on the morning news. His hands had stopped shaking, so far, so good. He liked to catch the weather and hear all the bad news before he rode the bus into the city. Global, national, and local economic data were all bad. Just a couple of weeks ago they had ‘Black Monday.’ The Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 508 points or 22.61% in one day. Just days before, the Iranians had hit two American owned super-tankers with silkworm missiles, off the coast of Kuwait. Economists were predicting that the next few years could be the most troubled since the 1930s. All this bad news was good news for him from a career perspective. He worked in the troubled assets department of one of the nation’s largest banks. More troubled times mean more troubled assets and more troubled assets meant job security for him and the team he worked with on East 57th Street.
He heard some more bad news when the anchor-man handed over to the city crime reporter. Two men had be
en found dead of gunshot wounds at the offices of C&J Textiles on 34th Street. One of the men was identified as Charles Morgenstern, managing director of C&J, and the other was reputed mob boss, Joseph Tarantino. When Noreen heard that the mob was mentioned, she had her usual joke at his expense,
‘Did you know him then?’
Years ago, before they were married, Brian had tried to explain to her that certain members of his family were pretty well-acquainted with members of certain other families in the New York area. His dad and his brothers were second generation Irish. It was not like any of his family members were actual Mafia family members or anything like that (just acquaintances). Now his wife, who was born and raised in Ireland seemed to find this all very confusing. He had even tried to explain the whole friend of ours, friend of mine, made guy, connected guy thing, but it didn’t seem to help at all. She decided that he was being colorful in a jokey sort of way and ever since then she thought it would be funny to kid him about knowing any major mob figure ever mentioned in the media. Being a good sport, he generally played along as he did that morning.
“No honey, I didn’t know him but I think I might have gone to school with his niece.”
“Ah, did she have a moustache, then?”
It was another running joke between them. Noreen knew that he had dated a few Italian American girls before he met her. Again, playing along like the good sport he was, he replied,
“No, no moustache that I can remember, but she did have a really big pair of…”
He made the universal sign for well-endowed women and ducked his head, bracing for the dish towel that he knew would be flung in his general direction. Brian Flanagan wasn’t a bad looking guy, six feet tall, trim build, dark hair, brown eyes, nothing special, but what he lacked in looks, he made up for in self-confidence. His wife, on the other hand, was a beautiful woman. Like a young Grace Kelly people said, but like Grace Kelly, she was not particularly voluptuous and did not like references to women who were. The news report ended with good news for him, “Unconfirmed reports indicated that Mr. Morgenstern’s injuries may have been self-inflicted.” He finished his cereal, kissed Noreen and headed off to the city. Maybe this thing would work out, maybe things would just go back to normal. He had gotten through breakfast, hadn’t he? One day at a time, just one day at a time, he thought as he walked out the door.
Brian and Noreen lived in a small town in New Jersey. He was second generation born and raised in Greenwich Village but he could not afford to live there now. Both, he and his wife were working. He was at the bank and she was a nurse. They made okay money, but they just could not afford the city, at least not any of the relatively safe neighborhoods. Well, that was not entirely true. They could have afforded a roach-infested shoe box on the Lower East Side, what is now referred to by realtors as the East Village, but it would have meant that they could not save any money. They both wanted to have kids someday and they realized that because of a combination of drugs, crime, greed and incredibly incompetent politicians, the city was no longer a place where ordinary people could raise a family.
So they did what many others had done before them, and crossed the river to Jersey to save a couple of bucks a month for the down payment on the white picket fence that would surround their future homestead. Not that affordable apartments in safe neighborhoods, within reasonable commuting distance of the city, were easy to come by either. When Brian had shown up at the realtor’s office and expressed interest in renting an apartment in the town, the realtor had smiled and shown him a long waiting list of names and suggested that Brian look further out from the city. Brian then played his ace. He explained that the realtor had been recommended to him by a very good friend of his father, Bill Mancino, a union delegate, who lived in town. Bill had assured him that the realtor would be able to find something for him. The realtor stopped smiling, excused himself and went to the back office to make a phone call.
When he came back to his desk, he pointed across the street to a drug store. “Over the drug store is an apartment, two bedrooms, nice and quiet, let’s go take a look.” As promised, it was nice and quiet, it was basic, but clean and affordable. Even with a limited budget they managed to shop around and find enough furniture to make it a home. Noreen found work at a hospital, twenty minutes down the Garden State Parkway. Brian drove to the train station and caught a bus to the Port Authority. The train took the corporate and investment bankers to Wall Street. For the most part, kids from working class families who grew up in the Village didn’t get the corporate and investment banking jobs.
His dad, Sean Flanagan, and his dad’s brothers were longshoremen. Brian was the first in his family to go to college. He had attended the local parochial school, St. Joseph’s, and then went to the upscale St. Francis Xavier High School. The first day in English class, the teacher went around the class and asked everyone to introduce themselves, give their name and say where they were from.
Most of these kids were from wealthy neighborhoods, Upper East Side types. They grew up in buildings that had doormen and elevators. There were a couple of kids from the Village in his class. When the teacher called on the first of them, the kid said his name and then let everyone know he was from “da Village.”
“Ah, da Village,” the teacher said with a smile, “and how many other Village idiots do I have in my class this year?” he asked. Those from the Village proudly raised their hands and went on to try extra hard in that class. Who was he calling idiots? they thought. They often wondered if he was trying to motivate them or whether he was just a snob or both. You can never tell with the Jesuits, they’re a deep bunch. Then it was Fordham for Brian Flanagan, with a year’s study abroad in Dublin, where he met his lovely wife.
After graduation, having been accepted for a job at the bank, Brian was placed in the troubled assets group and, funny coincidence, all his co-workers were Catholic kids from working class backgrounds. The theory was, that although bright, they were a little rough around the edges and better suited to dealing with companies that had run into difficulties. It is all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and fancy dinners when things are going well, but hit a bump in the road and they hand you over to the neighborhood guys. Guys who don’t give a shit if you are offended by their tone. Guys who are going to remind you that you owe money and that you need to make your payments. Dialogues along the lines of, “If that friggin’ check bounces, I am going to come down there, sit on your desk and tell all your staff, all your customers and the whole friggin’ world, just what happens to people when they don’t meet their obligations.” Funny how businessmen always seem to respond better to that message when delivered by guys like Brian Flanagan than from guys like Reece Overcash III.
His first day on the job he met his fellow team members; Charlie, Pete, and his boss, Sal. Within a couple of days of starting, Brian found out that Pete’s dad was in prison, Charlie’s godfather had been a real godfather and that Sal’s brother was a ‘captain’ in Brooklyn (not the sea-faring kind). A week or so later, they all went to lunch and Sal mentioned that he knew some people that knew Brian’s Uncle Jim. His teammates, who up until then had been somewhat stand-offish, opened up and made him feel truly welcome. He didn’t even have to cut his finger or burn a picture of a saint.
Brian didn’t see much of his Uncle Jim growing up, just Thanksgiving, Christmas, and occasional family events. One of his first memories of Jim was him showing up at the apartment late one night. Brian remembered waking up to the sound of his Uncle Jim telling his dad that he was his favorite brother and singing, I’ll take you home again, Kathleen, to his mother (her name was actually Kathleen so that was one of her favorites). He went out to the kitchen to see what was going on, his mom was laughing, and his dad was not. Apparently, Uncle Jim was taking Aunt Jeannie seriously when she said that she would kill him if he came home drunk again. His father made it clear that he was a working man and that he had to get some sleep. He didn’t have time for this shit. His mother, Lord rest her,
reminded his father that Jim was family after all. Jim got Brian’s bed and he got to sleep on the floor with some cushions and a blanket.
The next day, Brian’s mother told him that Jim was a bit of a character and that every family had one. He wasn’t quite sure what she had meant at the time, but it became a bit more clear a couple of years later when a bunch of the family, aunts, uncles and cousins, got together for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. Uncle Jim’s wife, Jeannie, and their two kids, were out on Long Island visiting her family, and Uncle Jim was the last to arrive. The kids were getting what his mother called fidgety (restless) when Jim made his appearance. He was a well-built handsome man in dark suit and overcoat, black hair slicked back. His father’s side of the family, all had brown eyes and black hair, the black Irish, some people called it.
Brian was never quite sure where the hell that saying had come from. He had read one time that it may have been used to describe Irish people who had inherited dark complexions from the survivors of the Spanish Armada; those who had washed up on Irish shores and been sheltered by their co-religionists. Personally, he thought it was more likely that the Spanish sailors had been clubbed to death and had their shit stolen or that they were captured and sold to the authorities. That pretty much is what would happen to strangers who wandered into the wrong neighborhood in the city, and he doubted if human nature had really changed all that much over the years. As Jim approached the table, to a cry of ‘there’s the man, I suppose we can all eat now’ from his Uncle Gerry, there was laughter from his aunts and more scowling from his dad.
