The Trouble Boys

by E. R. FALLON

  “No.”

  He took a step back and tried not to look hurt.

  “No, because if I let you do that, Colin, I might be tempted to go home with you instead.”

  “I’m honored. Let me just walk you home. I’ll make sure you don’t end up with me.” He smiled at her. “Please?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “It’s dangerous this time of the night.” He gently touched her arm.

  “All right.”

  He put money down on the table and they collected their coats. Halfway to Lila’s apartment, she made him turn around. They hadn’t discussed where they were headed next. But Colin led, and she never objected. He put his coat around her shoulders when he noticed her shivering. It was so big on her small frame it dragged on the sidewalk. They walked the thirteen blocks to his apartment in silence, as if each of them knew they were committing a sin that would secretly brand them forever. They might go their separate ways afterward, and they would certainly go on with their lives, but they’d always be marked. Because what they did with each other, to each other, would be remembered.

  They hurried up the stairs and Colin shut the door to his apartment. Lila checked twice to make sure the lock was secure.

  “Come here,” he whispered.

  She stepped close to him. He could feel her warm breath, sweet with the drink. The phone rang.

  She jumped in his arms. “That scared the heck out of me.” She trembled against him.

  Colin rubbed her shoulders. “Don’t worry, it’s okay.” He glanced at the phone as it continued to ring. He didn’t answer it. The phone stopped ringing. Colin wrapped his arms around Lila. “Do you love Johnny?”

  “No.”

  He nodded as he kissed her on the forehead.

  Her body was very warm when she undressed, and when he first touched her skin he wondered if she had a fever. Then he realized she was anxious.

  “Lila.” He softly touched her neck and her face. “It’s going to be all right.”

  After their lovemaking, Colin smiled at her small, tan body next to his larger, paler one. He reclined on his side in bed, leaning on his elbow, with his head resting in his hand, watching her sleep. Their bodies were covered by a sheet.

  Lila woke up. “Colin?” He smiled at her. “Have you…”

  “Yeah, have I?”

  “Have you ever wondered why you can say you love somebody, convince yourself so much that you marry them, and then one day you ask yourself why you did it when you knew all along that you never loved them?”

  Colin didn’t reply. He kissed her tenderly on the face.

  Colin glanced out his bedroom window after she had drifted off to sleep again. A firetruck barreled down the street. He saw a corner of the pale moon but no stars, and he thought he saw Johnny walking the streets, searching for his wife.

  A few hours later, after Lila had taken a cab home, Colin stood in front of Lucille’s house. It was eight in the morning. He didn’t know if Lucille’s husband would be home, but he didn’t care anymore. He’d told Lila that if she didn’t at least call him once in a while to confirm she was getting on okay, he’d stop by her apartment to make sure she was all right. Although she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him again after today.

  He knocked on Lucille’s door and heavy footfall approached. A man answered.

  “Yes?” The man, Lucille’s husband, wore dark pants and a green golf shirt. Colin recognized him from the photographs he had seen in the house. He was actually taller than Colin had thought, but not as tall as him.

  For a moment they stared at each other in silence. “What do you want?” The man sounded alarmed.

  Colin felt that Lucille’s husband sensed who he was. “Is Lucille home?”

  “She is. Who are you?”

  “I’m an old friend of hers from the Bowery, but I think you already know that.”

  “I’m sorry?” When Colin didn’t elaborate, he said, “Wait a moment.” He didn’t invite Colin inside the house. He walked away with the door halfway open.

  Colin could hear Lucille whispering from inside the house as he waited on the front porch.

  “Get rid of him,” her husband said.

  Lucille stepped outside wearing a blue cooking apron. She shut the door behind her and wiped her hands on the edge of the apron. “What are you doing here? I asked you not to come here again.”

  “Are you all right? Your husband shouldn’t speak to you that way.”

  “I was fine until you showed up.”

  “I had to see you.” He moved closer. “What’s your husband’s name anyway? You never gave it to me. What’s your daughter’s name? You never told me that either.”

  She retreated to the side of the porch like she feared him, and it wounded him.

  Colin followed her. “Please don’t be afraid. I didn’t mean to frighten you. That isn’t what I wanted to do at all.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Colin, but my husband is not going to like that you were here.”

  “He doesn’t hurt you, does he? Because if he does—”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Good.” Colin smiled. “You’d tell me if he did, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes. Why are you here?”

  “I came here because I have to tell you something.”

  “You couldn’t do it over the telephone or in a letter like a normal person would?”

  “It’s not the same. Besides, you asked me not to call you.”

  “So you thought showing up at my house would be better?” Lucille put her hand to her face and shook her head. When she looked at him again, her skin was flushed and there were tears in her eyes. “My God, why can’t you leave me alone?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to upset you.” Colin tried to touch her arm but she moved farther to the side. “I’ve always cared about you.” He lowered his voice. “From the first time we met at your brother’s pub, to the first time we drank together—”

  Lucille shook her head. “That’s called drunk, not caring about someone.”

  “I cared about you when I wasn’t drunk.” He attempted to take her in his arms. “I know the timing wasn’t right before. I’m older now.”

  She pushed him away. “You had a crush. That’s all it was.”

  “You asked me to marry you.”

  “I was a drunken fool.” She glanced at the curtained windows behind them.

  “You were never a fool.”

  Lucille wiped away a tear. Her husband called for her from inside. She gave Colin a firm look. “Go. Leave now.”

  He headed down the porch steps and then turned around to look at her one last time. “I’m sorry for disturbing your new life. But I came to tell you I remember our old times and I loved having you in my life.”

  Café Acebo and Social Club on the corner of East Third Street was owned by a friend of Tito Bernal’s named Manuel Acebo. Johnny, now called José by his cohorts because he had taken up his father’s name, frequented the café with Bernal and the Tigers. They liked the Cuban beer Acebo served and the food his loquacious wife dished out, food from their native land.

  Since joining Bernal’s rackets, Johnny had also moved up in the ranks of the Bowery streets. The gringos didn’t mock him anymore. Johnny and Tito were gradually pushing the Irish out of the Bowery betting and loaning trades and the drug business. But they weren’t successful infiltrating the local pubs and nightclubs, and the dock unions and construction companies. Those were still dominated by Tom McPhalen.

  The afternoon at the café was like any other. The men sat around discussing the things that men of a certain age sitting around often discuss – women, sports, cars, money, and their children. Outside the sun shone in the cloudless sky. The cool breeze of the mid-morning had stopped. It was the wintertime, but it was very warm out.

  “This weather, I feel like I’m back in Cuba,” Tito Bernal joked to the men around him at the indoor tables.

  Johnny looked up from r
eading his Cuban newspaper and smiled.

  “If only we were,” Tito said, reminiscing. “José, you must go someday soon with Lila, and take the little one with you.”

  “We plan to.”

  “Yes, and maybe the new Mrs. Bernal and I will go with you. A family holiday, si? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “I’m sure the first Mrs. Bernal would love that,” Johnny said in jest.

  “Who cares what she thinks?” Tito frowned. “How is my daughter doing these days? I haven’t seen her for a few weeks.”

  “She’s doing good.”

  “How is the marriage?”

  “It’s going well.”

  Tito chuckled. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I know how Lila can be sometimes.”

  Johnny felt uncomfortable laughing about Tito’s daughter with him, but he pretended to laugh.

  “Lila is a wonderful woman,” Carlos, who had sharp, light eyes, said.

  Johnny glared at him. Carlos had newly been initiated into the Tigers, was thirty years old and American-born like Johnny.

  Bernal winked at Carlos. “Thank you.” Carlos smiled at Johnny as if to act smug.

  Johnny continued to stare at him as he picked up his beer from the table and drank fast.

  Jarlath smoked a cigarette in an alleyway close to East Second Street. When he finished he threw the butt down to the ground and asked Colin if he had another smoke. Colin handed him a pack of cigarettes.

  “Thanks.” Jarlath took one out and returned the pack to Colin, who nodded in acknowledgment.

  “When are Bill and the others coming?” Jarlath glanced at his watch.

  “Should be any minute now.”

  Jarlath looked at his watch again.

  “They’ll be here.”

  Jarlath lit the cigarette. “You never came to Byrne’s last night. Did you meet up with one of your ladies?”

  “Sure. Marilyn Monroe.”

  “No. Who is she?”

  “Do you really want to know? You really want me to tell you? Because I don’t think you want to know.”

  “Now I do. Who is she?”

  Colin knew his friend wouldn’t stop asking until he told him. “Lila Bernal.”

  “Bernal’s daughter?” Jarlath shouted.

  Colin nodded and gestured for him to keep it down.

  “No one’s around.” Jarlath’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe it. Tom is going to explode if he finds out.”

  “He’s not going to find out.”

  “Of course not, Colin. I won’t say anything.” Jarlath smiled.

  “What’s so amusing?”

  “You sleeping with that man’s daughter. Sweet revenge, right?”

  Colin didn’t want to discuss Lila in a crass manner. She deserved better. “Sure.”

  “Is she good?”

  “What?”

  “Bernal’s daughter.”

  “In bed?”

  “Yeah, where else?”

  “She’s a good person.”

  “Despite her father. And what else is she good at?”

  “Nothing I’m going to tell you.”

  Jarlath smiled as if he could picture Lila Bernal nude. “I bet she is good. She’s not going to like you very much after today.”

  “I know.”

  “After you kill both her husband and her father, she’s going to hate you.”

  “Maybe I don’t care.”

  “You do. I can tell by your face.”

  “Here’s Bill,” Colin said to change the subject.

  Little Bill had stepped out of a yellow taxicab lugging a large, nondescript black case.

  “Do you see the size of that case?” Jarlath said. “Those feckers don’t stand a chance.”

  Bill’s case contained machine guns. Tom’s local mafia connections wanted the Cuban problem solved as well and had supplied the weapons.

  Colin didn’t reply to Jarlath. They greeted Little Bill on the sidewalk. Yesterday it had been snowing. Now it felt like the late spring. The snow had melted, causing an unpleasant watery slush, which had turned black from the grime of the city streets.

  “It’s so bloody warm out,” Bill said.

  “Nice shoes.” Colin glanced at Little Bill’s white shoes, which were smeared with street muck.

  Little Bill looked at his shoes and shrugged.

  “Who else did Tom send?” Jarlath asked Bill.

  “Mikey M and O’Neill.”

  “Frank O’Neill?”

  “Yes, him.”

  “Terrific,” Jarlath said with sarcasm. “The bloke can’t keep his blasted mouth shut. I can’t stand him.”

  Bill laughed. “Who knows, maybe he’ll die today?” Jarlath chuckled but Colin didn’t.

  “Here comes Mikey,” Jarlath gestured up the street.

  Michael M, a tall Irishman in his late twenties, took his time as he strolled. When Colin saw Mikey, with the black hair and the wild blue eyes, he saw a slightly younger version of himself.

  “Hey! Hey!”

  Frank O’Neill trailed after Michael M. ‘Fried Frankie’ was just one of a dozen unflattering nicknames for the man from Connemara. The men waved to Michael M and grunted in Frank’s direction. Michael M always had plenty of cigarettes to offer those who needed one.

  “How come Mikey gets such a nice greeting but I don’t?” Frank frowned.

  “Why do you think?” Jarlath said. “No one can stand you.”

  All of the men laughed, including Frank, who didn’t understand the insult.

  “You lads want to know something else funny? Colin fecked Tito Bernal’s daughter. His mate’s wife.” Jarlath laughed and shook his head.

  “Holy shite.” Frank grinned. “We won’t tell anyone, but tell us, Colin, how was she—”

  Colin’s skin heated and he glared at Jarlath. “You promised me you wouldn’t say anything. You’re starting to act like Errol, do you know that?”

  “Colin,” Frank and Michael M. said at the same time.

  Jarlath’s eyes darkened. To be compared to a dead man before a shootout foretold misfortune, and Colin knew that.

  “You shouldn’t have said that, Colin.”

  “What am I supposed to say? You’re the one who spilled my secret . . . Ah, forget this. We have a task to do for Tom and that’s what we’re going to do. Let’s head over there.”

  The men around him nodded in agreement. Jarlath stomped out his cigarette.

  “What time is it?” Tito Bernal asked.

  Johnny looked up from his newspaper. “Noon,” Carlos said.

  “Who’s hungry?” Tito looked around at his men.

  They all nodded. When Tito Bernal spoke it was never a question, it was an order. Acebo had no menu. The men could say what they wanted to eat and the café would make it.

  As the men discussed what they would order, someone kicked open the door and five men with machine guns rushed inside. These men weren’t wearing disguises to conceal their faces. Their anger and passion was evident in their features. Johnny thought he recognized one of them.

  “All right, you feckers,” a man wearing a dark jacket spoke directly to Tito’s table. “Drop your guns. Old man, drop that gun. And you over there, put that knife the hell down. Put it down. This is for Ronan—”

  Bang. Bang. Manuel Acebo burst from the kitchen firing a black pistol.

  Colin yelled as he fired point blank into the men at the café, but it was Jarlath who had spoken the words to Tito Bernal’s table. Bullets flew from the guns of both sides, and seconds later Jarlath was on the ground, his blood pooling around him. Glass had been shattered, and chairs and tables split in two from the force of the bullets.

  “Jarlath.” Colin stood above him.

  “I’m doing fecking grand. How about them?”

  “They’re all gone. We got them all.”

  “So you did it. You helped us kill that friend of yours,” Jarlath whispered.

  Old friend, Colin thought.

  Jarlath smi
led and his teeth were stained with blood. Spit and blood dribbled out of his mouth as he started choking. Then Jarlath’s chest heaved and he shut his eyes for the last time.

  Colin was glad Jarlath had closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to do it for him. He didn’t think he could have touched a dead man’s eyes, for he knew someday that might be his fate also.

  “Jarlath’s fecked up?” Little Bill was slumped in the corner. He kissed his machine gun. He didn’t appear wounded but exhausted. The front of his blue shirt was speckled with the blood of those they had killed, and his white shoes glistened red.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Shite.”

  Colin looked around the room littered with the bodies of Tito Bernal and his men.

  To his right was the body of his childhood friend, Johnny Garcia. He was a Cuban, but Irish too. When they were boys they had talked of being friends forever. Now Johnny had fallen over in his chair, bleeding from his head onto the table. It was the last time he’d ever be whole. Soon he’d be buried in the ground, and over time his flesh would cave in and his body would rot. He’d never think again, laugh, hold his child, or kiss his pretty wife. Johnny Garcia, thirty-two years old, half-Cuban, half-Irish, raised in the Bowery with Colin as his boyhood friend, was dead.

  But Colin hadn’t shot Johnny, though Tom had wanted him to as a show of devotion. Jarlath had, Colin was sure of it. It was good of Jarlath to have done that despite their earlier quarrel.

  Little Bill surveyed the dead men in front of them. “I can’t remember which ones I shot.”

  Colin pointed at Johnny. “Do you know who shot him?”

  “The truth is, there were so many bullets flying, I don’t know what I saw.”

  Colin’s secret was safe.

  “Scout’s honor,” Colin whispered under his breath, because that was what he had promised Johnny when they were boys.

  He had seen the dead before, he had been seeing the dead ever since he was a boy. But to know someone so well, as he had known Jarlath – or Johnny when they were children – and to see them slumped in front of his eyes, their bodies perfectly still it still shocked him. The smell of it all. The fluids they emitted after they had died because the body’s entire system had collapsed . . . it remained in Colin’s senses for many days after.