The Long Silence

by Gerard O'Donovan

  ‘I heard upstairs they had a Collins in on suspicion.’ Devlin’s voice was high and breathy as he stood over him, his accent a mix of all that grated in his native Boston mingled with decades lived in the Bowery. ‘I swear, boy, my heart soared.’ He turned and glanced around the room, then lowered his voice anyway and whispered malignantly, ‘I heard you were here in Los Angeles and I’ve been looking out for you since I arrived, praying you’d stray my way. But this – you and me alone down here – it’s a bloody dream come true.’

  How could it be happening? How was it even possible? Tom squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to get a grip, to fight through the pain and daze, to concentrate, to comprehend. Devlin was in uniform, so he was there in some official capacity. Which made one realization stand out more than any other: if Devlin held any sway in this building, his life wasn’t simply at risk. It was as good as over. If Tom didn’t do something, and the sooner the better, he would never make it out of the station alive.

  ‘What happened, Devlin?’ He spat a gob of bloodied mucus on the floor, just inches from the man’s high-polished boots, struggling to get his breath back. ‘Not enough extortion and racketeering in New York? Have to keep your hand in while you’re on vacation?’

  Devlin wheezed out a laugh like a punctured accordion. As he bent to his level, Tom felt acres of flesh wash about above his head.

  ‘Vacation, is it? Are ye blind as well as dumb?’

  Next thing, the sergeant’s hand was around Tom’s throat, tugging the chin up, forcing his eyes open to take in the yards of blue serge over his belly, the brass badge bearing the legend Los Angeles Police on it.

  ‘You think they keep this size in stock, boy? I’m here for good.’

  This time, Tom saw the punch coming but couldn’t avoid the pile driver that slammed into his belly. Through the rush of blind pain and dumb panic at his sudden inability to draw breath, he was aware of Devlin’s thumb on his throat, pressing hard as a piston, the stench exuding from the sergeant’s skin at the same time as noxious as smelling salts.

  ‘Remember I said I’d kill you, Collins? Well, I’ve had plenty of time to think about how. And you can be sure it won’t be easy on you.’

  As Devlin tightened his grip, through the cloud of choking need and confusion, the only choice left to Tom was between surrendering to strangulation or putting all he had into one last effort to escape from the suffocating bulk. Attack was his only hope. Flattening his hands on the floor beneath him, Tom marshaled every ounce of strength he possessed in his legs and thrust upwards from the knees, pistoning into the soft mass of the sergeant’s belly with his shoulder.

  Devlin let out a wheeze and staggered back, cursing, leaving enough room for Tom to scramble upright, stumbling sideways, catching only a glance of the heavy blow Devlin aimed at his back. This time, his legs held, but there was nowhere for them to go. Already Devlin had retreated beyond Tom’s reach, planted himself solid, back to the cell door, drawing a long black nightstick from his belt.

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Collins,’ he snarled. ‘Or you’ll suffer the worse for it.’ Stick in hand, he pointed at the chair. ‘I said it wouldn’t be quick, and it won’t be. So you sit down now and ready yourself. And tell me what I want to hear or you’ll live just long enough to regret it. Understand?’

  Tom understood all right and told Devlin what he could do with his threats. It was a weak resistance, but it felt better than obeying.

  ‘You make me weep,’ Devlin said, laughing enough to make his stomach roll. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Stepping forward, slapping the heavy wooden nightstick loud against the palm of his hand. ‘There’s only one way you get out of this room, Collins, and that’s in a box. How long it takes is all we have to decide.’

  Devlin took another step forward, raising the stick above his head now, a snarl of pleasure building in his throat. But before he could deliver the blow, a commotion erupted in the corridor, followed by a furious banging on the door and a clamor of arguing, affronted voices congregating outside. Even as Devlin turned and cursed, a Titanic blow from without ripped the lock from the frame and sent the door crashing inwards. Thad Sullivan’s granite-gray head followed, angrily scanning the room, behind him the desk sergeant from upstairs and several other flustered faces. What followed, Tom could never have described in detail, short of Devlin and the desk sergeant bellowing at each other like a pair of bull moose, and Sullivan pushing past to drag him by the arm into the corridor, propel him towards the stairs and roar at him to run.

  FIFTEEN

  Bent at the waist, supporting himself on the rear fender of Sullivan’s jalopy, Tom emptied a quart bottle of water over his head, shook it off and prayed the jag of pain lodged behind his eyes would be cast away with it. No such luck. Up front, Sullivan set the springs squealing like a cat orchestra as he hauled himself in behind the wheel. In the chromed radiator grill of a Mercer parked behind, Tom tried to assess how his face had weathered Devlin’s ministrations, but there was too much dirt and too little light for a good reflection. The street lamps didn’t stay on much past ten, and the luminous hands on his watch were giving off a V of almost two in the morning. Running his fingers over his face, he found a small cut above his right eye and decided the damage couldn’t be as bad as it felt.

  ‘Come on, you’re as ugly as you ever were,’ Sullivan hissed down at him. ‘Let’s get going before they figure out what’s happened.’

  He climbed into the cab and slipped the empty water bottle under the seat, his ribs aching as Sullivan maneuvered the machine out into the empty street, turning back towards East Hollywood and downtown. Tom tugged a handkerchief from his pocket, spat on it and pressed it to the ragged wound on the back of his head. It hurt like hell.

  ‘So, are you going to tell me what all that was about back there?’

  Tom looked at him askance, wondering if he’d heard right. ‘I was assuming you’d tell me. I mean, Devlin … in Hollywood for Christ’s sake? In uniform? How in hell did that come about?’

  ‘Bet you never thought you’d owe your neck to a Kraut.’ Sullivan hawked a gob of phlegm up from his throat and spat into the street. ‘All I know is I got a call from Kohl, that desk sergeant, saying you’d been pulled in for questioning, and to come over quick if I thought your hide worth saving.’

  ‘And what about Devlin?’

  ‘That’s just it. Kohl didn’t mention Devlin. When I got there, he starts jawing on about how some guy was gunned down on Virgil and you were in the frame for it. He wanted to hand it over to the squad right away. Then he drops in, casual as all hell, how “dat fat schmuck Devlin”’ – Sullivan caught Kohl’s lugubrious German accent to a tee – ‘insisted on having a go at you first. I nearly had a stroke when I heard that. I didn’t stop to think. I belted in there and grabbed you. Just in time, too, by the look of you.’

  Sullivan slowed as they approached an empty intersection, nothing but darkness bearing down from all directions. ‘I tell you, this kind of thing’s not good for the heart, lad. I need a drink – a proper one, and safe. The Hib’s somewhere near here, isn’t it?’

  Tom told him to take the next right. He knew at least three other speakeasies that were closer, but he also knew that by ‘safe’ Sullivan meant somewhere you could get proper bonded liquor rather than the pestilential rotgut sold in most joints around. And where the sight of a leading member of the Los Angeles detective squad downing shots of the devil’s own brew wouldn’t ruffle any feathers. The Hib fitted the bill. He sat back and imagined the booze in his belly, its flare in his brain, and relief rushed from his lungs.

  As the stores, homes, trees and telegraph poles of Hollywood Boulevard receded into the distance, Sullivan began quizzing Tom about the shooting, but the only thing Tom had any interest or concern for was Devlin. And why the hell Sullivan wasn’t fixating on that, too.

  ‘Aren’t you avoiding the obvious here?’ he said, at last. ‘Where in hell did Devlin come from? I mean, of
all the bad pennies to turn up, Thad. You know every cop in Los Angeles. How the hell could you not know he was here?’

  Sullivan stared fixedly ahead, his posture stiff and uncomfortable. ‘Well, y’know, maybe I did hear something to that effect, all right, now you remind me.’

  ‘You what?’ That was not the response Tom was expecting.

  ‘I did hear of him being out here, yeah.’ Sullivan shifted in his seat, never taking his eyes off the darkness ahead, affecting a show of concentration.

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell me? Have you lost your mind, man?’

  Again, Sullivan was silent, only the mechanical clatter of the engine filling the night air. Then, in a rush: ‘You got to understand I didn’t want to worry you, Tom. All that stuff with him was so long ago, so far back in New York. I thought maybe, you know, maybe … maybe he’d got so much bad going on he’d forgotten it. What can I say? I didn’t want to stir up all that blood and dirt again, you know? And it’s not as if you were likely to run into him.’

  ‘Not likely to run into him?’ he gasped at last. ‘Are you stone crazy? You knew that fat fucker threatened to rip my head clean off my shoulders if ever he laid eyes on me again. Do you think that just fades away? For Chrissakes, Hollywood is where I do my business. How could you think I wouldn’t run into him here? The miracle would be if I didn’t.’

  ‘But that’s what I’m trying to tell you.’ Sullivan was reaching towards him, hand outstretched, conciliatory. ‘He’s not in Hollywood. Even Kohl didn’t know what he was doing up here tonight. Devlin’s stationed down in San Pedro, with the port police.’

  ‘San P? He’s stationed there? But his uniform was—’

  ‘They use the same one. But it’s a separate division and chief. In theory, they’re a law unto themselves. Just how he likes it.’

  The niceties of police politics were hardly what Tom was focused on and he said so in no uncertain terms, barking at Sullivan now to tell him what he knew.

  ‘Look, you’re upset, Tom. You’re not thinking straight. All this happened four or five months ago, not long after they let you go from Lasky’s. I didn’t want to add to your troubles by telling you about it, did I? Sure, I intended saying something once you got settled again but, come on, man, I’ve hardly seen you since. And, anyway, how often do you get down to San Pedro, huh?’

  Tom had to concede that he rarely if ever set foot in the port area, twenty-five miles or so south of downtown. But that was no comfort. All he saw was the big picture.

  ‘He’s been out here four or five months?’

  ‘Which proves my point exactly,’ Sullivan said, grasping at the straw. ‘Look, I’ll be straight with you. I got as big a shock as you did when I saw in the Gazette that he’d been brought in as deputy chief down at the harbor.’ He lowered his voice, adding in boosterish tones, ‘“Straight from New York, bringing a new level of professionalism to policing in Los Angeles’ booming world class port.”’ He followed up with a derisive growl. ‘Jesus, I thought, they’re in for the shock of their lives, that lot. I mean I was appalled, for sure, but more for the guys down in the harbor than for you, Tom. That’s the honest truth of it. Apart from the inevitable rumors that the dirty sleeveen’s been taking a slice off everything that moves through the port since he got his fat ass through the door, I’d almost forgot he was there. Like I say, I guess I never had a good enough reason to break the bad news to you. It’s not like we’ve been seeing a lot of each other, is it? C’mon, man, what more can I say?’

  Tom had no answer for that. Sullivan was not the kind to spend time fretting over Devlin. And no matter how upset he was about it, there was no escaping that Tom had to some extent brought it on himself by not keeping in touch with Sullivan, the man he called his best friend in the world, and who’d just proved it more than adequately.

  They rode on in silence towards downtown, taking a left on to Third before turning eventually into a shadow-swathed side street and coming to a halt outside a commercial block, the glass in the store fronts black and lightless, apart from one flickering electric bulb illuminating a sign with a gilded harp beside a green door. The Hibernian Grill.

  Sullivan cut the motor and sat back in his seat, still gripping the steering wheel. ‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should’ve, OK? That can’t have been easy for you tonight. But I got you out of it, didn’t I? That’s what matters.’

  ‘For now,’ Tom said sullenly, unable to think any further into so bleak a future.

  Sullivan grinned and tousled the top of his head like he was a six-year-old. ‘C’mon now, let’s get that drink into you. You’ll feel the better for it. I know I will.’

  SIXTEEN

  The Hibernian looked abandoned from outside, but pushing in the door, they encountered an unlikely sentry in a yellow check suit and green homburg, sitting in a cane chair that looked like it was being slowly absorbed into his capacious rear end. He uttered a grunt of either recognition or threat; it was hard to tell which. Sullivan didn’t even break stride, flipped the guy a dollar and marched straight on into a cavernous dining hall lit by three low-hanging chandeliers that didn’t do much to dispel the gloom. But a homely aroma of roast meat and vegetables permeated the air like a warm embrace, and beneath it a malty, peat-laden undernote of hard liquor. The customers sitting among the rows of linen-laid dining tables were mostly off-duty patrolmen in belts and blues, and a scattering of others in shirtsleeves and loosened ties. Coppers to a man. Only a burst of shrill laughter from a closed booth at the far end of the room gave any indication of a female presence other than that of a black-aproned waitress sashaying towards them, the sway of her hips generating enough heat to fog up the room.

  ‘Boys, what can I get you?’

  Sullivan threw his hat on a booth table and slid in behind it. ‘A couple’a Irish,’ he said, barely looking at her.

  ‘I can see that.’ She gave Tom a flash of big, snaggletoothed grin.

  ‘In cups, with coffee, if you would,’ Sullivan added. ‘And some chops if you have ’em? You hungry, Tom?’

  The waitress tutted and said there was only beef stew this time of morning. Tom hadn’t eaten since his trip out to Sennett’s studio and, despite the pain in his head, just the thought of hot food made him ravenous. ‘Yeah, I’ll have some of that.’

  ‘You look like you been in the wars, honey,’ the waitress said to him, a trace of disapproval in her voice.

  ‘I better go tidy up, then, I guess.’ He winked at her. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

  As he loped off to the men’s room, he glanced back and saw Sullivan chatting animatedly with her now, laughing at something, as if he knew her but hadn’t wanted to admit it in front of Tom. By the time he’d washed his face and got back, there was no sign of either of them at the table, but two steaming coffee cups sat alongside a half-pint of amber liquid. Picking up the bottle, he examined the gold-backed red diamond label: John Power & Son, Dublin Whiskey. He twisted the cap off. It was the real thing. Best he’d sniffed in a while. One look around the room answered the half-formed question in his mind. So many in here, the place was probably run by cops. And if they couldn’t get hold of some proper Irish liquor, no one could.

  ‘Had to use the telephone,’ Sullivan said, sliding heavily back into the booth. He looked flushed, his shirt collar in slight disarray. Tom raised an eyebrow, thinking of the waitress and his old pal’s ability to stray, but before he could say anything the big man raised his cup and offered a toast. ‘Sláinte mhaith!’

  Tom responded in kind and gulped down half his cup, the layered heat of coffee and whiskey searing his throat, slipping like liquid peace into his belly. For the first time in hours, the fog in his head began to clear and the pain drifted off to a faraway place.

  ‘Thanks for coming to get me,’ Tom said. ‘I mean it.’

  Sullivan shrugged, muttered something about Kohl again and topped up the cups with two more slugs of whiskey. ‘It’s not like I don’t owe you,’ he
said. ‘I’d never be able to give Eleanor and the boys the life they have here if it hadn’t been for you convincing us to come out. Eleanor knows it, too. I think she’d lay down her life for you herself.’ Sullivan leaned forward and laid one of his massive paws on Tom’s forearm. ‘She wanted you to know how sorry we were that we couldn’t help more over the past months. But you … you didn’t seem reachable.’ Sullivan looked up. ‘You never did tell us why you had that bust-up at Lasky’s. You were so well in there – Charlie Eyton’s golden boy and all that.’

  ‘Get off me, would you!’ Tom shook off Sullivan’s hand. ‘Eyton’s golden boy is one thing I never was, and well you know it. He was never more than a boss to me – and he proved it good and proper when it came to all that shit over Arbuckle.’

  Sullivan looked surprised. ‘Arbuckle? What’d he got to do with it? You told me it had to do with that skirt you were involved with? What was her name?’

  ‘Fay. And she sure as heck is no bit of skirt.’

  ‘Still with you, then, is she?’ Sullivan eyes were already glinting with whiskey-fueled good humor. ‘Jesus, the woman must be a glutton for punishment.’

  ‘Still with me and still with Lasky, even if I am not.’ He said it with only a hint of bitterness. ‘That was the deal and I got the better part of it, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘If that’s how you want it,’ Sullivan grunted. ‘I just don’t get what Arbuckle has to do with anything. You weren’t even there, were you?’

  Whether it was the drink, or maybe he was just sore and dog-tired, but another surge of emotion was building in him, and he was determined not to be pulled under by it. All the doubts, fear and hurt of the last six months, his dismissal from Lasky’s, Sennett’s financial hold over him, the everyday struggle just to make a crust, the awful aching doubt that had eaten away at his soul these past months, convincing him that even here, on the threshold of paradise, nothing in life would go right for him. And now Devlin to top it all off. He wasn’t sure how much more badness he could take.