But I’m still fed up with Collins. He won’t let me do anything except shuffle papers around. “I want to have fun,” I told him.
“Shooting people is not fun,” he replied.
After casing the mail carts with Róisín, I went back to the office, and Mick was there with Tobin and Dick McKee, who runs the Dublin Brigade. I told them of my plan, and McKee thought it would be an easy steal. Tobin thought the information might be priceless in that it was coming not only from the countryside but from London as well. “Won’t Lord Johnny French be surprised when he sees ‘CENSORED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC’ stamped on his mail!” chirped Collins.
The next morning, McKee had several of his men—Vinny, Mick McDonnell, Paddy Daly, and Jim Slattery—head off the mail carts. One by one, they drove them into Dominick Street and transferred the bags into a waiting lorry. Vinny told me that he stood over the mailmen with his Mauser and said, “If you want to collect your pensions, lads, just lie there and watch the floor.” They then had some of the young lads from one of the Dublin North battalions drive the carts off in the direction of the stockyards. It was, as the saying goes, like taking candy from a baby.
It was my plan, and I begged Mick for permission to go on the ambush, but he said no-go. I guess I sulked, and he told me curtly to shape up and just do my job. Dick McKee came by the office later in the day. Dick is a native Dub like myself, hailing from the Finglas area on the North Side. He is in his late twenties and wears a handsome black mustache. He was in the printer’s trade before taking over command of the Dublin Brigades. After congratulating me on the mail coup, he told me I had been promoted to sergeant in the South Dublin battalion. I said, “That’s nice, Commandant, but I’ve never even drilled with the battalion—Mick won’t let me out of the bloody office!”
Dick laughed but then turned serious. “Could you kill a man, Eoin?”
The question caught me off guard. “I don’t know,” I replied.
Dick pulled his Webley revolver out of his pocket and held it out in front of him, pointing at the floor. “Eoin, could you do this? Imagine a man on the floor there. Could you point this gun and blow his brains out? Then put another into his skull for good measure?”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t know. In the GPO, all the shooting was long-range. There was nothing personal about killing a man. I guess it was anonymous murder.
“Could you?” McKee repeated.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I guess it’s against my religion.”
“It’s against my religion, too,” replied McKee, “but someone has to do it and do it well, or Ireland will never be free.”
“I understand,” I replied meekly.
“Congratulations on the promotion, Eoin. We’re all proud of you.” McKee headed for the door and opened it. “Mick, too!” he added.
That brought a smile to my face, and I said, “Thanks.” The door slammed, and McKee was gone. I guess Mick is right—shooting people is not fun. And I know in my soul that murder is still a mortal sin, no matter what Dick McKee says.
34
The telephone rang in the office at Bachelors Walk.
“Mr. Kavanagh?”
Whenever they asked for “Mister” Kavanagh, Eoin knew it was serious business. It was Collins’s way of protecting him and alerting him at the same time.
“This is Mr. Kavanagh.”
“This is Brendan Boynton. I’m with the DMP.”
For a second, Eoin was panicked by the mere mention of the DMP, but then he remembered Mick’s Sligo jailer, who was supposedly eager to help the rebels.
“Yes, Mr. Boynton, what can I do for you?”
“I’d like to meet with Michael Collins.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” said Eoin with a small, fake, humorous laugh. “Mr. Collins is very difficult to get in touch with, but I’d be glad to meet with you. Would that be convenient?”
“Sure,” said Boynton. “Should I come to your office?”
This guy is eager—too eager, thought Eoin. “No,” he said, “that wouldn’t be convenient at the present. Do you know the Stag’s Head, near the Castle?”
“I do indeed.”
“Well, could we meet there about half-five?”
“Sure,” said Boynton, “but how will I recognize you?”
“I’ll be sitting in the last snug of the bar.”
“Fine. See you at half-five.”
“One other thing,” added Eoin. “Could you bring a Castle phone directory along with you?”
“A phone directory,” said Boynton. “I don’t know if I can get my hands on one on such short notice.”
“Oh,” replied Eoin, “you’ll find a way. Until half-five.” He dropped the phone into its cradle before Boynton could say another word.
“Now I have to find Vinny,” Eoin said aloud. He had no intention of meeting Boynton without bringing along a little artillery, as he liked to call it.
Eoin was still smarting from not being allowed to participate in the hoisting of the Royal Mail. Mick was out in Connaught “organizing,” as he liked to call it, so Eoin was on his own. This time, he was going to have some fun.
Eoin found Vinny at his home in South Anne Street, and they walked over to the Stag’s Head to wait for Boynton. Eoin took the last snug at the bar, and Vinny was behind him, sitting at a table, a bottle of lemonade in front of him, as he eyed the afternoon newspaper.
Eoin sipped at his first pint of porter of the day when a hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Mr. Kavanagh, I presume?”
Boynton had caught him by surprise. He expected him to enter through the front door, but he had come in through the back door on Dame Lane. Eoin looked at Vinny, but Byrne didn’t even look up from his paper. It was Eoin’s show, so far without the fun.
“Yes, I’m Kavanagh,” said Eoin.
“I’m Brendan Boynton.”
“I presumed,” said Eoin snidely. “Would you like a drink?”
“I’d like a pint of that gorgeous porter,” Boynton said with humor. Boynton was well dressed and pristinely groomed. Collins, Eoin knew, must have been impressed with his impeccable preening when they first met up in Sligo Gaol. Boynton threw a few coins on the bar and then mused, “So you’re Mr. Kavanagh.” He was surprised that “Mister” Kavanagh was little more than a boy.
“I am,” said Eoin in a low voice. “Do you have my directory?”
“Right here,” said Boynton, as he handed the directory to Eoin in a manila envelope and passed his first test.
“What’s your extension over there?”
“Extension 103,” said Boynton, and Eoin wrote it on the envelope.
“I’ll be in touch,” said Eoin.
“Is that it?” said Boynton, surprised.
“That’s it for now.”
“But what about Collins?”
“When the time is right.” Boynton was about to say something when Eoin added, “Just stay here and finish your drink. I wouldn’t like you to follow me.”
“I understand.”
With that, Eoin scooted out the back door of the bar, Vinny Byrne and his Mauser watching his back.
35
The Castle telephone directory was a godsend. It was totally up-to-date and conveniently listed the name and number assigned to each division. Eoin was intensely interested in the notation “G-DMP,” which he took to mean G-Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He immediately began the time-consuming work of checking and crosschecking each name he had at Dublin Castle, from both the material he had gathered at his father’s barbershop and from the mail the lads had hoisted from the Rotunda rink. It all went on index cards, and they were filed alphabetically in a small black box.
When Collins finally returned from his trip, the first thing Eoin said to him was, “Your Detective Boynton finally called.”
Collins flung his hat into a chair. “When?”
“When you were out west. I met with him.”
“You met with him? Who ga
ve you fookin’ permission to meet with him?”
“I thought you appreciated initiative.”
“I think we’re developing a love-hate relationship, Eoin,” said Collins calmly.
“What’s that?”
“That’s when someone’s a pain-in-the-arse, but you still love them.”
“Like you?” deadpanned Eoin.
Collins charged at the boy. “You little imp!” he said, messing his hair up again and giving him a mighty tickle that left the boy howling. “What do you think of him?”
“I didn’t have much to say to him,” said Eoin. “He was well-dressed, well-spoken, and I also got this out of him.” Eoin held up the Castle phone directory.
“Good work!” said Collins, flipping through the pages.
“Some of the Castle boys are up to more than they make out to be.”
“I’m still not sure about Boynton,” Collins said, obviously troubled about his Castle windfall.
“Vinny followed him back to the Castle, so everything seems to be on the up-and-up with him. He’s very eager to meet you.”
“So you had Byrne in on this, too.” Collins realized that young Kavanagh didn’t miss a trick. “Well, I guess we should set up a meeting.”
“Where?”
“How about Castle Barbers?”
At first Eoin was thrilled, but then he thought of the danger to his father and brother. “Will it be safe?” asked Eoin, with concern.
“No one is safe,” said Collins matter-of-factly, and Eoin began to realize that there was no fun to be had in Michael Collins’s revolution.
Collins and Vinny Byrne arrived at Castle Barbers at half-five. Collins, after some protest, sent Frank Kavanagh on his way and out of danger. Vinny replaced his coat jacket with Frank’s striped barber shirt and slid his Mauser into his belt. They closed the door and turned the sign to “CLOSED.” At 5:45 Eoin, at the Exchequer Street office, phoned Dublin Castle and spoke to Brendan Boynton. “Go to Castle Barbers immediately. Be there by six. Get a shave.” Before Boynton could reply, Eoin hung up the phone.
The church bells around town announced the Angelus. Vinny Byrne sat in the last chair and camouflaged himself with the evening newspaper. Collins waited in the back room. Suddenly the doorway was darkened by a well-dressed figure. He looked confused at the “CLOSED” placard, but Joseph Kavanagh opened the door anyway. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“Could I, get a shave?” he said. Vinny nodded to Kavanagh, and Boynton entered and removed his jacket. Vinny visually checked for bulges and holsters, but there were none apparent. “Have a seat,” said Kavanagh, and Boynton took the first chair by the door. As soon as he sat down, Kavanagh draped him with a barber’s sheet and lowered the back of the chair to an almost horizontal level. He went to the steamer and plucked a hot towel. As soon it was on Boynton’s face, Collins entered from the rear of the shop.
“Mr. Boynton,” said Collins. Boynton tried to rise from his prone position, but Collins gently pushed him back into the chair.
“Collins?”
“Who else?”
“You’re a hard man to meet.”
“Not really,” said Collins. “How’s the new job coming along?”
“Pretty boring,” replied Boynton. “All I do is type up reports.”
“Excellent.”
“Excellent?”
“From now on, put another piece of carbon paper in your typewriter. At the end of your workday, put the carbons in plain envelopes, no return address, and mail it to Mr. Kavanagh, 32 Bachelors Walk. Got that?”
“Yes,” replied Boynton. “Do you want me to do anything else?”
Collins was looming over the G-man. Boynton was looking up at Collins, who was upside down in his vision field. “I want everything! Are you up for it?”
“I’ll do anything you ask.”
“One,” said Collins, “I want the home addresses of every man in the G-Division who works in Dublin Castle. Two, I want, immediately, any roster changes that occur within G-Division. Three, I want to know any big shots who are sent down here from Belfast or London. Four, I want to know everything and anything G-Division has on the rebels.”
“What are you planning?”
Collins laughed. “Mayhem, Mr. Boynton. Mayhem.”
The conversation was punctuated by Joseph Kavanagh noisily, mixing shaving powder in a cup. “How will I contact you?”
“You won’t,” said Collins. “I’ll contact you. You’re on probation. One slip-up, and I’ll be sending your body back to your mammy in a box. Understood?” Boynton, bug-eyed with fear, remained mute. “Never come back to this shop again.” Collins turned and spat a wad of saliva halfway across the room and dead-on into a spittoon. Byrne tore off his striped barber shirt and replaced it with his jacket. “Relax,” said Collins to Boynton. “Have a shave on us.” With that, Joseph Kavanagh flung open his straight razor and put it to Boynton’s throat as Collins and Byrne, their work done, exited into Aungier Street.
36
EOIN’S DIARY
I can’t believe what I did to Frank last night.
After Collins met Boynton, he and Vinny came back to the office in Exchequer Street for a recap. Collins was pleased and thought all had gone well. He loved telling me about my father holding the straight razor to Boynton’s throat so he and Vinny could make their escape. If this is what Mick does to his friends, I don’t want to be his enemy!
I went home, and Frank returned, stupid with the drink. Apparently Mick gave him a shilling to get his arse out of the shop, and Frank spent it on pints. If I ever find the barman who serves children, I’ll have his head. I was fagged out from the day when Frank, all thirteen years of him, barged into the shop and started berating Collins. “That cunt,” he said, “is trying to get us killed, and you think of the world of him!”
“Shut up,” says I, in a whisper, but Frank would have none of it.
“He’s a cunt, Eoin,” he said. “A goddamned cunt.”
“You’ve had enough to drink,” says I. “Get to bed.”
“Fuck bed—I’m going to Dublin Castle to turn your mate in.”
“You go to bed, or I’ll lay you low.”
“With what, little man?”
Frank was bigger than me—and I’m not braggin’—but I’m a lot smarter. “Just shut the fook up, and go to bed,” says I.
“Meet me at Dublin Castle, you Fenian cunt.”
I had had enough. Mick won’t let me carry a gun, so I’ve taken to “wearing” a pipe in me inside jacket pocket. One foot long, and it does the trick.
“I’ve got you!” Frank laughed like he actually had me.
I went up to him, pulled the pipe out of my pocket, and laid him out with one blow to the side of his head. Blood was gushing on the floor when my father rushed out of the back room. “My God,” said Da. “What happened?”
“Frank had an accident,” I told him, as I got a towel to wrap around Frank’s thick head.
“But why?”
“He was talking treason. Do you understand?” My father nodded. “Take him to the Meath—get him stitched and sobered up.”
“Will you help me?”
“No,” I said with sorrow. “He’s your problem now.” I paused for a moment. “Don’t make him Collins’s problem.”
Frank, holding the towel to his head, looked at me in stunned disbelief. My father looked at me with dread, and I knew that Mick’s revolution had already poisoned my family, perhaps forever.
37
“I never knew a girl who was ruined by a book.”
That was Mayor Jimmy Walker’s response to a call for censorship. When Eoin Kavanagh’s wife first read it in the New York Daily News, her face broke out in a big smile. “Eoin,” she called to her husband, “I like your Mayor Walker. Finally a politician who’s against censorship.” She paused for a second. “Censorship is the rancid juice of government and the Church.”
Eoin smiled. “You’re becoming a rabble-rouser.”
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“I want to write what I want to write, and no one is going to tell me what I can write and what I can read. Censorship is the tool of the ultimate insecure coward!”
As a congressman’s wife, she remained in New York while Eoin spent the week in Washington, returning to the Village on weekends. She continued to work as a nurse at St. Vincent’s Hospital, and Eoin Jr. went to high school at LaSalle Academy on the Lower East Side. It was a happy domestic scenario, but the wannabe writer in the family was restless.
She first got into the writing business working for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Eoin was with other congressional leaders at the White House right after the Nazis invaded Belgium in May 1940. The meeting was grim, but the president remained ebullient, even though his outlook for the invasion was not rosy. For the first time since the Great Depression, Eoin felt fear and uncertainty in the Congress.
As the meeting broke up and the congressmen were leaving the Oval Office, Eoin heard the president call him aside. “Eoin,” FDR said, “do you have a minute?” As soon as the others were out of the office, he asked, “How’s Congressman Johnson from Texas coming along?”
Eoin laughed. “You mean LBJ?”
“LBJ?”
“Lyndon Baines Johnson.”
“But LBJ?”
“You’re responsible, Mister President.”
“Moi?” asked the president innocently, sticking a Lucky Strike into a cigarette holder and lighting it.
“Yes,” said Eoin. “He figured if Franklin Delano Roosevelt is FDR, then Lyndon Baines Johnson has to be LBJ.”
The president threw his head back and let out his wonderful laugh. Then he looked at his watch. “I think that story deserves a martini. Cocktail hour has commenced!”
“I never disagree with my president,” said Eoin, taking a seat next to FDR’s desk. The president often called members of Congress—including LBJ—to the White House to have drinks. Eoin thought that he was probably lonely. It seemed that Eleanor was everywhere—except Washington, D.C.
The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising Page 13
