“You, Martin,” she began, as she always did, with the oldest. “You’re all of thirteen years now, and it’s time you were after t’inkin’ about what you’ll be doin’ for a livin’.”
“Yes, Ma,” said Marty, shuffling his feet, the way he always did when he was nervous, which he always was in the presence of our Ma. “A fireman or somethin’.”
Now, that I knew for a fact was a dirty lie, for sure wasn’t Marty already starting into mixing it up with some of the boys on Tenth Avenue and the surrounding streets, and hadn’t he already got himself into some sort of trouble or other. This trouble was principally caused by various tough lads resident on 30th Street and the environs who, seein’ what they thought was a soft touch, would request of my brother various loans and remittances pursuant to his passage along 30th Street and environs. Which example he was after following, much as I tried to dissuade him—not for any moral reason, like the kind they taught you down 34th Street at St. Mike’s, but for the most practical of reasons, which was that he lacked the talent for it.
Anyway, a paddy could always be a fireman, and at least he had the decency not to lie to her face and say a copper.
“A fireman,” she repeated. Ma had nothing against firemen; in her book a fireman was the third rung of the career ladder, right after priest and policeman or maybe navvy or sandhog because there was always paying work for the Irish digging the tunnels for the aqueducts from upstate or the subways that were borin’ in over on Seventh Avenue or both.
“You, May?” she said, out of courtesy. May hated to be left out of this kind of discussion, even though she was a girl and it didn’t much matter. Her answer never changed.
“Married, Ma,” she said, “to a rich man who’ll live on Fifth Avenue and always treat me swell.”
Now it was my turn. I don’t know why it was always my turn last, except that I suppose Ma knew I was smarter than my brother and that when I set my cap for something, I generally did it. I knew that Ma was hoping I’d shoot high, all the way for priest, because the job was steady and the pay was regular. But I’d somethin’ else in mind, something better than priest. Something that would combine the toughness of a fighter, like my Da had been, with the cannon-enhanced authority of the cop and the suasion of the padre, although morality had nothing to do with it.
“And you, Owen,” she said. “What might you be after becomin’?”
I didn’t have to think either long or hard. “A Gopher,” says I, ducking.
Chapter Two
The reason I wanted to be a Gopher was simple: them gangsters never had to work for a living, because there was no percentage in such nonsense, plus nobody took no guff off ’em either. Even after just a few months in New York, I had already figured out that my parents had been right, that there really was golden coins raining down from the heavens and running down the gutters: you just had to reach down and then pick them up, if only you had the sense to know where to look, the courage to take them and the moxie to keep ’em.
It was in precisely this area that I intended to distinguish myself from my own dear Da and all the Maddens that had gone before us. That of taking what Fortune offered, even if it meant grabbing it, instead of waiting for St. Nick to leave it on your doorstep. Born on the birthday of our Lord and Savior, 1891, or perhaps even a week earlier, I might have been inclined to wait for Himself to favor me with signs and signifiers. But even as a lad I was too restless for that.
The name Madden, or so Da used to tell me, means “hound,” and indeed of all the animals that made it safely back to the flatlands from Mt. Ararat, I was most fond of dogs. Whether you spell it Ó Madáin, O’Madden, O’Maddane, O’Madigane or Maddigan, it all amounts to the same thing: Madach.
My other favorite creature was the lowly pigeon, which my father had taught me to raise on the roof of our flats in Leeds and Wigan. “Sable, a falcon volant seizing a mallard argent,” which is coat-of-arms-speak for our crest, which I can best describe as a vicious bird of prey grasping a hapless duckling with its talons and looking forward to its imminent dinner. Not exactly a pigeon, but aviary enough for me. We had that coat of arms above the dinner table; it was one of the things I brought over on the Teutonic with me on that terrible and glorious day that the Maddens proper set out for America, and there never was a day that I didn’t identify with the falcon and not the mallard, and swore that would always be the case.
That was my Da’s doing. Next to his wife and his children, pigeons were Francis Madden’s special passion. The homely homing pigeon, to his eyes, was one of God’s finest creatures, nearly infinite in its variety. Why, didn’t the Bible record the sacrifice of a pigeon as being pleasing to our Lord way back when?
My Da was not what you would call a reading man, but he had boned up on the lore of the family Columbidae like nobody’s business. There were more than 175 different sorts of pigeon—not to mention the majestic variety within each breed—and he could rattle off the names of the different kinds of breeds the way he could recite his evening prayers: Racing Homers, the Colored Homers, Birmingham Rollers. Utility Blue Kings, Gros Mondaines, Giant Homers and Red Carneaux. Fantails, Pouters, Tumblers, Giant Runts.
Da and I spent a lot of time up on those English roofs. Even though he and Ma’d both gone to England shortly after they were married, to look for work in the mills—where more often than not you’d end up losing a finger or a limb before you’d made enough for the Passage—Paddy still wasn’t good for much except laying the bricks, and so while Ma worked, Da spent a lot of time at home, takin’ care of us kids and keeping himself in shape to fight fists in the local clubs.
Marty never had much interest in birds, but little May did. Da and I were often joined by my sister, who took great childish pleasure in the antics of the pigeons, their flappings and flyings. Sometimes she’d make like a bird and, flapping her baby arms, would try to take flight, runnin’ like hell toward the edge of the roof, making chirping noises, getting up a head of steam, and if we didn’t look lively and hustle, she’da been over the edge in a second.
“I wanna fly!” she’d say as Da would catch her in his great arms before she could do herself any harm, sheltering her in his shoulders, protecting her with his fists.
“Oh, you’ll fly someday, my sweet,” Da’d say. “You’ll soar. Over across the great wide ocean, to the magic land where the buildings rise higher than the birds, and where a man’s reach is limited only by his spirit.” As he spoke he’d be holding her tight and wouldn’t put her down until he’d carried her safely inside and tucked her back into her wee bed, where he’d stroke her hair and tell her stories of the great Irish heroes, every man jack of which had been a direct Madden ancestor.
A lesson my Da had taught me early was that if you were going to put a bird down, you had to do it quick and subtlelike, so he wouldn’t catch on to what you were up to until the knife point was already penetrating his brainpan. Da kept a six-inch knife handy for just such usage, and he could deliver a bird from his misery like nobody I ever saw, with such ease that you got the idea that the bird would have thanked him for it, had the bird lasted long enough to do so. So I was a bit ashamed about the episode on the roof, but I was already learning that’s what happened if I let my brother get involved in my business.
My mind was further made up the very next day.
It was one of the hot Indian summer days of the autumn, the kind we didn’t have in England, and Ma was on her way back from the market, with Marty, me and May trailing behind her like a bunch of baby ducks, when all of a sudden a gonoph comes running by and just like that snips the strings holding her sack and takes off with our supper in his paws.
It happened so fast that I think it took Ma a moment or two to realize our victuals was gone along with what little money she had left over and she stood there a couple of steps away from our doorway looking after him as if by staring hard enough she could make time stand still and then run backwards until she had got back her haddock and her change.
I’ll never forget the look on her face, the shock that there could be such horrible little heathens as would steal from a hardworking woman trying to feed her children.
Since this was all so long ago, let me try to give you a clear picture of what this buzzer looked like, because not only was we different back then, we dressed different too. First off, he was wearing a suit and tie, which was the way everybody dressed, whether he was a man or just a punk, and high lace-up shoes. And a cloth cap of course, which was how you could tell how old he was, since a boy didn’t graduate to a proper bowler until he was at least sixteen. He mighta been wearing a collar too, I forget, but the point is the lightfoot looked exactly like everybody else on the street, except he was running like hell with something that didn’t belong to him.
Of course I was mostly looking at his rump, hightailing it up the Avenue, because Marty and me were lying arse-ways on the sidewalk. When the thief rushed by, he ran right between us, knocking us both for six. I’d like to tell you that I tried to stop him but this boy was good and by the time I realized what he done I was sitting on my duff.
First thing I noticed was that I was okay and so was my brother and the second thing, which by rights ought to have been the first, was that May had been knocked down as well. In them days she couldn’t have weighed more than eight stone and there she was, lying sprawled on the pavement like a felled dray horse, and didn’t that get me to my feet quick as you can say jackrabbit, and over to her side.
The little lass was already picking herself up, but I could see her lip was bloodied and her brow bruised. This got my blood past the boiling point posthaste, and I didn’t know whether to tarry or take out after the miscreant, and in the interval between the two choices he was long gone and so my mind was made up for me. So was my vengeance.
May ran over to Ma and put her arms around her leg. “Don’t cry, Ma, we’ll get some more food,” she bleated, and there was Ma, not having the heart to tell her daughter that no, we wouldn’t because it was either that day’s meal or the rent money at the end of the week and we may go hungry from time to time but she’d be damned if we were ever going to wander the streets like poor tinkers.
Then Marty was up on his feet, sputtering about how he was going to kill that bum when he caught up to him, etc., although even then I knew Marty didn’t have the stomach for killing anybody and never would, which pretty much meant I would have to do it, when the time came.
As for me, I wasn’t so much mad as jealous. Sure, I was sore about losing supper. But when I saw how easy it was for him to take the food right out of our mouths without having to work for it even a minute, unless you call stealing work, which I don’t, I was confirmed in my belief that that was the kind of living I was going to make. Nobody was ever going to give us nothing, so we would have to take it. Gangsters had things because gangsters took things, and tough gangsters kept things.
I knew. I’d seen them, swaggering around the Kitchen like they owned the place, which they more or less did—and nobody took nothing from them. But I also knew that real gangs didn’t take no punks or sissies, so I was going to have to get noticed somehow.
Ma finally tore May away from her leg. Marty was on his feet and I was getting to mine when she said, “Children, let us say a prayer for that poor boy who felt he had no recourse but to steal from us, we who have nearly nothing,” and I’ll be damned if right then and there on Tenth Avenue we all didn’t bless ourselves and say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys for the eventual salvation of the young thief, although me, I was praying for the repose of his soul because I had already made my vow to God that I was after killing the bastard as soon as I caught up to him. Henceforth, no one was ever going to steal from Owney Madden again and get away with it.
For I alone knew his name, which was William Moore. He called himself Billy but we called him Fats, for he was a chubby boy of about fifteen, the kind that always kept his hair combed and that nobody liked, who lived up on 33rd. Standing there on that dirty Tenth Avenue sidewalk, I swore on the desiccated teats of St. Philomena that I was going to fix Fats’s wagon but good and that Ma was going to get her money back with interest before the sun set the next day.
That night in bed I made the mistake of confiding in Marty, whose bravado was evaporating in inverse proportion to his hunger. “Sure, that would be a sin, wouldn’t it now?” says he.
I had to tell my brother then and there that it would be a greater sin for me to kill him deader than a rat for being such a coward, but I was perfectly willing to have both sins on my conscience should he so much as breathe a word of my plan to Ma, and I sunk my teeth into one of his dirty toes for emphasis until he hollered uncle and promised to keep his trap shut, come what may.
Fats’s Ma—she was even meaner than he was—made him go to St. Michael’s School, which was also on 33rd Street, toward Ninth Avenue. I was supposedly attending the same worthy institution as well, but after just a few weeks I realized that prolonged and abstract book learning was only going to slow me down from achieving my life’s goals and that therefore there was no percentage in it for yours truly. About the only things I needed to know were how to read and write, which mission had already been accomplished back in Wigan, and how to do sums, not that I had much use for that particular skill yet, but I was counting on it to come in handy down the road, and frankly not so far down the road as all that. A month of sixth-grade classes in arithmetic was more or less all it took for me to get the hang of it, so I was already on the verge of bidding my school years good-bye when Fats came into my life.
I don’t think my schoolmate would have been able to distinguish me from Adam or even Adam’s rib: I was small, even for my age, and to him I was just another mutt from the neighborhood. So I had the element of surprise on my side when Fats was making his way back home for lunch. I was waiting for him down the stairwell that leads to the tradesmen’s entrance of all the buildings, with my cloth cap pulled good and low and holding a rolled-up copy of the Sun, or maybe it was the World, I forget, in my right hand.
“Hey, Moore,” says I as he goes past, and he says, “Who wants to know?” because he can’t see me, hiding in the shadows there, and then I says, “Me, I got something for ya,” which I knew would get his attention, him being so greedy and all.
As he steps down into the darkness he can just make out my shape but he can’t see my face, only my cap. And that’s when I bring the newspaper down on his head with a terrible crack, the crack on account of the lead pipe within it that I snatched from the back room of Ginsberg’s hardware store when Ginsberg wasn’t looking, and down goes Moore like he was shot.
I let him tumble toward me, taking my time. I knew the Maddens’ chow was long gone but I also knew the bastard had kept the money. “Lookit at what I brung ya,” is what he probably said to that old harlot Mrs. Moore, all the while pocketing Ma’s cash. He was mumbling something as I rifled his pants pockets and sure enough, there was Ma’s one dollar and twenty-seven cents, which meant Fats had spent sixteen cents on something, although I had certainly got sixteen cents’ worth of lump out of his head in return so I figured we were square and everything was jake now that I had the jack back.
Bloody froth was coming out of his mouth, the bubbles popping as he tried to speak, so I put my ear down to his lips, taking care not to get any of his slobber on my lapels, but I couldn’t make out no words. And then I, already thinking about my place in history, says, “It’s the Killer what done this, you fat bastard,” and then I give him another whack, not too hard but just hard enough so that he could appreciate the error of his ways, keep his mouth shut and maybe go to sleep and give me enough time to get away with my hands clean.
He closed his eyes like a good lad and I put the bloody newspaper at the bottom of one of the bins and tossed Ginsberg’s length of pipe among the trash that filled the side yard. You think New York is dirty today, you should’ve seen it then, the yards mostly filled with broken crockery and dog shite, not to mention the s
hattered glass from the bottles that everything came in in those days, beer bottles and nostrum bottles and pill bottles, each one a different shape and size and all of them useless except for the beer.
Then I walked up the steps as calm as you please and pounded on the door of the Moores’ flat and kept pounding until the missus herself opens the door and says what’s the matter fer chrissakes, because she could swear something fierce. “Billy’s taken an awful tumble,” says I, leading her down the stairs to the scene of the crime, at which she lets out a shriek that would have waked the dead and sends myself hustling around the corner to the fire station on 35th Street for help.
“God bless you, boy,” was the last thing I could hear her say as I scooted out of earshot. I stopped and got myself a soda at Hutscher’s fountain on 34th, drank it down slowly and then strolled up a block farther ten or fifteen minutes later to tell the man on duty what had happened—the truth but not the whole truth and certainly not nothing but the truth.
The soda was so delicious that I felt obliged to treat myself to another on the way back, which is why the firemen had already got to Moore’s street by the time I passed by. A small crowd had gathered and before I could get my gob open to ask what was going on I could hear Fats blubbering that a punk named the Killer done it, which was of course me.
Then I saw Moore, propped up by a couple of firemen, talking to a big bottle and stopper named Branagan, who worked our beat when he felt like working. We all knew Branagan: practically every kid in the neighborhood had seen him fooling around with Jenny Gluck, scaring and scattering the pigeons on the rooftop of her family’s flat at 380 Tenth Avenue while they did it, and her being underage and all. Fats’s eyes were rolling and there was blood all over one side of his face, but he seemed able to talk well enough so I figured he would live. I knew there was no chance he would recognize me, but he would remember my voice for a long time; anytime I wanted to terrify him I would just have to walk up behind him, whisper in his ear and watch him wet his pants.
And All the Saints Page 2
