“That would be Owney the Killer,” I said, amazed at the sight.
One Lung musta seen my look of surprise because instead of greeting me or asking me a question, he rose to his feet with a hacking cough. This was obviously the signal for everybody else to shut the hell up, which they did, turning their attention toward the boss expectantly. The former Duster was the first man I ever saw who had obviously already laid eyes on his own grave site; he had that look, half-scared and half-defiant, that soon-to-be-dead men get when they know they’re due for reaping.
“Says Dinny,” he begins.
Well, if this had been O’Carolan himself come back to earth to sound the sacred stanzas of Scotia’s bards, the effect could not have been greater. Curran’s poem—his one and only, as far as I could tell—had been composed on the occasion of his delivering a memorable beating to a copper named Dennis Sullivan of the Charles Street station down the Village, who’d had the temerity to try to put the Dusters out of business. Even worse—Sullivan had called into question the Dusters’ effectiveness as a fighting force and election enforcers. Even though the Dusters was the sworn blood enemies of the Gophers, cops were even worse, which is why Curran was celebratin’ them.
“Says Dinny,” repeats Curran, but that’s as far as he gets because he up and hacks a big glob of blood, which one of the uniformed lassies wipes away on the sleeve of her tunic. Nobody else moved, as if this was more or less the ordinary course of things, which it more or less was.
One Lung righted himself, dabbed a few flecks of foam from his lips and gave it another try.
Says Dinny: “Here’s me only chance
To gain meself a name;
I’ll clean up the Hudson Dusters
And reach the hall of fame. ”
A ritual chorus of boos and cries of “damn his eyes, the dirty pig” greeted this arresting opening as the audience settled in to enjoy once again the well-told tale.
He lost his stick and cannon,
And his shield they took away.
It was then that he remembered
Every dog had got his day.
I can no longer recall all the dozen or so verses, if indeed I ever could, but I never forgot the story, which was as well known in the western precincts of Manhattan as any tale of the Arabian nights. Curran and the Dusters ambushed Dinny on Greenwich Street. First they beat him senseless, then they beat him bloody and then they beat him damn near to death. They beat him with paving stones. They beat him with blackjacks. They stripped him of his tunic, his shield, his stick and his revolver. Finally, they took turns grinding their heels into his gob, until he looked like he’d been run over by all four wheels of a horse cart and left for dead. That was the last time the coppers had challenged the Dusters. One Lung had composed this masterpiece from his hospital bed in Bellevue, where he had landed after the exertion that came with nearly killing Sullivan, and for treatment of his tuberculosis, which was killing him.
Everyone shouted and cheered at the conclusion of Curran’s versifying, the happy ending of which proved profoundly satisfying to all and sundry. Me I gave a few perfunctory claps, but my eye was still fixed on the vision I’d seen, who was now coming into better focus on account of she was looking right back at me with the frankest stare I’d ever seen on a girl up to that point. Then I remembered I’d seen her before, over on Ninth. She was a hot-corn girl, one of the last of them, flaunting her wares around the neighborhood as she hawked ears of corn from a pushcart; it was still a girl’s job then.
While I was busy remembering, everybody else was busy noticing. “Looks like we got a lover boy on our hands,” sneered Razor Riley, who fancied himself hell with the cows and kisses even though he was shorter than me and not half as handsome. He weighed less than a hundred pounds, but it’s amazing what a little proficiency with a blackjack, a revolver and your Da’s spare shaver will do for a fella’s reputation with the distaffs.
“You sure he’s a fighter?” asked Happy Jack Mulraney, who spoke out of only one side of his mouth because the muscles of his face were permanently frozen in a grin, and was plenty sore at the world because of it. Some said he got paralyzed in a knife fight, others said it was something his Ma ate when she was carrying him. Nobody knew.
“A right regular Billy Noodle he is for sure,” said Goo Goo Knox. Goo Goo was esteemed among the company as the former Gopher who had wandered away to found the Hudson Dusters on account of he had a fight with Mallet Murphy, the Gopher chieftain who ran a saloon in Battle Row where the gang liked to hang out. But when Goo Goo realized what a bunch of rollos he had on his hands south of 14th Street, he came crawling back to the real gang and bringing One Lung with him. There were similar wisecracks from Newburgh Gallagher, Marty Brennan and Stumpy Malarkey and even Battle Annie, the leader of the Lady Gophers, who was the most frightening of them all, and for a moment there I thought I was going to have to fight them all when One Lung Curran himself intervened.
“Ya like it?” he asked, and I had to take my eyes off the dame for a moment so as not to be disrespectful.
“The poem’s grand,” says I.
“I ain’t talkin’ about the damn pome,” corrects One Lung. “I’m talkin’ about this here little filly, Freda Horner. Sure her hot corns’ll warm your arse of a cold winter’s eve.”
Everybody was laughing at me now, and here I am seein’ my dreams of Gopher glory goin’ up in smoke and my chances with Freda goin’ to hell in a handcart when she herself comes to my rescue.
“Aw, leave off,” says Freda. “I think he’s kinda cute, in a scrawny way.”
“Ain’t no bigger than a chicken,” cracks the Razor.
“Mebbe a rooster,” manages Mulraney.
“Copper Branagan called him a banty little rooster,” offers Chick, coming to my defense with an adjective.
“If that’s true,” says I, “then it’s a banty little rooster from Hell I am, and damn any man here what says different.”
“He means it too,” chimes in Freda. “Just look at them eyes. Killer’s eyes. Dead man’s eyes.”
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if any of ’em had taken me up on my offer, but luckily One Lung was still running the meeting. “So you want to fight, do ya?” he asked between hacks.
I nodded, both fists balled tight.
“Then why the hell don’t ya get yer new lady friend here a proper piece of wearing apparel, ’stead of these worn-out rags what her old man probably stole off a Jewman?”
Thus it was One Lung his own good self who suggested that, seeing as how I was after being a Gopher and was obviously sweet on Freda, and seeing as how Freda was after becoming a Lady Gopher and was obviously sweet on me, I should evidence my bona fides by handing over the requisite garment in conformity with Gopher tradition, namely, a cop’s tunic.
If the Killer’s the man he sez ’e iz
an’ Freda’s the gal we thinks she iz,
then Branagan’s coat’s just her size
and Owney’s the best of all her guys
is how I remember his command, but I could be wrong.
The next thing I remember, everyone’s pounding me on the back and telling me to go get ’im, Killer and suchlike, but I hardly noticed the pounding I was taking and sure didn’t feel it because Freda had just planted a big one on my kisser that drove almost everything else from my mind.
Chapter Four
We were trailing him somewhere along Ninth Avenue late that afternoon, me, Billy, Eddie and Click, pretending to be just humming around. The street was full of kids, as it always was: urchins in knee pants and cloth caps, girls in long dresses, hanging around, with nothing to do and nowhere to go except home. Most of their parents were either working, drunk or dead, and so they were left to fend for themselves all day and well into the night. Some of them worked, some of them loafed and some of them even went to school. Nobody looked twice at a boy or girl, not yet six years old, standin’ on the street corner begging alms or worse.
&
nbsp; Two boys, about ten years old, were having an imaginary gunfight as we passed, shooting at each other with their fingers and dying all sorts of horrible deaths. One of them was beefy and Hunnish; the other was lean, and he hopped around like his pants was on fire.
“Bang! Right between the eyes and Harry goes down!” screamed the first one.
“Pow! Two slugs shred his heart and there’s Butch, bleedin’ to death on the sidewalk,” shouted the other.
We motioned them over and they came on the double.
“What’s your name, yegg?” Chick asked the Hun.
“Crazy Butch.”
“What about you?”
“Harry the Soldier.”
Chick looked at me and the boys. “Who wants to smack these punks around?”
Billy and Eddie each grabbed a kid and pinned his arms back behind his back so hard it almost brought tears to their eyes. Neither of ’em cried, though.
“Where’d you learn names like them?” Chick demanded, for sure weren’t Butch and Harry sainted gangsters of the time, and this duo most certainly weren’t them.
“Heard ’em in the alley,” says the first kid, whose real name turned out to be Art Biedler. “Dint we, Johnny?”
Johnny McArdle, the hoppy one, nodded like his head was going to come off. He had a funny way of parting his hair, way over on the left side of his head a few inches above his ear, then combing the whole thing over his head so it flopped on the other side. It almost made you laugh except there was something about the kid that dared you to, and so probably nobody did.
“So you want to be gangsters, huh?” says I, as if I already was one.
Both punks nodded yes.
“Well, then, you gotta earn your names—you can’t just crib ’em. That’s like stealing.”
Chick joined in. “Just you watch it. Chowderhead goes around pretending to be somebody else, the next thing he knows he gets his noodle conked but good.”
“And his stuff stole,” added Billy.
“And his dames plucked,” said Eddie.
Chick nodded and Art and Johnny were free, but they stood put. “Beat it,” I snarled, trying to sound tough.
Johnny was looking at me queer. “You’re Owney the Killer,” he said.
“Who told you?”
“We seen what you done to Fats,” said Art.
“Gave him a hell of a shanty,” said Johnny.
This was my second tough moment of the day. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to deep-six the two of them for being material witnesses, or bring ’em both on board.
“Pow!” shouted Johnny, emulating me whacking Fats a good one.
“Right on the bean!” screamed Art.
I looked at Chick. “Whaddya say we let ’em tag along, maybe they learn something?”
“Your call,” said Chick, and I realized I’d just made my first gang decision.
“Okay,” I says to Art. “You too, Hoppo. But screw up and we’ll be feedin’ ya to the fish.”
And so off we all went, to look for Branagan.
We found him soon enough, and the good news was that he was alone. Now, this was highly unusual in our neck of the woods because normally the coppers was hardly ever seen on our streets unless they was traveling in pairs or packs, which meant Branagan was either planning on cooping, or he was up to something. Which proved to be the explanation, because even back then you had your odd honest copper or two, like poor Dinny Sullivan, and a fat lot of good that done him.
Branagan was shaking down Mollinucci’s fruit stand. “I’ll be thanking you very much, Signor Milluci,” he was saying, for he never could get names quite right, especially Italian ones. Branagan was one of those dumb micks who thought all foreigners were funny, which if you ask me is the English influence on the Irish because limeys really do think all foreigners is funny, especially us.
He left the fruit stand munching on an apple and whistling to himself while the family gave him the evil eye, especially Luigi the son, who was about my age. I would have felt sorry for them except that I didn’t like Luigi much because I’d heard he had been making lewd remarks about May at St. Mike’s School, and I filed away in the back of my mind that I needed to have a chat with him about that real soon.
We tailed Branagan easily, a block behind, just a bunch of kids walking down the street with time on their hands and him oblivious. Branagan paid us no mind because he had more important things to do, like counting up his wampum.
He turned into a small shaded alley that ran between two of the tenements. We didn’t want to chance him seeing us, so we decided that the other fellas should hang back while I, being the smallest and least conspicuous, continued to dog him, and that if I got into trouble, I was to sing out.
He ducked into a backyard, which was as devoid of greenery as ours, except for a small tree that was putting up a good but losing fight against the city. My angle was perfect, for I could see both the tree and the alleyway. I signaled to the others to approach and turned my attention to the yard.
Next to the tree in the dimming light stood a man in a dirty apron, the kind a bartender might wear, who greeted the copper sullenly. “Let’s have it, I ain’t got all day,” I heard Branagan say as I hid in the shade of one of the buildings, tucked in behind a pile of trash. As the man walked toward Branagan, I noticed he had a pronounced limp. “God damn you to hell,” he said in thick Irish.
The copper let out one of his big stupid laughs. “Why, Mike,” says he, “what kind of an attitude is that to take with an officer of the duly constituated municipal constabulary? You shouldn’t begrudge me a little coin to encourage me to ever greater vigilance on your behalf. Surely you’d rather give up some of it to me than all of it to one of them Gopher punks what are scouragin’ the neighborhood.”
The gimp was still walking toward Branagan, and starting to reach in his pocket, when the cop suddenly leaped forward and struck him a tremendous blow across the shoulders with his daystick. This got my blood boiling, not because of any distaste for violence, but because in my opinion a fight ought to be fair, or at least fixed, and this was neither.
Down went the man named Mike, but not out. As he lay there on the ground, I could hear Branagan saying, “Ya shouldn’t have tried to reach for yer weapon, Mike, and sure no one’s going to blame me for putting you down,” With that he pulled Mr. Mike’s hand from his pocket, coming up of course not with a Bessie or a shiv but with a fistful of dough. He pocketed the cash quickly and left the poor fella lying there.
A trash pile is the punk’s best friend, for all the tools of the trade can be found there in embryo. You could fashion a club from a old pipe, brass knuckles from discarded metalwork, a shiv from a broken bottle. And of course there was always plenty of paving stones. The glorious thing about New York then was that a weapon was always to hand if only you knew where to look, which I did.
I took out my slungshot and carefully fitted a splendid stone. So intent on counting his loot was Branagan that he probably never heard the whoosh that a rock makes when it’s whizzing through the air, never felt the hairs rise up on his neck in anticipation of getting clocked. The stone caught him square in the back of the noggin, which started him to toppling, and then Eddie Egan was on him with the pipe, catching Branagan with a sharp blow right behind the knees, which of course sent him over backward, the spittle flying from his lips. He hit the ground with a thud, and then Chick and Billy were there too, kicking merrily away at his midsection until I put him out cold with a boot right in the teeth. It was a tough job getting his tunic off him, him being so heavy and all, but after a bit of bother the job was done and I had my trophy.
When we looked up from our labors, there was Mr. Mike, struggling to his feet. “You’ll forgive me for not helping you out, son,” says he. “And may God forgive me for not tryin’ to stop ya neither.”
I returned most of his potatoes, with me keeping a penny or two for my trouble. He was too polite to count the dough right in front of me. “My th
anks to you,” he said, shoving it back in his pocket.
I must have looked a tad comical, drawing myself up to my full height, such as it was, but Mr. Mike only smiled. “I hold no brief for violence, but ’tain’t right what he’s been doing, and to his own people. If you ever need my help, you just ask for Mike Callahan of Callahan’s Bar, ’round the corner, and you’ll get it, no questions asked.” He put out his hand to shake mine, and it was then I realized that I’d never shaken hands man-to-man. It felt good.
So that’s how the Gophers got themselves a new member. And that’s how I got my first girlfriend.
We got back to the clubhouse after dark, Johnny and Art still tagging along, and there was some minor grumbling about how the gang was goin’ to the dogs, what with kids showing up and all, but all the mutterin’ stopped right quick enough when we spread Branagan’s coat on the ground for all to see and admire, especially One Lung, who was looking more and more like he was hardly going to last through the week.
“Now you gotta give it to one of the girls,” says he ceremoniously.
I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind which moll was going to receive this particular token of my youthful esteem, but I made a show of looking around just the same. At Drowsy Maggie, and Grace the Virgin, Big Mary, Little Mary and of course Margaret Everdeane, who was already becoming a dish and a half, but in the end it was Freda who got Branagan’s uniform and as I wrapped it around her gentle shoulders everybody cheered like hell and somebody handed me a fresh glass of beer straight from the growler but I hardly had a chance to take a single sip because Freda interposed her lips between mine and the beer and the beer lost bad, although it caught up a bit later in the evening.
There was nobody in the flat when Freda and I staggered in around midnight, which meant that Ma and May was sleeping on the roof, and maybe Marty too if he hadn’t gone out somewhere. It was still plenty hot out, which meant the temperature in the flat would be like Hell on a bad day, which is why half the building was up on the roof, hoping to catch a drift of air off the river to the west.
And All the Saints Page 4
