“So hot have I never been,” he cried, tugging at his collar and stumbling. He righted himself briefly, then leaned, swayed. “Give me water quick!”
His legs buckled and he started to topple backwards.
“Da’s ill,” said May.
Marty and I caught him as he fell and not only tried to prop him up but to push him forward, for at that moment the only thing I could think about was getting on that ship and away.
“Come on, Da,” I said. “Coupla more steps. One foot in front of the other. You can do it.”
He tried to move forward, but the pitch of the plank was exerting a more powerful pressure than his legs could overcome and to our horror he sank back into our arms.
I was damned if I was going to let his head bounce on that hard wood, and I managed to cushion his fall just enough that he wound up lying in my arms like a little child, as if we had reversed roles in an eyeblink.
“Owney,” gasped Da, his breath short and harsh. He was doing his best to focus his eyes on mine, to be able to look into my soul, and I wished for just about the first and last time in my life that there was a priest handy, to administer extreme unction, because I knew what this look meant, and it meant the end. “Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t, Da,” I promised. “Bank on it.”
“Good lad,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Give New York a licking for me.”
And then all of a sudden the anxiety went out of his gaze and I felt his body relax, the muscles go slack, the frantic desperation to get his last words out exhausted, for to him was suddenly given the insight, given to so few, that when your time comes, you embrace it happily and without regret, for what else can you do?
He shuddered one last time, taking one last swing at Death before it felled him for good. “Mary!” cried Da as he gulped his last breath. “God, why is there no air in the world?”
He died with his eyes wide open, as if they would devour and consume the great vast planet one final time, so he could take the sight with him to Heaven.
The doctor determined that Francis Madden had died from brain injuries sustained from a beating, and demanded that the police put forth their best efforts to discover who had done this. This being Liverpool, the doctor naturally assumed that Father had died from one of the usual causes of death—a barroom brawl being the most likely. When no report of a fight meeting the vague description and hazarded time emerged, the case was filed quietly away, just another paddy demise, with no known relatives to care or mourn.
This we learned later, from the post. With only two hours to go before the Teutonic sailed, the authorities decided on the spot to honor the surviving Maddens’ fares, in order that three fatherless and bereaved Irish children would not become an English public trust, and to unite them with their soon-to-be-grieving mother in New York.
The voyage lasted six days. I kept my brother and May in my sights the whole time, my cap pulled down firmly on my head and Da’s old pigeon-killing knife at the ready, clasped tightly alongside my leg, ready to kill the first sonofabitch who looked at us cross-eyed.
Chapter Thirteen
The end of Monk Eastman came sooner than I would have thought. That’s the way demises are; otherwise, nobody would talk about them. The worst thing that can happen to you, in my opinion, is that you die and everybody says, well, he did his time and about time too.
On the frozen, snowy evening of February 2, 1904, as we were making our way by foot across town, who should cross our path near the Croton Reservoir but one Llewellyn K. Massey (as I learned later), pie-eyed and puke-bibbed, staggering east on 42nd heading for his home over on Fifth. He was dressed swell, in silk topper and tails, and clearly just came from an evening of women and libation at Satan’s Circus, which lurked in the gloom of the Sixth Avenue el. Like most rich drunks, he was being trailed at a discreet distance as he rounded the reservoir by a tough-looking customer that Monk’s expert eye right away picked out as a rival for the man’s purse.
“C’mon, Own,” says he, “let’s roll da lush before da udder guy does.”
I was against this, for I didn’t think Monk was in any shape for combat, no matter how mild, but Monk was already scuttling through the snow toward Mr. Massey. “If you please, kind sir,” I could hear Monk saying as he approached. “Could you tell me the way to Bishop Doane’s domicile?”
This was always the prelude with Monk, for the bishop was a standing joke in the repeat-voter precincts such as ours, and a question about him always took a drunk aback enough to let Monk slip in underneath whatever guard he might have left. Sure enough, in no time flat Monk had his pistol out and under the young man’s nose, and not a copper in sight. I was standing impatiently off to one side, awaiting only the inevitably successful outcome of this operation.
The gunshots that followed caught me with my pants down. Monk rarely killed civilians unless they deserved it, and almost never in the course of a simple robbery, which was something Tammany frowned upon, and my first thought was that the lush had said something untoward about Monk’s appearance or parentage, about both of which he was quite sensitive. But a second later I realized that the shooting was not coming from Monk but from the fella who had been following Massey.
“Stop, thief!” he shouted, all the while continuing to fire.
Monk ducked and called out to me: “Pinkertons!”
I’m second to no man in my dislike for the coppers, but Pinkertons is another and lower order of life altogether. There’s not an Irishman in America who can hear the name without wanting to vomit, after what they did to the Molly Maguires down in PA, and if I’d had my gun, I would have shot my first man then and there. Monk was running madly down 42nd and firing wildly back in the direction of the Pinkerton man, who was blazing away himself. A fella coulda got hurt with all that lead in the air.
I don’t know whether Monk was feeling safe when he hit Broadway, or whether he was just getting tired, but he slowed as he rounded the corner and ran smack into the arms of a roundsman by the name of Corcoran, a Broadway Squad bull from county Westmeath called Happy John on account of the smile that always played across his lips, who was by happenstance standing just outside the Hotel Knickerbocker. I guess the Pinky man was still shouting about thieves, and Monk looked as guilty as sin, for no sooner had Monk entered the periphery of the copper—a giant of a man standing well over six feet tall and weighing 250 pounds—when said fellow unholstered his nightstick and delivered Monk a tremendous blow to the head, one that felled him as sure as an oak under the saw of an Oregon logger. I pulled up short, half a block away, and for the second time in a couple of months, contemplated the wreck of my chief and best friend.
To all of you who are caterwauling about the brutality of the police in our day and age, let me say that in my youth the coppers pretty much abided by the law of the nightstick, and whenever a criminal came within shouting distance, they were sure to take advantage of it, which is why Monk went down. In short order, there was a couple of more cops on the scene and without so much as a how-do-you-do, they dragged Monk’s carcass off to the 30th Street station and there he was booked on robbery and felonious assault and remanded to jail.
Monk was no more after accepting this than the pope was likely to credit the existence of Jehovah, except in a past-tense kind of way, and just bellowed all the louder, rattling his cage like a monkey at the Bronx Zoo. I saw an opening here, having slipped into the precinct house.
“Please, sir,” says I, “I need to see me Da.” It was not unusual to see kids wandering through the holding cells in those days, so plentiful were the Das who were brought in on drunk and disorderly or vagrancy charges.
The pig looked at me querulous-like, but let me pass.
“Monk,” says I.
“Own,” says he. “Get over to Plunkitt’s right away and tell him what’s up.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was no use. Not no use because it was four o’clock in the morning but no use because, li
ke Pontius Pilate, Plunkitt had already washed his hands of Monk Eastman. “Sure, Monk,” says I.
I guess there must have been something in my tone of voice that told the great gangster that whatever intercession Plunkitt might have been willing to offer, which was none, would be useless. He took his bedraggled hat, which was still too small for him, in his hands and wrung it like a wet towel. “I’m sorry I let ya down.” Another twist and that was pretty much it for the derby.
I almost cried again as I left his cell, heading for home, for sure didn’t I know that there would be no use in waking Plunkitt, and thus riling him up, when there were no further votes to be had from the bailing of Monk Eastman. Indeed, there was more votes to be had from keeping Monk behind bars, and down deep I knew that nobody knew that better than Monk. He was as finished as his hat.
The next morning I was to be found down the bootblack stand at the New York County Courthouse, where G.W. normally held court. As soon as Plunkitt had finished speechifyin’ he caught sight of me, and greeted me as warmly as if I could vote Democratic three or four times in the next election when in fact at my age I could only vote once or maybe twice.
“Oh, if it ain’t the Killer himself!” he exclaimed while a colored boy named Hiram Watkins shined his shoes.
“Say, Mr. Owney,” said Hiram without missing a beat. He coughed up a glob and planted it square on Plunkitt’s high-tops. “How you been?”
I’d met Hiram, who lived up Little Africa way on the West Side, a couple of times before and had found him to be a fine fellow. Just like in the old Five Points, the coloreds and the Irish lived side by side, and more or less hated each other, except that Hiram and I got along just fine. As far as I was concerned, paddies and jigs was passengers on the same coffin ship, foundering or coming safely ashore as God’s whim took us. Half the colored I knew had Irish names anyway, which ought to tell you something.
One of the things that still strikes me is how well dressed we all were in those days. Back then everybody looked pretty swell and I do mean everybody, even colored boys like Hiram. I can see him now, a good-looking little Negro in a three-piece suit with a high starched white collar and a tie, a cloth cap and brown button shoes. Nowadays you see a boy looks like that and it strikes you funny, like he’s on his way to church or something, but back then even a shoeshine boy like Hiram dressed almost as sharp as the mayor.
“And what brings this bright lad to these humble precincts?” That was G.W., not Hiram, speaking. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of entering the seminary.”
This reference to the seminary was one of our ways of referring to the Eastmans’ territory on the East Side.
“No, sir,” says I, “for the seminary’s a bit too strict for the likes of me these days,” which was another of our agreed-upon exchanges, meaning of course that Monk was in the kind of trouble that only Tammany could fix, if it felt like it.
“Now, ain’t that too bad,” said Plunkitt, this time addressing the multitudes that was always gathered around the bootblack stand. “A young Irish lad what don’t want to encounter head-on the challenges of our Lord’s sacred priesthood. What is this country comin’ to?”
My heart sank, for what we had to discuss was not for public consumption unless himself wanted it that way, which he did, and which signaled the end of Monk Eastman, as he had foretold. Because didn’t Plunkitt already know the news before I told it.
“Ladies and gents,” announced Plunkitt grandiloquently. I noticed the scribbler Bill Riordan scribbling furiously in his notebook as he took down the great man’s words verbatim, as he always did. “This fine upstanding Godfearin’ boy has just brung me news of the most joyful sort,” continued Plunkitt. “It seems that the notorious gangster Monk Eastman, who has been the scourge of the lives of so many in these parts, not the least of which have been our Hebrew brethren, has at last been apprehended by the forces of the law, red-handed in the act of robbin’ one of our fair city’s foinest citizens.”
There was a smattering of cheers, and some boos, from those who knew how things really stood between Monk and Tammany.
“So now,” continued Plunkitt, “this ruffian will finally face his comeuppance before the bar of justice and, an honest judge willing, be sent up the river where he can do no further harm to the likes of a daycent citizenry!”
With that, Plunkitt turned his back on the crowd and walked away. I chased after him as he ducked into the Tweed Courthouse and into the gents’. “Ain’t ya gonna do nothin’?”
Plunkitt smiled at me warmly as he snuggled his private parts up against the porcelain. His bowler hat fitted him like a nightcap on a miser. “What’s done is done, lad,” he said, shaking himself dry, “and what’s goin’ ta be done is done as well.”
Plunkitt was at the washbasin now, performing his ablutions. My hands were wet as well, from preventing the tears. I was no tough guy anymore, just a kid who was about to lose his best friend forever.
Plunkitt took a towel from the colored attendant who sat silently nearby. I never did get his name. “ ’Tain’t t’e end udda world, boy,” he said. “There’s plenty more where Monk come from, and plenty smarter too. A bit more growin’ and bit more learnin’ and then you come back and see old George Washington Plunkitt and wouldn’t I be surprised if there isn’t some business that you and I, or my noble successors, can’t be doin’ together.” He tossed the towel back to the invisible colored man, who caught it without glancing his way. “Now get along home wit’ ya.”
I walked out of the courthouse with my head low and my heart lower, making my way slowly across town back to the 30th Street station house. The weather had turned even colder, as frosty as my spirits. By the time I had slogged through the snow to the precinct house it was early afternoon. With a wink at the sarge, I slipped in the front door and headed back to the holding pen.
But when I got to where I had last seen Monk, the cell was empty. I must have stood there for a minute or two, gaping in confusion, and then a strong hand gripped me by the shoulder. I looked up and wouldn’t you know it, it was my old friend, the copper Becker.
“I thought I kenned you,” he said.
The force of the blow, which I never saw coming, knocked me against the iron bars, and as I rebounded, Becker caught me square in the breadbasket, a neat right cross, the artistry of which I would have admired had I had the time. As the air went out of my lungs my chin went down, which gave him an opportunity to catch me just under the button with his knee, and then the lights went out, and all I can remember was the sound of his laughter as he mocked me for my pretensions and my presumptions.
Becker told everybody I’d had an accident, which was true.
Chapter Fourteen
The charge “mugging with a club,” for which I spent some several months as a guest of the Protectory, just like my older brother had. I was never quite sure whether they nailed me for Fats or for Branagan or just bein’ an accessory to the Massey fiasco, because the Tiger stepped in before things got out of hand and made sure I was treated with the deference and mercy my youth deserved.
Ma of course got all weepy at the thought of her darling middle child being sent off to pay his debt to society. May simply gave me one of her grave looks. “Good-bye, Owen,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll come back a better man for all this.” Now, let me tell you that got to me far more than Ma’s more or less obligatory tears. For to look at May you would have thought that she was bidding me farewell as if I was going on a journey to some far-off place like Hindoostan or Wyoming instead of just up the road a piece.
“Good-bye, May,” says I, kissing her on the cheek.
Aside from family, I had only one visitor during my time and wouldn’t you know it was old George Washington P. himself. He came up to me all of a sudden, as I was weeding a bed of azaleas in the greenhouse garden. One thing churches always need is flowers and plenty of ’em, so the padres were teaching me something about horticulture, which I rather liked.
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p; “How they treatin’ ya, boy?” he asked with a smile. Plunkitt wore the same thing season in and season out: a wool suit with a waistcoat, foulard and derby, and I never once saw him sweat.
“Can’t complain,” I said, wiping my brow. It was true: I didn’t have to do no hard work, and got to spend most of my time working with the flowers.
“Didn’t think so,” remarked G.W. “Nobody likes a complainer.”
“I’m grateful to you, sir,” I said.
He pulled out his pipe and lit it. “Everyone appreciates gratitude.”
He smoked for a moment, sending plumes of tobacco wreathing through the air. “You mayn’t’ve heard,” he said, “that former roundsman Branagan is no longer with the Metropolitan Police.”
My eyes widened at this news of my enemy’s professional discomfiture. “Indeed, he is not,” continued G.W. “Didn’t a little investigatin’ into the loss of his tunic reveal the nefarious activities to which he was up, thanks to the privately presented testimony of your colleagues and cohorts, and a bunch of fine upstandin’ young men they is too. The upshot of which is that he’s been stripped of his rank and his position, and is now nothin’ more than a common day laborer, albeit in the vineyards of Tammany, for sure we always take care of our own, just as we’re takin’ care of you.”
I had to admire the way the Tiger always hedged its bets, always took the vigorish on any wager it laid, so that it could not lose. I was about to say something when Plunkitt pulled out his pocket watch and made a great show of consulting it.
“Just look at the time, lad,” he said, placing it back in his waistcoat. “I was just passing by, makin’ the rounds of my constituents you might say, and I thought I’d look in on ya, to see how you was makin’ out. And now that I’ve satisfied meself on that account, I’ll be takin’ my leave.”
We shook hands gravely, and then he was gone. That night, I dined on steak, and snuck a schluck of sacramental wine. They let me out not long after.
And All the Saints Page 11
