“How’s tricks, Fats?”
“Name’s Doyle now,” he said.
“In that case, how’s your mother’s tricks?”
I thought he was going to punch me, but instead he just laughed that village-idiot laugh of his, which was the signal for his two boys to start in to chortling. The noise of the music below drowned out their yucks and I suppose that if you’da looked up, all’s you woulda seen is four yeggs having a fine old time.
A mug with multiple monikers was nothing new in our profession. Multifarious handles came in handy when you were pinched, especially by a copper that didn’t recognize ya. Monk himself had a bunch of them, including Edward Delaney, Joseph Morris and Joseph Marvin. I’d been known to throw around a falsehood or two in my times in custody. But to change your handle for real—well, that just shows you what kind of sap Fats was.
“Pretty sassy for a dead man, ain’t ya, Madden?” said Fats, and I could feel the unmistakable shove of steel in the small of my back where one of his boys had jammed a hand cannon.
It’s a fair question to ask whether I was nervous, and you’d probably expect me to answer yes, but the fact is that in a tight spot like this you really don’t have time to be nervous. About all you have time for is to concentrate on each moment and anticipate the next. Long-range planning is not really on the table, as it were.
Accordingly I took a quick inventory of what I had on my person at that moment. Twin .45-caliber Colt automatics, brand-new 1911s like the soldier boys was gettin’, one under each armpit in fine leather holsters I’d pinched from a Jewman down Orchard Street way. Brass knuckles in my right pants pocket. Sapper in my left pants pocket. Monk’s .38 in my waistband. I could break the nose, split the skull or shoot the eyes of anyone to my right or my left.
Here’s what I could reach at that moment without drawing undue attention or, worse, return fire: nothing. Patsy’s other mug had jammed some heat into my midsection, while Patsy himself shoved his mug into mine. His breath was starting to smell real bad.
“Hear you’re still plenty sore about Freda,” he breathed.
“What’ve I got to be worried about, Fats?” I replied. “You ain’t exactly a shirt-collar ad.”
That got a little yuck out of the boys, which meant that Fats had to flash them the shut-up sign, which meant I could turn my head for just a moment and shoot a glance down toward the dance floor toward my wife, who was dancing away. I couldn’t tell whether I caught her eye or not, but I didn’t get a second shot because the guns in my ribs poked me harder.
“I gotta admire your taste in frails, Madden,” says Patsy, following my gaze. He waved at her and by God if she didn’t wave back, all gay and carefreelike. “Nice of her to let me know you’d be here tonight.”
If I could’ve killed him at that moment, I would have, even though it meant my own life. But I had no weapon at the ready, no freedom of movement. All I could do was stand there and wait, and think. I guess it was a measure of how much I trusted Loretta that I didn’t trust her at all.
Something happened right at that moment; the band stopped playing or the band started playing, or somebody got into a shouting argument with somebody else. I dunno. What it was, it was a moment’s distraction, the kind that come and go by the dozens on any evening among company. Maybe it was even Mary from Mayo dropping a stack of dishes. I can’t remember.
What it was it lasted just long enough for me to grab ahold of the sap and spin around, swinging. I caught the mug behind me right on the button, breaking his nose, but instead of going down, he stood there for half a second, his schnozz gouting, that crazy cocaine look in his eye, and I realized my error, which was you can’t hurt a Duster, you have to kill him, and I hadn’t. My time was up.
“You don’t have the guts,” I said to one and all. I was wrong.
It’s funny what you remember at a time like this. The first shot was the worst, but the only good thing I can say about it is that if it don’t kill ya, it deadens the pain of the others, which it more or less did. I felt the pain, heard women scream, felt myself toppling onto the table, knocking off the plates as the bullets still slammed into me, one after another, eleven in all, tattooing me from breastbone to groin like I was some Coney carny freak, each tattoo coming out blood red.
My head musta hit the table, which is what put me out like I was dead and saved my life, because the next thing I know some medicos was leanin’ over me, bringing me around as best they could before loading me on a stretcher. A big bull was there too and even in my condition I managed to recognize him: Happy John Corcoran, the cop who’d busted Monk.
“Who shot you, Owney?” said the giant mick.
Here’s an amazing but true fact. Despite the gunplay, there was plenty of folks still in the Arbor and not one of ’em had seen or heard a thing. Including my own good self.
“Nobody. Nobody shot me.” My voice sounded strange, like it was being filtered through day-old coffee grounds. I wondered how long it would take me to die. “I done it to myself.” Which, when you stop to think about it, was more or less the truth.
They had my nice clothes torn open, staring at my wounds. “Will ya look at that mess?” says one of the sawbones. “No sense takin’ this carcass to the hospital—better make it the morgue.”
I croaked that I hadn’t croaked and I’d be damned if I was going to see the inside of the morgue while I was still breathin’, which by the way was getting more and more difficult. “Try that and I’ll kill you,” I moaned.
That widened the smile on the lips of Happy John. “I don’t think you’ll be killing anyone for a long time, Killer,” he said. I was proud he recognized me.
The last thing I recall was bein’ wheeled into the cutting room. My lower belly felt like it had exploded and I could feel the blood soaking through the holes in my shirtfront. “Get busy with the knife, Doc,” says I to the first guy in white I saw. “I can feel it real bad.”
Then I retched up a lungful of blood and grabbed for my fiery abdomen and instead of touching flesh all I got was a handful of gore.
That’s when I passed out. It never occurred to me to pray.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I was in Flower Hospital for three weeks, which beats bein’ in the morgue for three days anytime. I only remember the last week or so—I guess I was off my nut half the time, babbling about my mother and dear old Ireland and whatnot, the kinds of things a mug babbles about when he thinks he’s had the course. They tell me the sawbones tucked right in, digging six slugs out of my gut, suturin’ up arteries and stuff. Five of the bullets was buried too deep and so they decided to leave ’em inside me as a souvenir. They say every last one of the shots just missed tearin’ apart a vital organ or two, and that while I was carved up inside like a Christmas goose, almost everything was able to be put back in relatively good working order. They said it was a miracle.
I dunno about miracles; I left that department to Ma. Frankly I didn’t believe in ’em. I’d seen too many mugs clipped with a stray shot and die right on the spot, while other bastards you could beat half to death and the next day there they were, big as life. The way I figured it at that moment was that me and Fats, or Little Patsy, or whatever he wanted to call himself, was square. We’d each tried to more or less kill each other—although I took it as a fault on his part that he needed a couple of mugs to help him out—and Providence or Fate or Lady Luck had decreed that so far we was fightin’ a draw, which I was determined to rectify, for sure doesn’t the Deity, like the Tiger, hate a tie. Kissing your sister, as the man said.
I didn’t want for company. Ma and May were there every day, even when I was unconscious, and I have a sneaking feeling that a prelate from St. Mike’s might’ve waved some holy water my way. I was bandaged from my chest to my jewels, and May helped the nurses change the dressings. Even out as cold as a tomato can, I could feel her hand in mine, long into the night.
Art and Johnny were there every hour of every day, standin’ gua
rd outside the door. In gangland you always got two shots at your target: once on the street and once in hospital, so it had become the custom to have a couple of triggermen standin’ near your bedside full-time. They felt terrible about what had happened, but I told them, once I could talk proper again, that it wasn’t their fault, but from now on they should consider themselves on permanent detail, and they did.
My case officer was a sweet little onion of a nurse, a colleen from County Tipperary named Mary Frances Blackwell. I thought that was pretty funny because Blackwell’s Island, in the East River, was where the penitentiary was back then, the nuthouse too, but she didn’t think it was funny and after a while I didn’t either. On the rare occasions when my room wasn’t crammed with family members, gang members, bulls or simple well-wishers, Mary Frances was there ministerin’ to my every need but one.
Not for want of tryin’. One night in my second week, when my head had more or less rejoined my body, I found Mary Frances lyin’ beside me.
“You’re going to make it,” she said. “I can feel it in my bones.”
I tried to contact various parts of my body, with no luck. “I wish I could feel my bones,” I said. “Not to mention yours.”
She giggled a little the way Irish girls do when a lad’s said something naughty. “Fresh.”
“Guilty as charged,” I breathed. “Throw myself upon the mercy of the court.”
“You’re lucky this court shows mercy,” she said, opening her mouth and pressing her lips against mine. I took a deep drink of her and then settled back, pooped. Her hand was moving over my body, my poor shot-up body, and it pains me to relate to you that said body wasn’t respondin’ to a woman’s touch in the way that it would have just a fortnight or so prior.
Some dames mighta up and left right then and there, but not Mary Frances. She gave me one of those smiles she doled out to patients, and then she gave me one of those special smiles she didn’t dole out for every Tom, Dick and Harry. And boy oh boy did it ever feel good, even though I knew there wasn’t going to be any payoff. They say that nice girls don’t do it, but in my experience the only girls you’d ever want to have anything to do with do it and how.
“How was that?” she said, rising. There was color in her cheeks now, that glow that women get when they’re being women.
“What do you want?”
What a thing to say. “Whattya mean, what do I want, ya dumb ape? Nothin’, is what.”
She rose up on one elbow and pulled her nurse’s uniform back in front of her. I had to admit she was plenty fetching. “You paddies are all alike. We’re either the BVM or a two-bit whore, Mother Mary or Mary Magdalene. There’s gotta be somethin’ in between.”
“If there is, I ain’t met it yet.”
This time it didn’t matter whether I was an invalid. She smacked me but good right across the gob. “You just did.”
She started to rise, but even in my condition I managed to get my arms around her and bring her down for another kiss.
The thing about broads is there’s a short time for talkin’ and a long time for action, and luckily I was experienced enough to know the difference. That was also the night I learned that package or no package, there was still a passage that ran straight to a woman’s heart, and it was up to a clever lad to find it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I woke up the next morning to find not Mary Frances but May Madden at my bedside. She emerged from behind a huge bouquet of flowers that preceded her into the room, as beautiful as ever in the early sun. I kissed her gratefully. Art and Johnny was right behind her, and Chick and Billy as well. That’s when I knew I wasn’t going to die, because otherwise Chick and Billy and the Tiger wouldn’t have bothered with me. The only person missing was Eddie Egan.
“Where’s Eddie?” It was amazing how improved I felt.
“Got hisself kilt,” said Billy. “Shivved, in the Big House.”
“Why?” I was sorry to lose Eddie, especially bein’ as how I needed every man jack.
“Crossed a screw,” says Chick.
“Shouldn’ta oughta done that,” says Billy. “Screw was his friend.”
“Screws are never your friend,” says Johnny.
“What’s the score?” I asked.
“Down a couple,” says Chick.
“Duster took a shot at me the other day, eatin’ a sandwich at Callahan’s,” says Art.
“That’s neutral turf.”
“Better tell Patsy that ’cause he apparently don’t know no more.”
“Anybody hurt?” A moment of silence. “Who’d they get?” I insisted.
“Mr. Mike,” says Art, sheepish.
“How bad?”
“Dead bad.”
Before I could say anything, May cut in. “I hope he goes to Hell. I hope his whole goddamn gang goes to Hell.”
“Workin’ on it,” says Johnny.
“That’s my sister,” says I with admiration. “Names.”
“The two mugs was Billy Devaney and Frankie Di Palma.” Answers came fast, furious and various.
“Status?”
“Late. Floaters.”
“How?”
“Perforated.”
“What’s the Tiger’s stance?”
“Officially neutral.”
“What about Jimmy?”
“Wishes you well. Just lookit them flowers.”
“Patsy?”
“On the lam.”
“Where’s the lam?”
“We’ll find out. Gotta little bird.”
“Who?”
“Freda.”
I felt a stirring in what was left of my innards. May gripped my hand tighter.
“Loretta?” I inquired.
“Who knows?”
“Who cares?”
“That bitch.”
“Hey,” says May. “She’s Mrs. Madden to you until my brother says otherwise.”
I think they all said they was sorry, which they damn well ought to have been, because after all Loretta was still my wife and they had no cause for disrespect.
All this talk was taking some toll on me, and I sank back into my pillow, thinkin’ about basically two things: shooting Little Patsy’s fat eyes out of his head, and Mary Frances. I must have closed my orbs a moment. “He’s tired,” says May. “Anything else you wanna say to him you can say to me.”
The meeting would have ended right then and there except for another voice plunging through my darkness. “Mr. Madden.”
I looked up to see the angel face of Nurse Blackwell.
“Your wife is here.”
I’ll never forget the way she said that word. Wife. Like it was the dirtiest word in the English language. Attached to the dirtiest whore. I wouldn’ta let her in, except that she had my daughter in her arms.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
All the boys shuffled their feet, like they was makin’ ready to blow. Mighta been my imagination, but I thought Hoppo reached into his jacket. I held up my hand.
“Let her in. Art and Johnny, outside. Chick and Billy, tell the Tiger I’m in no need of plantin’ just yet.” I glanced at Mary Frances. “Okay.”
As Loretta came into the room, May shot up. “I’ll come back when she’s good and gone,” and that’s how I knew how things were going to stand for Loretta and me. “First I got some business to take care of.”
The room was empty as Loretta sat down beside me, baby Margaret cradled in one arm. “Lemme have her.”
Loretta put Margaret in my arms and I have to confess that a great wave of feeling swept over me, a kind of feelin’ I wasn’t exactly used to, but which I guess the poets call love. Not that kind of love, mind you, real love. Here was this helpless little creature, doing so much for me, and I couldn’t do nothing for her. I had a heart full of love and I was about to plunge a knife into it, open it up and pour it all on the floor.
“You gotta believe me.” She gave me a hideous smile she probably thought affectionate and sincere. “I didn’
t know.”
I kissed my little girl. She had her mother’s cheeks, but she had my cleft in her chin and most of all she had the Madden blue eyes: narrow, with a hook at each end almost like a Chinaman’s. Ma’s eyes. May’s eyes. My eyes.
“He come over and I recognized him. Fats, the kid from the neighborhood. Said he wanted to end all this trouble between the Gophs and the Dusters. That all it took was you and him meetin’. That if I set it up, I’d go down in history or something like that. Anyway,” she said, brushing what I thought was going to be a tear out of her eyes, but it was only her hair, “things is gonna be different now, just you wait and see.”
“Let me tell you how things is gonna be now,” I said. Behind Loretta’s fat head I could see Mary Frances, glancing around the doorjamb. I didn’t care if she eavesdropped and my eyes must have told her so.
And right behind her, May, standing alone off in the distance, down the hall, talking on the telephone and pretending not to notice.
“This is the way things is gonna be, not just tomorrow but forever and ever amen.” I took a hard breath. “I’m going to let you live. Every bit as long as I do.”
Even as dumb a twist as Loretta was could hear by the tone of my voice that I meant business. Her big eyes were fixed on me, terrified, and her brain was trying to translate what I’d just said into terms she could understand.
“But I’m not going to ever see you again. The boys’ll find you a dump up in Yonkers, as close to New York City as they can. So close you can see the Bronx line. So close you can smell it and taste it and whatever else you want to do to it. But not cross it.”
She didn’t get it.
“They’ll have standing orders that the first time you so much as set a toe in the City of New York, your daughter loses a mother.”
Now she got it. Crying, real tears, not croc drops.
And All the Saints Page 18
