And All the Saints

by Michael Walsh

  “No more dances, no more parties. You’ll devote the rest of your life to Margaret, seein’ that she’s raised proper, Catholic, and not a whore like you. I don’t care how much it costs. You’ll put her in the best schools, buy her the best clothes, take her to the best places. Just one thing is off-limits to her.”

  “What is it?”

  “This.” I managed to sweep one feeble arm. “My world. My life. This is no world and no life for my daughter and it’s not for you anymore either. She deserves better. You don’t. That’s why you both get the same sentence.”

  “Ain’t you ever gonna see us no more?”

  My head sank back weakly on the pillow. “Get out.”

  I knew she’d make a scene and sure enough if she didn’t. She threw herself on the bed and kicked up such a fuss that Mary Frances was on her like a shot, heavin’ her to her feet. Loretta was still caterwaulin’, so M.F. hauled off and belted her a good one across the chops, a smack so loud it startled the little girl, who let out a tiny fuss that I kissed away as hard as I could, knowing it was probably the last time I’d have the chance. “Get her out of here,” I said.

  Mary Frances grabbed Loretta by the arm and jerked her upright. “I tell ya I didn’t know!” Loretta screamed as May walked in.

  The look my sister gave me at that moment was something I’ll never forget: contempt and fear and respect and love, all rolled into one, and it would take me years to sort them all out.

  “We found him,” she said. “Holed up in a West 40s whorehouse with some of his boys. Around the corner from Nash’s Cafe. They’re in there drinking every night.”

  I was so proud of her I coulda kissed her. “How?”

  She gave the wickedest gleam you ever seen a Catholic girl give. “Freda told me. The old lovey-dovey hokum works every time.”

  I flickered my eyes in Mary Frances’s direction and she got the message. Out the door went Loretta. I held on to my daughter for a few moments more as I spoke to May.

  “What would I do without you?”

  “That’s what I been tellin’ you for years.”

  We looked at each other in a new way. May approached my bedside and leaned down toward me.

  “Just you and me, huh?” I asked.

  “That’s the way it’s always been,” she replied. “You’ve just been too dumb to figure it out. Maybe you’re finally starting to.”

  I squeezed my daughter tight one last time and handed her over to my sister. “Give her back to her mother.”

  I was asleep before they left the room. For the first time since I was shot, I had no dreams.

  Chapter Thirty

  By the end of the third week I could more or less get to my feet, except when I was on my back with Mary Frances. Biedler and McArdle shadowed my doorway, invisible but omnipresent. The only stranger they let through came near the end of my stay. Tanner Smith, my spy in the Dusters. I trusted Tanner but, just in case, both Art and Johnny were there with me.

  “Info’s jake. They’ll be at Nash’s tomorrow night.”

  “How many guns he got?”

  “Five or six. By the time you get there they’ll be too baptized to care. And if they do, they won’t care for long.”

  All in all, things were working out just fine. “This is it, boys,” I said. “One last move and then—there’s no more Gophers, no more Dusters, no more Marginals, no more Parlor Mob or O’Briens. There’s just one big West Side gang, and we’re goin’ to be runnin’ it. This ain’t gonna be no nickel outfit no more, breakin’ into railroad cars and rollin’ lushes. We can’t just keep stuffin’ green under our mattresses and hopin’ it’ll grow. We gotta get professional.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up,” said Tanner. “Meet Frenchy.”

  He signaled to Art, who signaled to Johnny, and at that moment I thought maybe I’d been double-crossed by my own boys, a feeling that got graver when I saw what was cornin’ through the door: one of the biggest monkeys I ever seen, six foot six if he was an inch, and plenty of muscle to hold it all up. He was wearing a brown suit with brown shoes and was holding a blue fedora in his massive right paw and I swear to God he was sportin’ yellow socks as well. If he was going to join my gang, the first thing he’d have to do is learn how to dress.

  “Please ta meet ya, Mr. Madden,” said the giant, “I’m George DeMange.”

  Something about his face looked familiar, the way his forehead pressing down and his jawbone pressing up were fightin’ over the little territory between ’em. Then it hit me: he looked a little like Monk, if Monk had been halfway decent-looking and a hell of a lot bigger.

  “His middle name is Jean. Everybody calls him Frenchy,” said Tanner. “Or Big Frenchy.”

  “Actually I prefer ‘George,’ ” said the giant.

  “He don’t look it, but he’s a whiz with numbers. Cards too. Can tell ya the odds on just about anything.”

  I looked him up and down, mostly up. “Prove it. If you take two hundred fifty-four dollars and product it by five, subtract the age of my sainted mother and divide by sixty-four dollars and fifty-five cents and the result is eighteen dollars and ninety-eight cents, then how old’s my ma?”

  Without hesitation he said, “Forty-five.”

  “And she don’t look a day over it,” said Tanner.

  “You made a mistake,” says Frenchy. “The result is eighteen dollars and ninety-seven point seven five three six seven nine three one eight cents. You shouldn’t cheat yourself, whether to the plus or minus. It’s bad for business. You do that too often, the odds turn against you.”

  “Can you keep your mouth shut?” I asked Frenchy.

  “I’m good at numbers, not extemporizing.”

  “Where you from?”

  “The Village. Folks from Canada, I think. Maybe France.”

  “Drinkin’ man?”

  “No more than social.”

  “Handy with a gat?”

  “Prefer a shotgun. Better odds.” He folded his massive paws in his lap. “Frankly I don’t much like killin’, ’cept when I’m playing poker and even then I just mean symbolical.” He shot a sheepish look around the room. “Hope that ain’t a problem.”

  “We got plenty of boys who can handle themselves in a dustup,” I told him. “You mind the business and everything’ll work out fine.”

  A look of relief wafted across the big mug’s face. “Gee, thanks, Mr. Madden.”

  “Owney.”

  That brought back a cloud or two. He shuffled his bulk gracefully. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Madden—I’d prefer to keep things a little more formal. Business, you know.”

  “Then call me Owen. How’s that?”

  He brightened and nodded and forever after he was “George” to me and I was “Owen” to him. We shook on it and I signaled the boys.

  “Art, pick me up here, back entrance, tomorrow night at nine.”

  “Why don’t you come with us now, boss?”

  I shook my head. “Somebody I got to say good-bye to first.”

  They cleared out and I rang the bell for the nurse.

  Mary Frances came in, with that look in her eyes that women get when they know you’re going to say good-bye without having the guts to actually say it.

  “Thought you might need these.” She wasn’t crying, not even close.

  In her arms she carried all my weapons of war, wrapped neatly in a set of hospital towels. Everything I needed to deal with Mr. Doyle was present and accounted for, including a whole extra box of ammo. I coulda kissed her, and I did. “From your sister, May,” she said.

  “You’re a real pal, Mary Frances Blackwell.”

  She fought back tears hard. “I had a brother once.” She wouldn’t look at me, but instead snapped open Monk’s .38 and started shoveling shells into it, like she’d been doing it all her life, the tears running down her pretty face in earnest now. “Name of Frank Blackwell. Come over on the boat with me, started runnin’ with the Parlors. One night he made the mistake o
f crashing a Duster dive. Something about a girl. They took him out feet first, lacking his head. I identified him in the morgue by the birthmark on his leg.”

  “What can I do?”

  She gave the cylinder a vicious spin, checked all the chambers, snapped it shut and handed it over.

  “Kill ’em all,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The battle of Nash’s Cafe is legend now, but I’m here to tell you exactly how it was. Rivington and Allen was bigger, and some of the shoot-outs down at Nigger Mike’s in the old Monk Eastman days may have had more rounds expended, but I don’t think there was a one up to this time that could rival Nash’s for expert gunplay. It was like a prizefight, with two of the best shots in the city going toe-to-toe for the first time.

  Mary Frances snuck me down a service lift so that the hospital records would alibi me, and I mowed her molly for luck as I got into the backseat and pulled my overcoat over my head. My stitched-up belly hurt like hell, but as I thought about what we were going to do, the pain began to pass, and before we even got to Eighth and 41st Street I was feeling my old self. We glided by the 22nd Precinct station house just to make sure nothin’ was up, and it wasn’t.

  Johnny sat next to me in the back. Art rode up front. I was surprised to see who was drivin’: little Georgie Ranft. Him I hadn’t seen for a while, not since he started wearing fancy pants and dancing for a living, if you can call it that.

  “Hiya, boss,” he said. He was even wearing a chauffeur’s cap, what an actor that kid was.

  “Might be some lead,” I said.

  “This I gotta see,” he replied, and stepped on it.

  “Wrong. You stay in the car while we’re taking care of business, or else you get out right now and if you won’t get out, I’ll have Art tap you with a sap and put you to sleep.”

  Georgie looked both mad and relieved. “Aw, you never let me have any fun.”

  “Safer that way.”

  It was half snowing, half raining that night in late November as we pulled up. This was all to the good, because it meant we could pull our collars up and our hats down and nobody would look twice at us. We came through the front door one at a time, first Art, men Johnny, and me bringing up the rear.

  I knew going in we were outnumbered, me and Hoppo and Art, but we had two advantages, the first of surprise and the second of marksmanship. True, I was in somewhat weakened condition, but I wasn’t exactly planning on hand-to-hand combat, just a few well-placed slugs finding their marks, and then back to the hospital, where nurse Blackwell would vouch for my whereabouts.

  I scanned the joint, looking not so much for trouble, which is what we were bringing, but for trouble spots, bottlenecks, unexpected combatants, interfering civilians and the like. There was a clump of mugs down one end of the bar, one of which in particular stood out.

  He wasn’t much more than a kid, fifteen or sixteen, light on his pins, like a dancer; like I was as a kid, or Georgie was now. Smooth. He was skinny, also like me, but not as good-looking; well dressed, like me, but not as well dressed. Taller than me. I hated him on sight.

  I took a place at an unobtrusive lounge table, my hat still low over my left eye, and this time when the waitress came over, I waved her away.

  “Waitin’, ” I barked.

  I featured Freda, sitting cross-legged on a barstool, her skirts hiked up high, her blouse cut low, lookin’ like far more than your ordinary occasion of mortal sin.

  Next twist I saw was Margaret, chattin’ up a coupla fellas at the bar, laughin’ and tossin’ her head back the way she did. Maybe it was just my mood, or maybe it was my recent experiences with Mary Frances, but she didn’t look so hot to me anymore. The lads, though, I did have eyes for, since they was the two punks who fed me some lead at the Arbor. I nodded to Art, which meant these two bozos was marked for death.

  No Patsy.

  The thought flickered across my mind that I was bein’ set up again. One day you can trust a bloke and the next day you can’t. Alliances shift; power changes hands; greed or lust will all of a sudden get ahold of your best mate and ruin him for life. Trust is the only thing we got in our racket, and once that’s gone, well, sir, you are in real trouble. So you spend half your time making friends and the other half worrying about them and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.

  These musings was flittin’ through my brain, so that I almost missed Little Patsy’s big entrance. He’d been in the loo and was still fastening his trousers as he lurched toward the bar, buttonin’ with one hand and gesturing to the barman with his other. I was glad I wasn’t going to have to shoot him in the shitehouse. Freda flashed him a lamp, threw her arms around his neck and started in to spooning as he reached for his beer.

  I rose and moved through the crowd, keeping my face shielded by my hat as much as possible. Ordinarily a gentleman such as myself would remove his hat in the presence of ladies, but the females in Nash’s by and large were no ladies, so, protocol be dammed, I kept my hat on and tacked in close to the bar.

  “…all busted up about it,” Freda was saying.

  Patsy took a big draught. “Don’t know what you saw in that runt anyway,” by which I took he meant me.

  “Me neither,” agreed Freda. Dames always make the best double-crossers; comes natural to ’em, you ask me. “Just another punk.” She ran her hand up his free arm. “Not like you, Pats.”

  Fats slid his free hand down in the direction of Freda’s arse, which was territory I claimed as my own. “Might as well just stay in the hospital, he’ll have a quicker trip to the morgue.” Patsy seemed very proud of himself. “I got boys all over the West Side, waitin’ for him to show.” He slammed his beer mug down on the bar and called for another as I moved in closer.

  Out of the corner of my left eye I could see Johnny, and out of the corner of the other Art hove into view. Our strategy was to form a triangle; no one in our line could stand that kind of crossfire, and since the bar was pretty close to the entrance, we aimed to be out the door and into the car before any lurkers could get us in their sights.

  I was armed pretty much as I’d been that night at the Arbor, a .45 in each holster and my .38 in my pants for good luck. The reason for this was simple. In a serious gunfight you could lay down an awful lot of firepower with the twin .45s and if one of them jammed, why you always had your handy revolver to finish off anybody still standing.

  Most gangsters back then was pretty much as dumb as dirt, but wouldn’t you know it, the kid spots me as I approach. One more mug in a hat pushin’ toward a bar shouldn’t be the cause of no notice, but there you go. He had that sense.

  I’m slipping a hand into my coat just as the kid taps Fats on the shoulder and directs his attention my way. Fats, Little Patsy—his eyes met mine and I knew I was made.

  Fats shoves Freda hard and she goes flying off the barstool, which is what saved her life.

  Her drink goes flying, spilling all over the mug next to her and shattering on the barroom floor.

  Pow, it splinters into a thousand pieces sounding like a shot, and every mug in the joint reaches for his heater before the last shards of glass have finished spinning.

  My first slug caught Fats in the lung, drilling a hole through his shirtfront and coming right out his back, which also dropped the yegg standing right behind him. Two more shots from the .45 hit him in the throat and the lower jaw.

  Even hit this bad he didn’t fall right away, but just stood there looking at me, stupid as ever for a blink or two, then hit the deck as dead as McKinley.

  This I remembered later, because at that point I was already blasting the two punks who had popped me. I clipped ’em both, one with each hand, knocking them off their barstools into kingdom come glory hallelujah. Hoppo and Art had opened up as well, and all I can say is that I’d trained them good, because Dusters went down like they was shot, which of course they were.

  By now there was screaming and general carrying-on among the womenfolk. I stood
there for a moment over the body of the late Fats, our long score finally settled in my favor. I looked up and saw Freda’s eyes all alight and Margaret’s echoing her sentiments and I felt a brief tingle through my poor penetrated loins because nothing gets a dame hot and bothered like blood.

  A hand on my shoulder brought me around. “Let’s beat it,” says Art.

  On the way out I caught the bartender’s eye and give him a look that said forget about the cops till we’re gone and forget you ever saw anything, in fact forget your own name for a while, and I thought by return flicker that he got the message.

  We were out the door now, Art and Johnny sprinting for the car. Georgie had the wagon all fired up and in gear, and I swear it was buckin’ like a prize racehorse. But I’d only taken a few steps when I noticed I was bleeding pretty bad. The Dusters had got off nary a shot, but then again they sort of had, because my stitches had popped and was starting to leak pretty good. I felt gravity having its way with me, and the closer I got to the car the farther away it was, till there was at least a mile of wet pavement for me to cross, and I could hear the sirens already starting up in the distance, which reminded me I ought to turn back and shoot the bartender for disobedience, but Nash’s doors were just as far away as Georgie’s car, which I wish I could tell you was a Nash, but Nashes didn’t come along till a couple a years later.

  It was pouring down rain now, and pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to make it. Another half-step and then something else popped, and then another something else, and now I was in real agony and I could see the cop cars tearing up Broadway and so I waved for Georgie to scram.

  Johnny was half out of the car, half on the running board, reaching toward me, when the first bullet creased my hat; I could hear it splinter the doorjamb behind me.

  My first thought was those coppers were some shots, until another slug whizzed past my ear. It woulda hit me pretty much square if I hadn’t already been falling, which is what saved my life on this occasion, because the shooter musta figured he’d got me a good one.