“In fact, as a youth in Brooklyn, I played a little myself. Still got a pretty good swing.” Nervous laughter, big smile. “Or so they tell me. You should hear them cheer me at Cubs games.” He took a beat, then boomed: “And booin’ that bum Hoover!” The mugs loved that, let me tell you.
Now—and this is the part you won’t believe—Capone reaches under his chair and I swear I don’t know how it got there but he comes up with a Louisville Slugger, the real McCoy, moves to the front of the room and takes a couple of practice swipes. I could see the smiles frozen on Lansky’s and Torrio’s faces like old Happy Jack’s puss. I also saw a couple of the honored guests reach inside their monkey-suit jackets and then remember that all heaters had been checked at the door, for insurance purposes.
Even though most of us weren’t American citizens, and I include myself in that group, since I was still holding a British passport, we were patriotic. Behind the dais there was a big American flag, all forty-eight stars on it, plus framed pictures of the Jersey Governor, whoever he was, and President Hoover.
“First I heard of this meetin’,” said Capone, “I didn’t like it one bit. Thought it might be a con job, a setup.” Whoosh went the bat. “Or, worse, a hit.”
Pow! Capone got good wood on the Jersey Governor, knocking the picture from its holder and sending it flyin’. “Now,” says Capone, barely breaking a sweat, “I know it’s a hit. In fact…”
“Mr. Brown” wandered back over to the head table. I think I remember seeing Johnny T. flinch a little, but Lansky he never budged, never even blinked. I guess he figured if he was going to get it, he was going to get it and he might as well check out with his dignity intact, if not his head.
“In fact,” Capone said with that big scarfaced grin, “it’s a home run!”
I never saw anybody swing a bat harder, and that included the Bambino. Capone hit the portrait of Hoover so hard it flew into a million shards of shite, which is what all politicians deserve, in my opinion.
Al dropped the bat and I swear you never saw such a look of relief on the mugs of grown men. He held out both empty hands to his audience, like an opera singer soaking up applause, and boy oh boy did everybody cheer, like their lives depended on it.
I was surprised when the next mug to rise was none other than Big Frenchy, who besides Nucky was just about the only fella in the joint bigger than the Big Fella. George wasn’t as crazy as Al, but his size commanded respect, if his elocution didn’t.
“Um…,” he began looking over at me. “Say, Owen, have you got your watch with you?”
I had no idea what he was trying to say, but I held up my wrist to show I was wearing it. It was a fine little piece that had fallen off a truck a couple of years back, and it kept good time too.
“Mind if I take a look at it?”
I looked around the room, but everybody seemed to be in on the racket excepting for me. Maybe I don’t have much of a sense of humor, but the last time I looked around a room at unsmiling gangster faces, I got it but good.
I slipped the timepiece off my wrist and handed it to the man next to me, Boo Boo Hoff, who passed it along to Mangano and so on up to the dais and Frenchy.
“Nice,” said George, dropping it on the floor and crushing it under his weight.
There wasn’t a sound in the room then.
“Aw, gee, Owen, I’m sorry about breaking your watch,” said Frenchy.
He crammed one huge mitt into his pocket, fished something out and held it up for all to see.
It was a real beaut, a Swiss baby with a solid gold wristband. Even at a distance I could see my name spelled out with diamonds across the band.
“Here’s another one for you.” I could feel the color coming back into my face. “From me and the boys, for makin’ all this possible. You’re a real pal.”
I rose as steady as I could, the watch making its way down the ranks toward me. I pushed it over my wrist and thrust my left arm into the air.
I had never had so much applause in my life.
We broke up into smaller groups then, carving up the territory of the United States of America for ourselves. One thing we all agreed on was that neither Maranzano nor Masseria was going to have any part in our plan, nor was Legs Diamond. Charlie Lucky passed the death sentence on all three of them, even though at that time he was technically still working for Joe the Boss. I liked Joe; he didn’t have much class—he rivaled the Thumb in the amount of chow he could slop on his shirtfront—but he was an okay greaseball in my book. Still, if Charlie Lucky said he had to go, then he had to go.
General Motors or U.S. Steel couldn’ta done a better job than we did in splitting up territories. All the big East Coast bosses got theirs, Boston, Philly, Jersey. New York was big enough for everybody, and so Charlie and Meyer took the East Side, Lepke took Brooklyn, I took the West Side, the Dutchman got uptown and the Bronx and we all took pieces of Staten Island. Dalitz had Cleveland and a chunk of the Midwest, while the Big Fella retained Chicago, with the proviso that he finish off Joey Aiello the way he did the Terrible Gennas—Mike the Devil, Bloody Angelo, Tony the Gentleman and the rest of them—which he did the next year. California was declared an open state.
There was one other caveat for Big Al: thanks to the Massacre, the heat was on, even though he was disportin’ himself at his estate on Palm Island at the time. Everybody felt—okay, Lansky felt—that Capone would be doing us all a favor if he gave himself up on something piddling like a gun charge and do a year at the Eastern States Federal Penitentiary in Philly, to which he agreed. It was a good example for all of us, and especially for me.
So the conference, which began so badly, ended up pretty well. We had established the Combination, or the Syndicate, or the Outfit, or the Commission, whatever you want to call it. At the final banquet Al and Nucky even embraced each other, like they was brothers, and then everybody went home.
Speaking of brothers, did you know one of Capone’s brothers was a lawman? We didn’t either, but since he never bothered any of us, it didn’t matter. Just shows to go you, though, that sometimes you can’t even trust a member of your own family.
Chapter Forty-Nine
I got home around noon and the first thing I did was go visit the old lady. All them mugs had got me to thinkin’ about the finer things in life, of which women were most definitely included. And after disportin’ myself with Mary Frances, I was feeling the need for a less profane form of female contact.
“Hiya, Ma,” I said, blithe as all get-out. I threw my hat on the table and headed straight for one of the easy chairs. A picture of my Father stood on a table beside it. “Hiya, Pop,” I said to the old photograph.
The view out the window was spectacular. She and my sister could see all the way across town, all the way to the East River. “Long way from Ireland, huh, Ma?”
Atlantic City had got me all jaunty this particular afternoon, but Ma more than counterbalanced me. Usually she was quiet, the more so as she got older, but this afternoon she was mousier than usual. Folks from the west of Ireland usually don’t have a lot to say under the most garrulous of circumstances and these weren’t them.
“Maybe not so far as you might think.”
I had no idea what she meant by that, but in my long experience with Ma, either she’d explain herself or she wouldn’t and there wasn’t much I could do about it except wait.
I swept my arm toward the picture window. “You’re telling me you’d have all this if you’da stayed back home?” I felt like making an exception to my abstinence and pouring myself a celebratory drink—whiskey and soda were always on the sideboard, in crystal decanters, at my behest—but I refrained. She didn’t.
One thing I had to give Ma was that she could always hold her liquor. Years of practice, I guess. “Maybe not all this,” she said, and I started to nod. It’s always nice for a boy to finally put one over on his Ma. But she wasn’t finished.
“Maybe not this fancy furniture. Maybe not this big flat and this fi
ne view, although what the use of that is I’m sure I can’t tell ya. Maybe not this money you give me either, cash money it is too. But there’s plenty of things I would have back in Ireland.”
I walked face-first into it like a common palooka into a roundhouse right. “For instance?”
She sat down, hard, in the other chair, and I could see she was beginning to look and feel her age. “I’d still have an eldest son already defeated by life, who consorted wit’ bad companions, couldn’t hold a job and barely keep himself out of jail.”
She had me there, but she was just warming to her subject.
“I’d still have an unmarried daughter, searchin’ for a man who could stay sober past noon and who wouldn’t beat her when he finally came home, smellin’ of liquor and lipstick.”
Another shot to the chin. “High time to work on that.” I still found it hard to think of my sister as a woman.
She gave me a quick, darting look that sent a shiver through my heart. “Maybe it’s after high time you did.”
I stood toe-to-toe with her and got ready to take her knockout punch. “What else would you still have?”
She took a deep, exhausted breath. “I’d still have a rebel son who thought he was smarter than everybody else and maybe he was, until one day he found out the hard way he wasn’t. A son who’d shamed me by his actions, who disgraced the family name. And I’d still be sittin’ home, no matter how humble, waiting for the day they brought him home to me, wrapped in a sheet, suitable for buryin’.”
I tried to put up my dukes, but I was already out on my feet.
“There is one other thing I’d still have.”
“What?”
“I’d still have my husband.”
Down I went, face first onto the slippery canvas. Which is where I was when the door opened and my sister came into the room.
“Hiya, sis,” I mustered.
She didn’t seem glad to see me; in fact, she was surprised, like I’d caught her at something she shouldn’t oughta do. I would have figured something was amiss right then and there, except that something else was even more amiss.
May was still wearing evening clothes, party clothes, her cheeks were red and flushed, her breathing heavy, and there was a big welt across her bare shoulders.
Every fight I ever saw, even the ones I fixed, a man only had but one single opponent, and when he went down, there was a ref to step in quick and prevent further clobbering, but this bout was different.
May and I just looked at each other for a moment, and if two minutes ago I’d realized that I’d never really known my Ma, then you can imagine my mystification when May double-teamed me and threw the kayo.
“I’m going ta bed now,” she said, trying to sweep by me, or step right over me.
I was on her in a flash, grabbing her by her naked shoulders and shaking her, trying to shake some sense into her, some sobriety, some fear maybe, I didn’t know what. “Where the hell have you been?” I shouted.
“Owen…,” said my mother.
“Shut up, Ma! Where you been?”
May pulled away from me and did something she’d never done before. I was ready for a slap, but instead she just laughed in my face.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, Mr. Big Brother? Mr. Big Shot! Tough guy who can push little girls around and make them dance. Well, I got news for you, buster—”
“May,” I said, trying to calm her down. “Come on. We’re a team—remember?”
That just got her even more agitated. “Some team. You never let me do anything. You never let me go anywhere. Well, I’m not a child anymore, I’m a grown woman. Look at me.”
“Come on,” I said, trying to calm her. “You’re still my kid sis—”
She ripped open her dress and right through her slip, enough to expose both her breasts. I turned away, but she grabbed me by the ear.
“Look at me. Look at me! This is what men want to see. This is what you don’t want them to see. This is what I’d like them to see. Because I’d like to live—not die a shriveled-up old maid.”
I reached for her, trying to cover her up. “May, you’re—”
She pulled away. “So go ahead and look. Because this is what you want to see too.”
I couldn’t listen to talk like that, not from my own sister. I reached for her.
“Don’t touch me. If I’m going to be touched, it’s going to be by a real man. A real tough guy, who loves me and appreciates me for my brains as well as my body.”
Now I got it. “Who is he?” I said, my blood turning to ice water. I walked very purposefully over to the phone. “Give me his name and I’ll have a couple of the boys take care of him right now.” I gave the operator the name of the Cotton Club and asked her to place the call.
May ripped the phone out of my hands. “I’ll never tell you. Never. You know why? Because he’s married. Married, just like you, with all your mistresses and girlfriends and lovers. Married to a woman he doesn’t love, because he loves me. And I love him.”
May stood there, her bosom heaving. I would have gone to her and comforted her, except that first I had to take care of this thing with my sister, the sister I had loved since the day she was born, the girl I had protected on the ship and raised on the streets, the girl in whom I had confided all my hopes and plans. May.
“You give me his name, and this is all over in an hour,” I said very softly. But she just stood there, looking at me with a look of utter hatred on her face, and I could hardly believe I was staring at my baby sister.
Our mother came up behind her and draped an Irish shawl around her shoulders, restoring May’s modesty. “I’ll never tell you,” she spat. Then she rushed to her room and tried to slam the door.
I yanked her out of the doorway and smacked her around pretty good. I had to hit her a bunch of times before she spit out the name. I hated to bloody my sister’s face, of all people, but what choice did I have? You’d have done the same thing.
Finally I heard her whisper, “It’s Jack. Jack Diamond.”
I dropped her onto the floor and spoke to my Mother. “Keep her in there. Don’t let her out and I don’t care how she wheedles. You need food, I’ll send it over. She needs a doctor, one’ll be here in five minutes he knows what’s good for him.”
I grabbed my hat. “Everything’s gonna be all right, Ma,” I promised. “Just like old times.”
Chapter Fifty
The first bullets chinked my armored Duesenberg just past Columbus Circle. The shooters picked up my trail as I was coming up Eighth, and slipped in behind me real smooth with the merging traffic. I wasn’t looking for them, but I noticed them soon enough: soon as we cleared the circle, the tommies opened up. This is what I got for being mad and being alone.
Lead kicked up my steel-reinforced boot and ticked off the back window’s bulletproof glass, but bulletproof or no bulletproof, I knew that I was in trouble. It was still almost a hundred blocks to the safety of the Cotton Club, where Frenchy was. We tore up Central Park West, scattering schoolchildren and young mothers as we went.
My Doozy could really run, but even a racing car can only run so fast on Central Park West, so I cut into the park, hoping to open up a lead. The tail car, a big Packard, was almost as fast, and kept up pretty good, blasting away as it came.
I couldn’t believe this was happening, right after Atlantic City. I was trying to drive and figure out who would be dumb enough to try to hit me in broad daylight I didn’t think any of the boys with which I’d just broke bread would welsh so quickly, not even the Dutchman at his craziest, which meant that it must be somebody who wasn’t there, and that pretty much narrowed it down as far as I was concerned, if I lived that long.
I got one of my pistols out of my shoulder holsters, but there was no sense firing until I had a target. The twists and turns of the park drive meant I wasn’t able to put much distance between me and them, and so I decided the only way I was gonna shake ’em was to kill ’em.
We were u
p high, nearing 110th. My first thought had been to lose them in the park, shoot right out back onto Eighth and outrun them from there, but this plan was getting me nowhere fast, so when I hit the roundabout I took a hard right on 110th and then a left on Lenox, rolling down the passenger’s side window as I sped along. The thing about Lenox is it’s a nice broad boulevard, with plenty of room to maneuver, which I proceeded to do.
We crossed 116th going about eighty miles per hour and just when they thought I was going to floor it, I hit the brakes hard.
That Duesenberg didn’t even squeal as she slowed. Instead it was like the Doozy had stopped cold and the Packard all of a sudden caught up. I could see the surprised look on the driver’s side as we suddenly came starboard to port and I didn’t even have time to think if I recognized him when I shot out his left eye. I have a dim recollection of the bullet crashing out the back of his skull and splatting the window opposite, which distracted the triggerman beside him just enough that, when the dead man slumped over the wheel, I was able to take him out too.
Two shots, two kills; I said a silent prayer for Monk Eastman as the Packard started to swerve out of control. The backseat tommy johnnies got off a few desperate last rounds, then one of them dropped his cannon and leaned over the front seat, scrambling to regain control of the car. I fired at him and must’ve got him in the left shoulder because he flipped over on his side and then the Packard spun out completely, clipped a parked Chevrolet, flipped over twice, careered over the sidewalk and exploded into a storefront, mighta been one of those storefront Jesus joints the Negroes like so much.
And All the Saints Page 31
