“What do you mean backfires?” I asked.
“We sure as hell don’t want them pokin’ around the laundry, now do we, so we got to play along, which I did, more or less on my own toot, which means unfortunately your parole’s been revoked and the long and the short of it is that you’ll be arrested in the morning. For tax evasion, like I said.”
I guess it says something that the first person I called, as soon as I hung up on Joe, was my sister. And if I rousted her out of bed with her husband, that was only fair.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
“Marrin residence.” A man’s voice. Sleepy, not tired.
“Lemme speak to my sister.”
There was a pause, a hesitation. “She ain’t here right now, Mr. Madden.”
“What do you mean she ain’t there right now? Where the hell is she?”
“Out. She said she was going out.”
“You let your wife go out this time of night and you don’t do nothing about it? What kind of a man are you?”
I could feel his embarrassment over the wire. “You know May, Owney,” said Jack, getting familiar with me. “She’s got a mind of her own—”
“You were supposed to fix that,” I reminded him. “That’s what I pay you the ten grand a month for, remember?”
“I know, but…”
“Find her and have her call me.”
“Well…I’ll try, but—”
“Don’t try, Jack. Just do it.”
I slammed the receiver back in its cradle. I was still sitting there, trying to decide what to do next, when my doorbell rang. I was mighty popular this evening.
I slipped my .38 into my dressing gown pocket and walked slowly to the door. Off to one side I put my ear to it but didn’t hear anything. Then I peeked through the peephole, and that’s when I saw it was her.
I flung open the door so fast it almost come off its hinges. And then she was in my arms, hugging me the way she used to, before all this happened.
We held each other for a long time, and I realized how much I’d missed her. All because I was mad.
“Take off your coat and stay awhile,” I finally managed to say.
She gave me one of her May looks. “He’s a good man, Jack.”
“That’s why I picked him.”
“I’m only sorry I lied to you.”
“What do you mean?”
She sat down and I poured us both a drink. Even though I didn’t drink no more, sometimes I had to.
“What I said about Jack.”
Now I was confused. She could always read my mind.
“About Jack Diamond. Sure, he was pestering me there for a while. But I never had anything to do with him.”
I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear that. The thought of my baby sister sullied by that bum was almost more than I could bear. Even if he didn’t deserve to die, he did, just because of what he made me go through.
“I was just trying to make you mad.”
“You sure succeeded.”
“I know. I’m sorry. That’s why I’m here. To say I’m sorry. To the only man I ever felt I had to say it to.”
I looked at her, and at that moment I knew that it was her I loved, it was her that I’d always loved, and that it was her I’d ever love. Not in a dirty way, mind you, but in a pure Christian sort of way, a selfless sort of way, the way our Da had wanted us to love each other, the way I’d promised him I’d love her and here I was, doing just that.
My troubles with the tax man and the parole board didn’t seem quite so bad or so important now. I’d beat ’em, especially now that I had her back.
“I’m going to be arrested in the morning,” I told her. She looked so beautiful at that moment, the fur coat I’d bought her tossed over her nightgown, the pearls on her neck, the rock on her finger. My rock.
“What are you talking about?”
“Just heard from Shalleck. Joe’ll have me out in twenty-four hours.”
“What if he doesn’t? Repeal’s coming. These mugs don’t need us no more.”
“He will.”
“Yeah, but what if he doesn’t?”
I smiled at her, and the years fell away and it was like the old times all over again, just the two of us, up on the roof, holding hands, planning, dreaming…
“I got it all figured out. Besides, it might not be the worst thing that could happen.”
“I read about Vincent Coll.”
The image of the Mick, ventilated as all get-out, flashed before our eyes.
There’s a look I’d seen often in dead men’s eyes. I’d seen it in Luigi’s and Willie’s and even Little Patsy’s. It is not a look of anger or reproach, or any of them things you civilians might think, because after all you’ve never been there, and so you’ve only got your imaginations and the picture shows to guide you. But the real look that dead men get in their eyes just before they’re dead, the look that the cops spot in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, is this:
Surprise.
“I wouldn’t cry for him, I was you. He had it coming, if anybody ever did.”
“We all have it coming.” She fumbled for a cigarette in her pocket and then realized she didn’t have any street clothes on. “Ain’t that what you always say?”
I fished a fag out of my pocket and handed her my silver lighter.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“What are we going to do, you mean?” She’d been right all along. The look on her face, I can still see it to this day, sitting right here in my study at the big house in Bubbles. “I’ve been such a chump, May. I never saw the play.”
She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming, her lips wet. That was the look I loved. “What play?” she breathed.
“The play of you and me together. Nobody knows me better than you. Not Frenchy, not Dutch, nobody. You’re like the other half of me. All this time I was pushing you away, when I should have been drawing you close. Because when you get right down to it, who can you trust? Nobody, except your blood.”
I thought she was going to laugh from joy. “What do you want me to do?”
I phoned her husband and told him to relax and go back to sleep, that she was here with me. We talked late into the night, until we stopped talking.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The next morning—it was February 13, 1932—I came out the front door of my apartment to find a big mick dick named Thomas Horan standing there, waiting for me.
“Owen Vincent Madden?” he said. May was freshening up in the biffy.
“Who wants to know?”
“You’re under arrest for violation of parole and are hereby taken into custody pending a hearing on a writ of habeas corpus two days hence.” He must’ve practiced his little speech in front of the mirror, because he didn’t look like he was smart enough to make it up on his own, even if you spotted him a sentence or two. “Will you come peacefully?”
“You think I’m going to walk all the way to the Tombs?” I asked him, holding out my hands for the cuffs. I knew the drill.
“Follow me, please.”
We rode down the lift in silence. I nodded to the doormen as we exited.
The flashbulbs started popping the minute we hit the street. There musta been a dozen photographers there, plus who knows how many reporters, all crowding around to get a good look at the famous desperado, myself, caught up in the long arms of the Law. Normally I hated photographs, but they had me dead to rights, so I figured I might as well give ’em a show. You’ve probably seen the pictures. They were in all the papers.
I looked swell. I was wearing a dark three-piece double-breasted suit with a pocket square, light green tie, my best pearl-gray fedora and a scarf. Horan was dressed like a detective. He resembled an icebox somebody had outfitted in a suit.
A crowd trailed us onto 34th Street. Faceless, for the most part, but one kid caught my eye, a kid from the neighborhood, a kid just like me in them dear departed days when I was a kid, Jewish by the looks of him, in s
uit and cloth cap, a look of adoration on his face, and pride, and fear, just the way it should be. I thought of me way back when, and of Monk and all those who had come before us, and maybe all those who would come after us too.
We got into Horan’s car, me and Horan in the backseat. The driver hit the pedal and we were off, heading downtown.
“Sorry about this,” says the bull.
“You’re just doin’ your job.”
Horan was about my age, maybe a little bit older. He sure looked older, but then he didn’t live as well as I did. “I remember you from the old days in the Kitchen.”
I looked him over. “What gang did you run with?” Got it in one.
“Parlor Mob.”
I smiled in recollection. “We smacked you boys around pretty good. What for’d you go straight?” Horan was silent Talk about Regret…“Bet your mother made you. Mine tried that with me, didn’t work, God bless her.”
“You know, I admired you back then, the way you ran things.”
The squad car bounced hard over some old paving stones. “And now here you are, arresting me.”
“Funny how these things work out.”
“I’m hysterical.”
“Well, if you need anything, you know, while you’re in the can, just let me know.”
“Make sure my meals are catered. I hate that college slop.” We shook hands and Horan was as good as his word, which was rare in an Irishman, no matter which side of the pond we was on.
Shalleck was waiting for me as I checked in. Joe was dressed almost as sharp as me, but even flashier, which was a difference between us. “We got a hearing in two days, habeas, the usual jazz.”
“So I heard. What’s the score?”
“I won’t kid ya, we’re behind.”
“What’s the inning?”
“Still early, third or fourth, I dunno, I gotta make a few phones calls, call in some chits, but Jesus it’s hard now, there’s heat on everywhere, what the hell is going on, I can’t even find Hines.”
“Why don’t you ask Judge Seabury?” Right on schedule, another goo-goo commission had come along.
“I hear they’re even after Jimmy Walker now.”
“You heard right.”
“Well, ain’t that a kick in the pants, going after the Night Mayor, after all he done for everybody, for the city, for the state, hell for the U.S. of A., him writing that hit song and all, what was it called, ‘Will You Love Me in November—’ ”
“December—”
“Whatever, ‘as You Do in May.’ Brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it.”
“You always were sentimental, Joe.”
“Maybe so, but in this business there ain’t no room for sentiment, sentiment’s for suckers, and we got our work cut out for us now, I mean, we lose this and you’re back in stir for another twelve years, fer Chrissakes, and all because of a few lines in the statutes, go figure.”
“That’s what I pay you for, so things like that won’t happen. Statutes or no statutes.”
The food arrived at that moment, a nice cutlet with all the trimmings from “21,” a midtown speak I did business with.
“And it’s money well spent too, it really is. How many times you been arrested?”
“Remind me.”
“I’ll be your guest. I’ve been doin’ a little research, on account a we gotta make our case for your being a solid upstandin’ citizen, and here’s what I found out, what I found out was that, datin’ back to way back when, you been arrested a grand total of…hell, I lost count, but it’s more than eighty.”
“Not counting juvvy, how many convictions?”
“One.”
“I rest my case. Who’s the judge?”
“Levy. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“What’d it cost me?”
“Not as much as you’d think.”
Aaron J. Levy was the Democratic majority leader, the guy who got Governor Sulzer impeached, the judge who’d freed my lorries from the feds, Israel’s boon kin. He’d been on my payroll for years.
“He’s a state supreme court judge now, how about that, it pays to make friends, as I always say. So listen I got some ideas how we’re going to handle this, it might get expensive, but hey it’s only money, right?”
“It’s only my money, you mean.”
“Whatever.”
Joe Shalleck was a wizard in that courtroom. He wasn’t afraid of nobody, certainly not Cahill and Brancato, the prosecutors, who were trying to get the writ of habeas dismissed so they could take me directly to the can.
Cahill starts things off by talking about my clothes. “Look at this man,” he orders Levy. “See how he is dressed. This kind of arrogance is typical of his kind, and he should be made to fear and respect the law. The question before this court is simple: are the law enforcement agencies running this country, or are men like Owney Madden?”
Well, I knew the answer to that question, and so did everybody in the courtroom, but most important so did Judge Levy, and his was the only opinion that counted.
Up pops Joe, who points out that I was convicted long before the present parole rules were put into effect and that therefore this was prima facie evidence of ex post facto something or other, and I couldn’t follow the whole show, but Levy did. He sat up there on the bench, fat and gray-haired in his black robes, and from time to time he would nod and smile at Joe, which only encouraged my little shyster to even higher flights of eloquence.
Near the end of his peroration, Joe whipped out a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and made a big production of unfolding it, putting on his reading glasses and reading it aloud. “I have here in my hand a telegram from my client, Mr. Madden, to the parole board,” he began.
I couldn’t recall sending such a telegram, but what did I know.
“In it, he asks only one thing, and I quote: ‘a chance to work, to be let alone and to be a law-abiding citizen.’ Are we going to deny him, a poor immigrant boy, that chance?”
“This court is recessed for lunch,” said Judge Levy, who was always hungry at propitious times.
“How we doing?” I whispered. The courtroom was packed with spectators, onlookers, kibitzers, gawkers, all nattering upon the departure of Hizzoner. There was cops in uniform and cops out of uniform, plus the usual assortment of reporter johnnies, scribblin’ like mad. What distinguished them from bookies I couldn’t tell you.
“I like our chances,” replied Joe, studying a racing form.
The Times reported that I was nervous and ill at ease as we waited for the Judge’s ruling, but that is just plain hogwash or wishful thinking. As soon as the Judge came back I knew it was in the bag.
He wiped a couple of Reuben crumbs off his lips. “After reviewing the evidence, the court declines to dismiss the writs,” he said. “Bail is ordered at ten thousand dollars, pending the court’s evaluation of the written briefs.” And that was that. Now we had time to cut a proper deal. Make that deals. Because right there, at that moment, in that courtroom, I saw a way out for all of us.
As the gavel slammed down, I caught May’s eye and I swear to God she knew exactly what I was thinking. She was always one step ahead of me, was my sister, May. That was just one of the things I loved about her.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Although a tough break for Lucky Lindy, and even worse for his kid, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping was a terrific split for me. Right off the bat, people figured little Charlie was grabbed for dough and that maybe the Outfit was behind it—specifically the Purples from Detroit. I knew the Fleishers and the Bernsteins wouldn’t be mixed up in something as dumb as grabbing the kid of the most famous man in America, and so we put out the word to the Colonel that we would be happy, as patriotic Americans, to help him find who nabbed the baby. Given that the Jersey cops couldn’t find their arse with both hands, it was an offer he gladly accepted.
It was one of life’s little ironies that I found myself working the case alongside Elmer Irey fro
m the Treasury Department. Irey was the selfsame mug threatening me with a tax-evasion rap, and now here we were, with me funneling him whatever information we could find out about the kid. I even sent Joe out to meet the press, to assure the public that all the important gang leaders were doing our bit to find out who’d commit such a heinous crime. Even the Big Fella, doin’ his time on the Rock, volunteered to help out, but the feds turned him down cold.
I took the Doozy down to Hopewell a coupla three times, to meet with Schwarzkopf, the chief investigator. I also took up residence for a few days with the great man his own good self and here’s why. Once word got out that the underworld was actively involved in seeking-information-leading-to, well, let me tell you every poseur on the planet started showing up, pretending to be one of the boys. “Do you know Owney Madden?” the Colonel would inquire of each and every mug what come through his door. “Yes, sir, why of course I do,” they’d to a man reply, upon which I’d emerge from the next room and most of ’em would piss their pants on the spot and the rest would just plain make a run for it.
At one point the Colonel was so desperate that he met with a nut job named Mary Magdalene, one of those phony psychics who always come out of the woodwork in times of trouble, offering to divine the whereabouts of the missing beloved. I had a word with her on Lindy’s behalf, and she didn’t bother him no more. Nor, coincidentally, did the Treasury Department bother me anymore, after Lindbergh had a discreet word or two with them.
As you know, they eventually found the kid stiff, coincidentally nailed a kraut carpenter for the big job and fried him after a fair trial. I have no idea if he done it or not, but it didn’t really matter. The important thing was we all of us looked like the good guys for a change, which we of course were.
Even more coincidentally, Levy found for us again in the matter of the parole violation. That rat Roosevelt showed his true colors just about this time. I never saw anybody follow the papers the way this crook did, calculating every last move, and when he saw that I was up before Judge Levy, what did he do but release the pardon plea I’d wrote him earlier, in which I said I was gainfully employed by the Hydrox Laundry. That was all Cahill and Brancato needed, and they flew it over to the judge saying it was evidence of my deceitful nature or some such nonsense, because after all hadn’t I denied that very thing at some or other court appearance in the dim distant past, let the record show.
And All the Saints Page 35
