Legs

by William Kennedy

  Seeing events from this perspective, I felt and still feel justified in defending Jack. Fogarty took a fall—twelve and a half to fifteen, but served only six because of illness. I feel bad that anyone has to go to prison, but Fogarty was Jack's spiritual brother, not mine, and I am neither Jesus Christ nor any lesser facsimile. I save my clients when I can, but I reserve the right of selective salvation.

  * * *

  Jack took pellets in the right lung, liver, and back, and his left arm was again badly fractured. The pellet in his lung stayed there and seemed to do him little harm. The papers had him near death for three days, but Doc Madison, my own physician, operated on him and said he probably wasn't even close to dying. He beat off an infection, was out of danger in ten days, and out of the hospital in four and a half weeks. One hundred troopers lined the road for forty-seven miles between Albany and Catskill the day he left the hospital for jail, to discourage loyalists from snatching away FDR's prize. New floodlights were installed on the Greene County jail (lit up the world wherever he went, Jack did), and the guard trebled to keep the star boarders inside: Jack, Fogarty, and Oxie, who had gained fifty pounds in the eight months he'd been there. The feds indicted Jack on fourteen charges: coercion, Sullivan Law and Prohibition Law violations, conspiracy etc., and it was two weeks before we could raise the new bail to put him back on the street. It really wasn't the street, but the luxurious Kenmore Hotel in Albany, a suite of rooms protected by inside and downstairs guards. The troopers and the revenue men continued their probing of the mountains. They found Jack's books with records of his plane rentals, his commissioning the building of an oceangoing speedboat. They found the empty dovecotes where he kept his carrier pigeons, his way of beating the phone taps. They found his still on the Biondo farm, and, from the records and notations, they also began turning up stashes of whiskey, wine, and cordials of staggering dimension.

  The neatly kept files and records showed Jack's tie-in with five other mobs: Madden's, Vannie Higgins', Coll's, and two in Jersey; distribution tie-ins throughout eighteen counties in the state; brewery connections in Troy, Fort Edward, Coney Island, Manhattan, Yonkers, and Jack's (formerly Charlie Northrup's) plant at Kingston; plus dozens of storage dumps and way stations all through the Adirondacks and Catskills, from the Canadian border to just west of Times Square.

  The first main haul was evaluated at a mere $l0,000 retail, but they kept hauling and hauling. Remember these booze-on-hand statistics the next time anyone tells you Jack ran a two-bit operation. (Source, federal): 350,000 pints and 300,000 quarts of rye whiskey, worth $4 a pint retail, or about $3.8 million; 200,000 quarts of champagne at $10 a bottle, or $2 million; 100,000 half-kegs of wine worth $2.5 million, plus 80,000 fifths of cordials and miscellany for a grand estimated total of $10 million. Not a bad accumulation for a little street kid from Philly.

  Catskill was looking forward to Jack's trial, which was going to be great for tourism. The first nationwide radio hookup of any trial in American history was planned, and I think somehow they would've sold tickets to it. A hundred businessmen, many of them hotel and boardinghouse operators, paying up to three hundred dollars in seasonal tribute to the emperor, held a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, a meeting remarkable for its anonymity. Fifty newsmen were in town covering every development, but none of the hundred attendees at that meeting were identified.

  What they did was unanimously ratify a proclamation calling on one another not to be afraid to testify against Jack and the boys. Getting tough with the wolf in the cage. There was even talk around town of burning down Jack's house. And finally, what Warren Van Deusen had been trying and not trying to tell me about Jack was that half a hundred people had written FDR letters over the past two months, detailing Jack's depredations. It was that supply of complaints, capped by the Streeter episode, which fired old Franklin to do what he did. That and politics.

  The abandoned getaway car of Jack's would-be killers turned up with a fiat tire on Prospect Avenue in Catskill, behind the courthouse. The Browning repeaters were still in it, along with a Luger, a .38 Smith and Wesson, and two heavy Colt automatics with two-inch barrels, all fully loaded. The car had a phony Manhattan registration in the name of Wolfe, a nice touch, and when perspective was gained, nobody blamed Murray for the big do. Too neat. Too well planned. A Biondo job was Jack's guess.

  My chief contribution to the history of these events was to snatch the circus away from the Catskill greed mob. They squawked that Jack was robbing them again, taking away their chance to make a big tourist dollar. What I did was win us a change of venue on grounds that a fair trial was impossible in Greene County. The judge agreed and FDR didn't fight us. He hopscotched us up to Rensselaer County. With Troy, the county seat, being my old stamping grounds, I felt like Br'er Rabbit being tossed into the briar patch.

  Attorney General Bennett paid homage to Jack at the annual communion breakfast of the Holy Name Society of the Church of St. Rose of Lima in Brooklyn. In celebration of Mother's Day he said that if men of Diamond's type had listened to the guidance of their mothers, they would not be what they were today.

  "One of the greatest examples of mother's care," the attorney general said, "is the result which the lack of it has shown in the life of Legs Diamond. Diamond never had a mother's loving care nor the proper training. Environment has played a large part in making him the notorious character he is today. A mother is the greatest gift a man ever had."

  * * *

  Alice came out of the elevator, walked softly on the rich, blue carpet toward the suite, and saw a form which stopped all her random thought about past trouble and future anguish. The light let her see the hairdo, and the hair was chestnut, not Titian; and the face was hidden under half a veil on the little clawclutch of a maroon hat. But Alice knew Kiki when she saw her, didn't she? Kiki was locking the door to the room next to Alice's. Then she came toward the elevator, seeming not to recognize Alice. Was it her? Alice had seen her in the flesh only once. She was smaller now than her photos made her out to be. And younger. Her face looked big in the papers. And at the police station. She had sat there at the station and let them take her picture. Crossed her legs for them.

  She passed within inches of Alice, explaining herself with the violent fumes of her perfume. It was her. But if it truly was, why didn't she give some form of recognition, some gesture, some look? Alice decided that, finally, Kiki didn't have the courage to say hello. Coward type. Brazen street slut. Values of an alleycat. Rut whore. Was it really her? Why was she here? Would Jack know?

  * * *

  Kiki saw Alice coming as soon as she stepped out of the room, and she immediately turned away to lock the door. She recognized the fat calves under the long skirt with the ragged hem. On the long chance Alice wouldn't recognize her, Kiki chose to ignore her, for she feared Alice would turn her in. Kiki the fugitive. But would Alice run that risk? Jack would kill her for that, wouldn't he? Kitchen cow.

  Why did life always seem to be saltwater life for Kiki, never life with a sweetness? Violence always taking Jack away. Violence always bringing back the old sow. Meat and potatoes pig. Why was fate so awful to Kiki? And then for people to say she had put the finger on Jack. What an awful thing to think. The cow passed her by and said nothing. Didn't recognize her. Kiki kept on walking to the elevator, then turned to see Alice entering the room next to Kiki's own. But how could that be? Would Alice break into Kiki's room? But for what? Why would she rent a room next to Kiki's? How would she know which one Kiki was in? Kiki would tell Jack about this, all right. But, Fat Mama, why are you here?

  * **

  The Kenmore had status appeal to Jack: historic haven of gentility from the mauve decade until Prohibition exploded the purple into scarlet splashes. Its reputation was akin to Saratoga's Grand Union in Diamond Jim's and Richard Canfield's day. It was where Matthew Arnold stayed when he came to Albany, and Mark Twain too, on the night he lobbied for osteopathy in the Capitol. It was where Ulysses S. Grant occasionall
y dined. Al Smith's son lived there when Al was governor, and it was the dining room where any governor was most likely to turn up in the new century. It boasted eventually of Albany's longest bar, always busy with the chatter of legislators, the room where a proper gentleman from Albany's Quality Row could get elegantly swozzled among his peers.

  Sure Jack knew this, even if he didn't know the details, for the tradition was visible and tangible, in the old marble, in the polished brass and mahogany, in the curly maple in the lobby, in the stained glass, and the enduring absence of the hoi polloi. Jack was always tuned in to any evidence of other people's refinement.

  He dominates more memories of the place even now than Vincent Lopez or Rudy Vallee or Phil Romano or Doc Peyton or the Dorsey Brothers or any other of the greater or lesser musicians who held sway in the Rain-Bo room for so long, but whose light is already dim, whose music has faded away, whose mythology has not been handed on.

  Jack didn't create the ambiance that made the Kenmore so appealing, but he enhanced it in its raffish new age. He danced, he laughed, he wore the best, and moved with the fastest. But I well knew he had conceived that style long ago in desperation and was bearing it along cautiously now, like a fragile golden egg. He was frail, down eighteen pounds again, eyes abulge again, cheekbones prominent again, left arm all but limp, and periodically wincing when he felt that double-ought pellet bobbling about in his liver. But more troubling than this was the diminishing amount of time left for him to carry out the task at hand: the balancing of the forces of his life in a way that would give him ease, let him think well of himself, show him the completion of a pattern that at least would look something like the one he had devised as a young man: Young Jack—that desperate fellow he could barely remember and could not drive out. Empire gone, exchequer sequestered, future wholly imperfect, it occurred to Jack that the remaining values of his life inhered chiefly in his women. Naturally, he decided to collect them, protect them, and install them in the current safe-deposit box of his life, which at the moment was a six-room second-floor suite in the Kenmore.

  * * *

  "Marcus, you won't believe what I'm saying, but it's a true. I'm in the kitchen one day and the boss come in and says, Sal, you busy? I say no, not too much. He says, I gotta friend of mine in such and such a room and his name is Jack Legs Dime. Have you heard him? Well, I say, in the newspaper, yes. He says you wanna be his waiter from now on while he stays uppa here? You go upstays every morning eight thirty breakfast, noon if he's a call, maybe sandwich now and then, don't worry dinner. Take care of him and his friends and he pay you. I say, sure, it's all right with me. So every morning I used to knock on the door with the same breakfast—little steak and egg overlight for Jack, coffee, toast, buns, some scramble eggs for everybody, some cornflakes, milk, plenty potsa coffee, all on the wagon, and Hubert, this rough-lookin' bast with a puggy nose, he's got a goddama gun in both hands. I say Hubert, you son um a bitch I won't come up here no more if you don't put them guns away. I talk to him like that more for joke than anything else. So I see Jack Dime and I give him the breakfast and sometime breakfast for two, three extra people they call to tell me about and Jack call to somebody and says, hey, give Sal twenty-five dollar. He says to me, will that be enough? I say Yeah, Legs, plenty. More than what I expect. Just take care a me and my friends and you down for twenty-five a day, how's that? Beautiful. Jesa Christ, them days twenty-five dollar, who the hell ever seen twenty-five dollar like that? Every day was a different five, six new people, I guess they talking about Jack's trial coming up. And one day Jack call the next room and say, hey, Coll, you wanna eat some breakfas? I gotta breakfas here. Hey, Legs, I say, that Vince Coll? He supposed to be you enemy it says in the pape. Jack says no, he's a good friend a mine. And I pour Coll a coffee and some toast. Then three, four weeks later I met another fellow, Schultz. I say, Hey, Legs, you and Schultz, you supposed to be the worst enemies. And he says no, only sometimes. Now we get along pretty nice. So I pour Schultz a coffee and some toast. I say, Hey, Jack, they's a big fight tonight, who you like, we bet a dollar. Nah, he says, them fighters all crooks. Punks, no good. Then how about baseball, I says. Yeah, he says, I bet you a dollar. I take the Yanks. Legs like Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey. Then one day he says to me, Sal, I want you to meet my wife, Mrs. Jack Legs Dime. I say it's a pleasure, and then another day I go up and he says, Sal, I want you to meet my friend, Miss Kiki Roberts. And Kiki she says hello and I say it's a pleasure. Jesa Christ, I wonder how the hell Jack Dime got these women together. I see them sit down together, have breakfast, and then go out together and shop down the stores on Pearl Street while Jack stay home. I say to Freddie Robin, the detective sergeant who sits in the lobby looking for punks who don't look right and who ask funny questions about Legs and I say, Freddie, son um a bitch, it's magic. He got the both women up there. Freddie says you think that's something _ you ought to see them Sunday morn. All in church together. No, I say. Yeah, Freddie say. All in the same pew, seven o'clock mass Saint Mary's. No, I say. Don't tell me no, Freddie says, when I get paid to go watch them. So I says this I got to see for myself and next Sunday seven o'clock mass son um a bitch they don't all come in, first Kiki, then Alice, then Jack, and little ways back in another pew, Freddie. Alice goes a communion and Jack and Kiki sit still. Then later every Friday I see the monsignor come into the hotel and go upstairs. To hear the confessions, Freddie says, and he thinks sometimes they go to communion right in the room. Hey, I says to Freddie, I don't know nobody gets a communion in this hotel. How they get away with that when they all living together in the same rooms? I took a peek one day, the women got a room each, and Legs, he got a room all his own and the bodyguards got a room and they got other rooms for people in and out, transaction business. Course when I was up there, everything was mum. Nobody say anything, and when I go back for the dishes and the wagon Legs is maybe getting a shave and an haircut, every day, saying the rosary beads. They got a candle in every room, burn all day long, and a statue of Saint Anthony and the Blessed Virgin, which, I figure out, maybe is through Alice, who is on the quiet side, maybe because she got too damn much on her mind. She don't smile much at me. Hello, Sal, good morning, Sal, always nice, but not like Kiki, who says, Sal, how are you this morning, pretty good? Howsa weather outside? She liked to talk, some girl, Kiki. Wow! Freddie says to me, Sal, you think they all wind up in bed together? I laugh like hell. Freddie, I say, how the hell anybody going to do anything with a woman when another woman alongside you? No, that's not it. Bad as the guy might be, if I had a swear, put my hands to God and say would the guy do anything like that, I would say no. Maybe he got a desire to stay with his wife, then he call his wife into his room. He gotta desire to stay with his girlfriend, he call his girlfriend. It's the only thing I can see. Nine time out of ten I would say his girlfriend. On the other hand, he had to take care of his wife too. She wasn't so bad-looking, and after all it was a legitimate wife. You ask me was he an animal, a beast—I say no. He was a fanat. lf he wasn't a fanat, why the hell he got Saint Anthony up there? He must've had some kind of good in him, I gotta say it. Not for the moneywise he gave me. I wouldn't judge him for that. But I couldn't say nothing bad toward the guy. I never even hear him curse. Very refine. Pardon me, pardon me. lf he sneeze sometime, it's pardon me, tank you, see ya tomorra. But, actually speaking, who's a know what the hell really goes on upstays?"

  * * *

  The night I went to dinner with Jack, Alice, and Kiki at the Kenmore, the ménage seemed to be functioning the way Jack wanted it to function. He'd called me to come down and see him, talk about the trial, and, more important, he wanted to pay me. I'd already told him I was fond of him as a friend, even though I disagreed with some of his behavior, and I enjoyed his company. However, I said, all that has nothing to do with business. If I work for you, I expect to get paid, and now that you've got your bank accounts under government lock and key, what are you going to do about my fee, which, I explained, would be ten thousand dollars
payable in advance? I knew two aspiring criminal lawyers who waited until after trial for their pay and are waiting yet.

  "Jack, let's face it," I said, "you're a crook."

  He laughed and said, "Marcus, you're twice the crook I'll ever be," which pleased me because it implied prowess in a world alien to me, even if it wasn't true. What he was really doing was admiring my willingness to structure an alibi for his trial, give it a reasonableness that smacked lovingly of truth. I had fifteen witnesses lined up three weeks before we went to trial, and all were ready to testify, in authenticatingly eccentric and voluminous detail, that Jack had been in Albany the night Streeter and the kid were abducted. Waiters saw him, a manicurist, a desk clerk, a physiotherapist, a car salesman, a bootblack, a barber, a garment executive from the Bronx, and more.

  I arrived at Jack's Kenmore suite half an hour ahead of schedule and was let in by Hubert Maloy, the plump Irish kid from Troy whom Jack had hired away from Vincent Coll as his inside guard. Hubert knew me and let me sit in the parlor. I immediately caught the odor of exotic incense and saw a wisp of smoke curling upward from an open door to one of the bedrooms. I glimpsed Alice on her hands and knees with a brushbroom, pushing a lemon back and forth on the rug in front of the incense, which burned in a tin dish. The scene was so weird it embarrassed me. It was like intruding on someone's humiliating dream. Alice was in her slip and stocking feet, a long run in the stocking most visible to me. Her hair was uncombed and she was without the protection of makeup. I quietly got up from the chair and moved to another one, where I wouldn't be able to see her room.