Light of the Diddicoy Page 15

  Gilchrist looks over to Dinny with an interested look. Vincent raises an eyebrow, squiggles his mouth.

  “Dinny?” The Swede pleads. “Ya know who that kid is, he’s the same griftin’ punk of a . . .”

  “I know who he is.”

  I look over at Vincent, “Pegleg,” he whispers in my ear.

  Dinny then waves for Vincent to let the kid in downstairs through the bar. As Vincent walks toward the door I look over at Dinny with a shock of hair falling to his temple, cut real close on the back and sides and sitting deep in his chair behind the desk. The muscles in his neck and shoulders are evident even as he is covered by a jacket and tie, but I see in him also that he has weaknesses uncommon from the others. He looks over at me with his green eyes concentrated on his occupation. Unaffected completely by my watching him or that he could in any way alter his approach because of it. It’s somewhat difficult to explain, but Dinny Meehan knows that the world is not watching him. Knows the world doesn’t care about him. Even disapproves of him. Still, it appears to me sitting next him, there are many men and families that rely on his hand and his maneuvering. The weaknesses that Dinny Meehan has are of a nature that men like The Swede are unaware exist, yet it is these weaknesses that summon the truest sense of honor I have yet to see among these men. The weakness of caring.

  Upstairs a few minutes later and a wild-eyed, windswept, floppy-booted, dirty-blond-haired fifteen-year-old limps in the room like some forgotten, defective cur on a prison ship. Almost as skinny as myself, but with a much tougher look on his face. I immediately spot the fake half leg and foot. The nailed boot at the end of it looks empty for the fact that it’s sunken in and bent upward at the toe. It drags behind him menacingly and the blank look in his eyes is a cold one. Very cold. His hands are dirty with grease from the sprockets of his trade and the grease has migrated to the side of his bone-cheeked face and along his ragged coat. His tie is fraying and leans to the left carelessly, but it’s the eyes that stand out. A pair of mean things earned from beating the coinage out of drunkards and sleeping outside with the aching emptiness in his belly that causes it.

  Dinny still sitting behind his desk, looks at the wild child in front of him. Then at Vincent.

  “He’s clean.”

  “He’s scum,” The Swede growls, his lip curling up on one side. “Trashy scum underbelly of the fookin’ slums and the lowest . . .”

  “That’s good,” Dinny says, then looks upon the boy. “What brings ya to the headquarters o’ the White Hand?”

  Lonergan stares for a moment. Keeps staring. Doesn’t answer and it seems a minute has passed in the quiet room when he finally mutters, “My Ma.”

  “And all her other weans too,” The Swede admonishes.

  Lonergan never breaks from the stare of Dinny and is then asked, “There somethin’ ya want? Somethin’ I can do for ya?”

  “Nah.”

  “Ya from Cath’rine Street, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “John Lonergan’s ya father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mary Lonergan’s ya mother? Yakey Yake Brady’s sister?”

  Dinny nods his head back as if pointing down behind the windows at Mrs. Lonergan.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why ya in my neighborhood? Cath’rine Street’s across the Manhatt’n Bridge.”

  “I been livin’ in Brooklyn since I’m six, on Johnson Street.”

  The Swede jumps in, “Yeah, the Lonergans and the Lovetts. Two peas in a pod.”

  “Ya family’s close wit’ the Lovetts, right?” Dinny asks interested.

  “Kinda.”

  “Ya know Bill Lovett works for me now? We ate up the Jay Street boys and good thing too. Might as well work together instead o’ fightin’ each other. A fellow Irish American ain’t ya enemy, is it?”

  “Nah.”

  “Ya wanna work for me?”

  “Nah,” without a sign of interest.

  Dinny smiles, “I guess ya got ya own gang and ya own gimmicks, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This our neighborhood,” The Swede demands. “Time’ll come that ya’ll pay tribute. Real soon too . . .”

  “Hey?” Dinny asks the boy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ya ever hear what a king lion does when he takes over a pride?”

  “What’s that. A pride,” he asks without the inflection of a question in his tone.

  “A pride’s a group o’ female lions that’re loyal to the king. Kinda like the businesses and the ships around here. Long-shoremen, they’re my pride, dig?”

  “Oh.”

  “So, lemme ask y’again, Richie. . . Ya know what a male lion does when he takes over another male lion’s pride?”

  “What?”

  “He eats the younglings.”

  The room became quiet. The Swede crosses his spider arms. Vincent smiles from the side of his head and lowers his eyes. Lumpy isn’t listening again. Dinny is relaxed. Leans on his elbows while pointing his attention at the boy.

  “How’d ya know my name?” the boy asks.

  The Swede jumps in again, “Ya think we don’ know ya been jackrollin’ sailors and beatin’ on drunken laborers and holdin’ up shops around here? Cutpursin’ and pickin’ pockets at Sands Street station? Eh, kid? You and ya cullies Abe Harms and Matty Martin and Petey Behan and Tim Quilty? Ya think we don’ know everything? Everybody? Shit, Dinny, this fookin’ guy thinks we’s dumb, Dinny. Dumb like dumb. He ain’t . . .”

  “How ya gonna operate a business without knowing what the competitors’re thinkin’, Richie?” Dinny says.

  Richie looks over at The Swede for a moment, then back at Dinny. His head tilts slightly to the side, then back and he lowers his eyes while his mouth remains open. This is his way of defense. I could tell this is his way of both calming himself down so he doesn’t explode, and still looking mean at the same time.

  “Ya don’ wanna open a bike shop? Do ya Richie?” Dinny asks in a fatherly tone.

  “My Ma wants me to.”

  “Why don’ ya open the shop and let ya Ma run it, then?”

  “I don’ have that kinda money.”

  “What happen’t wit’ all that money ya got from the trolley company for the accident?” Dinny says, looking down toward Richie’s leg.

  Everyone knew that money, something close to $6,000, was spent by his fool father almost as soon as he took possession of it.

  “Ya come work for me and I’ll do ya Ma the favor.”

  Lonergan stares at Dinny while The Swede stands up from the ledge apparently unaware that Dinny was interested in engulfing Lonergan’s gang too.

  “Eddie,” Dinny announces just before The Swede was about to start complaining. “Give the kid two hundret dollar. That should be enough, right, kid?”

  “Keep the jack,” Lonergan says standing up.

  “Vincent,” Dinny says. “Let the kid out, but give ’em the terms.”

  “Right,” Vincent says, who then stands up in front of Richie and walks with him to the door.

  “And tell Lovett to step away from the moanin’ of Mick Gilligan and come up here,” Dinny gives an order, directing the last part to Richie Lonergan’s back. “Bill Lovett! My dockboss!”

  As Vincent opens the door I hear him whispering feverishly to Richie, then yell down to Tuohey to bring in Lovett. The door closes but I can still hear Maher talking. Asking questions and then coming to conclusions on his own without Richie’s response. Only about five years older than Richie, Vincent advises and warns all in the same sentence, then laughs at his own jokes too.

  Meanwhile, another brutal mug walks in the door. This time it’s Bill Lovett who carries a full beer in his right hand. He walks in the room looking in a different direction, then sits his beer on the floor and folds his hands in his lap. Behind him is the scowl of the one known as Non Connors, Lovett’s right-hand.

  The Swede immediately starts in, “I don’ know why ya let this fookin’ yella-larrikin-s
palpeen Connors enjoy the light o’ day in this neighborhood . . .”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Connors snarls. “Least I ain’t fook’t my own sister! Ya fookin’ mongrel . . .”

  I tilt my head at that accusation.

  “Yeah?” The Swede says jumping toward him with his eyes popped open wide.

  The room is quickly filled with the temper of wild dogs. Full grown males barking at one another’s faces in warning while a few chairs fall to the ground behind. The Swede and Connors are screaming and Dinny gets between them. Vincent Maher comes flying in the door, a pistol hidden behind his hip at the end of his arm while Lonergan leans up against the frame in the background unaffected. Vincent grabs Connors’s right wrist before a punch can be thrown and Dinny whispers up into the ear of The Swede. Bill Lovett then begins warning Vincent to let loose Connors’s arm. Increasingly agitated, Lovett opens his jacket to reveal his own piece, “Let go of ’em! Let it go now!”

  And I’m unsure if I should hide under a table or sprint for the door where Lonergan stands uncaringly and at peace. The Swede and Connors continue at the extent of their lungs, straining to let loose their grievances as their heads turn a bloody hue in the excitement. Tommy Tuohey then runs into the room, pushing Lonergan out of the way and standing in a boxer’s stance in front of Connors and Lovett and ready to throw until finally Dinny yells at the top of his lungs above every other voice and blasts down his fist on the desk, leaving a wound in it.

  “You take your place!” He spits into the face of The Swede, pointing toward the window sill. “Pick up the chair!” he yells at Connors. “I won’t have this old war between you two!”

  And I have never seen Dinny lose his cool before this, but he is so alight that I believe for certain someone is going to get killed.

  “I don’ wanna hear a word from the either of yas!” Dinny says as they slowly back in to their places holding their stares on each other, The Swede and Connors. “Yas think ya can walk in and turn this place upside down? All we have here? No ya won’t! Too many good men worked too hard to get us where we’re at. Too many men died for ya small rivalries to disown it now!”

  The Swede leans against the windowsill with his arms crossed and looking away. Non Connors sits down with Bill Lovett across Dinny’s desk.

  “G’on, Vincent,” Dinny says with a wave of his hand. “Go Tommy, downstairs.”

  Slowly, Dinny walks around the side of his desk while looking back and forth at each man, then looks at The Swede. “Not a word!”

  Sitting down, he looks across the desk, “Now, what ya find out about this I-talian feller, what is it? Majio?”

  “Maschio,” Lovett returns, then remembers the beer he put on the floor by his feet, picks it up and takes a long slug from it. “Yeah well . . . You know Strickland? The pier house super down there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got ’em to talk.”

  “Fookin’ coward,” Connors mumbles.

  “He’s weak in the brain,” Lovett continues. “He tells me Maschio’s been talkin’ wit’ Wolcott, but he ain’ all that involved wit’ Yale. Yale pays him, though. For information.”

  “Information about what?”

  “The ILA, the New York Dock Company and . . . the White Hand.”

  “An’ how long’s Strickland known about this fookin’ guy?” The Swede demands.

  Dinny holds up his palm to The Swede, then looks to Bill. “How ya know what this Maschio looks like?”

  Lovett finishes off the beer. “He’s gotta white streak a hair over his forehead, like an albino thing in his hair. All black except that one white part.”

  Dinny nods his head while thinking. “Thanks, Bill, that’s damn good work.”

  The Swede wrinkles his nose.

  “Anythin’ I can do for ya?”

  “I need Darby Leighton,” Lovett says.

  The Swede jumps in, “That scally’s been eighty-sixt, y’ain’t gonna . . .”

  “Shaddup!” Dinny yells without looking at him. “I’m sending ya Mickey Kane, Bill. He’s got plenty o’ experience and he’s a fighter.”

  “I already got my second in command, Dinny. Non’s my right-hand. I need another guy who’s got more to ’em than Kane. Every day we fight. Every day them fookin’ guineas jig in for a job or a whisper to the linemen or the pier houses, the captains or the stevedore companies. I need more muscle and more brains. Darby’s all that an’ more . . .”

  “So why haven’t ya called on The Swede, Bill? Or Vincent? Not once have y’asked me for help. Why don’t ya let me help, Bill? That’s what you pay me for.”

  Bill doesn’t answer and I see for the first time where the line is drawn; Dinny’s extended hand for help, which, if accepted, means his power then takes its grip. At the same time, Bill’s silent, distant plan to cut that hand off entirely. “Kane’ll work out, I’ll talk to ’em. He’s my cousin and he’s a ready scrapper, brisk fighter, that’s for fair. He’ll fight for ya and wit’ ya. I seen ’em, Mickey Kane’ll dig in wit’ ya. Darby don’ work here no more, and that’s the end of it.”

  Looking at Dinny, Lovett asks, “Why? What ya got against Darby Leighton?”

  “I know he’s a old friend o’ your’s, but I don’ trust ’em.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’ trust’em ’cause I don’t.”

  “That don’t mean nothin’.”

  The Swede almost says something, but Dinny raises a patient finger, silencing him.

  “Are you makin’ demands, Bill? You sayin’ I don’ know what I’m doin’ here? Are ya? From you? The guy who shoots a man downstairs? For what? Pullin’ a fookin’ cat’s tail? Brings the tunics in our home? Bill? Then shows up in the office wit’ a beer in his hand?”

  Bill stares at Dinny unapologetically. Not giving an inch.

  “Ya wanna war wit’ me? You sit in front o’ me wit’ a gun in ya belt. Ya wanna kill me? Do ya? G’ahead. Shoot me. What’ll that do for ya? For us? All these men are gonna suddenly follow you around if I’m dead? Think so?”

  Bill moved in his seat.

  “Frankie Yale takes over Red Hook. Navy Street Gang takes over the Navy Yard, unions take the rest, and both you and me are dead. What else? I’ll tell ya, every down-and-out Irish in these neighborhoods got nowhere to turn when they need help. When the breadwinner dies, or a child needs a meal ’cause he ain’t eaten in three days. Who’s gonna be there for them when they need it? Coal for a winter night? Who’s gonna help them, the county? The state? Them goo-goo Protestants only wanna look like they care. The company they work for’ll turn their back on’em, you know that. The union? No dues today, no help tomorrow. Even McCooey and his Madison Club captains’ll be happy to hand over the waterfront to I-talians and Jews for the votes.”

  Dinny left a silence after these words. Bill shifted his jaw in thought, but refused agreement.

  “If there’s anything we can agree on Bill, you’n me, it’s that if we don’ stick together, we’re done. You know what ‘done’ means, Bill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Done means done,” Dinny says, gently tapping his desk with a fist while The Swede agrees. “We got things to straighten out down in Red Hook, Bill. Things we gotta work together on. Soon too,” then shifts the conversation. “Ya’ve known the Lonergan kid for a long time, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Lovett agrees, remembering Lonergan talking with Vincent in the doorway.

  “What’s the skinny?”

  “He works the Sands Street station wit’ his own boys, you know that. Cutpursin’, pickin’ pockets’n whatnot. His dad’s . . . uh,” Lovett tilts his head. “Ya know what I mean? And his mother too . . . it’s a burden, that family. He lives day by day, penny by penny, that kid. Why y’ask?”

  After a silent moment between the two, Dinny looks over, “And his crew?”

  “Good kids,” Lovett says. “Rookies is all. Bunch o’ teenage grifters workin’ the gimmick for Richie. Abe Harms is his best friend, he’s loyal to R
ichie. Matty Martin’s a follower. Tim Quilty’s a follower, but a good boxer, and,” Lovett moves his eyes over to me, “You Garrity?”

  Dinny looks over to me also, then back to Lovett. “Yeah, that’s his name.”

  Lovett smiles coolly, then speaks in my direction, “Petey Behan? Does’at ring a bell? Petey Behan?”

  “I know him,” I say.

  “He’s still got ya coat.” Lovett laughs, though everyone else in the room is at a loss until Lovett explains, “They was stayin’ in a building off Flatbush and Behan bulldozed ya kid’s coat from ’em. Ya kid didn’t even fight back,” Lovett kept laughing. Connors mumbles a laugh from behind.

  Dinny hadn’t heard this story. I never mentioned it to him. Embarrassed, I turn red with all the attention. I even feel as though I’ve let Dinny down somehow. It was true, I never fought back. I was too scared. I’d never fought anyone before. Dinny looks over to me trying to understand, then finding in my shame his answer. As they continue talking, I notice The Swede again turn around and look out the window. When I look, I notice a bunch of men filing out of the bar and into the alley where the Lonergan family waited below. Just then, Vincent Maher comes running in the room.

  “Dinny, Red Donnelly, and the kid are gonna fight.”

  “Lonergan?” Dinny sits up from his chair and looks out the window while Lovett and Connors do the same. “Wha’ happened?”

  “We was walking by, me and the kid, and Red cracked about how the kid showed up at the saloon wit’ his mother. Some laughed, but the kid went cold on ’em. Then the kid challeng’t him to say it again outside, and that’s it.”

  Dinny looks at Lovett, who raises his eyebrows. They both smile. Below, the excitement is becoming uncontrollable. I see someone get pushed who falls into a bunch of other men in the circle. This causes a wave of falling bodies and tantrums, which then turn into minor scraps. Tommy Tuohey is ready to fight any takers, and squares off against three of them. Chisel MaGuire has taken to standing on a box with a bunch of money in his hand. He calls out the line and tries to pencil down the names on a piece of paper while collecting bills. Donnelly looks sheepish as he stretches his arms out in front of him, his red head standing out among the crowd around him. He must have sixty pounds on the kid Lonergan. Across from him stands the skinny, slightly muscular opponent staring at Donnelly, who seems unaware of the bets and yelling around him. At the outside edge of the moving circle are Mary and Anna Lonergan, trying to gather the children before they get a good stomping from the fighting men. Still, two of the brood can’t be found, though I could see them walking hopelessly on the other end of the rumpus.