Exile on Bridge Street (24 page)

CHAPTER 19

The Ritual

U
NDER
THE
TENEMENT
AWNING
OF
LOW
-
RISE
, wood-framed houses pushed against each other over by where the bridges reach deep into the neighborhoods and where elevated trains pass every fourteen minutes off Johnson Street comes a terrifying sound from 113. A woman's screeching from within one of the open, empty windows. Walking by, some stop in wonder. An old man with a cane has stopped his shuffling and tilts his ear to the air. The screaming endures. Mothers from each tenement stop their washboard laundering within their homes to hear. Stop their rocking chairs. Stop their hungry husbands from making love to them in the April mid-morning. Stop their window-smoking and shoosh children from their questions for to listen to the banshee inflections, as they know it themselves like some horrid ritual in this place where the peasants have settled from countries that flung them of their borders.

It comes down the stairwell, too, as the draft horses puff their necks high, snuffling and stamping at it. Three energetic, wagging dogs have come to a halt and look in the hole where the wretched song comes from the black of the doorway. Cheering children look behind them, over their shoulders and drop the rock that has outlined on the sidewalk their game-playing and men in their window chairs pull from their facial hairs, look out over Johnson Street.

“
Mikä se on?
” says a long-bearded man.

“
почему она кричит
?” asks a bulbous-armed woman.

And finally after some long minutes of the ancient maternal lilt from within the stared-upon building emerges another mother in her peasant gray housedress—this one Irish. This one screaming as they all do. As if it's the first child ever died in the world. Holding its distant body close to her chest as its limbs flail in her desperate strides.

“Thomas,” Mrs. Lonergan tries to wake him.

Young Anna, following her mother and seeing it all, holds her own face and stops on the sidewalk, bends down to her knees. Bends to the god of death. The cruel god and taker of innocents.

Mrs. Lonergan in her stride falls with the boy held to her, plunges into the cobbled street, scraping her knees and elbows bloody. Bloodying the skin on her shoulder. Her sack dress hiked high, up to her torso and her legs are open in the air wagging for all who've stopped to see her. They see underneath her. Where that child, dead in her hands now, had emerged alive six years ago. His shoeless foot swollen and gangrenous. His open-mouthed stare evacuated of all the stirring of life. Gentle now, his smile is without the guile and treachery this city offered him.

CHAPTER 20

Save Our Souls

M
AY
, 1917

A
LONE
, D
ARBY
L
EIGHTON
HAS
HIS
BACK
to the Atlantic Basin as he stands on the bulkhead of Commercial Wharf among the dock's warehouses. Ahead of him on Imlay Street are the twin, six-floor masonry block-and-mortar structures of the New York Dock Company. His sallow cheeks a sign of malnutrition and with bright eyes, a pale broth of color in the skin and a great concern for his surroundings, Darby Leighton has the look of a lost soldier.

Through the wind in his ear, he can hear men speaking. He looks to the north where two jump-formed annex silos above four wood-cribbed bins and grain depots have only a few men there. They are deep in thought of their work under the clanking chains of the grain elevator, ignoring him. On the other side of Imlay is Van Brunt Street where just beyond to the east is the great contiguous crush of immigrant tenements. Italians bearing down on the South Brooklyn levee. Massing in endless enclaves, sections and wards only put to an end where the land meets water. Pushing them closer and closer. Closer still as they multiply and reduplicate in immense breeding surges, still hungrier children who see the waterfront hard-strung riches with resentment and lustful craving. Won and run by white men in their neighborhood.

A cluster of dogs trot the pavement back and forth, weaving amongst each other, tails in the air happily. Red Hook a terror to defend from incursion or raid, the three north–south streets curve east into Brooklyn, providing multiple entrances and exits for enemy forays. Behind Darby Leighton, five ships await their unloading in the basin and yet Red Hook's northern terminal is empty of all labor men. Not one longshoreman has shown on this morning. Not even has an unwelcome Italian surfaced, as they regularly do from Union, Sackett, and Degraw Streets. The pier house supers are missing too. The stevedoring company left without notice and there are none of the warehousemen Wolcott and the New York Dock Company had redirected to the docks over the last few weeks.

The terminal is empty of the boisterous men that work here. Abandoned of all its life like shore-water sucked out to sea ahead of a disastrous flooding. Like the work of some terrible creator or pagan artisan. Darby Leighton, like anyone would, saw in this the work of Dinny Meehan, the man who lives in the silence of things. Perpetually waylaid. In the void where everyone knows his name, yet no one knows his name. With many men following him as if he is more a driving force behind a certain behavior than a man of blood and skin. Darby shakes his head, exhales out the nose.

“What're we waitin' for?” screams a hand from the deck of a barge. “You got men're what?”

Ahead of Darby there are at least eight entrances to Truck's Row where the multitude of automobiles are lined up for loading the ship cargo. Teamsters stand on the running boards with the doors open, staring at him, waving their hands at the ships that need unburdening, yet it is only he who stands between the vessels heavy with cargo and the empty automobile trucks.

Darby Leighton's eyes remain calm. As men yell from both sides, still his eyes are calm. Calm as they've always remained. As calm as when he arrived from East London five years old with his older brother, Pickles, and fatherless. Calm as when he watched Pickles push a knife in a man's stomach so deep that the hilt came back bloody. Calm even when he lived under a pier in Brooklyn with Coohoo Cosgrave and Dinny Meehan himself, and McGowan. Calm as when he watched Coohoo, The White Hand Gang's first leader, lose the plot, screaming over and over, “My soul is pure, a cloud in a mountain shroud. My soul is pure, a cloud in a mountain shroud,” and ran into an engine repair shop and drank from a five-sixton jug of oxalic acid, eating out his insides in front of Darby's serene, unaffected eyes.

With a great resemblance in the face to his cousin Sadie, he looks behind him at the ships at dock alongside the pier houses and the sailors awaiting the berth to no avail. Then looks down to his hands in his pockets. Down to his shoes.

“Jesus, man,” yells a truck driver. “Are ya gonna just stand there? Where's your men? Where's anybody round here?”

Placid eyes Darby turns to the driver. Behind the trucks he sees a youngster walking his way. One of Richie Lonergan's. Matty Martin, coming closer.

“Bill's on a tear wit' his buddy Flynn and ol' man Lonergan,” Martin says. “You gotta run things 'til he comes back around.”

“Come on. We're still waitin' here,” screams a deckhand from one of the barges behind Darby. “You bringin' men're what, kid?”

In a monotone voice, Darby points over his shoulder to the ships, “You guys gonna help wit' this?”

“Richie wants me back watchin' over Bill.”

“There's ten o' ya watchin' over 'em. Can't you guys at least come an' help?”

“Sorry,” Martin said. “Richie's younger brother died this morning so . . . ya know? I gotta be there for Anna . . . an' her ma.”

Darby nods his head, looks at Martin, “Bill know about Wolcott?”

“Yeah, he quit,” Martin says walking away. “It's in the papers. Don' look good for us, I think.”

“You seen Wisniewski an' his boys?” Darby yells out to Martin's back.

“Nah, Wisniewski went wit' Wolcott though, right?” Turning away the wind causes the stripling Martin to hold his hat and walk sideways, one hand in a pocket as he turns up Imlay Street and gone.

“He's leavin'? The kid's leavin'?” a man yells from a truck. “Is he goin' for men?”

Darby looks toward Truck Row. Does not answer the man. He looks down as the gusts winnow the dirt and sand along the stretch of pavement at his feet. Separates the grains in a natural way into piles. Shaped by the wind. A funnel no larger than a man forms on a long sidewalk and steps down into the street sucking loose garbage and city debris into the air before feebly coming apart in front of Darby's eyes.

* * *

T
WO
WEEKS
AGO
,
WHEN
B
ILL
L
OVETT
learned Silverman had been murdered in a tailor shop, he'd gone into a frenzy. Darby Leighton did not know how to calm him. Lovett posted Joey Behan, James Quilty, and Frankie Byrne's boys at the myriad entrances around Truck's Row with weapons. Wisniewski had come with five warehousemen at Wolcott's order too, and as much as could be accomplished, Red Hook had been shut down of any and all outsiders—including the throngs of Italians not allowed to work the docks.

“No I-talians either,” Lovett said to his men while striding across their posts. “They can go down to the Bush Terminal. . . . No fookin' ginzos ever.”

Red Hook was sealed all the way down to the Erie Basin. Down to the Gowanus Canal, an impossible extension of waterfront terrain to defend consistently with the number of men at Lovett's hand. But for the moment at least, anyone seeking passage through the streets were scrutinized, patted down, and their vehicle inspected at checkpoints. Still, it was the endless possibilities of invasion that drove Lovett's excitement. If Meehan wanted to send killers for him, there were twelve entranceways to the northern terminal alone, not to mention the dozens of corridors and entryways along the tip of the hook and the streets leading to the canal. Then there was always the possibility that Meehan could hide one hundred men in the hull of a ship. Right in through the basin and bulkhead. This possibility drove Lovett to take great measures and every ship that threw a rope toward the Red Hook cleats and bollards was searched at gunpoint. Then there were the trucks.

“How many men could hide in one truck?” Lovett asked Leighton and Lonergan. “In five trucks?”

Before Darby could configure it, Lovett had gone off.

At Lovett's demand, Wolcott sent a couple Italian-speaking factory workers to the tailor shop on Union Street to find out who killed Silverman. They reported back that it was no more than “two white men.” The diminutive Italian tailor had kept silent under the questioning of his countrymen. But Lovett did not trust the Italians Wolcott sent. Did not believe they cared much for extracting information from a tailor who turned the questioning of him into a sales pitch for his wares.

Within the boundaries, Lovett talked to every man on the perimeter six and seven times each and every morning. He checked his own gun even more, ensuring it was fully loaded and ready for war. Richie Lonergan limped behind Lovett everywhere he went with his right hand held deep in his pocket, holding his own piece. Darby Leighton there, too. Up to the ship captain to find out what was to be unloaded and how many men he would need, asking Abe Harms to check again the rest of the Lonergan crew to make sure they were keeping aware, meeting each man at his post and reminding them of the two white men that had shot Silverman in the face. Losing sleep himself, Lovett kept a round-the-clock notice and began showing fatigue in his red eyes.

* * *

O
NE
WEEK
AGO
L
OVETT
WAS
TOLD
that Garry Barry had been hospitalized and was expected to die. He found out from Maureen Egan off Hoyt Street that it was “four guys, one black.”

“Gillen,” Lovett said to Darby. “Dance Gillen. Whitehanders. Killed Garry fookin' Barry too? Shit.”

Darby nodded, “He offered to kill Meehan so . . .”

“I know the fookin' reason why, for chrissake,” Lovett yelled at Darby's face in front of the Egan girl. “We gotta double-down, got it?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Then let's do it then,” Lovett screamed and started running back toward Red Hook to the south as Lonergan tried keeping up.

Darby stood still watching them with a stoic stare, then turned to Maureen Egan, “Thank you.”

Afterward, more men were taken from longshoremen and loading duties and posted on top of pier houses, in windows of empty tenement rooms and in the back of trucks with holes cut through the fabric. Wolcott provided more guns and more men and Wisniewski, Wolcott's lone underling, had become entirely dedicated to protecting Red Hook from a similar donnybrook that had passed one year previous. Petey Behan and Timothy Quilty were given guns, which they shot into the choppy channel for giggles. Matty Martin, too, who accidentally shot down his own pant leg and took a flesh wound to the thigh.

“Dimwits, fookin' all o' ya,” Lovett called them.

It was taking twice as long to unload at the piers, which left ships at their anchor for hours at a time in the Basin. Clogged to the Buttermilk Channel even. Stacking to the north, the mouth of the East River was backed with steamers and barges along the anchorage, yet Lovett was hysterical about his war with Meehan. Fanatical in speculating on the next move of his opponent.

“Why won' he fookin' hit us already?” Lovett would stamp about the Red Hook Terminal.

“He might've made a deal wit' the I-talians,” Darby said, but Bill had traipsed away.

* * *

F
IVE
DAYS
AGO
, D
ARBY
L
EIGHTON
COULD
smell alcohol on Bill Lovett's breath in the morning. After hearing Darby explain what happened to Tanner Smith, Lovett was not able to think clearly and asked, “Why did that happen to Tanner? Thought they was close, them two.”

“Tanner went to the ILA with the money Wolcott gave to Dinny to kill Carmody for a job wit' 'em,” Darby said.

Bill dug the crook of his hand into his eye, then looked Darby in the face, “If Non Connors was here, he'd help me. You. What the fook're you? The better o' you Leightons is up in Sing Sing wit' Connors right now. Both put away by Dinny's hand an' you can't even gimme a straight answer.” Then walked away and sat down at a table with Joseph Flynn, a childhood friend from Catherine Street, and poured a fresh beer from the keg that had been set up inside the Red Hook pier house. Lying next to him were three dogs that Lovett fed and cared for. Darby looked at the dogs as one of them lifted its leg and licked it's own grommet intently.

Darby then looked at Richie Lonergan, then to Frankie Byrne. Between the three it was generally agreed, without a word exchanged, that Lovett was distancing himself.

When a runner had come later in the day from Johnson Street about Tiny Thomas, Richie and his father left without telling anyone. Abe Harms followed as Lovett watched.

* * *

N
OW
,
WITH
HIS
BACK
TO
THE
Atlantic Basin, Darby Leighton watches the perimeter from Commercial Wharf where not even one man is posted. Lovett's dogs trotting and smiling and wagging. Alone, he scans the empty entrances between the screaming of ship captains behind him and the screaming of automobile truck drivers ahead. Not even one Italian has shown for work in four straight days. For years they had shown every morning and every year more came and demanded work on the docks only to be run off.

“An' suddenly they don' come?” Darby says aloud.

Bill Lovett, too, had not been seen in Red Hook for two days.

“Are you people gonna unload this shit or what?” says a man with a Greek accent walking toward Darby from the dock.

By the end of the day, two of the five ships have moved north toward the Atlantic and Baltic terminals. Two more south toward the Bush Terminal while one waits for the next morning to see if anyone will show, as it has cargo that needs to be stored in a Red Hook warehouse.

That night Darby sleeps on the dusty pier house floor next to an empty keg and table with two chairs. He is awoken by the voice of Bill Lovett and five others.