Light of the Diddicoy (7 page)

“Would ye like to come wid us too, Vincent? I'll bet ye'll be havin' more than just a lead pipe in yer pocket, like Connolly here.”

“Let it go,” Meehan said to his men, then turned around.

“What's he got to do with it?” The Swede mumbles to Meehan. “Ain' even his business.”

“He don' have a choice himself,” he mumbles back. “Be out in a day o' two.”

I see Brosnan light a black cigar and look angrily at The Swede. He stashes the matches in his blue tunic and disappears with his own gang of men through the snow and the unkempt street.

We continue together, surrounding the clopping horse and the coffin. Eventually we reach the funeral home, which is not much more than the basement of another tenement with only a makeshift sign above to make it an official place.

“Hungry?” Meehan slows up to ask me.

I nod sheepishly.

Free of the morgue dray, the men walk with a mighty pace through the streets. Taking shortcuts between buildings, under fences, and around lean-tos we are soon on Warren Street. When it is seen that Meehan and myself are walked to the front door on the third floor of a brownstone safely, the others begin to retreat back down the stoops. Maher at the tail end of them winks to me as Meehan and I go up.

“Sadie!” Dinny Meehan bellows as we walk in the warm parlor room where the child I saw on his mother's hip at the wake sits with his chubby fist in his mouth on a round carpet in front of the fireplace, staring up at us in a happy surprise.

“Shikaaaah?” the dote says, pulling his hands from his mouth and opening his palm to us.

“Yes?” come a voice from the kitchen.

“We got a visitor from the ol' country, see to it he gets some soup or porridge or whatever ya got on that Quincy, yeah?”

“Aye, the choild from the wake?” She comes rushing out. “My, my youngsta, yu look bea'en by da cold an' God 'imself, don't yu? Come, come and put yu 'ands by the foire and I'll fetch yu some'in' dat'll warm the marrow. Yu so fin, must be sta'vin', sweet choild. 'ow old are ye any'ow? Yu look about twelve yea's long, yu do.”

“Still fourteen,” Dinny bellows from a back room.

“Stiw fou'een?” Sadie looks at me and smiles. “Not quoite fif'een yet, aye?”

“Not yet,” I manage.

“An' whe's yu muva?”

I didn't answer. Didn't understand what she said.

“Ya mother!” Dinny yells again.

“Back home, Ireland.”

“No fam'ly? 'At's a odd way'a live in New Yook, innit?”

“His uncle turned'm out!” Dinny calls.

“An Oirish 'at come over durin' da war's got'a be desp'rate. An' wha' of ya fava?”

“Fenian,” Dinny answers as he emerges from the bathroom drying his hands. “Isn't he?”

I nod, though it's an outdated term by then as my da always saw himself as a legitimate soldier.

“From Clare,” he again speaks for me.

“Clare? 'At's whe' Dinny's fam'ly come from 'riginally, 'e tol' yu dat roight?”

I look over at Dinny who stands emotionlessly in a small shirt that reveals his round muscles and scarred forearm, then turns back to the bathroom.

Confused by Sadie's accent, I know of it only as that cruel sound from the landlord's paytaker and the stewards and all the terrible stories, though hers was in fact the cockney Irish which I had not then heard much of yet. She was kind though. So kind. I stared into the warmth of the heater and was mellowed by the rubbing palms she spread along my back. As she encouraged me, I began bubbling up. Bubbling with hidden tears, I could barely constrain myself from the happiness the fire gives me and the finality of finding someone in Brooklyn that is thoughtful of my pitiful state.

“What would ye loike 'en, I 'ave pea soup or meat pie?”

I look at her.

“Bof it is 'en!” she laughs and drapes a blanket over my shoulders, then looks me in the face and whispers as Dinny watches from behind, “‘Appy Christmas, choild. Welcome 'ome.”

T
HE
D
OCK
L
OADERS'
C
LUB, THE GANG'S
headquarters under the bridge they and their fathers built, never had electricity. Though it was true that much of Brooklyn by 1915 either had gas lighting or electricity, along the waterfront where the White Hand ruled there was no such thing. Most of the slums along the rim of the docks from the Navy Yard down to Red Hook where the poorest of the poor lived among the elevated tracks and the factories and within earshot of the barge horns and the pier house whistles lit their faces and their one-room apartments with candles made of paraffin wax or animal fat.

There were some things in “Auld Irishtown” that never changed. That included an absolute and obstinate disbelief in law, for it was law that forced their parents and grandparents from the homeland during the Great Hunger. No one blamed the blight of the tuber. All blamed the law and saw it as foreign to them. And so, change came slowest by the Brooklyn dock neighborhoods where the Famine Irish settled. And when I arrived in October, there was no electricity and no change and too, there was no law but the clan ways and the gypsy sways of the old days. A place caught in the time of archaic codes, bard-told lores and bare-knuckled rites. The only place in New York where a gang could still rule the streets in 1915, was where the ancient candle lit the darkened diddicoy faces under the bridges and along the Brooklyn waterfront here, and where back when their faces were lit in the dark of cave and cover, hiding their religion and their language too. Some say things never change, like these boys. Some say some things change, while other things stay the same, and yet more say with a whisper, like Beat McGarry in my ear, that some don't want things to change.

Mick Gilligan sits among a few immigrants at the Dock Loaders' Club. He cracks his knuckles, presses them against his forehead above two fearful eyes. He can't think about anything more than what is on his head: he's a bad person. Bad people exist, he thinks. That's what happens in this world. Bad things happen. He doesn't blame his wife for wandering. Isn't her fault. He always knew she deserved more than him.

Mick gritted through the thoughts of her whining in pleasure with Joey Behan atop her flayed thighs while the man of the house is gone looking for work. Behan's pants are on the floor and he is smoking cigarettes while she kisses his ear and smiles at him with her breast filling his palm, children in the backroom. Mick Gilligan presses his knuckles again, but won't pop this time. Even with admitting he feels it's his fault she has cheated him, what turns his face red and makes him shake in fits is the embarrassment of his name's suffering. Angers him to a rage that only blood can salvage so that his honor will again be redeemed among the men of the Bridge District. Only blood. Nothing more matters now to him and he looks up to the door with phobic eyes when he hears the
chu-chum, chu-chum, chu-chum
of the trains on the Manhattan Bridge above. Still no Bill Lovett.

“Must be fookin' six by now,” he mumbles as Ragtime Howard levels a stare at him from the side.

Mick runs his fingers roughly over the rim of his whiskey. Pushes his knuckles against his forehead and looks over again at the opening door and the screeching streetcar shoeclamps grating against the rails like iron-piped banshees calling for him as they slow for the connections over Flatbush Avenue. With the saloon opened, the brine of the East River churns in his nose with the rust and the January freeze too. And the candles are wincing and jerking on the wicks and the ceiling lanterns rattling above from the cold doorwinds like the answers to prayers from kneeling, black-shawled peasant women in a city church. Gilligan jumps when he sees Non Connors and Frankie Byrne enter looking everyone over. Lovett emerges from behind, shorter and thinner than most, cold eyes ugly and fixed and with a childish brutality in them underscored by bright pink lips and cauliflower ears like immature cherub wings.

“Bill!” Gilligan announces, then reaches back to finish off his drink. The tender Paddy Keenan peers up knowingly from behind the bar. Non Connors steps up and pushes Gilligan to the side with an elbow and Byrne measures the head of him with a leaning back of his right fist, biting his lip from behind Connors's shoulder. The two men wall themselves between Gilligan and Lovett by the crook in the bar as the door slams behind.

“I jus' wanna talk to 'ems all.”

“No ya don't,” Connors said, keeping him at distance with a straightened arm.

“It's personal, Non,” Gilligan whined.

“What'll it be, fellas?” Keenan asks in his brogue. “Beer Bill?”

“Fill it to the top. No foam,” Lovett answers elbowing himself up, loosening his black tie. “Gimme two 'o dem yokes.”

“You got it, Bill.”

“Gimme a bat an' a ball,” Connors nipped.

Byrne nods for the same.

Behind the front door of the Dock Loaders' Club, in a corner wall leans a wooden coatrack with a gaggle of picks and shovels, bale hooks and tool belts, mortar-hods and the like. The weapons of the working class. No music rings out. No entertainment makes the air, just stories from old-timers like Beat McGarry, the saloon's resident storygiver. McGarry has many stories. Knows them all and is oft to articulate his knowing that 25 Bridge Street was once the home of the Brooklyn decisionmakers, political or non, back when the area was known as Irishtown where the famine-runners settled and where the ships unloaded them. The survivors of the Great Hunger,
An Gorta Mor
. Tough years. Lean years back then before Jews and Italians and Scandinavians and Poles and Russians came to the waterfront of Brooklyn. Back when Brooklyn was a city separate from Manhattan and the rest of the boroughs and where the alderman had 25 Bridge Street as his official place.

Back too Beat McGarry witnessed himself, well before Dinny Meehan brought all the wild gangs together somewhere round 1912, so the Black Hand couldn't rake the rackets from the old locals. Now he, Dinny Meehan, the young man who honors the aged and rules from above the saloon upstairs where he can overlook his territory, the Bridge District of the largest port city in the world.

And when Mick Gilligan makes his way to Bill Lovett, old McGarry gave a knowing look upon the tender Paddy Keenan who always listens to everything said when the truth serum makes the men of the docks say things they know they shouldn't.

“Bill, ya know I ain' gonna ask for nothin' stupit, Bill,” Gilligan called over the shoulders of Connors and Byrne. “Listen Bill, can I come talk at ya? Can I?”

Staring into his beers, Lovett picks the one on the right and ate it down, fists the glass on the mahogany and wipes it off his face.

“Listen Bill, I can't ask Dinny for somethin' I know he won' do. I only come to you. Ya gotter help me. I spend all day lookin' for work and Joey Behan's in on checkin' wit' my wife. I can't be there to defend my home and go out and work at the same time, Bill. Ya know?”

Before Lovett grabs for his second beer, Keenan plops a replacement in front of him, filled to the top, no foam.

“Bill, listen to me. Ya gotter listen. I need that fuck taken out, Joey Behan. You think Dinny's gonna do that for me? No, he ain't.”

“What'd he say?” Lovett spoke, unconcerned if Gilligan hears.

“I didn' ask him. But Bill, ya know he ain' like that. I need a man with your talents, Bill. Ya gotta future, Bill, Dinny's got no reason . . .”

“Shaddup,” Connors pushes.

“I'll pay ya. I don' care what it cost. I pay. And I do. This Joey Behan? He's gonna die and I'm gonna get my name back. Thing is, he knows I want blood, so I can't do it. Anyway, I ain' got that kinda talent like you got, Bill.”

“Maybe if ya didn' talk so much, ya'd get hired more, then ya could spend more time with ya wife,” Lovett said without turning his head. “Ain' Dinny sent ya a ham on Christmas?”

“Yeah,” Gilligan remembers.

“Den why don' ya go home and beg ya wife to forgive ya, Mick, she ain' slept wit' no Joey Behan. And I ain' for sale.”

“Bill, I . . .”

Connors puts down his rye whiskey, reaches across and grabs Gilligan by the back of the jacket, and slings him to the floor down by the feet of immigrants and patrons. Pushing him off balance, Byrne kicks Gilligan with an outstretched boot. A few men laugh, but silence follows.

“I want justice, Bill,” Gilligan yells from the floor. “I don' go to the tunics, I go to you and this is what I get? Huh? Where's Darby Leighton, Bill? Huh?”

“Shaddup, Mick,” Connors warns him away from the topic.

It is there that everyone listening knows that Mick Gilligan is almost dead. Paddy Keenan takes a step back from behind the bar and Beat McGarry haults his banterings. Ragtime Howard holds his liquor for a moment before swallowing, Connors and Byrne stand stone silent, immigrants and other labormen listen closely. Someone mumbles, “Man's scareder of his own thoughts than another's consequence.”

“Where is he, Bill? Darby?” Gilligan demands. “Who proved Darby's brother Pickles kilt McGowen up in the stir, huh? No one! And still Darby gets eighty-sixt? And why? 'Cause Dinny says so? That ain' like you, Bill. You takin' orders now, Bill? Darby's one o' yours from the old gang on Jay Street, an' y'ain't got nuttin' to say fa dat?”

“Ya jus' stupit, Mick,” Connors said moving in.

“G'ahead an' kill me! A man ain' a man wit'out his honor! He ain' nothin'! Ya kill me wit'out my honor and they'll bury me at your doorstep!” The crowd of men at the bar, along the wall and in between stare quietly. “If he can't find it, he goes'n gets it! Honor's all and all! It is too! And I'm gonner get mine!”

Connors pushes Gilligan through the crowd and against the wall while Byrne jumps over him and grabs Gilligan's head, yanking it down by the neck to the floor where the two can rip at him, fists and boots. Gilligan yelps as blood appears at his nose and through the crowd pushes The Swede with his long hands and dangling height, “A'right, a'right. Ain't you're saloon to make corpses in Connors, go'n! Go'n! Both o' yas.”

As The Swede separates Connors and Byrne from the prostrate Gilligan, Vincent Maher and a group of others support him.

“Ya ain' got the right to stop me from my business,” says Connors to The Swede as he backs away.

“I'll do as I see fit, Non!” The Swede bellows, then speaks toward Lovett's back, as he hadn't moved from his beers at the bar. “Nothin' personal, Bill, jus' don' want any corpses in here. No tunics.”

Lovett nodded but never looked in The Swede's direction.

“Thanks for nothin', Swede,” Gilligan says looking up. “No one'll say it except me, why don' ya let Darby back in the Red Hook? His brother didn' do nothin' to McGowen. It was the screw that got'em, not Pickles Leighton! Right, Bill?”

With a swoop The Swede backhands Gilligan who again falls to the floor as the patrons grunt and fall back to the drink.

Out of the corner of Lovett's eye moves a vagabond tomcat out the front of the saloon looking for him as he had every day around the same time. Lovett orders another beer and a piece of bread and makes his way through the din of the saloon and outside to the sidewalk. The matted cat hid in the alley next to the saloon behind some paint cans and crates when the door opens, then peers out to see Lovett kneeling down, leaning on the facade among the saloon's garbage while placing his glass of beer next to him.

“
Spspspspsps
,” the fawn-eared gangster cooed to the cat while reaching out with the bread in his hand.

The tomcat appears, pretending not to be interested, then looks Lovett square and then away disinterested while tossing his tail in the air.

“Come 'ere, boyo,” Lovett said gently whispering. “I know ya hungry, ol' boy. I won' hurt ya, promise. Ya know who I am, come and smell my fingers.”

With a decisive turn of feline philosophy, the tomcat walks directly to Bill without fear and takes a quick sniff of his knuckles, pulls from the bread with a showing of his teeth and a yank of his neck. Both of Bill's arms rest on his knees pointing toward the cat while he squats. Smiling at the critter's ignorance, Bill calms in the tough's presence. He enjoys seeing the cat feel welcome. After a few bites it let Bill pet him slowly across the back, then dove its head into Bill's shins in a sign of trust and lay down on his back daring Bill to touch his flea-strewn belly. When he does, the cat bites down and kicks up with his clawed hinds, then jumps up quickly again, looks down Bridge Street at something that seemed important, and then falls into a deep purr.

The sloping cobbles below them eventually halts at the water along a great brick structural warehousing reach where men begin closing the big double-doored shutter windows where goods are hoisted from ship hulls. No ice accumulates on the muddy cobbles, but the sidewalk has long slippery stretches of it and the wind seems to ricochet into Lovett's face with a great slicing and drying of his lips. Afterward the thin air around them begins to retract and as darkness takes over the waterfront with the Manhattan lights across the river, a light flurry shimmers with flat crystals that disappear into watery specks on the brick-brown and yellowed cobblestones. A wind then again swoops into his face and ears as he looks down at the tom that hunches his shoulders and bends his little legs at the gust as it unfurls his matted mane.

Lovett cracks a pensive smile and with it moves his ears on the sides of his head sadly. His stomach aches in emptiness as he hadn't eaten a thing all day but instead of tearing from the bread in his left hand, he bites from the beer in his right, gritting his teeth afterward as the fluid flushes through him.

And out of a sudden the door of the saloon is cranked open. Mick Gilligan appears and the tomcat scatters in a frantic sprint down the alley, galloping gently when he finds himself at a safe distance.