Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (19 page)

And it was an old street even when Billy was born on it. It ran westward along the river flats from the Basin, that sheltered harbor that formed the mouth of the Erie Canal, and rose up the
northernmost of the three steep ridges on which Albany was built: Arbor Hill. It rose for half a mile, crossed Ten Broeck, the street where the lumber barons had built their brownstones, and, still
rising, ran another half mile westward to all but bump the Dudley Observatory, where scientific men of the city catalogued the stars (8241 measured and recorded for the International Catalogue as
of 1883) from the top of the same hill on which Mike Mulvaney grazed and daily counted his two dozen goats.

The street took its name from The Colonie itself, that vast medieval demesne colonized in 1630 by an Amsterdam pearl merchant named Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, who was also known as the First
Patroon, the absentee landlord who bought from five tribes of Indians some seven hundred thousand acres of land, twenty-four miles long and forty-eight miles wide, out of which a modest seven
thousand acres would eventually be expropriated by the subsequent Yankee overlords to create the city of Albany.

Each power-wielding descendant of Van Rensselaer to assume the feudal mantle of the Patroonship during the next two centuries would maintain exploitative supremacy over thousands of farm renters
on the enormous manor called, first, Rensselaerswyck, and later, The Colonie. Each Patroon would make his home in the Manor House, which rose handsomely out of a riverside meadow just north of the
city on the bank of a stream that is still called Patroon Creek. Mickey McManus from Van Woert Street went rabbit hunting one day near The Patroon’s creek and shot a cow. Few can now remember
that meadow or even where the Manor House stood precisely. It closed forever in 1875, when the widow of the Last Patroon died there, and it was later moved to make room for the Delaware and Hudson
railroad tracks, dismantled brick by brick and reassembled in Williamstown as a fraternity house.

But long before that, North Albany, where Billy Phelan and Martin Daugherty both now lived, and Arbor Hill, where the McCalls and Billy’s aunts and uncles still lived, had been seeded in
part with the homes of settlers who worked as servants and as farm and field hands for the Patroon. Billy Phelan’s great-grandfather, Johnny Phelan, a notably belligerent under-sheriff, was
given the safekeeping of the Manor House as his personal charge after four rebellious prisoners barricaded themselves in their cell at the penitentiary and, with a stolen keg of gunpowder,
threatened to blow themselves up unless the food improved. Johnny Phelan sneaked a fire hose to the door of their cell, opened the door suddenly, and drenched their powder with a swift blast. Then
he leaped over their barricade and clubbed them one by one into civility.

Martin Daughterty’s grandmother, Hanorah Sweeney, had been the pastry cook in the Patroon’s kitchen and was famed for her soda bread and fruitcakes, which, everyone said, always
danced off their platters and onto the finicky palates of the Patroon and his table companions, among them the Prince of Wales, George Washington’s grandnephew, and Sam Houston.

Arbor Hill and North Albany continued to grow as the railroads came in, along with the foundries, the stove works, the tobacco factory and the famous Lumber District, which started at the Basin
and ran northward two and a half miles between the river and the canal. Processing Adirondack logs into lumber was Albany’s biggest business at mid-century, and the city fathers proclaimed
that Albany was now the white pine distribution center of the world.

The North End and Arbor Hill grew dense with the homes of lumber handlers, moulders, railroad men, and canalers, and in the winter, when the river and the canal froze, many of them cut ice,
fifteen thousand men and boys cutting three million tons from the Hudson in six weeks at century’s end.

They all clustered on streets such as Colonie to live among their own kind, and the solidarity became an obvious political asset. Not the first to notice this, but the first to ride it to local
eminence, was the fat, bearded, Irish-born owner of the Beverwyck brewery, Michael Nolan, who in 1878 was elected mayor of the city Coming only three years after the death of the Last
Patroon’s widow, this clearly signaled a climactic change in city rule: the Dutch and Yankees fading, the American Irish, with the help of Jesus, and by dint of numbering forty per cent of
the city’s population, waxing strong. And eight years ahead of Boston in putting an Irishman in City Hall.

Nolan had lived on Millionaire’s Row, on the east side of Ten Broeck, two and a half blocks from Patsy McCall’s home on Colonie Street. Patsy, who could have lived like a millionaire
but didn’t, was in the Irish descendance of political power from Nolan as surely as the Last Patroon had descended from the first; and was a descendant in style as well as power. When Nolan
was elected, he swathed his brewery wagons and dray horses in red, white, and blue bunting and saw to it that Beverwyck beer was sold in every saloon in town. Nolan’s example was not wasted
on the McCalls. Gubernatorial hopeful Tom Dewey revealed that in October 1938, Stanwix, the McCall beer, was sold in 243 of the city’s 249 taverns.

Billy Phelan knew the Patroon only as a dead word, Nolan not at all. But in the filtered regions of his cunning Irish brain, he knew the McCalls stood for power far beyond his capacity to
imagine.

They were up from below. And when you’re up, you let no man pull you down. You roll your wagons over the faces of the enemy.

And who is the enemy?

It’s well you might ask.

Billy pushed the door bell.

Bindy McCall opened the door, smiled, and pulled Billy by the arm, gently, into the house, the first time Billy had entered Patsy’s home. The front hall, leading upstairs
and also into both front and back parlors, reminded Billy of the hated house across the street, probably built from the same blueprints.

Bindy held Billy’s arm and led him into the front parlor with its thick oriental rug, its heavy drapes and drawn shades, where a scowling male ancestor of the McCalls looked down
insistently on Billy: a powerful face above a neck stretched by a high collar and string tie, a face not unlike Patsy’s, who sat beneath it at a card table, shirtless, reclining in his blue
bathrobe in a leather armchair; pads and pencils on the table beside a telephone. An old player piano dominated the room, where Patsy no doubt played and sang the dirties he was famous for,
“Paddy McGinty’s Goat,” for one.

Billy had heard him sing that at the Phoenix Club in the North End on a Sunday years ago when the political notables of North Albany turned out for an election rally. Billy went just to watch
the spectacle and barely spoke to anyone, never said, Hello Patsy, as he could have, as thousands did whenever the great leader hove into range. Hello Patsy. Billy just listened and never forgot
the song and later learned it himself:
Patrick McGinty, an Irishman of note, fell heir to a fortune and he bought himself a goat.

A panorama of a Civil War battle, one of Patsy’s well-known interests, hung in a gilded frame over the piano. A pair of brass donkeys as bookends, and with Dickens and Jefferson, a
biography of Jim Jeffries, and canvases of Fifth and Eighth Ward voters sandwiched between the butt ends of the animals, sat on top of the piano. On an old oak sofa across from Patsy sat a man
Billy didn’t know. Bindy introduced him as Max Rosen, Matt McCall’s law partner.

“You’re a tough man to find,” Bindy said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“I wasn’t hiding. Just playing cards.”

“We heard about the holdup and what you did. You’re a tough guy, Billy.”

“How’d you hear about it? It just happened.”

“Word gets around. We also heard what you did in the Grand Lunch with that crazy kid.”

“You heard that, too?”

“That, too,” Bindy said.

“Listen, Bin,” said Billy, “I’m really sorry about Charlie.”

“Are you?”

“Sure I am. You got any word on him yet?”

“We got a little. That’s why we wanted to talk to you.”

“Me? What’ve I got to do with anything?”

“Relax. You want a beer?”

“Sure, I’ll have a beer with you, Bin.”

Bindy, shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow, soup stain on shirtfront, no tie, wearing eyeglasses and house slippers, looked like somebody else to Billy, not Bindy McCall, the dapper boss of the
street. He looked tired, too, and Patsy the same. Patsy stared at Billy. Max Rosen, in his suit coat, tie up tight to a fresh collar, also stared. Billy in the middle, a new game. He was glad to
see Bindy come back with the beer bottle and glass: Stanwix.

“I heard you took a beating today with the nags,” Bindy said, pouring Billy’s beer.

“You hear what I had for breakfast?”

“No, but I could find out.”

“I ate alone, no witnesses.”

“There’s other ways.”

“Yeah.” And Billy took a drink.

“You know where your old man is?” Patsy asked.

“My old man?”

“Yours.”

“No. I don’t know.”

“I heard he was in town,” said Patsy.

“My father in Albany? Where?”

“I didn’t hear that. Somebody saw him downtown today.”

“Goddamn,” Billy said.

“You wanna see him?” asked Patsy.

“Sure I wanna see him. I haven’t saw him in twenty years. Twenty-two years.”

“I’ll see if I can track him down.”

“That’d be terriffic, Mr. McCall.”

“Call me Patsy.”

“Patsy. That’s a terrific thing if you can do that.”

“Maybe you can do something for us.”

“Maybe I can.”

“You heard that kidnap rumor about me,” Bindy said, sitting on a folding chair across the card table from Patsy. The card table Billy worked at was in better shape.

“I heard that last summer.”

“From who?”

“Jesus, I don’t remember, Bin. One of those things you hear at a bar when you’re half in the bag, you don’t remember. I didn’t give it the time of day. Then I
remembered it today.”

“And got hot at Louie Dugan for telling me about it.”

“I didn’t expect to have it repeated.”

“We heard the same rumor last year and traced it to a couple of local fellows. And maybe, just maybe, that ties in to Charlie. Do you follow me?”

“I follow.”

“Neither of these fellows are in town and we don’t know just where they are. But they got a friend who’s in town, and that’s why you’re here.”

“I’m the friend?”

“No, you’re a friend of the friend. The friend is Morrie Berman.”

The noise Billy made then was a noncommittal grunt. Maloy and Curry, Berman’s pals. On the list, Curry.

“We understand you know Mr. Berman well,” Max Rosen said.

“We play cards together.”

“We understand you know him better than that,” Rosen said.

“I know him a long time.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all about it,” said Patsy, “and we also know you didn’t give Pop O’Rourke’s man his ten dollars today.”

“I told Pop why.”

“We know what you told him,” said Patsy, “and we know your brother-in-law, Georgie Quinn, is writing numbers and don’t have the okay for the size books he’s taking
on.”

“Georgie talked to Pop about that, too.”

“And Pop told him he could write a little, but now he’s backing the play himself. He’s ambitious, your brother-in-law.”

“What is all this, Bindy? What are we talking about? You know the color of my shorts. What’s it for?” Billy felt comfortable only with Bindy, but Bindy said nothing.

“Do you know the Berman family, Mr. Phelan?” Max Rosen asked.

“I know Morrie’s old man’s in politics, that’s all.”

“Do you like Morrie Berman?” Rosen asked.

“I like him like I like a lot of guys. I got nothing against him. He’s the guy had the idea to buy me a steak tonight. Nice.”

“Do you like Charlie?” Patsy asked.

“Do I like him? Sure I like him. I grew up with him. Charlie was always a good friend of mine, and I don’t say that just here. I bullshit nobody on this.”

Bindy poured more beer into Billy’s glass and smiled at him.

“All right, Billy,” Bindy said, “we figure we know your feelings. We wouldn’t have okayed you for that Saratoga job if we didn’t trust you. We know you a long time.
And you remember after the Paul Whiteman thing, we gave you that other job, too.”

“The Chicago Club?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought that came from Lemon Lewis. I didn’t think you even knew about that.”

“We knew. We do Albany people.”

“Then it’s two I owe you.”

“Just one,” Bindy said. “We trusted you then, we trust you now. But that don’t mean forever.”

“Who the hell am I not to trust? What do I know?”

“We don’t know what you know,” Patsy said.

“It’s what you might come to know in the next few days that’s important,” Max Rosen said. “We’re interested in Mr. Berman, in everything he says and does.
Everything.”

“Morrie doesn’t tell me secrets,” Billy said.

“We don’t expect that,” said Max. “If he’s involved in the kidnapping, and we’re by no means saying that he is, then he’s hardly likely to talk about it
at all. But you must know, Mr. Phelan, that men sometimes betray themselves indirectly. They reveal what’s on their mind merely by random comment. Berman might, for instance, mention the men
involved in a context other than criminal. Do you follow me?”

“No.”

“You’re not stupid,” Patsy said, an edge to his voice. He leaned forward in his chair and looked through Billy’s head.

“Nobody ever said I was,” Billy said, looking back through Patsy’s head.

“Billy,” said Bindy in a soothing tone, “we’re playing in every joint where we can get a bet down. I tell you one thing. Some people wouldn’t even put it past
Berman’s old man to be in on this.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Max Rosen said. “Jake Berman isn’t capable of such behavior. I’ve known him all my life.”

“I don’t accuse him,” Bindy said, “but he don’t like us. I just make the point that we suspect everybody.”

“People might even suspect you, with your name in the paper,” Patsy said.