Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (5 page)

He shoved his arms into the fresh shirt Mary Daugherty had ironed. A fresh shirt every day, Mary insisted, or you’ll blow us all out the window with the B.O. Martin pushed into his black
shoes, gone gray with months of scuffs and the denial of polish, threw a tie once around his neck in a loose knot, and thrust himself into his much abused suit coat. A
sughan
, Mary said.
You’ve made a
sughan
of it. Ah well, all things come alike to all, the clean and the unclean, the pressed and the unimpressed.

In the bathroom he brushed away the taste of oatmeal, splashed his face with cold water, flattened his cowlick with the hairbrush, and then salt-stepped down the stairs, saying as he sped
through the kitchen: “I’ve got a hell of a story, I think, Mary. I’ll call you.”

“What about your coffee? What about your eggs?”

But he was already gone, this aging firefly who never seemed to his wife to have grown up quite like other men, gone on another story.

Martin Daugherty had once lived in Arbor Hill, where the McCalls and the Phelans lived, but fire destroyed the house of his childhood and adolescence, and the smoke poisoned
Katrina Daugherty, his mother, who escaped the flames only to die on the sidewalk of Colonie Street in her husband’s arms, quoting Verlaine to him: “. . . you loved me so!”
“Quite likely—I forget.” The fire began in the Christian Brothers School next door, old Brother William turned to a kneeling cinder by the hellish flames. The fire leaped across
the alley and consumed the Daugherty house, claiming not only its second victim in Martin’s mother, but also his father’s accumulation of a lifetime of books, papers, and clippings that
attested to his fame and infamy, and two unfinished plays. Edward Daugherty left Arbor Hill forever after the fire and moved into the North End of the city, politely evicting the tenants in his own
father’s former home on Main Street.

This was the house Edward Daugherty’s parents had built on the edge of the Erie Canal the year before Martin was born, and had lived in until they died. After Edward’s first stroke,
Martin moved into the house also, with his wife and son, to nurse his father back to independence. But the man was never to be well again, and Martin remained in the house even until now, curator
of what he had come to call the Daugherty Museum.

Martin parked his car on Colonie Street in front of the vacant lot where his former home had stood before it burned. He stepped out onto the sidewalk where he’d once pitched pennies and
election cards, and the charred roots of his early life moved beneath his feet. Chick Phelan peered out of the upstairs bay window of the house next to the empty lot. Martin did not wave. He looked
fleetingly at the outline of the foundation of the old place, slowly being buried by the sod of time.

Patsy McCall’s house was kitty-corner to the empty lot and Martin crossed the street and climbed the stoop. He, the Phelans, the McCalls (Bindy lived two doors above Patsy), and all the
other youths of the street had spent uncountable nights on this stoop, talking, it now seemed, of three subjects: baseball, the inaccessibility of the myriad burgeoning breasts that were poking
themselves into the eyeballs and fluid dreams of every boy on the street, and politics: Would you work for Billy Barnes? Never. Packy McCabe? Sure. Who’s the man this election? Did you hear
how the Wally-Os stole a ballot box in the Fifth Ward and Corky Ronan chased ’em and got it back and bit off one of their ears?

Martin looked at his watch: eight thirty-five. He rang the doorbell and Dick Maloney, district attorney of Albany County, a short, squat man with an argumentive mouth, answered.

“You’re up early, Dick, me boy.”

“Am I?”

“Are you in possession of any news?”

“There’s no news I know of.”

And Maloney pointed toward the dining room, where Martin found Patsy and Matt McCall, the political leaders of the city and county for seventeen years. Cronies of both brothers sat with them at
the huge round table, its white tablecloth soiled with coffee stains and littered with cups, ashes, and butts. On the wall the painted fruit was ripening in the bowl and the folks were still up at
Golgotha. Alongside hung framed, autographed photos of Jim Jeffries, Charlie Murphy of Tammany, Al Smith as presidential candidate, and James Oliver Plunkett, who had inscribed the photo with one
of his more memorable lines: “Government of the people, by the people who were elected to govern them.”

“Morning, gentlemen,” Martin said with somber restraint.

“We’re not offering coffee,” said Patsy, looking his usual, overstuffed self. With his tight haircut, rounded jowls, and steel-rimmed specs, this Irish-American chieftain
looked very like a Prussian puffball out of uniform.

“Then thanks for nothing,” said Martin.

The cronies, Poop Powell, an ex-hurley player and ex-cop who drove for the McCalls, and Freddie Gallagher, a childhood pal of Mart’s who found that this friendship alone was the secret of
survival in the world, rose from the table and went into the parlor without a word or a nod. Martin sat in a vacated chair and said to Patsy, “There’s something tough going on, I
understand.”

“No, nothing,” said Patsy.

The McCalls’ faces were abulge with uncompromising gravity. For all their power they seemed suddenly powerless confronting personal loss. But many men had passed into oblivion for
misjudging the McCalls’ way with power. Patsy demonstrated it first in 1919 when he campaigned in his sailor suit for the post of city assessor and won, oh wondrous victory. It was the wedge
which broke the hold the dirty black Republican sons of bitches had had on the city since ’99. Into the chink Patsy made in the old machine, the Democrats, two years later, drove a new
machine, the Nonesuch, with the McCalls at the wheel: Patsy, the savior, the
sine qua non
, becoming the party leader and patron; Matt, the lawyer, becoming the political strategist and
spokesman; and Benjamin, called Bindy, the sport, taking over as Mayor of Nighttime City.

The three brothers, in an alliance with a handful of Protestant Yankee aristocrats who ran the formal business of the city, developed a stupendous omnipotence over both county and city, which
vibrated power strings even to the White House. Democratic aspirants made indispensable quadrennial pilgrimages to genuflect in the McCall cathedral and plead for support. The machine brushed the
lives of every Albany citizen from diapers to dotage. George Quinn often talked of the day he leaped off the train at Van Woert Street, coming back in uniform from France, and was asked for five
dollars by John Kelleher on behalf of Patsy’s campaign for the assessorship. George gave not five but fifteen and had that to brag about for the rest of his life.

“I have to say it,” Martin said, looking at Patsy, his closest friend among the brothers. “There’s a rumor around that Charlie was kidnapped last night.”

The gravity of the faces did not change, nor did the noncommittal expressions.

“Nothing to that,” said Matt, a tall, solid man, still looking like the fullback he once was, never a puffball; handsome and with a movie actor’s crop of black hair. When he
gained power, Matt put his college football coach on the Supreme Court bench.

“Is Charlie here?” Martin asked him.

“He went to New York,” Matt said.

“When was that?”

“None of your goddamn business,” said Patsy.

“Patsy, listen. I’m telling you the rumor is out. If it’s fake and you don’t squelch it, you’ll have reporters crawling in the windows.”

“Not these windows I won’t. And why should I deny something that hasn’t happened? What the hell do you think I am, a goddamn fool?”

The rising anger. Familiar. The man was a paragon of wrath when cornered. Unreason itself. He put Jigger Begley in tears for coming drunk to a rally, and a week later Jigger, Patsy’s
lifelong friend, quit his job in the soap factory, moved to Cleveland, and for all anybody knew was there yet. Power in the voice.

Martin’s personal view was this: that I do not fear the McCalls; that this is my town as much as theirs and I won’t leave it for any of them. Martin had committed himself to Albany
in part because of the McCalls, because of the promise of a city run by his childhood friends. But he’d also come back to his native city in 1921, after two years with the A.E.F. and a year
and a half in Ireland and England after that, because he sensed he would be nothing without his roots, and when, in 1922, he was certain of this truth he went back to Ireland and brought Maire
Kiley out of her Gaelic wilderness in Carraroe, married her in Galway, and came to Albany forever, or at least sixteen years now seemed like forever. So to hell with Patsy and his mouth and the
whole bunch of them and their power. Martin Daugherty’s complacency is superior to whatever abstract whip they hold over him. But then again, old fellow, there’s no need to make enemies
needlessly, or to let the tone of a man’s voice turn your head.

“One question then,” Martin said with his mildest voice, “and then I’m done with questions.”

The brothers waited solemnly.

“Is Bindy in town?”

“He’s in Baltimore,” said Matt. “At the races with his wife.”

Martin nodded, waited, then said, “Patsy, Matt. You say there’s nothing going on and I have to accept that, even though Maloney looks like he’s about to have twins on the stair
carpet. But very obviously something
is
happening, and you don’t want it out. All right, so be it. I give you my word, and I pledge Em Jones’s word, that the
Times-Union
will not print a line about this thing, whatever it is. Not the rumor, not the denial of the rumor, not any speculation. We will not mention Charlie, or Bindy, or either of you in any context other
than conventional history, until you give the go-ahead. I don’t break confidences without good reason and you both know that about me all my life. And I’ll tell you one more thing.
Emory will do anything in his power to put the newspaper behind you in any situation such as the hypothetical one we’ve not been discussing here. I repeat. Not discussing. Under no
circumstances have we been discussing anything here this morning. But if the paper can do anything at all, then it will. I pledge that as true as I stand here talking about nothing
whatsoever.”

The faces remained grave. Then Patsy’s mouth wrinkled sideways into the makings of a small grin.

“You’re all right, Martin,” he said. “For a North Ender.”

Martin stood and shook Mart’s hand, then Patsy’s.

“If anything should come up we’ll let you know,” Matt said. “And thanks.”

“It’s what’s right,” Martin said, standing up, thinking: I’ve still got the gift of tongues. For it was as true as love that by talking a bit of gibberish he had
verified, beyond doubt, that Charlie Boy McCall had, indeed, been grabbed.

“You know I saw Charlie last night down at the Downtown alleys. We were there when Scotty Streck dropped dead. I suppose you know about that one.”

“We knew he was there,” Patsy said. “We didn’t know who else.”

“We’re working on that,” Matt said.

“I can tell you who was there to the man,” Martin said, and he ticked off names of all present except the sweeper and one bar customer, whom he identified by looks. Matt made notes
on it all.

“What was Berman doing there?” Patsy asked.

“I don’t know. He just turned up at the bar.”

“Was he there before Charlie got there?”

“I can’t be sure of that.”

“Do you think he knew Charlie would be at the alleys?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Do you know Berman?”

“I’ve been in his company, but we’re not close.”

“Who is close to him?”

Martin shook his head, thinking of faces but connecting no one intimately to the man. Then he said, “Billy Phelan seems to know him. Berman backed him in last night’s match and did
the same once before, when Billy played pool. He seems to like Billy.”

“Do you trust Phelan?” Matt asked.

“No man in his right mind would trust him with his woman, but otherwise he’s as good as gold, solid as they come.”

“We want to keep tabs on that Berman fellow,” Patsy said.

“You think he’s connected to this situation?” and both Patsy and Matt shrugged without incriminating Berman, but clearly admitting there certainly was a situation.

“We’re keeping tabs on a lot of people,” Patsy said. “Can you ask young Phelan to hang around a while with Berman, the next few days, say, and let us know where he goes
and what he says?”

“Ahhhhh,” said Martin, “that’s tricky but I guess I can ask.”

“Don’t you think he’ll do it?”

“I wouldn’t know, but it is touchy. Being an informer’s not Billy’s style.”

“Informer?” said Patsy, bristling.

“It’s how he might look at it.”

“That’s not how I look at it.”

“I’ll ask him,” Martin said. “I can certainly ask him.”

“We’ll take good care of him if he helps us,” Matt said. “He can count on that.”

“I don’t think he’s after that either.”

“Everybody’s after that,” Patsy said.

“Billy’s headstrong,” Martin said, standing up.

“So am I,” said Patsy. “Keep in touch.”

“Bulldogs,” said Martin.