City of Dreams (38 page)

Eddie twitched about, and every time he heard a noise outside, he got up and looked down, as if he might see his harmonica being passed like a bottle among the Boyle gang.

The mother hunched over her sewing machine and got down to her piecework for the night. Her foot pumped the pedal. The big gears turned. The small gears spun. And she stopped only to wipe away the sweat or push her stringy hair back around her ears.

The sound had always been like music to the boys, as calming as their mother’s song. But that night, the steady whir, punctuated by the clicks and clacks and clatters, simply made them more nervous.

Finally, Eddie jerked his head at Tim—let’s go downstairs.

“Unh-unh,” said Tim. “Let’s stay right here.”

“Well”—Eddie got up and clomped to the door—“I’m goin’ to the outhouse.”

“Use the chamber pot, why don’t you,” said their mother. “Then get into bed.”

“I need more than the pot, Ma.”

The mother nodded and kept sewing.

Tim wondered if he should go after his brother. Then he went back to the paper.

Then a thought struck him. If his brother had the bullets in his pocket, where was the gun? He slid his hand beneath the sofa cushion, but he felt nothing. He moved to the other side, but . . .

A train was coming. The picture of Jesus was rattling on the wall. The rumble was growing louder. So, as Tim fumbled among the sofa cushions, he did not know if he heard the sound of gunshot or a leftover firecracker.

His mother did not react, so maybe it was a firecracker.

“What are you lookin’ for?” she asked.

“Nothin’. I . . . unh . . . I must’ve et what Eddie did. I need to go to the privy.”

He rushed down the stairs to the first floor just as Mr. Flaherty poked his head out.

“Hey, Timmy,” he asked. “Did you just hear a firecracker?”

“No, sir,” said Tim, and he kept going.

Down in the yard, there were three outhouses to serve the whole building. Tim pulled open one of the doors: empty.

A second door: empty.

Someone shouted out a window, “You kids better not light off any more of them damn things, or I’ll come down and give somebody a beatin’!”

A third door: Tim jumped back at a sight so terrifying that he almost ran. A man was sitting with his pants at his ankles and a bullet hole drilled into the middle of his forehead. Then Tim realized it was no man. It was Dinny Boyle.

Tim whispered his name, but Dinny just stared straight ahead.

So Tim slammed the outhouse door and looked up into the fire escapes.

Where was Eddie?

Had he gone up? Or had he headed for McGillicuddy’s on the street?

Tim remembered what Eddie had said: no one would expect a crip to walk in and start shooting. So he ran back through the tenement and out onto Forty-eighth and up to Ninth Avenue.

At the corner, he looked down the block toward McGillicuddy’s, but he did not see the silhouette of Eddie on his crutch. Ninth Avenue was quiet, except for a few passing drays. At night, New York lived its bright life along Broadway, or down at Fourteenth Street, or on the Bowery. What night life there was in Hell’s Kitchen lurked in the shadows.

Tim ran down to McGillicuddy’s, but this time he slowed before stepping in front of the window. He pulled close to the wall, took off his hat, and peered in.

Mother Mag was wiping a spill from the bar. Slick was drinking a beer with a foot on the newly polished brass rail. Strong was still sitting at a side table. Sunny Jim Maguire had joined him for a late-night conversation. The other drinkers had gone home.

And there was Uncle Billy, collecting spittoons and pouring the oily streams of brown and silver spit into a single bucket.

Then Tim heard a voice behind him.

“Timmy! Timmy!” It was Doreen.

“What are you doin’ here?” whispered Tim. “Go home.”

“I watched all night to see if you’d come out. I had to tell you . . . I heard what Dinny Boyle said about Eddie bein’ sweet on me.”

Tim made a gesture with his hand—quiet. “Go home. This ain’t a place for a girl.”

“Why? What’s goin’ on?” She tried to step around him and look into the saloon.

Tim grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back out of the light. “Go home.”

“Why? You don’t want me to see your uncle cleanin’ spittoons or somethin’? Everybody knows. The kids all call him Billy-spit.”

“I don’t care what they call him. Just go. Go or I’ll smack you.”

She stepped back in shock. “I just come to tell you, to tell you—”

“Tell me what?”

“That
I
ain’t sweet on Eddie.”

“Okay. That’s great.” Tim peered again into the saloon.

“I’m sweet on
you
.”

Tim looked into her eyes and saw tears glistening. “You are? Well . . . I’m sweet on you, too. But if you don’t get out of here, I won’t ever talk to you again.”

“You mean you won’t walk me home?”

He wanted to walk her home more than anything. But he said, “Go on. Beat it.”

That was when he heard a sound vibrating through the iron fire escape above him. He looked up.

So did Doreen.

Somehow, Eddie had gotten across the rooftops and was now climbing down. He had put his crazy plan into motion.

Tim said to Doreen, “This ain’t no place for a girl.” And he pushed her up the street.

She went a short distance, stopped, looked, then went a bit farther, stopped, turned, and faded into the darkness. . . .

Tim thought she was going, and his mind was now turning to his brother. He looked around and saw the awning pipe on the next building.

He could shimmy up the pipe, step on the cornice above the window and . . .

When Eddie reached the last level of the fire escape, right in front of the second-story windows and right above the entrance to McGillicuddy’s, Tim was waiting for him.

“Timmy! Jesus. You scared the shit out of me.”

“Did
you
shoot Dinny?” whispered Tim.

“I opened the door to go in and take a shit and there he was, so—”

“So you shot him?”

“No. He told me to get out of there and called me a nancy-boy.”

“So what did you do?”

“I said, ‘Oopsie-daisy.’
Then
I shot him. He’s dead, hunh?”

“As dead as Lincoln. Give me the gun. We got to get rid of it.”

“I ain’t done with it.”

A train squealed south out of the Fiftieth Street Station. From where the boys lurked, they could look straight into the light that the engine aimed along the tracks.

Tim tried to push his brother up to the next level of the fire escape.

Eddie pushed back and tried to release the bolt that held the ladder that led to the sidewalk.

“Don’t do that,” said Tim

“This is our chance. The train’s comin’. They can’t hear us.”

The rumble was growing into a roar. The light was flickering, widening, sending flashes onto the faces of the buildings on both sides of the street.

Eddie got his fingers on the bolt . . . just as Tim got his hands on the pistol in Eddie’s belt . . . just as the train thundered past . . . just as Uncle Billy appeared below them with a bucket of spit in his hand.

The bolt came out. The pistol came loose. The lights in the passenger cars flashed and flickered. And for a few seconds, the sound of the train felt like a solid thing, heavy enough to crush two boys against the darkened second-story window.

Then Tim grabbed for the pistol. And Eddie grabbed for Tim. Tim fell against the ladder. And the ladder began to slide. Then the pistol fell through the opening and tumbled toward the street.

As Uncle Billy tossed the contents of the bucket into the gutter, the iron ladder dropped behind him. The pistol hit the sidewalk an instant later.

“Fuck!” said Eddie.

Uncle Billy turned, saw the ladder, then the pistol. Then he looked up and dropped the bucket in shock. “Timmy? Eddie? What the—”

Tim climbed halfway down the ladder and held out his hand. “Give me the gun.”

Billy picked it up and looked at it, then he looked again at the two desperate boys on the fire escape.

That was when Slick McGillicuddy appeared at the front door. “What the fuck is goin’ on out here?” He stepped out onto the sidewalk. He saw Tim on the ladder. He saw the pistol in Billy’s hand. And he said it again. “What the
fuck
?”

And something snapped in Billy Donovan, as if he suddenly saw a way to erase all the insults of a lifetime and all the embarrassment of befriending these thugs and all the shame of knowing that his blabbermouth ways had caused the death of Six-Pound Dick and endangered his whole family.

Without another word, he raised the pistol and shot Slick McGillicuddy right in the forehead.

Slick’s derby flew off and landed with a rattle on the floor of the saloon.

Slick dropped like a hod of bricks.

Then Billy stepped over Slick and followed the derby into the saloon.

The train was receding quickly now. The city had swallowed the roar, and the last cars sent a
clickety-clack-clickety-clack
echoing through the rails.

Strong and Sunny Jim were standing as Billy strode in. Strong was pulling a pistol from under the table and was stepping forward. Sunny Jim was stepping away.

Billy put a bullet into Strong’s chest, stopping him where he stood.

Sunny Jim turned and ran for the rear door, so Billy shot him in the back. The politician took another few steps and fell flat on his face.

By now, Tim and Eddie had both dropped to the sidewalk and were watching wide-eyed as Mother Mag pulled the sawed-off shotgun from behind the bar.

Eddie screamed, “Uncle Billy, look out!”

Billy turned and aimed.

But Mother Mag fired first, blasting a spray of shot that tore into Billy and struck the staggering body of her own son, too.

Strong hit the floor.

Billy hit the wall . . . then the floor.

And the room fell silent.

For a moment, the only sound was the distant squeal of the train arriving at Forty-second Street.

Mother Mag broke the shotgun and dropped two smoking shells onto the floor. She was muttering to herself, as if this were no more than a spilled beer bucket, a mess to clean up. “Fuckin’ Billy Donovan tellin’ fuckin’ stories about fuckin’ funny money. So we give him a fuckin’ job and this is the fuckin’ thanks we get.”

As she reloaded, she came out from behind the bar in her trousers and cowboy boots. She looked at Strong and poked him with her foot. “Son? Son?” But he did not move.

So she turned to Billy. His face and the apron covering his belly were splattered with buckshot holes seeping blood. He was gasping for breath.

She pointed the shotgun. “Fuckin’ weasel is what you are.”

And with the last life left in him, Billy Donovan raised the pistol and fired twice. The first shot hit her in the chest and staggered her. The second struck her in the face and blew off the top of her head.

Mother Mag fell backward through the settling mist of her own blood and brain and hit the floor, as dead as her sons.

After a moment of shocked silence, Eddie Riley whispered, “Mother of fuckin’ Jesus.” Then he started into the saloon.

Tim grabbed him. “Come on.”

“But Uncle Billy!” cried Eddie.

“Go!” Billy rolled to his side as if trying to get up. “Go now. Leave the gun. And go . . . go . . . go tell your mother, tell her—” He rasped and rattled and stopped breathing.

Police whistles were sounding from both directions on Ninth Avenue. So the boys turned to leave and walked right into Doreen, who was standing wide-eyed in the shaft of light slanting out onto the sidewalk.

“I told you to go home,” said Tim.

“But”—she looked into the saloon—“Uncle Billy?”

“He’s dead,” said Eddie, “and we’ll all be in jail if we don’t get out of here.” He told his brother to take his crutch, then he grabbed a rung of the ladder and lifted himself.

Tim pushed Doreen up the ladder after Eddie. At the landing, Tim pulled up the ladder, replaced the bolt, and they escaped over the roof.

T
WO DAYS LATER
, Tim and Eddie Riley stood before George Washington Plunkitt at the shoeshine stand in the County Courthouse.

Plunkitt was reading the
Advertiser
. The headline screamed:
SUNNY JIM MAGUIRE DIES. ONLY SURVIVOR OF MCGILLICUDDY MASSACRE SUCCUMBS WITHOUT REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS
.

The voice rose from behind the paper. “It says here, ‘There is still no motive for the shooting, but one thing is certain, the field in the fifteenth now belongs to Plunkitt and Plunkitt alone.’” He lowered the paper. “I would’ve beaten Maguire like a mangy dog. But your uncle done me a favor, and I don’t forget a man who does me a favor.”

Tim and Eddie looked at each other. Eddie seemed more frightened to stand here than he had been on the night of the “massacre.”

“I been lookin’ into all this,” said Plunkitt, “and I told the police that there don’t seem to be evidence of anything but revenge. Your uncle thought the McGillicuddys killed your pa. So did I, even if the only witness was too honest or too scared to finger them.”

Tim just shrugged.

“So your uncle decided to do the world a favor. And God bless him for that.”

Eddie looked at his brother. Tim could think of nothing to say.

After a few moments, Plunkitt said, “Have you boys made up your mind?”

“About what?” asked Tim.

“About what you’d like to do in life. Why do you think I sent for you? Two fatherless boys with an uncle as brave as that . . . you deserve a leg up.”

“Well,” said Tim, “I’d like to go to school. To college.”

“And do what?”

“Go into business.”

“Is that why you introduced yourself to J. P. Morgan the other day?”

“How did—”

“Morgan showed the bond to Mr. Daly. I hear he give you ten dollars for it.”

“Yes, sir.” Tim had given up wondering how Plunkitt knew everything.

“Well,” said Plunkitt. “A boy with your brains, he can learn all he needs
and
help his mother, too . . . if he’s practical.” Plunkitt wrote down the name of Daniel Daly, Drexel, Morgan and Company, 23 Wall Street. “They need an office boy. Go see Daly.”