Exile on Bridge Street (5 page)

“Lonergan,” Lovett yells out. “Richie Lonergan.”

“He's in za back, Bill,” Abe Harms says with the accent of the Hun.

Walking past the boys, Lovett storms around the counter and as Lonergan appears from the back room with his fingers black from the grease of sprockets, Lovett grabs him by the collar, picks him up over his head, and slams the youngster to the ground with his might.

“The fuck's wrong wit' ya?” Lovett's face red and shaking, spittle dropping into Richie's face from gritting teeth. “Ya fookin' monkey. Ya're a fookin' monkey doin' tricks.”

Yelling over Richie, legs spread around his body and holding him down by the neck and face, “I known ya since I'm six years old, Richie, and you was only what? A babe, that's all. And never had ya backstabbed me like ya have now.”

“Why?” Lonergan says, looking up coolly without fighting back.

“Why?” Lovett yells looking back at the stunned Abe Harms and the rest of the Lonergan crew. “Why. Why. Why. Look what he done, Richie. Not only what he done, but he got you doin' it to me. Manipulated ya. Got ya doin' his tricks. Look at ya. Ya still don' even know what I'm talkin' about.”

Lovett stands up, paces over Richie who comes to his elbows on the floor. Lovett jumps and pushes him back and puts one boot on the kid's neck, reaches down to Richie's leg and rips off the straps of his peg and yanks three, four times until it is finally free.

“Stay there,” Lovett points to Richie's face, and holding the leg in one hand like a weapon walks across the faces of the other boys, Petey first, punching him across the ear until he holds his hands over his face. “Ya got somethin'?” Then to Harms, who looks away and toward the floor. He comes closer to him, the German Jew boy. Closer again, Lovett's chest against Harms's thin shoulder, slowly pushing him back. Forcing him back. Back more, slowly, coercing him into acting weak for him. Breathing deep and angrily into his ear and face, Harms just stares in the distance toward the ground without words. Avoiding the man's eyes until Lovett brings the wood leg up, smacking Harms in the lip with it, “I know ya think ya smart, you. How smart can ya be though, followin' Richie? Ya like a fookin' girl prancin' around waitin' for a man to tell ya what's right'n wrong. Waitin' for 'em to fuck ya head on straight. Ain' that right, Harms?”

“Yeah,” he says, looking down and away.

“Richie?”

“Huh,” Richie answers from the floor.

“Stay on ya back. . . . Ya listen to this heeb before me?”

“Nah.”

“Seems like it. . . . I want ya to stop makin' it seem that way.”

“A'right.”

“Get against the wall,” Lovett says to the four followers of Lonergan and pulls the .45 from his belt, kicks Tim Quilty in the pants. “Against the wall.”

With heads pointed to the floor, eyes scared and stuck on Lovett, they walk ashamedly toward an empty wall in the bicycle shop.

“Stay there on ya back, Richie,” he repeats, pointing with the gun, the wood leg in his left hand. “Faces against the wall. Faces, chest, peckers'n toes against the wall. Hands locked behind ya back.”

Looking up from the floor, Richie watches emotionlessly.

“Which one first, Richie?”

Matty Martin winces and begins to cry.

“Martin,” Richie says.

“On ya knees, Matty,” Lovett yells. “Face on the wall, pecker'n chest too. Hands behind ya back. Lock ya fingers up.”

The other boys look down at Matty, cheeks pressed to the wall. Lovett looks at them and pulls back the hammer and presses it against the back of Matty's hair.

“No, no, no, no . . .” Matty mumbles.

“Don' ya fookin' move from that wall, boy,” Lovett says, points the gun toward the ceiling and fires and hits Martin in the head with the wooden leg at the same time.

Matty screams, falling to the floor. Feeling desperately at the back of his head for blood. Looking at his palms, white and dry. Feeling again, then rolling on the ground crying and holding his head.

“Get back against the wall, Matty,” Lovett says. “Stand up. Up against the wall wit' the rest of 'em there. Matty.”

“Okay.”

“Get up there.”

“Okay, a'right.”

Pacing behind the backs of Harms, Behan, Quilty, and Martin, Lovett calls out, “Richie?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do ya fookin' pieces of shit love when I'm weak? Why?”

“Don't.”

“No?”

“No.”

“This shop here, what is it?”

“Bike shop.”

“No, it's boodle,” Lovett says, dropping the leg. “A bribe to make ya Ma happy. And to keep you boys away from me. And who paid for it?”

“Dinny Meehan.”

“Richie?”

“Yeah.”

“Why'd Connors get set up? Why him?”

“He was yours.”

“Richie?”

“Yeah.”

“What'd Mick Gilligan ever do wrong? What? What'd he do that was so bad that you executed him at Meehan's order?”

“Gilligan went to you for a favor instead o' to him.”

“Outta anybody to kill 'em, why'd Meehan choose you?”

“Show loyalty.”

“Why's Darby Leighton eighty-sixt from workin' the docks?”

“He's Sadie's cousin, Pickles's brother.”

“And what about Pickles?”

“Sadie's cousin too, set up back in '13.”

“Harms?”

“Yez.”

“Ya so smart, what happened to the money Wolcott'n the New York Dock Company commissioned Dinny Meehan for the Thos Carmody kill?”

“I uh . . . I'm not zo sure . . .”

“Ya don' know,” Lovett says. “Ya got no idear, but ya the smart one. I'll tell ya what happened wit' it, it was used to pay off Brosnan'n the tunics to set up Non Connors. Make sense?”

“Well . . .” Harms says. “That's a theory.”

“Yeah, a theory. Until I see Carmody's body somewhere, we're gonna assume it's the truth. But I gotta feelin' Dinny'll never take an order from some fat Puritan fookin' Anglo from Massachusetts who's in charge o' wage'n labor at the dock company. He don' take orders from nobody, ya know that. All o' ya know that. So, what's that mean if Carmody ain' dead?”

Harms begins to answer, but mumbles.

“Speak up.”

“Maybe Volcott vill vant to know zat information.”

“Yeah, Maybe Wolcott and his lackeys Silverman an' Wisniewski over at the New York Dock Company might wanna know that the man they paid Meehan to kill ain't dead. And since we're there talkin' wit' 'em, maybe he'd like to work somethin' out, him'n us. I mean, hey, we're the bosses of the Red Hook Terminals, right? The New York Dock Company's headquarters is in Red Hook, right? The White Hand Gang just firebombed the damn place and didn't even kill Carmody, the Brooklyn recruiter for the ILA, and he's supposed to be happy about it? Harms?”

“Yez?”

“Silverman's a heeb like you, you're gonna go'n find 'em, talk to 'em.”

“I don't know zis man.”

“Well,” Lovett says coming up close to him again, his chest and breath against Harms's face. “Ya gonna talk to 'em. Find 'em. And we're gonna be quiet about it all. There's only the six o' us in here, so Meehan finds out anythin' about this conversation, I know who to look for. I'll hunt ya down, all o' ya. Yaz already got chumped by Meehan 'cause ya a bunch o' fookin' babies, all o' ya. But I hear anythin' back from Meehan about this conversation and I swear on my mother an' anythin' else, I'll open up ya heads like tomata soup, the fookin' whole lot o' ya.”

Matty's legs begin shaking, tears streaming down his face.

“Matty?” Lovett says as Richie looks up from the floor. “Turn around, Matty. Turn around.”

The boy turns around, his shoulders slumped and hair in his face.

“Shoulders against the wall,” Lovett screams.

Matty trembles, pushes his shoulders back.

“What'll happen if ya talk to Meehan about any o' this?”

“I won't,” he says, blubbering.

“Won't what?”

“I won't talk to no one, ever.”

Lovett grabs him by the neck and throat and runs him up the wall with one hand, gritting and with eyes bulged and shaking in disgust, then points the gun up under Martin's chin toward the brain. “I'll take ya life. It'll be mine, forever. I'll hold it. And I'll walk wit' it and everyone'll know I have it.”

At that moment mother Mary and daughter Anna Lonergan walk in, children among them with their wee hands held high to their mother and big sister and Willie Lonergan one year younger than Anna. Mary steps forward, her face maimed and discolored on one side where the man of the family had drunkenly thrown hot grease across her years earlier, disfiguring her and scalding the hair away forever just over the left ear.

“What happened, Richie?” Mary yelps in a panic as Martin is dropped to the ground. “What goes on in here?”

“Nothin', Ma,” Richie says from the ground. “All's fine.”

“What is yer notion comin' in here with all o' yer wild ginaker and yer ballyraggin', Bill?”

And young Anna, the lackeen, sees for the first time the ferocious look on Bill Lovett's face. An elf with his funny ears, red cheeks, and mean look on the mouth. And as she looks away from him, she looks to another face, Matty Martin's.

“Are ya okay, Matty?” she says, kneeling.

“I'm fine, stay away,” he says, jumping to his feet.

Anna looks up as Matty struggles to hold back his tears, catching his breath. She looks up at the angry, wild face of Bill Lovett but does not seem outraged.

“He's just fine, girl,” Lovett says as his tie again is stuck over his shoulder, then turns to Mary. “Get this, woman. You let Dinny g'ahead an' keep payin' the rent here.”

“I do,” Mrs. Lonergan says.

“But from today you'll pay a due every week to the Lovett Gang and ya won't say a damn thing to nobody about it either.”

Lovett and Mrs. Lonergan hold eyes. And Anna stares at the man threatening her mother and holds close onto her arm as the man speaks in a terrifying tone. The children hiding behind skirts, tears on their cheeks and lips curled in cry. Tiny Thomas Lonergan too, all five years of him, scared by the threat in a man's voice again, like his father's, and is tearing up himself, hushed and pushed by the head behind the dresses of mother and older sister.

“My husband will have something to say about it,” Mrs. Lonergan says softly, then looks away.

“Ya husband needs to be workin', Mary. We all know that. Send 'em every mornin' to Red Hook and I'll keep 'em busy. You're gonna run this bike shop from this point forward. You an' Anna and we'll keep supplyin' new bikes. Here's how it's gonna go. We're gonna stay quiet, all o' us. Right now, we ain' ready. I owe Meehan tribute every week from Red Hook. I'll give 'em back his own money from this shop here and it'll be even. But nobody says nothin' to 'em. Anybody talks,” Lovett points toward the Lonergan children. “I'll take every last one o' these fookin' snotty fookin' mucks o' yours . . .”

“You're drunk,” Mrs. Lonergan screams.

Gritting, Lovett grabs her by an arm and holds it over her head with a hard grip, pushing her backwards as Anna holds her from falling.

“Let 'er go,” Anna screeches.

Harms looks from the wall toward Richie, who goes up on his elbows to watch.

“Ya fookin' ugly slattern whore,” Lovett says, pushing her and Anna backwards over two bicycles and then wheeling around toward the boys with his .45.

Children are hugging each other, shrieking, convulsing, and unsure what to do with the fear that runs up in them. The littlest ones go to their mother and big sister who've fallen across a row of bicycles. Willie waits for his older brother Richie to move before going after Bill. Scared himself, Lovett pushes the stripling teen to the ground and points the gun at him, then kicks him in the kidneys.

“Six mont's,” Lovett says, roaring toward Willie, then looks against the wall where four teenagers are smashed against it, over to Anna and Mary Lonergan standing and checking their wounds, then stares down to Richie on his back. “Six mont's and we'll make our move. . . . Petey an' Timmy?”

The two teens look back to him from against the wall.

“Ya tell ya older brothers they're wit' us. That they're in now, forever. Mary, ya tell ya husband he's wit' us too. Darby Leighton, Byrne, Seaman, Healy, and others. Six mont's and we'll make our move.”

Squatting by her mother who is bleeding from an elbow and her back, Anna looks up to Bill Lovett. Sees that no one in the room challenges his command as he struts from one side to the other, bellowing and casting rules and orders. She watches Bill as he throws her brother's wooden leg toward him and tells him to get up. She is not outraged at his actions. Sees in him the violence that she knows from her father's actions, but does not feel the same disgust. Instead she sees in Bill Lovett all of the qualities of control and power that her father lacks. The dominance over others. The leadership. A violent demand for success unlike her father's violent demand for respect. Aroused by this man's will, she looks up from helping her mother and sees not hatred for the man that has wounded her here, not resentment as she has so often felt toward her father, but stimulated by the brutality she's come to know so well.

“All five o' ya, out the door. Go bring back five bikes so these women can get to work sellin' 'em. Ya got rent to pay, no more freeloadin' off Meehan. When the time comes I'll be in charge and the whole lot o' ya will be ruling ya own territories like Dinny's dockbosses. We're gonna get there, but we need six mont's o' quiet to build up. Richie?”