Light of the Diddicoy (10 page)

“What type o' yokes are they?” Vincent Maher asked, interested.

“The Saru.”

“Saru?”

“Yes, Saru. Thieving bands of primates. They are better known as macaques.”

The Swede looked at Dinny, then back at Wolcott. “You're tryin' to be like that on purpose. Why don' ya talk straight'n quit wastin' time.”

“Well Mr. Swede, I will speak bluntly then. They are not human at all, this subgroup. Have I not clarified this already? My mistake then. Snow monkeys! My dear Mr. Swede,” Wolcott boomed with a snide turning of the nose. “They are commonly known as snow monkeys. Now, may I ask a rather important question? Mr. Meehan? Have you ever heard of a man named Thos Carmody?”

No answer.

“I am certain you have,” Wolcott said, sitting back in his chair. “Mr. Carmody . . . well. May I speak frankly? I will. Mr. Carmody is a man I would like dead. Will you, please Mr. Meehan, will you look at my face? Thank you then. I would like him dead, is that at all unclear?”

“Who's Thos Carmody?” Maher asked dumbly.

“Thos Carmody is antibusiness,” Mr. Wolcott answered quickly. “He does not want stevedoring companies to supply jobs to you and your people, Mr. Meehan. He wants to tell us how to run our business. Indeed, he aspires to put you out of business, Mr. Meehan. I can promise you that. A promise. But still, Thos Carmody is alive.”

“Yeah, and?” The Swede said.

“You were born on the West Side of Manhattan, is this true, Mr. Meehan?”

Dinny nodded as he watched Wolcott weave through his strategic presentation.

“Why don't you ask your people over there who Thos Carmody is?”

“Why don' you save us a trip?” The Swede barked.

“Thos Carmody is the muscle behind the International Longshoreman's Association, Local 856. He struts up and down Chelsea and the Hell's Kitchen docks behind the likes of King Joe Ryan with a big stick, Dinny. He kills morale, he kills strike-breakers, he kills profits, and he kills business, and guess where my people saw him just three days ago, Mr. Meehan? Would you care to guess?”

“Where?” Maher asked.

“Sackett Street, here in Brooklyn,” Wolcott said, leaning back in his chair and fingering a long cigar from a wooden box at the end of his desk, then lighting it slowly, allowing the imagination of all those watching him to overtake them.

“In your neighborhood,” Mr. Wolcott exclaimed.

Dinny sat unfazed at the pitch.

“In our neighborhood,” The Swede repeated who stood up and began pacing. “A union guy in our neighborhood?”

Dinny smiled when he saw The Swede become undone.

“Yes,” Wolcott said. “And I'm sure you are well aware of the topic of conversation. Aren't you Dinny? If you won't answer, I'll say . . . Huns!”

“What about 'em?” The Swede asked.

“One million dollars to the ILA.”

“Wha?” The Swede tilted his head.

“For a general strike,” Wolcott said. “You think Thos Carmody's just comin' around Brooklyn for St. Patrick's Day? No, he is organizing the German plot. Mr. Swede? Have you ever been run out of your own neighborhood? Hmm? Have you? By your own people, no less. Another Catholic, but with a much different agenda. The Irish union's will take power with this strike and you and your's will be left as waterfront scabs, nothin' more. How does that sound, Mr. Swede? A general strike for guaranteed salaries, limited hours, better working conditions, sick days even! Worker representation . . . union cards! All these promises to the very men that work for you currently. Who could deny them their right to better their conditions, Mr. Swede? What laborer would deny such gentrification and luxury? All paid for by the Hun, America's enemy! Why Mr. Swede, maybe you could get a job in crowd control when Mr. Eugene V. Debbs comes for a speaking engagement! That is your line of work, is it not? Crowd control? Security?”

The room was taken by the story.

“Mr. Meehan?” Wolcott asked, addressing us all. “Do you know how many piers the New York Dock Company owns?”

“Yes.”

“I will tell you then,” Wolcott ignored. “Thirty-five piers from the Brooklyn Bridge down to the bottom of Red Hook. That is close to three miles of waterfront property. More than one-hundred-fifty storehouses. Close to six million square footage of covered storage area. Four large terminals at Fulton, Atlantic, Baltic, and right here where we're sitting on Imlay. Every day we employ thousands and thousands of laborers. You, Mr. Meehan,” Wolcott pointed, raising his voice. “Represent about ten percent of our workforce, which are nothing more than stevedores. Not counting the warehouses you extract premiums from, for which I am not in the least in agreement, though that is a topic for another discussion entirely,” Wolcott turned his back and paced in front of the large window, “Mr. Meehan, can I ask you a question?”

“Mmm,” Meehan mumbled patiently.

“Do you need help? Are you losing your grip? I'm sorry I have to ask you these questions, but it doesn't change the fact that I have to ask these questions. Is Mr. Lovett pressuring you? You know he has an exquisite reputation. Has he taken over Red Hook? Is he coming back?”

“I sent 'em down here,” Dinny said, playing the game. “He works for me. He'll be back.”

“But not in the same sense as Mr. McGowan, am I right? I mean, Mr. McGowan was loyal to you. Is Mr. Lovett equally as loyal as Mr. McGowan was before death came knocking on his cell wearing police blue?”

Dinny didn't answer.

“You see the two gentlemen standing at the door behind you?” Wolcott requested.

“I know them.”

“Those two men work tirelessly to control ninety percent of our work-force from even uttering a single word concerning unions. Those men are not allowed to pass wind without us knowing it ahead of time. That's two men. We have succeeded in controlling thousands with only two men. We have utterly closed the ranks on any possibility of worker organization. And you know where our company's weak spot is, Mr. Meehan? Our weak spot is in the ten percent you watch over.”

“That's easy for you to say, not easy to prove,” Meehan said. “I've seen union guys in their midst. The warehousing units? They're union, a lot of 'em are. You can't prove nothin'.”

“Thos Carmody is making my case for me,” Wolcott again turned his back.

I watched Dinny. There he was, sitting solemnly in his chair and taking such a verbal beating without so much as a word in return. The Swede ready for murder, Maher and Gilchrist confused by the wordiness of it all, I sat behind with only pity for Dinny and what does he do but slowly turn in his chair and look upon me and my shocked face. Why, I couldn't know but it would be soon I'd be finding out.

“When's the last time ya went down to Florider, Wolcott?” Dinny asked abruptly.

Standing high over his desk now after he had created his tension like a chess player, Wolcott paused before answering the question. Then started to laugh. “Why do you ask, Mr. Meehan?”

“To me, Florider don' suit ya. The heat and the dirt roads. I don' think you like Florider.”

“Alright then,” Wolcott started to secede, then sat down at his desk, held his hands together, then opened them to Dinny. “Tell me about Florida, Mr. Meehan.”

“Who gave you them cigars?”

“What, these?” Wolcott said, pointing to the box on his desk.

“The box says they came from Ybor City,” Dinny said. “That's I-talian territory.”

Wolcott knew that if he lied, Dinny would know it. Instead, he calculated that letting Dinny know the truth would be to his advantage, “What? Can a man refuse a gift?”

“A couple guinea stinkers' from Frankie Yale s'all it takes for you to listen to'm, is it?” The Swede said, pointing to the box.

Dinny stared at Wolcott, and then looked up at The Swede who had stopped his pensive pacing.

Dinny's hands were weather worn and tan. They were also very muscular. They told a story. They sat evenly on the arms of the chair in front of Wolcott's desk. In fact, Dinny's posture, his head, eyes, and shoulders all sat evenly. Directed toward Wolcott, you could say. While staring ahead at the fat man with a watch hanging from his breast and his thinning pate greased back like a Wall Street big shot, Dinny called out to me, “Kid?”

Gilchrist, sitting next to me, looked in my direction. Then so did Maher and The Swede. I became nervous, “G'ahead Liam,” Maher said.

I looked up.

“Tell the man your first and last name.”

“William Garrity,” I replied.

“Now, Wolcott,” Dinny continued. “Do you know the name of the man Thos Carmody was visitin' last week?”

Wolcott cracked a smile. His smile then turned into a laugh and then the laugh turned into a howl and as he began opening up I noticed his English accent had faded away, “I don't know about you, Dennis Meehan, you old son of a bitch you. To answer your question Mr. Meehan, yes, I do know the name of that man. How could I have ever doubted you wouldn't know something? I apologize, Dinny. From the deepest part of my cold heart! I didn't mean disrespect. Doubt you? That was my mistake and you have played your hand well, I should say so! I see you have a plan in place then and I will trust that plan will be carried out successfully. To make sure,” Wolcott snapped his fingers toward Wisniewski and Silverman. “To make sure we are together in our thinking, I have assembled a nice little package. . . .”

“How much?” Dinny asked.

“Oh, well considering . . .”

“How much?”

“Five hundred dollars . . .”

“Fine, give it to Gilchrist,” Dinny said.

As we all stood up to leave, Dinny then looked back at Wolcott. “Frankie Yale?”

“What about Mr. Yale?” Wolcott suddenly became defensive. “Oh, am I going to work with those gentlemen? Is that what you are intoning? No, I can't work with those fucking animals,” Wolcott said, while enjoying the hand-rolled he drew under his nose. “Unless I can . . . that is. You know Dinny, a man can only work so hard and stay happy. It's the pleasurable things in life that make it all worth living for.”

Vincent Maher nodded his head slowly in agreement.

“That's funny,” The Swede started berating the fat Wolcott. “I thought we was the reason ya able to enjoy dose pleasures. I can't wait to see the day when ya gotta bunch o' fookin' dagos tellin' ya how to run the docks and when ya disagree with 'em, ya find ya family in danger. That's the way dem guineas do. And you know dat. You walk wit' dem, we'll burn this place to da ground.”

“They send me presents. You send me threats,” Wolcott said for the first time showing his frustration. “Dinny! If I was you? If I was Dinny Meehan? Nah, I wouldn't worry about me making a deal with those fucking ginzos. If I was Dinny Meehan? I'd worry more about a deal with Bill Lovett.”

And after retaliating with his own threat as we began to walk toward the door where Wisniewski and Silverman stood guard, Wolcott's forehead and upper lip drenched in sweat from his sudden anger, he then mocked Dinny's Brooklyn accent, “Take care o' ya nayba'hood, would ya. I wanna see Thos Carmody's name in the obits within two months! Two fookin' months, Dinny Meehan!”

I
T WASN'T FOR ME TO KNOW
at the time, but The Swede was at his his wit's end and in Dinny's ear on a Saturday night along the stretch of a pier below the Arbuckle warehousing stores.

“Lovett's gotta go,” he yells while pacing around Dinny, rubbing his head agitatedly. “He'll deceit us as soon as he can! Soon as he's outta the workhouse. Fuck Lovett! Fuck Non Connors, I'll run Red Hook, me and Dance will. We give them too much string and it's all o' us that'll lose out, Dinny.”

Dinny listens as its The Swede who thinks more about the angles than any other. Aside from himself.

“And Brosnan? Fookin' tunics in the Dock Loaders' Club? Thos Carmody and the ILA in our neighborhoods recruitin' an' talkin' strike and millions o' dollars from the Germans? Frankie Yale and them pinchin' in on us. And Wolcott givin' us orders? Us? Dinny, the fuck we doin'? We're losin' it, Dinny. We're losin' control and ya know we can't afford to ease up, not even for a second. . . .”

“Lovett's valuable,” Dinny said, folding his arms. “He can be swayed. He's only twenny one. But the man can run Red Hook with fire on his side. That's our border, the Red Hook. You know that. We need only the best down there, but I need you wit' me and available up and down the territories. I can turn Lovett around, just need to control those whisperin' in his ear.”

“Connors,” The Swede said. “They take McGowan, we take Connors. . . . Me or Vincent.”

“Just wait.”

“Why? Why, why, why . . .”

“Because I don' jump before I know where I'm gonna land, that's why. Don' touch 'em just yet. Hands off. Death is a message to the livin', the only message we'll send by killin' either of 'em now is that they scared us. They don' scare me. They scare you, Lovett, an' Connors. Frankie Byrne an' them?”

“No.”

“Let's do some maneuverin' in the Red Hook. That don' work, we'll show everyone that we gave 'em a chance. Show 'em that we tried and that we'll try for them too. But when we try and we don' get the response we're lookin' for . . . that's when ya send ya messages.”

“And this kid? Joe Garrity's nephew?”

Dinny nodded. “Still early on him.”

“Yeah, but he's dangerous now,” The Swede said.

Dinny smiled. “Dangerous, yeah, I guess so then.”

The next morning and it's Sadie and L'il Dinny and I off to St. Ann's again. The trolley we board slides on the tracks through the tenement halls with a motorcar here and there scuttling by us on the left, keeping up on the right. Pedestrians dodge opposing traffic and look behind us as they run ahead of the trolley or wait in the middle of the street for us to pass. Apple carts and potato shays and one-horse drays park along the sidewalk for the morning markets under the awning of laundry wires and elbows and faces pouring out from the window ledges above, staring lazily at the scenery movements. And along the rooftops are flocks of pigeons pecking at simple flecks and pooping on bald spots below as if they are targets. Ladies dressed to the nines, or as best they can, have the big hats that flop in the breeze of the trolley air with ruffles on their sleeves and squeezed between many a stranger who thinks long and hard on her curving thighs and heart-shaped hips hugged by the make of her church gown.

Inside Father Larkin blesses the tabernacle and just before the baskets are sent round for the offering, there is a clamor behind us all as the church door swings open with a fling and a bang against the back wall. Two men storm down opposing aisles like soldiers through a prisoner's camp looking through the crowd for the wanted. Ignoring wholly, even desecrating the vaunted rituals adhered to by the flock of prisoners and true, the rituals of most millions too.

“Ya see'm?” One of the rebels yells across the flock.

“And who might ye be lookin' fer, bhoys?” Father Larkin echoes angrily over St. Ann's hall. “What on eart' is it that gets in ye so impartently s'mornin' that ye feel overcome wit' yer inclinations as to interrupt this service. . . .”

“Dere he is! Dere's da yoke, I see'm,” Tommy Tuohey yells over Father Larkin's complaints.

I can tell by the accent it's Tommy Tuohey and by the time I see him, Vincent Maher has come behind me and begun his pulling me out of the pew by the underarms.

“Let's go, kid,” Maher mumbles, then signals at Sadie. “Don' ya dare say my name out loud. Don' do it.”

“Oop-ye-go-bhoy.” Tuohey lifts on my legs and together they carry me over the heads of the faithful of the aisle.

“I can walk on my own,” I yelp with embarrassment. “Let me down, let me down. I'll go on my own!”

“Ye're not to hert the bhoy,” Father Larkin cautions in echo form with all his summoning.

“Clouts for touts!” Maher yells back.

Father Larkin doubles his tone, “Don' let me see dis bhoy hert in the slightest, I say! I'll have the justice upon ye! For heaven's sake, let the bhoy down and be off wit' yerselves den!”

By then the flock has all but stared at my sequestering and is beguiled and betwixt by the treachery and the tragedy and the blasphemy in it. L'il Dinny has begun crying and grabbing through the air for me to come back while Sadie has turned her attention to his soothing. I unwrinkle myself angrily next to Maher in the aisle and blush at the attention. Father Larkin continues with his celestial scorn and instead of answering back in kind with snide remarks, Maher pulls out two bills from his pocket and drops it in the offering basket, then starts his pushing me toward the door with Tommy Tuohey in tow like two trench-coated rebels marching their informer to his execution. The people mumble and they gasp and Sadie has turned red in anger, though a few of the older men giggle happily being as it reminds them of their own brash youths in the place they used to call Irishtown.

Following us from behind is Cinders Connolly who is a churchgoer himself and who assures his wife all is well as he leaves his family to be with his boys. Outside we are, and with a crash of the door Maher and Tuohey push me up Gold Street until a left we take on Plymouth.

“Real tough now, ain' ya kid?” Maher taunts.

“I don't think I'm tough.”

“Yeah well, ya know things now, don' ya?”

“What do I know?”

“T'ings!” Tuohey yells in my face, then pushes me again.

I look over at Connolly hoping he will help me out since I know from the look on his face that he is kinder than most, but he keeps distant and nods toward me to go along with it all.

“We'll find out whatcha know, won't we?” Maher says.

“Sure will, givertake moraless,” says Tuohey.

When we turn on Bridge Street and enter a saloon I had yet never seen before, Paddy Keenan stands behind the bar and looks upon us as we enter. On the end of the bar is Ragtime Howard with a small glass sitting ahead of him, though he hadn't moved when the door opens nor gave us a glance, and finally the old storyteller Beat McGarry comes from the rear room with a big smile at our entrance. These men reside day and night in the saloon, even on a Sunday morning as this.

I am pushed to the middle of the saloon as McGarry begins clearing the stools away and putting them in the rear room. Menacingly, Maher motions in my face as Tuohey walks around the back of me and pushes me closer to Maher.

“What, ya wanna fight me?” Maher asks since I came upon him so close.

“I don't.”

“Then why ya gettin' so close on me?”

Connolly comes around to my side when the front door opens again, this time the two large figures of Gibney the Lark and Big Dick Morissey enter and seem to know from the look on their faces what the situation is. Together, they form a circle and push me not so gently from one side to the other.

“Tell me what ya know,” Maher says to me. “What did ya hear the other day?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don' play stupit, kid. I was there and I wanna know what ya hoid and and what ya didn't.”

“How can I tell you what I didn't hear?”

“Shaddup and start singin'!”

“About what?”

“That fat bastard Wolcott, whad he say that ya hoid?”

A range of thoughts run through me. Gibney kicks me in the seat of my pants and Morissey laughs in his baritone. Connolly pushes me to the center of the circle again as a matter of routine and McGarrity seems to be enjoying the whole scene like an oldtimer would.

“Let's pull his trousers down and cut off them barnacles,” says the Lark. “Then we'll send 'm back to church where he can't do no one no harm.”

“Join the choir,” Morissey laughs, then shoves me to the ground at Maher's feet who then puts a boot on my shoulder. “We'll get it out o' him one way or da other.”

“Get up! Get up ya fookin' yella coward,” Maher pushes through to get to my face. “Ya think ya better'n the rest o' us, don't ya? Don't ya? I seen ya over there at Dinny's pretendin' to be so important. Pretendin' like ya gonna live for free forever! Get up! Now ya gonna find somethin' out, get up!”

So I did.

“Lie down!” Gibney yells and kicks the legs from under me and I slam to the ground on my elbow and back.

“I said get up!” Maher hoots.

By then the room has started spinning on me and next thing I know the box head of Red Donnelly is jabbing me in the kidneys and Harry Reynolds too has somehow appeared while old man McGarry laughs it up.

“Are ya gonna kill 'em?” McGarry asks.

“No let's torture 'em first,” Red offers.

Suddenly a terrible smashing sound came to my ears and it took me a moment to realize I'd been boxed with a hand across the side of my head and ear. Then Gibney grabs me by the tie and jacket and pushes me backward where Donnelly had gotten on all fours behind. As I tumble over top of him and onto my back again, my head hits the cement flooring. Someone drags me from behind and throws me into some chairs and a table and then all men are over me yelling one after the other, so much so that all of their angered voices mix together and I can't do anything or return a word so I decide only to stare at them with the strongest scowl I can muster. Slaps come across my head and face and then a fist splits my lip and I can taste the blood but instead of spitting it out, I swallow and all I can think about is Father Larkin and his warning, which had fallen on deaf ears.

“Ya're the most dangerous man in Brooklyn right now, kid!” Maher yells over them all. “The most dangerous man 'cause ya weak and ya know things! That's the most dangerous combination! Now ya gonna tell me what ya hoid Wolcott say to ya or we're gonna beat it outta ya!”

“What? He didn't say anything to me that you didn't hear.”

A knuckled crack came thumping on the top of my head and my ears got boxed again as I lay in the corner among the shambles of the toppled tables and chairs.

“Where's ya pride!”

“Why don' ya fight back!”

“Tell me what ya hoid!” Maher shouts in my face, his toothpick flying out of his mouth with the spittle too. “Whad Wolcott say and how much did he give us!”

By that time I am so upset and angered that I refuse to say a thing since already I know that Maher was there too at the big building on Imlay Street in Red Hook. There was nothing I was going to say to him that he doesn't already know. Nothing. But to stop the beating and the yelling, all I have to do is say the words. That's all I have to do. But something obstinate wells in me, walls them off in my eyes. Something so strong and so overwhelming is culled that I simply refuse, no matter the consequence.

In the saloon we hear the
chu-chum-chu-chumming
of the train come running overhead as the door has been opened again. In ducks a man of great height and white hairs. A man so long and slow in his strides that he seems to ride in like the swoop of an apparition. Something from the past that haunts us more in imagination than reality. A darkness so old and ancient that shanachies in all their trying could never bring the death-scare that the face of The Swede could summon as it does with me then and there.

“Where is 'e?” He bawls.

Everyone steps from his way and with the length and strength of a long moving crane, he crinkled his fists into my jacket at the chest and picked me up over his white-haired head, slams me up on my duff at the bar with a bang so hard that the bottles sang in their shock and in their shimmering.

“Ya gonna tell me how much Wolcott offered!” The Swede blasts into my face like a flung open furnace door. “Ya gonna talk an' sing. Then I'm gonna make ya dance like a little choich goil too! Sadie Meehan ain' hear to save ya now, is she! Dinny ain' here neither, now start chirpin'! How much was it?”

Tears streaming from my eyes in anger and my face red and ready to burst, ears ringing and body shaking in a shock and fear eclipsed not even by the horror I felt of drowning in the Atlantic by a U-Boat's will, I scream as loud as I can, “I don't know any Wolcott!”

The Swede throws me across the bar where I fall to the floor on my neck and my back. Connolly half-catches me there and tries helping me stand back up on my own.

“Let'm go!” The Swede yells, then grapples me again by the jacket and flings me into the arms of another.

“Hold'em, Philip,” The Swede bellows. “Send'em to his heaven, that's where he wants to go, see! Get ya hooks in him Philip!”

Shorter than I, Philip Large grabs me from behind obediently as Connolly whispers into his ear. I can hear the whisper and know that he won't allow Large to break my back. But I also know that the only reason Large won't snap me in half is because of Connolly's influence. Connolly's whispering. And if The Swede or anyone else orders Connolly to shut up, I'll not walk again. Large fells me to the ground, and as we go back, he wraps his stout legs round my torso and pulls my arms yet over my head, choking me in his stubby grasp. Next to us on the floor below the crowd of larrikins is Connolly who continues whispering in Large's dumb ears and I can feel that Large yearns to squeeze the life from me. Yearns like a snake to break the will from its victim or the yearning a man feels to stay inside his woman instead of pulling out when the sensation overcomes his reason. Above me I can only see Harry Reynolds's face as the air is squeezed from my lungs. He looks on me with a businesslike stare. Looks to see if I will succumb and this look of his gives me the knowledge. Lets me know that giving the information these men are after will mean death. Not giving them their information will mean more torture, but it will also equal something else entirely. Something I hadn't much experience with yet. Those things in life that men are entranced by.