The Ballroom on Magnolia Street (4 page)

The dopey-looking one clenched and unclenched his knuckles, as if he was longing to ruin Johnny’s good looks. But nobody was going to threaten Johnny Hogan, right there on the street where he was born. Or his sixty-four-year-old grandmother, either. Johnny tried to stare them down, but the steely gaze of his tormentors never wavered. The sly one spoke with a soft voice that made Eileen’s blood boil. They stated the terms of their business arrangements, and explained to Johnny that unless they were paid on the first Saturday night of every month, there would be trouble in the ballroom on Magnolia Street.

Johnny agreed at the time, not wanting to put his grandmother in any further danger, but he needed a plan to outwit the gangsters. He gave them code names: Knuckles and Sly. That’s what James Cagney would have done. He paced around the ballroom, smoking cigarettes continuously, and ignoring his girlfriend, Marion, whose beautiful face had grown pale. He would have to split the gangsters up somehow, and catch them off their guard. He would floor the little, sly man with a couple of good punches, and then take on the big one in a fair fight. He’d give the two of them a pasting, Hollywood-style, and then they’d know it was useless to blackmail Johnny Hogan. They’d slide back into the shadows of the slum neighbourhoods where they belonged.

On Saturday night, at the promised hour, the gangsters crept up the stairs to Johnny’s office and knocked on the door. He confidently called out to them to enter. Johnny was sitting behind his desk, casually smoking a cigarette. He was wearing his best, double-breasted suit. And a liberal helping of expensive aftershave.

‘Come on in, fellas. Make yourselves at home,’ said Johnny, with just a hint of a New York brogue. The two men stared at him.

‘Are you ready to do business?’ asked the smaller criminal.

‘Or do you need a little persuasion?’ added the big man. ‘Such a shame to have to spoil those good looks of yours.’ There was real intent in what he said.

‘I’m ready,’ said Johnny. ‘Get back in your cage. Let’s get this over with before someone comes.’

‘A wise decision. Well, hand it over. We’re busy men.’

‘It’s over there, in the cupboard,’ said Johnny, pointing with his cigarette. ‘I’ll get it for you.’ He stood up slowly, never taking his eyes off the two interlopers.

‘Not so fast, Hogan,’ said the one code-named Sly. ‘We don’t want no funny business. We’ll get the money ourselves.’

Knuckles went straight over to the cupboard and tried the handle. It was locked.

‘It’s locked,’ he said.

‘The key’s
in
the lock, you big monkey,’ said Johnny. ‘All you gotta do’s turn it.’

‘Don’t call me a monkey,’ snarled Knuckles, his face turning red.

‘Shut up and hurry up!’ Sly urged.

When Knuckles turned the key, Johnny ran his fingers through his hair in a confident gesture that seemed to unnerve Sly. Sly could smell a set-up, a mile away.

‘Wait a minute. Give me the gun,’ he said to Knuckles.

Johnny froze. He hadn’t banked on that. He hadn’t thought they would come armed. There was no money in the cupboard, only light bulbs, envelopes and ashtrays. As Knuckles fumbled for the gun in the pocket of his raincoat, there was a knock at the door and Marion came in, carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. Knuckles quickly withdrew the gun then returned it to his pocket.

‘I’m sorry, Johnny, I didn’t know you had company,’ she said, setting the tray on the desk. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’ She coughed gently, and waved the cigar smoke away from her face.

‘For God’s sake, what kind of an operation are you running here, Hogan, letting
women
loose all over the place?’ said Sly.

‘I thought I gave you the night off, baby?’ said Johnny, trying to sound casual.

‘You did. One of the bar staff called in sick,’ Marion said crossly. ‘I had nothing else to do.’

‘I wish you’d told me,’ said Johnny. ‘I would have got someone else to cover.’

‘Never mind the staff rota! Sit over there, doll, and keep quiet, and you won’t get hurt.’ Sly was livid. ‘Hurry up, you great lump, and get the money!’ he shouted at Knuckles. ‘I don’t want to have to use the shooter.’ After that, everything happened at once. Marion fainted clean away. She fell heavily on the floor, striking her forehead on a wooden chair. Johnny rushed to help her, causing Knuckles to lose his balance as he spun round to see what was happening. The big man landed in a heap, and there was a tiny hiss as he burnt his lips with the cigar.

‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Sly. ‘I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.’

‘Shut up, he made me do it, running about like that. I can’t concentrate under these conditions.’ Knuckles held the gun inside his pocket, his finger on the trigger. ‘You said there would be no hassle.’

‘Ah! You’re useless! You couldn’t rob sweets off a small child. Now, get the money before I lose my temper completely.’

Knuckles leapt up in a rage, slipped on the crumpled rug and there was a loud crack as the gun went off and he shot himself through the foot. He was silent for a moment, his eyes wide open in shock. As the pain began to tear at his bones, he let out a wail that made them all jump.

‘Ah, Jesus wept! Sweet Jesus! Why does nothing work out for me?’
he screamed, as he crawled around the floor of the office, in agony.

The noise roused Marion, who was cradled in Johnny’s arms. Slowly, he helped her to stand up. She covered her stomach with her hands.

‘Let me call an ambulance,’ he said gently. ‘This woman’s not well. She’s in shock. And we’ll have to get that poor sucker to a hospital, too, I suppose. Give me that gun before you kill yourself.’

Johnny went forward to get the pistol. So did Sly. Sly got there first.

‘Look out, Marion!’
shouted Johnny, but it was too late.

Sly leapt forward, grabbed Marion in an armlock and the gun was in his other hand. ‘Now, hurry up,’ he snarled, ‘before I do something we’ll all regret.’

‘All right. All right. I’ll get the money,’ said Johnny, pulling open a drawer in the desk. ‘It’s not as much as we agreed but it’s all I can afford this time. Setting up this place has cleaned me out.’

Sly’s greedy, green eyes lit up when he saw the thick bundle of tattered banknotes. Forgetting the empty cupboard, and his bleeding friend, he slowly reached for the money. Just as his fingers closed on the prize, Marion jerked herself out of his grasp and ran to the door. Sly saw her pull it open, and was so annoyed he wanted to shoot her. Women could never be relied upon to do what they were told. At the same time he felt something like regret, as he realized his finger had already squeezed the trigger. The gun exploded, taking two of his fingers with it. It fell from his rigid fingers, through the torn lining of his coat, and slid under Johnny’s desk just as the door opened wide and Marion fled into the hall. Sly collapsed and lay trembling beside his accomplice. He closed his eyes.

Johnny grabbed the gun and turned to face the door.

Dozens of revellers, attracted by the noise of the first shot, had gathered outside the door. They struggled to get a good look at the two injured men, writhing in pain on the floor; and at the handsome figure of Hollywood Hogan, as he stood, looking magnificent, beside his fake marble desk, one eye closed to avoid the smoke from the cigarette he still held in his lips. He held the weapon up high above his head, to show them all that the trouble was over.

‘Call the cops,’ he said. ‘Tell them I’ve got a couple of Christmas presents for them. And tell them not to worry about the gun. I have it here. There’s been enough shootin’ for one night.’

Of course, the police believed Johnny’s version of what really happened in the office that night; that it was nothing more than a series of accidents and slip-ups, and good luck on his part.

But nobody else believed Johnny when he told them he was nothing special. They said that he was not only a hero, but modest with it. Within days, the story was all over the city, richly embellished with every telling. Hollywood Hogan had taken on two of the city’s most notorious gangsters and wounded them both with their own gun.

Sly and Knuckles were taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital and held under armed guard in a private ward. By the time their wounds healed, they would be ready to stand trial for armed robbery and extortion. Their misery was not mourned by the policemen of the city, who feared this was the beginning of a crime-wave, or by the outraged business community. A criminal investigation was duly launched, and Sly and Knuckles were charged under their real names of Eugene Lolly and Timothy Tate, respectively.

The story of the robbery blazed on for months. Timothy Tate was found to be a loner who lived with his mother in a run-down bedsit in the meanest area of the city; and it was revealed that he hadn’t dated a woman in seven years. One of his ex-girlfriends came forward to sell her memoirs to the local newspapers. A modest bidding war followed. Unfortunately, when the bidding war ended in the high hundreds, she didn’t have much to say except that Timothy Tate hadn’t been a very skilled lover. Most of the time, she said, when they were in bed together, he preferred to watch cartoons on the television and eat sweets. Yellow bonbons, to be precise. And he was very selfish with the bonbons, too. He never offered her one from the little paper bag. Inevitably, Eugene Lolly and Timothy Tate became known as the Bonbon Gang.

Marion took two weeks off work to recover from the shock of the attempted robbery but when she came back to the ballroom it was only to tell Johnny that she would not be walking out with him any more. And that to make the split less painful for both of them, she was also giving up her job behind the bar. She said that she now realized that the business would always come first with Johnny, and that she didn’t want to play second fiddle to an ugly great hangar full of smoke-damaged furniture. She gave him back the silver bracelet he had given her on their third date and kissed him gently on the cheek. Johnny was too shaken to say anything, so he put the bracelet in his pocket and simply watched Marion walk away. For a few moments, there was no sound at all in the main ballroom, except for the clickety-click of Marion’s heels on the wooden floor. Then, there was the soft whisper of the heavy foyer doors closing behind her, and then Johnny was all alone.

Johnny was too proud to win her back. And so he did nothing. Marion would miss him, he decided, and come back to him when she was over the fright of the robbery.

He thought he still saw love in Marion’s eyes when he spied her out walking in the vicinity one day, but when he crossed the road to speak to her, she announced that she was getting married to her childhood sweetheart, Eddy. They had set the date already. Johnny’s knees went weak with the shock.

Eddy Greenwood! That dull stick. With his tweed sports jacket and beige slacks, and his untidy, curly hair! He couldn’t even dance properly! All he could do was shuffle about in the one spot as if his shoes were made of lead. It was the ultimate humiliation for Johnny, to be rejected by Marion for a man like that! What was she thinking of? She couldn’t possibly love Eddy. She’d told Johnny a million times that he was the only man who’d ever made her heart flutter with excitement, and her body burn with desire. It was completely beyond his understanding.

Eddy, on the other hand, was only too glad to have the love of his life back again, and thrilled that he had won her away from Hollywood Hogan at last. When Eddy saw his chance, he did not rest for one minute until he had convinced Marion to marry him.

Pulling pints would not be a suitable job for the wife of a respected businessman so Eddy set Marion up in business on her own. A little bridal boutique, a few streets away from the ballroom, which she called Romance And Ribbons. Seven months later, she gave birth to a son. Marion and Eddy told everyone that the child was born early, because he was big and ready, and everyone believed them.

Johnny dated lots of women after that, but Marion was the one for him, and he couldn’t believe that he had let her go. Thoughts of her invaded his dreams at night, and even when he was counting piles of money in the office he missed her bringing in the tea and sitting on his knee for a kiss. He missed dancing with her most of all.

Owning the ballroom lost a little of its shine for Johnny then, and all the women who loved him only made him more lonesome for the one that got away.

4. A Jar of Mint Imperials

Louise Lowry worked in a tiny, dusty newsagent’s shop crammed to the roof with jelly worms, packets of dipping sherbet and boxes of chocolates, plastic water-pistols, tiny beaded purses and neon skipping ropes. The newspaper stand and twenty boxes of crisps prevented any daylight from coming in through the grime-covered window. A small fridge full of milk cartons and packets of butter hummed in one corner.

In the gloomy stillness of the shop sat two young women, deep in conversation. Louise was tall, blonde and well-built enough to look uncomfortable in a size-sixteen shell suit. Her friend, Mary, was a delicate freckly redhead, dressed in hippy rags and green leather sandals.

‘Ah, now, Mary, I never heard such a tale,’ said Louise, in a voice that was tinged with fear.

‘I’m telling you, Lou, it’s the gospel truth. She told him that your left eyeball was lying in a jar of mint imperials for two days. And that’s why he never asked you out. That kind of thing gives him the creeps.’ Mary pored over the confectionery display beneath the glass counter. ‘Here, go on, give us a couple of those jelly frogs, Louise. No, not them wee ones – the big ones covered in icing sugar.’

‘But it doesn’t make any sense. My own eye? It falls right into a jar of sweets, and I don’t even notice?’ Louise couldn’t take it all in.

‘Yes,’ said Mary wearily. ‘The frogs?’

Louise passed them over. One red, one yellow.

‘How could I
not
notice a thing like that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe you can’t actually
feel
a glass eye?’ Mary began to lick the icing sugar off the red frog.

‘Wouldn’t I still have the other eye to
see
with, though? Oh, you couldn’t lose a glass eye and not notice. Why would Alex believe a yarn like that? He must be completely brainless.’