We Were Kings (5 page)

_________________________

Albany Street, South End

PHILLIP CONNELLY PRESIDED
over the room like a man expecting trouble. With hands clasped behind his back, he walked among the poker and craps tables, his face expressionless. About twenty customers played the tables, and four men dressed in black silk vests with red bow ties worked the cards and the dice. The lone woman worker in the den, Gretchen, carried a tray plated with small sandwiches, ham and cheese with mustard on rye bread, and to make them look more appealing, a toothpick bearing a green olive was speared into each one. Phillip raised a finger and motioned her to come over. “Just watch the lad with the hairpiece,” he said to her. “Over on Lou's table. He's twitching an awful lot. Not sure if he's sending secret messages or if he's a goddamn epileptic.”

“Got it,” she said.

“Let Neil know. I'm going to the head, be back in a couple.”

She walked to the small oak bar that had been scavenged from an old Prohibition-era speakeasy in Fort Point, its original varnish painted over one too many times. Neil stood behind it and listened as she whispered something in his ear. He looked across the room at Phillip and nodded, then went back to making a drink, squeezing a quartered lime into a gin and tonic.

Phillip left the room, tapped the bouncer on the shoulder, and motioned for him to put out his cigarette. The bouncer took a last pull, dropped it to the ground, and pressed his heel on it. Cross-eyed and with a confused look, the big man shrugged.

“Anybody else comes, tell them we're full up for the night,” said Phillip.

“Doesn't look all that full. You expecting something bad, huh?”

Phillip paused and eyed the man from his spit-shined shoes as big as Boris Karloff's in
Frankenstein
to his square, nearly imbecilic face. “Best to be safe rather than sorry, that's all. And no more smoking, you got it? Makes it look like you're hustling our fine establishment, not protecting it.”

Old ragtime music drifted down to the lobby from the second floor, where Madame Crane and her whores ran their own games, peddling opium and skin. He could smell burning sage along with reefer and cigar smoke. A man's laughter bellowed, a low operatic tenor, and one of Crane's ladies joined in, her voice shrill and piercing. At least somebody was having a good time tonight, Phillip thought to himself.

The heels of his shoes clacked and echoed as he walked down a marble stairwell to the basement level. The damp hallway smelled of mold and standing water, and it was lit with only one working bulb, leaving much of its length in darkness. Exposed pipes clanged and vibrated above his head. He walked past a janitor's closet that had been left ajar and into a men's room, old black and white tiles faded and cracked, a brackish puddle pooling over a clogged drain. He stood before the urinal he knew still worked, unzipped, and closed his eyes. The door opened behind him, but he paid it no attention. A stall door opened and shut, and then came the loud flushing of a toilet.

At the sink, he rinsed his face in cold water, felt the weight in his front jacket pocket: a fold of cash an inch thick, bound with a heavy-duty rubber band. Perhaps that young lady from New York upstairs would be without a john, he thought, and he could have a nice ride before heading on home. Cindy, Carol, he forgot what her name was but remembered her pinched nose, the full lips, her overall delicate appearance despite her harsh Brooklyn accent.

The toilet flushed again. The stall door slammed open, and pulling a paper towel from the dispenser, he glanced into the mirror before him and saw a dark shape rushing his back. The mirror had dulled over time, exposing the mercury plating below—he couldn't see the face of the attacker, nor his own. He tried to turn but the hands reached up over his head quickly and looped a steel wire across his neck. He watched his reflection in the glass as the wire cut into his skin, and he felt the tremendous strength of his attacker as his body was lifted upward, the tips of his shoes scraping the tiled floor and then kicking at nothing but air. Blood gurgled up into his mouth, and a surge of it sprayed against the mirror as the wire cut through the muscle and the arteries. And then he was dropped to the floor and kicked in the chest with a steel-tipped boot, just to make sure there was nothing left.

At O'Casey's Bar in North Quincy, the taps had closed early. Three men sat in the back room and counted money, what little of it there was. Brendan smelled the smoke first, and one of the other men said he smelled nothing but somebody passing gas. A half a minute later, he sniffed loudly, said he smelled it too, got up from the table and opened the door. Flames danced and twirled along the bar top; blue fire rolled across the ceiling. He reared back and stumbled into the room and saw that Brendan and TJ were already rushing for the back exit.

Brendan got only a few feet outside before a shotgun took off his head. TJ got a few feet farther before a second shot tore through his chest, misting the air with blood and smoke. His body landed hard on its back, twitched uncontrollably, and then went still. The last man almost made it out of the lot and to the street, but a giant of a man, broad-shouldered and balding, cut him off, raised a pistol, and fired. The bullet snapped his head back, and two more bullets brought him to the ground.

Across the street in a five-floor apartment building, bedroom lights flickered on. A woman screamed from an open window. Three men got back in their car, and the driver gunned it down the street. All of them kept quiet until they were a mile away from the burning bar, and in the distance, they could hear a fire engine wailing its sad, desolate song.

“Time for a drink, I say.”

“I say we all deserve it.”

“We sure as hell do.”

“Not a scratch, not one scratch. Pray to the Mother Mary and may she bless us all.”

The laughter they shared was loud and quick, and before they knew it, the quiet returned as they made their way back to Boston. The killing was over for tonight. Perhaps one drink, or maybe two, but not much more than that. They had to be on their toes for the morning, bright and sharp and ready. Because they knew damn well that tonight was not the end of something but the beginning.

_________________________

The Intercontinental Club, Dudley Square

THE BIG COP,
Brennan, hulked in the doorway, waiting. He was almost as tall as Phelan. “He was a cop, a detective, Martin,” Donal said. “Brennan recognized him.”

“We have a lot of police that come in here. Sure most of them are our own. Where else would they go?”

“He was on the docks the other morning. Some of the lads—dockworkers—saw him there.”

“Was he? That could just be coincidence.”

“And he's here that night? That's a quare coincidence.”

“It's Boston—you can't go four feet one way or the other without banging into someone who knows someone else. Besides, he has no way of knowing the two are connected. Was he talking to anyone?”

“Not that we know.”

“Well, then, there you have it—if he was on police business, he'd be asking questions and not dancing.”

“Still.”

Martin nodded and raised a hand to placate them both. “Right, right, I get your point.”

He rubbed at his chin with his pen and, for a moment, looked very far away. He tapped absently on the marble patina of the accordion resting with its clasps closed upon his desk. The reeds had swollen with the heat and he'd need to find another instrument to play tonight.

“I'll let Mr. de Burgh know,” he finally said and Donal looked at him, and Brennan, seeming satisfied, left them.

“What do you think?” Donal said.

“I think that things we have no control over have already been set in motion, and, God willing, those things will take care of themselves. We shouldn't get involved.”

“You're sure?”

“They'll already be on their way so?”

“They will.”

“Then I'm sure.”

After Donal left, Martin went back to his work—arranging the music for the Fitzgerald wedding, scheduling a session with the young fiddler from Athlone who was trying to make the band, ensuring that the flower bouquets and Mass cards for the recent Irish dead would arrive at the funeral homes, and writing the monthly check to Mr. de Burgh's mother, sent via airmail to Ireland.

Afterward, Martin Butler drove down to Quincy, as he did every other day, to Mr. de Burgh's home, a brick Colonial on an acre of perfectly manicured lawn on the Houghs Neck peninsula, overlooking Quincy Bay. In the two-car garage sat the Lincoln town car, and, because it was always one of Mr. de Burgh's pleasures, Martin took it out for a spin down to Hull and through the winding coastal roads to Cohasset. There was a clam shack on Route 108 called Tully's Bait that sold the best fresh oysters and fish—baked cod or haddock melting in tartar sauce and vinegar, dripping in a thick bun, and the brine from the oysters slick and tight on your gums for hours after. On the return trip he filled the car with gasoline at a station near the Quincy shipyards, at the rotary just over the Quincy Fore River Bridge past Kings Cove, and then returned it to its spot in the pristine garage.

In the parlor, he often paused before the carved crest of the de Burgh clan, a red cross on a gold shield, a black lion standing on its hind legs in the left quadrant of the cross, and, atop the shield, a seated and chained mountain cat. Mr. de Burgh had once told him that the cross on the coat of arms came from the time of the Crusades and that it had originally been painted with the blood of a slain Saracen.

On the paneled walls on either side of the crest were pictures of Mr. de Burgh himself and his family, the wealthy merchant barons of Galway, an oil painting of traditional Irish sailing boats on the Atlantic with their red sails bowed by the wind, another of white swans gliding atop the Corrib River in the Claddagh. Butler would often stand before these images for some time—it became a ritual, like lighting votive candles and then stepping into a pew to pray.

He checked all of Mr. de Burgh's rooms, made sure the refrigerator was stocked with food—they had delivery service from the local A&P—and shortly after four o'clock, he locked up the house again. He stared briefly out over the Atlantic, inhaling the scent of the sea, and then got into his own car—a dilapidated end-of-the-war Chrysler New Yorker—and headed back through the late-afternoon commute into Boston, the sun still battering the flat coastal expanse and the waters of the bay off to his right like a hammer on steel, and to his house in Chelsea, with its crumbling red-brick steps, asbestos shingles, bowed roof, and patch of scorched and withered grass at the rear for a yard. Here, beneath the hulking shadow of the Mystic River Bridge, his brother waited in his forever state of waiting—a limbo that, when Martin considered it, very nearly broke his heart, but as they said, God prefers prayer to tears—and attended by the Irish day nurse that he'd hired because she only rarely spoke, and then only in Irish.

_________________________

North End

OFF OF SALEM
Street, Dante pulled his Ford into the small lot next to North End Auto Body. He parked beside a dumpster, got out of the car, lit a cigarette, and listened to the Ford's engine ping and hiss and what sounded like a steel ball ricocheting inside a hollow metal tin. Most likely it was the oil pump going to shit. He wondered how much juice the car had left, if any.

There were a few other cars in the lot but they were in far worse shape than Dante's. A junked-out Chevy with its windshield cracked and spiderwebbed, the bumpers hanging off, and four flat tires. A Chrysler DeSoto that had been in a car wreck, the passenger side smashed in as if the metal were no more solid than a foil gum wrapper. And the husk of an old Hudson passenger car from the Depression era, its sides pockmarked with blistering rust, the front hood no longer covering an engine but a family of raccoons.

Dante walked across the lot toward the building. One of the circular lamps above the gas pumps remained on, occasionally flickering as if in some secret code. The garage in back was covered in darkness, the metal dock door rolled down and chain-locked. Tufts of weeds and crabgrass came up through cracks in the concrete. Broken glass shimmered along the walkway leading to the front door. The two large windows were cluttered with advertisements yellowed and wrinkled from the sun:
Golden Shell. Veedol. RPM. Johnson Motor Oil. Phillips 66.
Dante peered between the gaps to see if the owner was still in the back office, but the place had been shut down for the night.

Dante tried the door anyway. It was locked.

He'd done a bit of work over the past six months for the owner, a lean and weathered Sicilian who called himself John even though his real name was Gianni. Changing oil, filling tanks, doing some spot-welding, soldering, touch-ups, and all-out paint jobs. Just last week, he'd spray-painted a pristine red Plymouth all white. He'd known it was hot, probably stolen the night before from one of the suburbs bordering the city, but he was getting twenty-five dollars for it so he kept his mouth shut and made sure he covered the thing twice over. He even got into the dashboard and knocked a thousand miles off the odometer. But in the end, John didn't show much gratitude. He'd stiffed Dante the last few jobs, suddenly losing his grasp of the English language when Dante asked him where his money was.

The bulk of his income was from Uphams Corner Auto in Dorchester, but even there, the work had become too sporadic to produce a steady paycheck. Twenty hours one week, forty the next, and sometimes a Sunday phone call from the owner, Gus, telling him there wouldn't be much work that week and to check back the following Monday. Cal couldn't give him anything reliable either—the occasional trail job or a weekend gig working security at some downtown office building. Dante wasn't even on the Pilgrim Security payroll; it was all under the table.

At home, the bills were piling up. Pay one off, and another three come in the mail. Save up a little money for the holidays, and watch it blow away well before Christmas. He felt he'd been busting his ass for the past two years, and ever since Maria came into his life, he couldn't keep up, even with Claudia working part-time as a waitress. And there wasn't much to show for their efforts besides the bigger apartment in the North End, just as dingy and decrepit as the old place in Scollay Square, but felt much more like a home, although just last week, a letter had been slipped under the door telling them that the rent was going up twenty dollars a month.

Hoping to make ends meet, Dante had auditioned for some nightclubs needing a piano player. All of his tryouts had come up empty, and he wondered if it was how he played or how he looked. With all that time at the garage—sweating in the pit and hunched over engines—and the sleepless nights trying to comfort Maria after bad dreams, he looked grizzled, the stress and the insomnia adding on the years, the hard lines of his face growing deeper, and all the life in his eyes dulled to a dispirited glare, as if he were one step away from giving it all up.

Another strike against him: the music was changing. Fewer and fewer people wanted to hear the classics, whether it was jazz or swing or soulful standards. Instead it was pop songs by Perry Como, Doris Day, Bill Haley and His Comets, and a handful of pretty white boys singing love ballads suited for a soda-parlor serenade. Fuck, maybe he'd play those songs if he had to, if he got paid well enough. But in the end, he couldn't see himself in a record store fingering through the Top 40 songbook sheets alongside acne-riddled boys smacked in the face by puberty, and teenage girls showing off their growing curves under tight wool sweaters. Piano men, there wasn't much need for them anymore. A jukebox would do just fine as long as people had spare change in their pockets.

Dante checked his pack of smokes. Only one remained. He reached in his pocket and took out a paper clip twisted around his key chain. He straightened it out, hooked the edge, maneuvered it inside the office door's lock, twisted one way and then the other. A small click, and he was inside by the front desk. The cash box was locked, screwed down into the desktop marked with coffee stains and cigarette burns. Below a shelf lined with cans and jugs of windshield wiper fluid, WD-40, and antifreeze was a metal rack squared up with packs of cigarettes and candy bars. He reached in and grabbed four cartons of Camels and a box of Mars bars for Maria, found a paper bag behind the desk, and placed them all inside. He figured that wouldn't settle the amount owed to him, but at least it was something.

Outside, the air smelled of asphalt and gasoline. His stomach growled and he felt acid crawl up into his throat. With only a few dollars in his pocket, he needed something to fill the hole; he hadn't eaten much since the morning. He walked toward the lights of the North End, passed onto Prince Street, and glanced inside the windows of restaurants where tables remained empty and where waiters idled about with nothing to do. Not even DiGiacamos' Bakery showed a line. Or the ice cream shop serving gelato and shaved iced.

Dante went into a corner store right as they were closing up and picked up the cheapest bottle of wine they had, a film of dust coating the glass, and a day-old loaf of bread costing only a nickel.

On Prince Street, the colorful lights dimmed. Young workers swept the doorways and walkways of cigarette ends. An old cook sat on a stool pressing a wet towel against his face, cursing the heat in Italian. Across the street, a few teenagers with greased-back hair sat on a curb talking with a navy sailor who was asking for directions back to Scollay Square, his words slurred and slow from too much drink. One of the young hoods stood up and paced around the sailor, sizing him up. Dante knew they were about to roll him over, but he looked away, knowing it wasn't any of his business. The sailor should have known better—if you can't handle your booze and don't know your way around, never go off and get drunk all by yourself in a city like Boston.

He passed by more restaurants that had closed early. Left over from the first festival of the year, the Feast of Santa Maria di Anzano, streamers and decorations hung off wires and around poles. Hanging in some storefronts and twined around the railings of apartment balconies were ribbons striped with the colors of the Italian flag.

He crossed the street and came to the storefront window at the De Rossi Social Club. Inside, the life-size effigy of Santa Maria stood illuminated garishly by red and green Christmas lights. Her crown was a wreath of silver stars that enveloped her head like a constellation. The robe draped around her shoulders was heavy with miscellaneous costume jewelry, and dollar bills were pinned together and wrapped around her neck. The crowned infant nestled in the cradle of her right arm, the porcelain of his cheek chipped and the once-vibrant red of his lips dulled to a pale rose. The glass window was smeared with the prints of the many desperate hands that had reached out to touch the saint, and suddenly, Dante felt a great somber weight fill his chest.

He lowered his head before the window and said a prayer—not for himself, not for Margo or Sheila or Cal, but for his niece, the namesake of the saint, three-year-old Maria. He had to pray for her. Who else would? He prayed for her health, her happiness, that he might provide for her, clothe and feed her. He prayed that her mother was in a better place and would look out for her. And he hoped with all his heart that Sheila would want it this way—with him and Claudia as her daughter's caretakers.

Years ago, when it seemed the snow would never end, he had come so close to falling off and never coming back. He prayed that he'd never get so close to that edge again.

The Christmas lights suddenly flickered off, and the silhouette of the porcelain saint stood shrouded in darkness. With a chill gathering at his neck and slowly moving down his spine, he imagined her closing her eyes and lowering her head in her own lost prayer.

It was time to go home. If he stayed out much longer, trouble would come find him as it had for the young, drunk sailor. He took the two bags from the ground and walked down Prince Street, wary as he passed by barrels of trash awaiting the morning pickup, hearing the rats scavenge and gnaw their way through the waste. He saw their dark, glistening bodies hugging the curbs, some of them disappearing through a sewer grate and others darting across the street into the alleys.

The rat problem was only going to get worse. With neighboring Scollay Square being demolished—building by building and block by block—even the rodents needed someplace to go.

The two lamps in the living room had been left on, and Dante walked to each one, reached up under the shade, and switched it off. In his bedroom, he unbuttoned and took off his shirt, pulled off his shoes, removed his sweat-drenched socks, and tossed everything into a corner. The yellow glare from the streetlight outside came in through the windows and cut across his unmade bed with razor-edged lines. The way the sheets were strewn about the mattress gave him the sensation that there was someone frail and thin hiding under them. He pulled the sheets off the bed and fought against remembering how Margo had looked at him: the death-locked eyes glaring, the lips parted and still, even though he heard her calling his name.

He whistled the refrain from “These Foolish Things,” forced himself to think of Margo vibrant and alive, but he couldn't go back quite that far in time. He spread the sheets over the mattress, tucked them in, and smoothed out the edges.

Footsteps padded into the hallway and toward his room. A voice came to him. “Uncle.” He watched her enter the room and he walked over to her, slowly, as though trying not to startle her.

He turned on the ceiling light and bent to one knee. “What's wrong, darling?”

Barefoot, the soles of her feet black with dirt and the cotton nightgown threadbare at the shoulders, the three-year-old started to cry. He picked her up and she burrowed her face in the crook of his neck.

“Where's Auntie?” he asked, but she didn't answer.

Maria's breath was hot and sour on his skin, and he felt a feverish heat coming through the thin cotton. She smelled ripe too, and Dante could tell that Claudia hadn't bathed her as she'd promised she would that morning.

“It's okay, love. I'm here now. Everything's okay.”

He brought Maria back to her bedroom, no bigger than a kitchen pantry, and gently laid her on the small mattress beside her doe-eyed Boopsie doll. He checked to see if the lone window was open all the way, pressed at the screen to make sure it was firmly in place, and moved the fan to a bedside stool so it blew directly on her. He sat on the edge of the cot's mattress, careful not to put all his weight on it. With his fingertips, he stroked her forehead and her hair until he heard her breath thicken with sleep. “I'll be right back,” he whispered.

He knocked on Claudia's door and then opened it and saw that her bed was empty.

On the kitchen table were two glasses and a nearly finished bottle of white wine. In the ashtray, a few cigarette filters stained with red lipstick and two half-smoked Toscani cigars, the ends pinched and still dark and moist from saliva.

An hour later, he heard the front door open, the clatter of shoes on the wooden floor. When Claudia came into the kitchen, Dante looked out the window toward the Brink's Building and, farther off, the hazy lights of Boston Garden and North Station.

“Out late?”

“I was just gone for a bit. I wasn't going to leave her long.”

He turned slowly in his chair, looked her over. “I've been home for over an hour now.”

“It's nothing. I was just down the street, with Janice and the other girls.”

Dante pointed to the ashtray. “Are these Janice's shit-smelling cigars? Don't bullshit me, Claudia. You were out with Vincent again.”

“So what if I was?”

“You look drunk.”

“I just had one drink. One drink and that's it.”

“Did he pay this time, or was it out of your pocket again? Or should I say my pocket?”

Claudia's hair was done up in a roll, her lids thick with powder-blue eye shadow, and she was wearing a sleeveless polka-dot dress that hugged her hips and, above, showed a small thread of cleavage. She went to the fridge, opened it, and looked inside. “Nothing to eat,” she said, matter-of-fact.

“Don't complain to me. You were home all day.”

She reached in and grabbed a block of cheese, held it in her hand, then put it back. “I don't see what the big deal is. I'll make sure I go tomorrow.”

“You can't leave her alone. Not ever.”

Her back was turned to him as she went through the cabinets. “She was sleeping like a rock when I checked on her. I already told you I was just down the street. Vincent had good news on a business deal. He just needed to talk it through before making a decision. So don't get all worked up.”