Leon Uris (50 page)

Zach pondered. Could such a place ever sort itself out? It was a tinderbox on the borders but never quite burst into the all-consuming flame. Gangs and riots were softened by a promise of plenty as the cultures seeped from neighborhood to neighborhood.

For the Irish, down the social ladder, there was always hostility against the blacks, who they feared were after their jobs.

When summer’s heat and wet crushed the city or there was an economic slump or a killing or a political fucking, black and Irish tensions went to the brink.

What happened that night at Paddy O’Hara’s Saloon was bound to happen.

The Galway Brewery down by the river was a prime supplier for the midtown, West Side bars, restaurants, and gardens.

Its teamster corps was solid Irish, driving livery vans artistically decorated with posters of current events and solid horses sporting chimes and plumes.

A Galway teamster was no small measure of a man. Indeed, each beer wagon had a helper, always a black man, who did most of the heavy work, rolling the kegs in and taking the empties away.

Paddy O’Hara’s Saloon was on the route of Tommy Bannon, whose horse was in far better shape than Tommy himself. After twenty-five years of draying, he was drowning in the sorrows of life as well as drowning in the other stuff that surely wasn’t holy water.

Tommy, though, was a respected man. In the early days, he had gained prestige as one of the first teamsters and purveyors of Galway beer. Add that to a fine singing voice and jolly manner.

However, his family grew larger and larger and his fine singing voice went croaky over the years. Often, these days, he dozed in the driver’s seat. Though past his prime, he could still be a fine show.

The owners of Galway Brewery, the Mulcahy brothers, had sentimental loyalty to anyone who had come from their county in the old country. They turned their eyes away when, again and
again, Tommy fell off the wagon and had to dry out at the Angels of Mercy.

Tommy’s helper, an elderly Negro, certainly past fifty, known only as old Henry, had been on the job eighteen years. When Tommy fell ill, Henry ran the route, earning an extra twenty-five cents a shift. In the past few years, old Henry drove the route, often as not.

When Zachary knew Tommy Bannon was down, he’d often hitch on with Henry and help him run the route. Henry was not only amusing to banter with but had a terribly keen mind in sorting out the confusion in the city. They became like pals, the first black person Zachary had ever really known. On the route, Zachary got a firsthand view of the general abuse a Negro bore in an ordinary workday.

It annoyed Zach and puzzled him. Would America implode before it could become cities without boundaries?

It was a scorcher, the most brutal and suffocating heat wave in twenty years, some said. The July evening had driven everyone to the rooftops and fire escapes gasping for breath, and the fire hydrants below opened, dousing the kids, and movement slowed to a shuffle.

When out of Long Island, a beedler of a thunderhead of lightning and rain roared onto Manhattan like a prayer answered from the Almighty.

Breath-saving, lifesaving, cooling, the storm dumped and hovered. People stood there on the sidewalks pointing their mouths up like fish drinking and doused themselves to the bone.

It made for a horrendous mess out on the streets, mixing up horse shit on the cobblestones and turning them snot-slippery. Iron wheels spun and horses lost footing. On the unpaved streets, vans went down nearby, hub-deep in mud. It was fun for the kids, but hell on wheels for the teamsters.

Paddy O’Hara’s Saloon had been drunk near dry before the storm, and the afternoon delivery was nowhere in sight.

The first street out of the Galway Brewery was an uphill affair. Wouldn’t you know, the wagons were loaded to the gills and man, beast, and wagon struggled to get to their routes. Deliveries ran later and later. A busted axle at the gate and flying barrels made life no easier.

Tommy Bannon generally fell sick with one thing or another when it stormed. The brewery became more short of men as crews had to go out and help crippled wagons.

Bucking it alone, old Henry left Galway overloaded for the thirsting bars, three hours late, pulled by an intemperate horse.

At Forty-fourth and Ninth Avenue, two companies of fire wagons raced down the street in an opposite direction, answering an alarm. Henry veered out of their way and slammed the curb, tipped, and dumped.

As the storm headed for Jersey, a midnight crowd jammed the saloons to overflowing. Paddy O’Hara’s ran stone dry and was deserted as though a bill collector had entered the place.

Paddy O’Hara was annoyed. Along with the heat and a dry saloon, he’d lost a goodly sum in the poker game he ran in the cellar. Paddy, who could outdrink any man in the bar, hit the hard stuff in his anxiety.

And that damned bloody sharp pain tore through his stomach. Of late, the pain seemed to visit on a daily basis or more. At first, Paddy ignored it, then drank to smother it. With all the crap going on, it hit him bad, this night.

Knowing the saloon business from his vantage point in the storeroom, Zachary stayed in place to put things in order later.

The saloon was quite well trashed up and would stay so until the morning cleaning crew. Zach nodded off for one of his patented twelve-minute naps as his da emptied the registers and fumed over the pain in his belly.

Paddy finally heard the iron rims of wheels and clip-clopping hooves of an unsteady horse and was all but snorting fire when old Henry entered.

For a moment, a sense of pity overtook Paddy at the sight of
Henry, drenched, yellow-eyed with exhaustion, and in fear of a tongue-lashing.

“It was a mess out there tonight, Mr. O’Hara, sir, worst I ever seen in eighteen years. I come straight to you soons I could and skipped all the other bars.”

“A lot of fucking good that’s going to do now. I lost a fucking fortune tonight.”

“Truly sorry,” Henry said, glancing hungrily at a badly picked-over free lunch counter. It had been a long, grueling day and he had not tasted a bite for twelve hours.

Paddy always saved the leftovers for Tommy Bannon and Henry. Henry had his own tin plate and tin water cup behind the bar near the free lunch table. It was often his one solid meal of the day. At times, Paddy let old Henry clean the mess at the free lunch table, wrap the scraps in butcher’s paper, and take them home.

Paddy set Henry’s plate on the counter. “All right, fix yourself a plate.” There weren’t too much leavings, but Paddy took some bologna from the cooler and added it.

Paddy calmed a bit, looking at a creature more miserable than himself. “Henry,” he said, “you’re the only one that really gets a free lunch. There is no such thing as free lunch. Why? I’ll tell you. Any Irishman will spend ten times more for what he’s drinking than what he does eating.”

Famished and light-headed, old Henry shoveled bologna and sardines and onions and carrot sticks and soda bread into his face with his fingers, munching with few teeth and drooling down his chin. Ugly sight, Paddy thought. Thank God they ain’t in the Marines.

“So when is Tommy coming back on the route?”

Henry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, asked for water, and went at the rest of the plate.

“Mr. Tommy has been sick for several days.”

“He’s always sick when it rains,” Paddy said.

“I mean double sick, sir. Mr. Hogan, the dispatcher, went and seen him at the Angels of Mercy Mission and Mr. Tommy’s missus
and kids was all wailing over his cot. Mr. Hogan told me I was to do the route until they decided to break in a new man. Sir, can I have the rest of those leavings?”

Hogan, the dispatcher, was a bloody Ulsterman and suspected of not being of the true faith. Paddy didn’t trust Hogan.

“Henry, there’s been talk.”

“Concerning which matter?”

“They say Hogan is going to get rid of Tommy and give you his route.”

“I never heard nothing about that, sir.”

“Fuck you didn’t. Hogan told you to be real quiet about it, didn’t he? Someone overheard him talking to you about it.”

“That’s not true, Mr. Paddy.”

“Yeah, man, you’d be the one nigger teamster they could get away with, and then, more nigger drivers. The brewery would save a fortune.”

“No, sir, no, sir.”

“You’re a liar, Henry.”

“I ain’t lying to you.”

Paddy O’Hara shrieked as fearsome pain, like a bullet, ripped into his stomach and he wobbled and doubled over, made cries like a woman giving birth. He looked up at Henry through maddened eyes.

Paddy’s hand wrapped in natural movement about the bar blackjack, a sap of lead pellets covered in leather. No man in Hell’s Kitchen was so accurate and devastating in its use.

Gagging in pain, Paddy’s left hand grabbed Henry and lifted him off the bar stool and pulled him over the bar, and the right hand lashed out, bashing the sap into Henry’s head, shattering the edges of Henry’s temple with a single blow. Henry puked. His eyes nearly popped out as Paddy lined up a second blow.

“No, Da, no!” Zachary’s voice shouted from the opened storeroom door.

Old Henry did not require a second blow.

Paddy O’Hara, renowned for his lightning thinking under fire, let Henry fall to the floor and turned his back to Zachary.

Within a minute, Paddy ditched the blackjack, snatched a bottle of rum from the bar, smashed its bottom, and pulled the jagged edge over his own face, ripping his skin, and he punched himself hard in the nose, turning his face gory.

He knelt alongside Henry’s body and wrapped Henry’s fist around the broken bottleneck, then looked up to Zachary standing above them.

“The son of a bitch tried to kill me!” Paddy cried.

God be thanked that Commissioner Andy Burke was in a card game at the Hibernian Club a few blocks away. Andy Burke was familiar with and on top of these circumstances. It was very late and the street was quiet.

The commissioner shut the saloon down tight against curiosity seekers and, God forbid, a wayward reporter.

The ambulance and a doctor arrived with no bells. It backed into the side alley and whisked off quickly with the dead man’s body.

Paddy was cleaned up, his cut taped closed.

“Not too bad, you’ll need a few stitches,” the doctor, a stitch master, told him; otherwise he was fine and lucky.

Paddy was helped to a table.

“What happened?” Burke asked.

“He come in very late and must have been drinking up a storm, probably had a shot at every bar he delivered. I fixed him something to eat, but he was raging, cracked off a bottle, reached over the bar and cut my face, and bashed my nose as well. I pushed him off me. He was so drunk he fell off the stool, cracked his head on the corner of the bar, then hit it again on the foot rail, wedging in his face.”

Paddy stopped, aware that his son was standing close by, listening.

“Did you see it, Zach?” Andy Burke asked.

“No, he didn’t,” Paddy answered quickly.

“Zachary,” the commissioner said, “you wait now over in the ladies’ parlor. I’ll be with you later.”

Burke ordered a cop to help Paddy up to his flat, where the doctor would stitch him up.

It was half four and dawn peeking through when the commissioner was satisfied with the cleanup and found his way into the ladies’ drinking parlor, where Zach sat in a booth in a stupor.

Burke was a steadying sight, great muttonchop sideburns, top-of-the-line bowler, a diamond stickpin in his cravat, a man as dandy as his reputation.

He set a bottle of Paddy’s best Scotch whiskey on the table and invited himself to a glass and ran through his notes.

“Can we have a little talk now, Zachary?”

Zach mumbled.

“Here, take a couple of sips, won’t hurt you any.”

Indeed, it helped.

“I realize this has been a traumatic experience for you, but as you know, it is not an uncommon occurrence. We like to close the report quickly on these barroom incidents. Not that anyone gets too upset when Irish brawl with Irish, but when you start mixing the races, particularly the niggers, it can be like lightning on a short fuse, if you get my meaning.”

Zach nodded.

“You often rode with old Henry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We don’t have a complicated case. In that you are the only possible witness, your statement will close the matter and spare us a coroner’s inquest. So, you came out of the storeroom to see what the ruckus was all about and you saw your da kneeling by old Henry.”

Zach just stared down.

“Then you could smell Henry, reeking from rum. Your da said Henry was a master at sneaking booze from his deliveries and stealing off the free lunch table. I’m sure every bartender of Eighth Avenue will confirm that.”

Burke waited.

“I read myself to sleep,” Zach said.

“You slept? With this heat, through the storm, no beer, and a hundred Irishmen needing a drink?”

“I often nod off no matter how loud things get. I sort of sleep with one eye open.”

“So the saloon emptied, and later on, Henry comes in dead drunk and mad and you kept sleeping.”

“I didn’t see Henry come in.”

“Indeed. What woke you up?”

“My da had a fierce stomach pain and shrieked to high heaven.” Zach broke into a sweat and took another nip at the whiskey. “It gets blurred,” he said.

“You have to corroborate your da’s story. Henry was on the floor and your da was kneeling over him. You never saw any blows struck.”

“Old Henry was Temperance. He never drank,” Zach rasped. “I saw what happened.”

“He was at Henry’s side, right?”

“No, sir.”

“Go on.”

“I awakened by Da’s scream. He was reeling around gagging and all doubled over. It sometimes annoyed Da the way Henry ate with his fingers, sometimes half starved. Da come out of his pain raging and hit Henry,” he said, and pointed to his temple. “You’ve seen how fast he is with the blackjack. Split the man’s skull.”

“You liked old Henry?”

“Aye.”

“Paddy told me you oftentimes walk around in Harlem, totally without fear.”

“Aye.”