On the Waterfront (6 page)

Terry said Hi to this one and threw a friendly jab at that one and pretty soon he had come to the Friendly Bar on the corner across from Pier B. There was nothing special about the Friendly Bar; it looked like most of the other gin mills along the street: a plate-glass window with a green blind running half way up so the wives couldn’t spot their truant husbands, a beautiful old bar, exquisitely carved in the old rococo manner, surrounded incongruously by unscrubbed walls of corrugated brown sheet metal decorated with pictures of fighters, ball players and calendar nudes. A few humorous signs—“In God We Trust—No Exceptions”—“Ladies, Watch Your Language. There May Be Gentlemen Present”—and a Back Room for the big and little wheels, that was Friendly’s, a deceptively unimposing command post for the Bohegan sector of the harbor.

Johnny Friendly (through his stooge brother-in-law Leo) didn’t pay any rent for the street corner outside the Bar and Grill, but it was considered an integral part of the establishment. There were always half a dozen or a dozen or more of the Friendly boys standing around, leaning against the plate-glass window or the lamppost, talking shop or sports or doing a little business. “J.P.” Morgan, bat-eared and weasel-faced, was a familiar figure on the corner as longshoremen sullenly accepted his loans of fifty or a hundred, to be paid back at the generous rate of ten per cent a week, which didn’t sound too bad until you remembered the ten per cent was accumulative, and that if you failed to come up with the hundred the first week, the interest was ten per cent of $110 and so on and on until you were paying thirty or forty per cent. If you fell too far behind “J.P.” would signal a hiring boss, Big Mac McGown or Socks Thomas, to put you to work. The debtor would turn over his work tab to “J.P.” and “J.P.” would collect straight from the pay office, so there was no chance of the guy drinking it up or turning it over to the wife before “J.P.” (really Johnny Friendly) got his. So one way to be sure to work (eventually) was to cooperate with “J.P.” Morgan’s street-corner banking system.

The financial see-saw of the labor set-up on the waterfront balanced on a nondescript but vital little fulcrum like “J.P.” Most longshoremen lived all their lives in debt, spending the last dollar in their pockets on a Saturday night and starting from scratch, or rather, behind scratch every Monday morning. Loan-sharking plus two or three men for every job, keeping a floating population of insecure and hungry men—these were the two prongs of Johnny Friendly’s power in Bohegan. And it was the power of dock bosses in Port Newark and Staten Island and Red Hook and every section of the harbor split up into a dozen self-sufficient multi-million-dollar operations according to the tacit understanding of the underworld executives who referred to themselves as union leaders. These waterfront lordlings were smiled upon by President Willie Givens, who could pound his chest and weep at union conventions and communion breakfasts about his love for his dock-working brothers who expressed their gratitude by voting him twenty-five thousand dollars for life and an unlimited expense account. The vote was one hundred per cent legal, as well as phony, for the convention delegates were hand-picked, opposed only here and there by an obstreperous, irrepressible Runty Nolan, or a serious, young parliamentarian like Joey Doyle. The rank and file spent their resentment in undercurrent humor, calling their President “Weeping Willie” and “Nickel and Dime Willie” because his contracts with the shipping association always resulted in notoriously paltry wage increases, and “Willing Willie” because he was so pitifully eager to please the shippers and the stevedores (and his high-and-mighty benefactor Tom McGovern) who remembered him gratefully with Christmas envelopes containing crisp thousand-dollar bills. Yes, it was always Merry Christmas for Weeping Willie, yet somehow no one questioned the fact that this bit of formalized corruption was meant to celebrate the birthday of Weeping Willie’s and Tom McGovern’s Father and Savior.

It seemed a long way from Bethlehem to the corner of River and Pulaski Streets. There “J.P.’s” pockets bulged with Johnny Friendly’s ready cash and there “Jockey” Byrnes, an ancient gnome ruled off the tracks as an apprentice in some dust-covered scandal, ran a book that longshoremen were expected to patronize. At least it was no secret that Jockey worked for the set-up along with “J.P.,” Big Mac, and Socks Thomas, familiarly known as “A ’n B” in honor of the number of times he had been charged with assault and battery.

These were some of the people standing outside the Friendly Bar and Grill when Terry appeared. Leaning against the bar window, waiting calmly, was Charley, flanked by Truck Amon, a fat fortress of a man who was said to consume three gallons of beer every day, and Gilly Connors, another fat boy, who was once told by Charley to use his head in handling a certain situation, whereupon he butted the fellow so effectively the victim went to the hospital with fractures of the nose and jaw.

When Terry was close enough, Charley said in his habitually soft voice, as if the vocal cords had been designed for conspiracy, “How goes?”

Terry nodded impatiently. “He’s on the roof.”

“The pigeon?” Charley’s voice was barely audible.

“Like you said,” Terry grumbled, still resenting the conversation, as if merely avoiding the subject could disassociate him from whatever they were doing with Joey Doyle. “It worked.”

“You’re sure? You saw ’im go up?” Charley pressed him.

“Yeah, yeah, it worked, it worked.”

Truck Amon tapped his temple, pressed his thick lips together and nodded sagely at Terry. “That brother of yours is thinkin’ alla time. Alla time.”

“
All
a time,” Gilly Connors agreed, his lower lip protruding and his head bobbing in a characteristic series of abbreviated nods.

Terry looked at his brother questioningly, not knowing what more to say. Usually he waited for Charley to peg the conversation, but this time Charley was silent and pensive. There was a sad, sweet, distracted look on his face, an expression of concentrated preoccupation. As Terry looked at him, wishing he could figure what was on his older brother’s mind, that brainy mind, a sound came to his ears, and to the ears of everybody in the neighborhood, for it could be heard for blocks around, that was the most terrifying he had ever heard. It was a scream, such as might have been torn from the bloody throat of a savage animal being ripped apart by fiercer beasts. It was a scream, a cry, a shout, a prayer, a protest, a farewell. Unmistakably it gave voice to death, sudden and violent, a tongue ripped from its living mouth at the very moment of its outcry against the act, a shrill, hoarse, descending wail, choked with agony.

“I’m afraid somebody fell offa roof,” Truck Amon said looking from Gilly to Charley for appreciation of his wit.

The barflies were pouring out of Friendly’s in the direction of the scream and the sickening, thudding punctuation that had ended it. Only Charley didn’t move. Truck and Gilly and “J.P.” and a few others sat there with blank and withdrawn faces, curtained against the act of mercy or a show of compassion. Terry looked into their faces, into the purposely bland face of his brother. Suddenly he saw what they had done to him. He had been a decoy, like the pigeon, as ignorant and almost as innocent.

Around the corner there was an increasing babel of voices. A police car sirened in. Charley and Truck and Gilly watched, with tired, mind-our-own-business eyes. Terry watched Charley and Gilly and Truck. Truck said, in his dry, thick-toned monotone:

“He thought he was gonna sing for the Crime Commission. He won’t.”

Terry said to Charley quietly, more befuddled than accusing, “You said they was only gonna talk to him?”

Charley wouldn’t look at Terry. He kept staring straight ahead, at the passers-by, as if it were any other night. He tried to be as cold and business-like as Johnny Friendly. “That was the idea.”

“I thought they’d talk to ’im. Try to straighten ’im out. Get him to dummy up. I thought they was only gonna talk to him?”

Terry’s was less a question than an awkward searching of himself.

“Maybe he gave ’em an argument,” Charley suggested.

“I figured the worst they’d do is work ’im over a little bit,” Terry said.

“He probably gave ’em an argument,” Charley persisted. He said it in a way intended to cut off further discussion. Terry was a funny kid, a roughneck, a natural cop-hater, but not quite a working hoodlum in the Specs or Sonny or Truck or Gilly sense. A little too much of a loner. People didn’t realize you had to have an organization sense to rate as one of the boys. Terry was like a masterless half-vicious mongrel dog that never ran with the pack. He was satisfied to gnaw on any stray bone he picked up in the street when he could be stealing meat off a butcher truck. A hard guy to figure, hard to trust, in a funny way. That’s why Charley had never bothered trying to get Terry into the organization. People wondered why Charley with his connections didn’t do a little more for the kid brother. The reason was in Terry himself. He couldn’t do a simple favor without asking dumb questions about it.

“Just work ’im over a little, that’s what I figgered,” Terry was muttering.

“That Doyle’s been givin’ our boss a lot of trouble lately,” Truck said in a righteous, almost prim tone of voice. To Truck Amon, born and raised in Bohegan to respect muscle and power, any flaunting of the authority of Johnny Friendly was an affront to his sense of order. Johnny had made him and Johnny could break him. He was on the payroll for a bill and a half a week and what he could look to steal. That’s all he knew and all he needed to know.

Terry was still talking to himself. Charley had an eye on him. What was the kid eating himself for? Maybe he should have given him the whole picture. But it was bad security. Don’t tell nobody no more than he has to know to do what ya tell him to, Johnny Friendly always said. Like many a successful racket guy, Johnny would have made a pretty good division commander. So how could Charley give Terry the whole story? He hadn’t figured Terry would give him any trouble. Terry knew certain things had to be taken care of in this business. He had to know that much.

“He wasn’t a bad little fella, that Joey,” Terry said under his breath.

“No, he wasn’t,” Charley said.

“Except for his mouth,” Truck said.

“Talkative,” Charley said.

“Yeah, talkative,” Gilly seconded, liking the sound of the word.

“Wasn’t a bad little fella,” Terry couldn’t seem to stop saying. Maybe if he had known it was to be his pitch to call Joey out for the knock-off, if he had had a little time to get used to it, it might have been okay. Joey had been asking for it, that’s for sure. So he had only himself to blame. Terry could see that. But what was getting under his skin was this not telling him. As if he was too dumb to be trusted with the job if he had known they were going all the way. That’s what was crawling inside him. That’s what he figured it was. All he knew was he felt bad. Until the time Charley had come up to get him on the roof, he had felt okay, his usual okay self, and now he felt something like a bellyache in his head, the way his head had buzzed and felt heavy and big when an opponent had scored with a combination to the jaw and the ear, and he knew he was hurt and needed to cover up until he could shake his head clear.

Everyone on the corner was looking in the direction of the tenement rooftop from which Joey had fallen unwillingly into the littered courtyard.

“Maybe he could sing,” Truck said with his guttural wit, “but he couldn’t fly.”

“Definitely,” Gilly rumbled, with his abbreviated St. Vitus nods, and a bull-frog chuckle in his throat.

Terry looked at them and he felt he was catching blows to the head again. It was like being caught in a flurry and trapped in the other guy’s rhythm. Charley saw the look on Terry’s face and figured he better get the kid away from Truck and Gilly before they said anything else to rub it in worse. Especially that Truck, who wasn’t satisfied just being a thickneck and had to double as a comedian.

“Come on, kid, I’ll buy you a drink,” Charley offered, sliding his arm over Terry’s shoulder.

“You go in. I’ll be in in a minute,” Terry said.

“It happens, kid,” Charley said philosophically.

“I know. I know. I just wanna get some air,” Terry said, ashamed to be caught soft in front of Charley.

Charley hesitated for a moment and then turned toward the entrance, giving Truck and Gilly the eye to follow him in.

With his mind full of confusion, Terry watched the stream of people, longshoremen, truckers, wives and kids and drifters, moving in the direction of the accident.

I
N THE CLEARING BEHIND
the row of tenements at least fifty people had gathered around the heap of inert bone and flesh and crumpled clothing that had been Joey Doyle. Their heads were bent in the age-old attitude of grief, in this case genuine grief, for Joey had been a popular kid before developing into a respected neighborhood figure. But there was also in this atmosphere a deep sense of shame, as if the entire neighborhood was implicated in this sudden and yet not unexpected violence.

Group resentment, smoldering, was silent and invisible, and yet a force, like a field of electric current coursing around the body, which someone had had the grace to cover with pages of a daily tabloid. In fact, if one looked carefully he could see the dark headlines crying out the day’s rapines, holdups and murders, so that the rags of violence covered the remains of violence in the back alley of this river town.

Pop Doyle stood with his friends, Runty Nolan and big, bull-voiced Moose McGonigle, a Mutt-and-Jeff combo who did a lot of drinking and clowning together and liked to abuse each other. They knew the whole story of Joey Doyle and they also knew—while often straying from—the narrow, twisting paths of waterfront survival. So they weren’t saying anything. The three of them stood mute and guarded near the body. And although the motionless grief of Pop Doyle was deeper, for Joey had been a beloved only son (an infant brother losing to pneumonia years before), Pop’s face, like the faces around him, made an effort to hide its feelings and its knowledge. To know nothing, or to act know-nothing, was the one sure way of survival on the waterfront.