Legs (35 page)

"You want any cupcakes tonight, Legs?" the
kid asked. "Why not?" Jack said and gave him a ten-dollar
bill. When the tank was full, the kid ran across the street to an old
lady's grocery and came back with three cupcakes in cellophane and an
opened bottle of sarsaparilla. Jack ate a cake and sucked at the soda
for the kid, who wanted to be near Jack, do things for him.

"You think you can beat that federal rap on an
appeal, Legs?"

"A sure thing, kid. Don't bet against me."

The kid—with his freckles, his large Irish teeth,
and a cowlick his barber didn't understand—laughed and said, "Bet
against you? Never do that."

"Listen, kid," Jack said, and I can hear
Cagney telling Billy Halop almost the same thing years later, "don't
get the wrong idea about me. I'm not going to live much longer. I got
more metal in me than I got bones. Stay in school. The rackets are a
bum life. There ain't no heroes in the rackets."

"I heard you were on the spot," the kid
said. "That true?"

Jack gave him a happy grin. "I been on the spot
all my life."

"I heard a rumor there's guys around want to get
you."

"The word's even out to the kids," Jack
said to me.

"I wouldn't tell 'em nothing if they come here,"
the kid said.

"Attaboy," Jack said.

"You know I didn't say nothin' about the panel
truck."

"I know that."

"I heard one of the guys looking for you is
called Goose."

"Yeah'? What else do you hear?"

"That they were asking questions up in Foley's
last week."

"Nothing since then?"

"Nothing."

"I heard about that," Jack said. "It's
all over with. The Goose flew south."

"It's okay then," the kid said. "Good
news."

"Give your old lady some good news, kid. Don't
mess in the rackets."

"Okay, Legs."

Jack tipped him five and got behind the wheel of his
Lincoln, which he was buying on time. Within a month he'd be too
broke to keep it. I got in and we followed Hubert to the brewery,
where Jack paid for the beer and saw it loaded. Then we headed for
Packy's in downtown Albany. We took a back road from Troy through
North Greenbush and into Rensselaer, a town like Albany, where Jack
was safe passing through with wet goods, across the Dunn Bridge and
up to Packy's on Green Street.

"What was that panel truck the kid mentioned?"
I asked when we were rolling again.

"Heavy load of booze. We parked it there one
night we were being chased. Oxie sat in it all night with a machine
gun."

"That was nice advice you gave the kid. But I
can't believe you don't want disciples in your own image, like the
rest of us."

"Kid's too soft," Jack said. "If he
was tougher, I'd tell him, 'Go ahead kid, see how tough you really
are,' line him up behind all the other tough guys waiting to die
young, let him take his chances. Sure I'd tell him about the easy
money, easy pussy, living high. But I like that kid. "

"You liked Fogarty too. Why'd you take him in?"

"He reminded me of Eddie."

"But you let him sink."

"Did I? You had more say over that than me."

"I told you I get paid for what I do. And it was
you who said the hell with him, that he was never any good."

"He wasn't. You saw he turned stool pigeon. He
was a weak sister. What'd he expect me to do, mother him? Rothstein
not only dumped me, he tried to kill me. But I never blew the whistle
on him. Never trust a pussy freak. Fogarty's cock ran ahead of him
like a headlight. Made a sucker of a good guy. Why not let him sink?
I'd let anybody sink except Eddie. And Alice and Marion. I'd even let
you sink, Marcus."

"I know. And I'd do the same for you, Jack. But
the difference is that I'm just a businessman and you're a prick in
your heart."

"Pricks are the only ones got it made in this
world."

"That's a chump's line."

"Maybe. I look like a chump these days."

"Chumps never know who their real friends are. "

"Friends," said Jack. "I got no
friends. You and me, we're just knockin' around, passing the time.
You're all right, Marcus, and I always said so, but I only had one
friend my whole goddamn life. My brother Eddie. Came down from
Saranac when he was dying to help me during the Hotsy thing. Christ,
we set up a meeting in the subway, Twenty-eighth Street, and he was
all dressed up, coconut straw, brown palm beach, and a new white silk
shirt with a lemon tie, looked like a million except you could've got
two other guys inside the suit with him. He wanted to make
collections for me, wanted to run the operation while I was hiding
out. Said he'd do anything and the poor bastard could hardly breathe.
We talked an hour, and when we got up to go, I was holding him and he
started giving me the Holy Roller malarkey. He got religion up in
Saranac and they were calling him The Saint. Used to go around
visiting in his wheelchair, seeing guys who couldn't move a muscle,
who were afraid to fucking breathe. Really selling me hard, and so I
said to him, forget that guff, Ed, it's not my style.  You'll
come around, he said, and I say in a pig's whistle, and he keeps at
it, so I finally say will you for crissake shut up about it? And
we're up in the street by then, so I hailed a taxi to get him back to
the Commodore where he had a room. And when I let go of his arm, he
fell down and Christ Jesus, he let out a cough I thought his whole
insides was liquid. Death rattle is what it was. Fantastic horrible
goddamn gurgle. He only lasted a couple of months more. Shortened his
life coming down to help me out. Couldn't do a goddamn thing for
anybody, but he tried, the son of a bitch tried with all he fucking
had. That's what's friends, Marcus. That's what I call friends."

Jack, the gush, was
crying.

* * *

Old Joe Delaney opened The Parody Club in 1894 to
appease a capricious thirst that took hold of him at odd hours, often
after the city's saloons had closed. He ran it until 1919 and dated
his retirement to the day a hod carrier swooned at the bar and
crumpled like a corpse. Delaney's son Packy (né Patrick),
apprenticing as a bartender after a stint with the AEF, looked the
hoddy over, kicked his ass, and yelled in his ear, "Get up and
go home, you stewbum."

"A born saloonkeeper," the elder Delaney
rejoiced, yielding swiftly then to the pull of retirement in his
favorite chair, where he died five years later with a bent elbow and
foam on his handlebars.

Music greeted us when we walked through the old
swinging doors, original doors that led to the Delaney time capsule.
We walked under a four-globed chandelier and a four-bladed ceiling
fan, past photos on the walls of old railroad men, old politicians,
old bare-knuckle fighters, dead Maud Gonne's likeness sketched on a
handbill announcing her appearance at Hibernian Hall to raise funds
for a free Ireland, defunct Hibernian Society marching down State
Street on a sunny Saint Patrick's Day in '95, disbanded private fire
companies standing at attention in front of their pumpers, K. of C.
beer drinkers, long in their graves, tapping a keg at a McKown's
Grove clambake. I went back to Packy's now and again until the place
burned down in 1942, when fire dumped all that old history of faces
into the powdery ashpit. Nothing ever changed there, till then.

Flossie was making the music when we walked in, the
piano being her second talented instrument of pleasure. Flossie was a
saucy blond cupcake then, not working directly out of Packy's, where
sins of the flesh were traditionally prohibited on premises. But she
was advertising from the piano bench and specializing in private
sessions to augment her income after her musical workday. Ah, Floss.
How well I remember your fingers, so educated to the music of joy.

She was jangling away at the keyboard while Packy and
another man delivered up some two-part harmony, not half-bad, of
"Arrah-Go-On, I'm Gonna Go Back to Oregon," a song from the
war years.

"Now this is something like it," Jack said,
and he walked ahead of me past the crowded bar toward an empty back
table that gave a view of the door. Hubert, having deposited the
truck for unloading inside Packy's garage, followed us; but Jack told
him, "Watch the door and the street." And without a word
Hubert went to the end of the bar and stood there alone while Packy
pined for Oregon, where they'd call him Uncle Pat, not Uncle John. He
gave Jack a smile on that line and an extended left arm that welcomed
and introduced the hero to the customers who hadn't yet recognized
him; Jack waved to half a dozen men at the bar looking our way.

"You know those fellows?" he asked me.

"I guess I've seen one or two around town."

"All thieves or hustlers. This is a good place
to buy yourself a new suit or a new radio cheap."

Jack bought the drinks himself at the bar, then
settled into a chair and gave full attention to Flossie's piano and
Packy's baritone. Packy came to the table when his harmony ran out.

"Fellow singing with me says he knows you,
Jack."

"I don't place him. "

"Retired railroad cop and not a bad fellow for a
cop. Nice tenor too, and he carries a tune. Hey, Milligan."

The tenor came over and looked at us through cataract
lenses. His hair was pure white and standing tall, and his magnified
eyes and cryptic smile gave him the look of a man in disguise.

"You don't remember me," he said to Jack.

"Give me a clue."

"Silk. New Jersey. l924."

"Ah, right. I make you now. You pinched me."

"You've got it. You were stealing the railroad
blind, you and your brother."

"I remember. You were in the house when I came
home. Sure, I remember you now, you son of a bitch. You sapped me."

"Only after you tried to kick me in the balls."

"I forgot that."

"You were out of jail quicker than I put you
in."

"I had some classy political connections in
those days."

"I know all about it. You remember anything else
about that night? Remember singing a song coming up the stairs'?"

"A song."

"It was a favorite of mine and I said to myself,
now this can't be such a bad fellow if he knows a song like that.
Just about then you saw me and tried to kick me in the crotch."

"I can't remember any song, Milligan, that your
name?"

"Milligan's right. You were drunk and howling it
out like a banshee. Listen, see if you remember."

He backstepped and put his hand on his stomach, then
gave us:

There's an old time melody,
I
heard long ago . . .

"l damn well remember that," Jack said.
'"One of my
favorites."

Mother called it the rosary,
She
sang it soft and low . . .

Jack nodded, grinned, sat back, and listened as most
of the customers were also listening now, not merely to Milligan, but
to Milligan singing for Legs Diamond.

Without any rhyme,
I
mean without any prose,
I even forgot
How the melody goes . . .

Flossie found Milligan's key and trilled some soft
background chords, a flicker of faint melody.

But ten baby fingers . . .

And then Jack could hold it back no longer and added
a  spoken line: "And ten baby toes . . ." And then
together he and Milligan finished the song:

She'd watch them by the setting sun,
And when her daily work was done,
She'd
count them each and every one,
That was my
Mother's ro—sa-reeeeeeee.

Flossie gave them a re-intro, and with Jack on
melody, Milligan on first tenor, and Packy on baritone, the
harmonizers sang mournfully, joyously, and profoundly out of the
musical realm of their Irish Catholic souls. They sang for all the
children who ever had mothers, for all the mothers who ever had
children, and when it was over, Jack called out, "Flossie, love,
let's do it again."

"Anything for you, Jack. Anything you want."

And the harmonizers moved closer together, their arms
on each other's shoulders, and began once more:

There's an old time melody,
I
heard long ago . . .

We sang songs that way for three hours and drove
everybody out of the bar, including the bartender. Packy made our
drinks and Flossie stayed and played for us, long after her
advertising day had ended without a client. But I think the Floss
anticipated things to come, and rejected all Johns who had no hint of
transcendence about their requests. I was drinking beer and Jack was
not quite reckless, but was at the boilermakers. And so both of us
were a little slow on the uptake when Hubert, back in from a
reconnaissance walk up the block, quick-stepped over to our table and
spoke his first words of the musical evening: