On the Waterfront (25 page)

Father Barry had a good laugh too at the way Runty, like a flea, had worked his way under Willie Given’s oratorical armor. Runty’s staggering up onto his feet and asking the big boys to knock him down again was real comedy, of the bloody, gadfly kind the Irish have a knack for understanding.

“But Runty,” Father Barry asked, “when it’s all over what’ll you have done to Johnny Friendly, or Willie, or Big Tom? Won’t the murders still go on at the bottom and won’t McGovern keep soaking up that million-dollar gravy off the top? That’s why it seems to me your best bet is to break the silence and testify. The Crime Commission is willing to unlock the door for you. But what’s the good of opening a door if nobody’s willing to walk in?”

“If you testify, you might as well stick your head in the cement yourself and save them the trouble,” Runty said. “You wouldn’t have the chance of a snowball in a blast furnace.”

But, Father Barry argued, if Runty had defied the waterfront powers all his life, if he was on borried time as he was always saying, why not strike a single, effective blow that might add up to more than all the bravadeero escapades put together? “If you really hate those fellers, here’s a chance to make ’em look bad in the papers, where it really hurts,” Father Barry said. “Baiting them in a bar and getting your head staved in, what good does that do?”

“In me own soul it does me good,” Runty laughed. That one was hard to answer. “What makes you so hot for this investigation?” the old longshoreman asked.

“Because I can see the Joey Doyle case will wind up a hush-up job. This whole mess down here is being smothered in silence like a—a pillow held over the mouth of the harbor. And on the other hand here is the State setting up machinery and begging you to come forward. If it worked, if enough of you put the story together it could change the whole direction of this thing. The mob would be publicly discredited—instead of hiding behind a phony trade-union respectability.”

“I know enough to send Tom McGovern and Willie Givens away for years,” Runty boasted. “I go all the way back to when Tom was hijacking meat trucks with his own hands. Yes, and killing with them too. Now he’s got a manicurist come up to his penthouse to paint his nails and he’s chairman of the Mayor’s Harbor Improvement Society, God help us all. I seen him come up from the gutter. I seen how it happened.”

“Runty, get your story down,” Father Barry said excitedly. “I think you’ve got a hell of a chance to knock Johnny Friendly out of the box. Maybe Willie and McGovern too. And Donnelly and the Mayor over here. This investigation is a stick of dynamite. And you guys are too stupid to light the fuse.”

“God Almighty, Father,” Runty said, half-impressed. “You make it sound like the second comin’.”

“Look, why don’t we do this?” Father Barry said, talking fast. “I’ll get in touch with the Commission. Set up an executive session for you. You can testify on the q.t. The Commission doesn’t want to come out in the open anyway until they’re sure they’ve got enough stuff to make a case. By that time you’ve got them on the run. I’m going to bring a lawyer in on this. I c’n see a petition in the courts for an on-the-level election. The rest is up to you. Only don’t back away from this and come crying to me that you want my help. I’ll probably catch enough hell as it is. I’m thumbing you into the game, Runty. You c’n take it or leave it.”

Runty said, “Cripes, I oughta have me head examined.”

Father Barry prodded him. “Listen. I’ll line it up for you in the morning. I don’t like big government any more ’n you do. But in this thing I can’t see any other way. Without government implementation, you boys haven’t a chance.”

“Balls to government impleme—whatever that is,” Runty said. “Don’t give me any of those ten-dollar-Willie-Givens’ woids. I’ll buy the rest of it.”

“Amen,” Father Barry grinned. He took a good look at Runty’s bruises. “You’re sure you’re okay now?”

“Hell, lemme outa here,” Runty said. “It’s a quarter after two. I gotta get to the Longdock before they close.”

Father Barry had to choke back the warning—How can you go back into the streets and ask them to clobber you again? He gulped the words down because he knew the man who would go back onto River Street, not to be brave but just for another couple of shots of thirty-five-cent whiskey, was the same man who might have the spirit—with Father Barry’s help—to get the waterfront on the side of decency.

“Take it easy now,” Father Barry said as he walked Runty down to the front door of the rectory. “You’re gonna be valuable merchandise.”

Runty looked out into the cool, moonless night. There were snow flurries in the air. General Pulaski was a brooding shadow of iron in the park.

“Don’t worry, Father. I don’t think they’re gonna folly me no more t’night.” He tapped his wounded head humorously. “They had their fun.”

“Tomorrow we get our turn at bat,” the priest said. “Take care now. Stay out of the gin mills.”

“I aint afraid to go anywhere in Bohegan,” Runty boasted.

“I know that,” Father Barry said. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep you in one piece, at least until we get this thing on the road.”

Runty went boldly out into the night, his hands pushed deep into his windbreaker pockets, his hard, bantam chest thrust defiantly forward.

A noble little lush, Father Barry thought to himself as he watched him go.

Father Barry felt pleased with himself all the way up the stairs and into the bathroom he shared with Father Vincent It was rather a primitive bathroom, with an old-fashioned tub. Father Barry had been trying to promote a stall shower ever since he reported to St. Tim’s. He liked his bracing morning shower. When the Pastor had turned this down as an unnecessary luxury he had gone so far as to pray to St. Jude to intercede for him. Only the Saint of the Impossible, Father Barry had decided, could work such an innovation in habit-set Father Donoghue’s rectory. The Pastor had spent his boyhood in the old country and was not at all sure that hot water, stall showers and the like were necessary to salvation. In fact it was one of his notions that Americans were too clean. “Rub all the natural protective oils off their skins, they do for a fact.”

Father Barry was leaning over the sink and staring at his hairline in the small mirror, wondering if his hair was indeed receding as alarmingly as it seemed to be, when Father Vincent came in, in his plaid bathrobe, sleepy-eyed and grouchy.

“Pete, isn’t it bad enough to drag this thing into the church?” Father Vincent began, standing at the toilet and continuing to talk over his shoulder. “Are you going to start dragging these drunks in at all hours of the night?”

“That’s no way to talk about our parishioners,” Father Barry tried to joke it.

“We see enough of the parishioners at the Masses and Confession,” Father Vincent said, going to the sink to wash his hands.

“I’m not so sure,” Father Barry said.

“Peter, I hate to see you do this to yourself,” Father Vincent said. “You’ve got a lot on the ball. You can go places. But not this way. You’re cutting your own throat.”

Father Barry shook his head. “I’m just trying to keep a few throats from being cut.”

Father Vincent shrugged. “That’s a problem for the laity. I don’t think a priest has any right butting into it. All you’ll do is get yourself out on a limb the Monsignor will be very happy to chop off,” Father Vincent said. “But go ahead, if you want to be a curate all your life.”

“Damn it, there are people out there getting clobbered,” Father Barry said. The long, strenuous day was catching up to him now and there was no reserve of patience for the argument. Anyway he could throw the entire Encyclical of Pius XI at Brother Harry and it would make no difference.

On his knees for his night’s-end prayer, Father Barry begged God to help him repair his weaknesses so that he’d have more strength to follow the path he had set for himself. “Lord, give me the strength to climb out on this limb,” he prayed, “and please God, try to keep the Monsignor from going to the Bishop and getting him to chop me down.” He reinforced this request with fifteen Our Fathers.

T
ERRY’S FLOCK WAS ALOFT
again that next afternoon, a fluttering, swiftly moving cloud against the sun-brightened sky. Terry watched them parentally, occasionally swinging his long pole to keep them exercising. At their deceptive rate of nearly a mile a minute they could sweep far out over the river and circle back across the squat buildings of Main Street in a few seconds. Billy Conley, attached to Terry like a pilot fish, enjoyed the sight too—one of the three experiences in Bohegan he gave himself up to with enthusiasm. The other two were girls (from the age of eleven) and block battles against the rival Dock Street Dukes.

“Will ya look at them beautiful goddamn birds?” Terry said.

“The ones you stole off the Army sure rounded out the flock nice,” Billy said.

“Wait’ll we get the squabs from these Army slates and our Belgian blues next spring,” Terrv said “We’ll fly them other bums into the ground.”

Billy laughed and then, looking across the roof, frowned when he saw Katie Doyle making her way along the roof through the forest of television aerials and clotheslines.

“Who ast that broad up here?” Billy said.

Terry tensed at the sight of the girl approaching across the next roof level. He wanted to see her again, but he knew there was no percentage in it.

“Okay, I guess they got enough exercise,” he said, no longer bothering to follow the sweeping flight of the birds. “Let ’em come in.”

He handed the pole to Billy and waited for Katie. She had a graceful, lady-like walk, he was thinking; it seemed almost as if she were floating toward him. His chance meeting with her, his walk through the park with her the night before, her soft way of talking and the unfamiliarly kind things she said belonged more to the world of adolescent day-dreaming than to the hard reality of the Bohegan riverfront.

“What’re you doin’ up here on the roof?” Terry asked gruffly.

“Just looking,” Katie said.

She was startled. She felt out of place, though she had been up a few times with Joey when he was exercising his flock. She lingered a moment, just now, to look at Joey’s coop three roofs away. The birds were still there, unconcernedly eating from the self-feeder. The sight of them, all alive and waiting for Joey, made her brother’s absence unbearably intense. Then she hurried on to Terry—why, she didn’t know exactly—perhaps because he was a pigeon fancier too.

Now that Billy had lowered the pole the birds were circling closer to their loft. Terry hailed them with an encircling wave of his hand.

“You’re looking at the champion flock of the neighborhood. Everyone of ’em bred ’n raised ’n trained by yours truly.”

“I love seeing them fly out over the river,” she said.

“They’ll fly anywhere,” Terry said. “Over the ocean. As far as fifteen hundred miles. They’ll keep coming all day. And they won’t even stop for food or water until they’re back in the coop.”

They were coming in for a landing one by one and pushing trustfully through the movable bars into the coop.

“Joey raised pigeons,” Katie said.

Terry frowned. “Yeah. He had a few birds.” He glanced at her and then seemed to be studying the tar-paper flooring of the roof. “I went over and fed ’em this morning.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so interested in pigeons,” Katie said.

Terry shrugged. “I go for this stuff. Ever since I was a kid. I like the feel ya get when ya spot ’em in the sky comin’ home from Wilmington or somewheres. Makes ya feel big”—he snickered—“almost like ya done it yerself.”

“Do they always fly home?” Katie asked.

“Well, sometimes they get lost or hit a wire or somethin’,” Terry admitted. “And then of course the hawks get ’em.”

“Oh.” Katie shuddered.

“Ya know this harbor’s full of hawks?” Terry said. “That’s a fact. They hang around on top of the big hotels. The Plaza over the river is full of ’em. When they spot a pigeon in the park,
swoosh
right down on ’em. They c’n tear a pigeon’s throat open in a second, right in the air.”

“The things that go on,” Katie said, shutting her eyes for a moment.

“Yeah, ya c’n say that again,” Terry said. “Hawks is a pain in the …” He stopped abruptly. “What good is a hawk?” he wound it up.

Katie noticed one bird on the landing platform with a long string attached to its leg. When she asked what that was for, Terry looked across at Billy, who had turned aside disapprovingly.

“Well, that’s kind of a funny thing,” Terry began. “Y’see, a bird from some other flock or a lost racin’ bird sees the string and—it’s somethin’ about pigeons—right away he’s got to find out what it is. So he comes over ’n joins the flock and next thing he knows he’s followin’ ’em right into the coop. Kinda like hypnotism.”

“Isn’t that stealing?” Katie asked in that disconcertingly unemotional way she had of asking hard questions in a soft voice.

“Well—it’s sorta like a sport. See what I mean?” Terry apologized. “Everybody does it.”

“And that makes it right?”

“Yeah—yeah,” Terry muttered uncomfortably. Then he called to Billy, “Better check their water, kid. Looks like the can run dry. Get on the ball.”

Billy glared at the two of them and swallowed a profanity as he entered the coop.

“The Golden Warriors?” Katie read the emblazoned inscription on Billy’s back.

“Yeah. I started them Golden Warriors.” Terry swaggered a little. “You might say I was the original Golden Warrior. This little bum here”—he thumbed toward Billy inside the coop—“he’s my shadow. He thinks I’m a big wheel because I used to box pro for a while.”

“Aah, I coulda licked ya,” Billy said.

“Ha, ha. Ya couldn’t lick a postage stamp,” Terry said, and flicked his left a couple of times.

A large blue-checker pigeon with a thick white wattle around the eyes and a proud carriage flew through the movable bars and took his place on the highest perch, where he moved about and cooed authoritatively.

“You see that one,” Terry said. “Now what do you think of that hunk a stuff?”

“Oh, she’s a beauty,” Katie said.