Free Exile on Bridge Street by Eamon Loingsigh

there’s the hangers-on like the bony Needles Ferry, mumbling Johnny Mullen, the half-Italian “Dago Tom” Montague, best friends Eddie Hughes and Freddie Cuneen, the Simpson brothers, the mental case Garry Barry and his lone crony James Cleary, Happy Maloney, the limping Gimpy Kafferty, and Fred Honeybeck. Most are there, but Mick Gilligan is not, since he’s dead by now, shot in the back of the head by young Richie Lonergan. Nor is the secretive dockboss of the Atlantic Terminal, Harry Reynolds, present, as he’d already beat the place upon receiving his take from the divvy, as usual.
    Tanner pushes the back of my shoulder while the men look upon me gravely. As we pass I see Petey Behan and the other Lonergan boys sitting around a small table with half-drunk beers on it, eyeballs at the corners of heads staring daggers at me.
    â€œHow go it, Tanner?” the pavee fighter Tommy Tuohey says quickly while manning his post guarding the stairwell.
    Tanner nods, then whispers to Tuohey, who runs upstairs, knocks, grunts something when the door opens, comes back downstairs, and throws a thumb over his shoulder to us. “G’on up.”
    Vincent Maher opens the door, the grip of a .38 protruding from his belt, tight trousers clearly displaying his phallus lying to a side. A gallous dresser, Vincent is. Vest unbuttoned, belt unbuckled. Skinny and handsome and full-haired and ready, he comes out to the hallway with Tanner and myself and closes the door behind him.
    â€œListen, kid,” Vincent says. “I’m gonna give ya the terms. Listen. Shit’s serious, a’right?”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œIt’s four months t’day McGowan is killed up in Sing Sing. We all know Lovett ordered it and Pickles Leighton got the screws to do it from the inside. We all know Lovett was behind it. Ain’ no secret there. We might’ve won t’ings down here in Brooklyn, but on the inside we lost. Pickles is still up there now recruitin’ guys in Sing Sing and when they get out, we don’ even know who they are, got it?” Vincent says to me, wiping his nose with a knuckle in the dark stairwell, a lone small window running light over his shoulder as he speaks. “A man close to Dinny’s heart, was McGowan, ya know? Damn close. It was a hard war we won before you even landed here. I don’t blame it if ya don’t appreciate it all the way, but I’m here to tell ya it was a struggle to get where we are now. I myself went to war right alongside McGowan when I was your age . . . your age! And the man was a fookin’ soldier through to the heart of ’em. But lemme tell ya somethin’, Dinny an’ McGowan went way back. On the streets together, no help from nobody. So Dinny . . . he’s been thinkin’ a lot about McGowan t’day. About how close they was, them two. And you. You too. Dinny started gettin’ close wit’ ya, so when he heard ya lam’d it to Manhatt’n on ya own? On this day o’ days? Naturally, he’s got a bit o’ the mopes. Lookin’ back on his ol’ friend. Who he went to battle wit’? McGowan? Then this? Understand?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œGood, here’s what I want ya to do. I want ya to shut ya hole when ya walk in there an’ listen. Just listen’s all. Can ya do that?”
    â€œI can.”
    â€œThanks again, Tanner,” Vincent says, quickly moving the conversation toward him. “Ya hangin’ out a bit?”
    â€œFor a while, yeah.”
    â€œRight, ya heard anythin’ about Thos Carmody, the ILA feller?” Vincent winks.
    â€œHeard he’s missin’,” Tanner says. “Real shame.”
    â€œLet’s go,” Vincent says, pointing in my face. “An’ you. Just keep it shut, you.”
    As I pass through the door Vincent tightens his belt. But even back then I knew the face he had when violence was on the wing,