Kennedy - Legs

PENGUIN BOOKS

LEGS

William Kennedys Albany cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the citys netherworld, and its spheres of powerfinancial, ethnic, politicaloften among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period.

The novels in his cycle include Legs, which evokes the flamboyant career of the legendary gangster Jack Legs Diamond; Billy Phelans Greatest Game, about a pool hustler and small-time bookie who gets involved in the kidnapping of a political bosss son; Ironweed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, which tells the story of Francis Phelan, ex-big leaguer and full-time bum on an odyssey of redemption through the lower depths; Quinns Book, a boys adventure-filled journey through the tumult of nineteenth-century America; Very Old Bones, a revelation of ancestral influence on a later generation of Phelans; The Flaming Corsage, about the charged relationship between an Albany playwright and his complex, seductively beautiful wife; and, most recently, Roscoe, the story of a suave, brilliant, unscrupulous lawyer, for twenty-six years the chief braintruster of Albanys notorious political machine.

Kennedy has also published an impressionistic history of his city, O Albany!, and a non-fiction collection, Riding the Yellow Trolley Car, which gathers literary essays, profiles, and book reviews that Kennedy has penned over the years. With his son, Brendan, he co-authored two childrens books: Charlie Malarkey and the Bellybutton Machine and Charlie Malarkey and the Singing Moose. Kennedys first novel was The Ink Truck. His work has been translated into two dozen languages. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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First published in the United States of America by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1975

First published in Canada by Longman Canada Limited 1975

First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1976

Published in Penguin Books in Great Britain 1978

Published in Penguin Books in the United States of America 1983

Copyright 1975 by William Kennedy

Maps by David Lindroth copyright Viking Penguin Inc., 1983

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My Mothers Rosary copyright 1915 by Mills Music, Inc., copyright renewed 1942. Arrah-Go-On, Im Gonna Go Back to Oregon, copyright 1916 by Mills Music, Inc., copyright renewed 1943. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

eISBN: 9781101665930

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Kennedy, William, 1928

Legs.

1. Diamond, Legs, 1895 or 61931Fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.E428L4 1983

813.54 82-13285

ISBN 9780140064841 (pb.)

Version_1

This is for Pete McDonald, a first-rate relative, and for all the archetypes lurking in Ruth Tarsons lake house

People like killers. And if one feels sympathy for the victims its by way of thanking them for letting themselves be killed.

E UGENE I ONESCO

I really dont think hes dead, I said to my three very old friends.

You what? said Packy Delaney, dropsical now, and with only four teeth left. Elephantiasis had taken over his legs and now one thigh was the size of two. Ah time.

He dont mean it, Flossie said, dragging on and then stubbing out another in her chain of smokes, washing the fumes down with muscatel, and never mind trying to list her ailments. (Roaches in your liver, Flossies doc had told her. Go on home and die at your own speed.)

Tipper Kelley eyed me and knew I was serious.

He means it, all right, said Tipper, still the dap newsman, but in a 1948 double-breasted. But of course hes full of what they call the old bully-bull-bullshit because I was there. You know I was there, Delaney.

Dont I know it, said the Pack.

Me and Bones McDowell, said the Tip. Bones sat on his chest.

We know the rest, said Packy.

Its not respectful to Bones memory to say he sat on the mans chest of his own accord, Tipper said. Bones was the finest reporter I ever worked with. No. Bones wouldnt of done that to any man, drunk or sober, him or Jack the corpse, God rest his soul. Both their souls, if Jack had a soul.

He had a soul all right, said Flossie. I saw that and everything else he had too.

Well hear about that another time, said Tipper, Im now talking about Bones, who with myself was the first up the stairs before the cops, and Jacks wife there in the hallway, crying the buckets. The door was open, so Bones pushed it the rest of the way open and in he snuck and no light in the room but what was coming in the window. The cops pulled up then and we heard their car door slam and Bones says to me, Come inside and well get a look before they kick us the hell out, and he took a step and tripped, the simple bastard, and sprawled backward over the bed, right on top of poor Jack in his underwear, who of course didnt feel a thing. Bones got blood all over the seat of his pants.

Tipper, said Packy, thats a goddamn pack of lies and you know it. You havent got the truth in you, and neither did Bones McDowell.

So in comes big Barney Duffy with his flashlight and shines it on Bones sitting on poor Jacks chest. Sweet mother of mine, says Barney and he grabbed Bones by the collar and elbow and lifted him off poor Jack like a dirty sock. Haventcha no manners atall? Barney says to him. I meant no harm, says Bones. Its a nasty thing youve done, says Barney, sittin on a dead mans chest. On the grave of me mother I tripped and fell, says Bones. Dont be swearing on your mother at a filthy time like this, says Barney, you ought to be ashamed. Oh I am, says Bones, on the grave of me mother I am. And then Barney threw us both out, and I said to Bones on the way down the stairs, I didnt know your mother was in the grave, and he says to me, Well, shes not, the old fart-in-the-bottle, but she oughta be.

You never got a good look at the corpse, Packy said to Tip, and dont tell me you did. But you know damn well that I did. I saw what they did to him when he was over at Keenan the undertakers for the autopsy. Thirty-nine bullets. They walked in there while he was sleeping and shot him thirty-nine times. I counted the bullet holes. You know what that means? They had seven pistols between the pair of them.

Say what you will, I told them, savoring Packys senile memory, remembering that autopsy myself, remembering Jacks face intact but the back of his head blown away by not thirty-nine but only three soft-nosed .38-caliber bullets: one through his right jaw, tearing the neck muscle, cutting the spinal cord, and coming out through the neck and falling on the bed; another entering his skull near the right ear and moving upward through his brain, fracturing his skull, and remaining in the fracture; and the third, entering the left temple, taking a straight course across the brain and stopping just above the right ear.