Walsh - And All the Saints

When I think about them other mugs, I suppose I got off lucky, luckier than Luciano, although I never went for a ride like him, although he never got it from the Hudson Dusters like I did. Lucky ran dames, I ran after em, which may be the basic difference between us, when you come to think of it. And right now, who would you rather be?

Owen Madden, from AND ALL THE SAINTS

A terrific writer who has given us a page-turning tale.

Bruce Feirstein, contributor, Vanity Fair and the New York Observer

Here is the Irish Godfather in ganglands Golden Age, brought to life by Michael Walsh, a brilliant storyteller with a deep, instinctive feeling for the textures of American history, for its sometimes brutal and hilarious cast of characters, and for the wilder ironies of becoming a success in America.

Lance Morrow, author of Heart: A Memoir

Crackling gritty colorful Walsh will keep you turning the pages brings to life a dark yet fascinating episode of Irish-American history.

Irish Review

Compelling.

Booklist

Michael Walsh writes as intensely about romance as he does about murder. To be able to show all sides of his characters is the authors gift to us.

Gail Parent, author of Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York

Combining his eminent skills of reportage with the brilliance of a born storyteller, Walsh leads us through places and times of fascinating danger and constant excitement.

Daniel Melnick, producer, Straw Dogs and All That Jazz

Admirably told vivid remarkable.

Dothan Eagle (AL)

Colorful uses historical fact as much as possible relates the life of one of New Yorks most notorious gangsters.

Litchfield County Times

Also by Michael Walsh

Exchange Alley

As Time Goes By

Hostile Intent

Early Warning

Shock Warning

Copyright 2003 by Michael Walsh. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc.; the agency can be reached at dca@doncongdon.com.

For

Patrick Joseph Walsh (18671931)

Joseph Patrick Walsh (19021979)

and

John Joseph Walsh (b. 1926)

I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

If you ever have to cock a gun in a mans face, kill him. If you walk away without killing him after doing that, hell kill you the next day.

Murray the Camel Humphreys

There are now no gangs in New York and no gangsters in the sense that the word has come into common usemerely young hoodlums who seek to take advantage of ancient reputations. They [have] nothing in common with such great brawling, thieving gangs as the Dead Rabbits, Bowery Boys, Eastmans, Gophers and Five Pointers.

Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (1929)

L ATELY I VE BEEN THINKING about the Mad Mick and how he died bloody in the London call box on 23rd Street, and about Little Patsy and his gunsels, Granny and his damsels, and Texas and her brassy lungs, and about how we shot the Dutchman in the Palace john in Jersey along with his dear boy Lulu.

The Cotton Club has crossed my mind more than once, which was after it was Jacks Club Deluxe, although if you ask me, it was never the same after they moved it from darktown to midtown and Hymie Arluck went Hollywood and turned into the Wizard of Oz. So has the Duke, for that matter, although nobody ever called him that when I was around, because I was always the real Duke, if you ask anybody who knows. Like Walter and Damon and Jimmy Hines and Joe the Boss and Arnold and Lucky and Meyer, and Estes the Senator from Tennessee and John the Senator from Arkansas, and Joes kids Jack and Bobby and all the rest of them who made my life so remunerative and difficult more or less at the same time. Not to mention the Kitchen gang, One Lung, Razor, Happy Jack, Art and Hoppo, but also Legs, Lucky and the Bug, the Big Fella and the Little Man.

Gone now, most of them long gone, except for old friends like Mae and Georgie, big stars now, four-letter household words. And here I sit in Bubbles, alone with Agnes and my pigeons, gazing out on North Mountain and West Mountain and the rest of the Ouachitas, which remind me of Ireland, at least the Ireland my mother used to tell me about, which was probably mostly a lie. Whereas theyve all been plugged, fried, planted and otherwise disposed of.

When I think about them other mugs, I suppose I got off lucky, luckier than Luciano, although I never went for a ride like him, although he never got it from the Hudson Dusters like I did. Lucky ran dames, I ran after em, which may be the basic difference between us, when you come to think of it. And right now, who would you rather be? Me, sitting here pretty if semiventilated in Hot Springs, or Salvatore Luciano, dead on the tarmac in wopland, his nasty heart bursted wide open and his last view the phiz of a Hollywood producer, there to seek his life story? Me, I never did much worry about immortality.

Except now, when mortalitys as close as a barbers blade. If you ask me, you could learn a thing or two about life from yours truly, if learning there is to be had from the ruminations of an old English Irishman, if you call 73 old, which I guess you have to, especially in my profession.

As far as this truthfulness stuff goes, though, I have to tell you that in my opinion truthfulness is vastly overrated, especially in a court of law, where lying is always much more efficacious, not to mention safer, not to mention profitable. Besides, lyings something Ive known since I was a kid, something Ive tried to teach all my boys, on account of in our business thats what you do if you want to stay in business. When somebody tells me how thats different from what other businessmen do, then maybe Ill stop. But first Ill laugh in his face and tote up my swag one last time.

They say that every man is a hero to his dog, of which Ive had plenty and each one of em a Jack Russell, but no man is a hero to his valet, of which Ive had only one, because you can replace a mutt but not a man. I guess if I have a purpose these days, its to get people to remember us, our gang and our girls, recollection right and proper, givin the divvil his due as it were, which is why Im summoning memories and conjuring the dead. Because when everything else has departed, slipped aside, fallen away or been blown asunder, what do we have left except remembrance? Old and fading, mayhaps, but alive and whole and full of lifes coursing blood as long as we are.

There isnt a day that goes by that I dont think about them all, and what we did and how we did it and sometimes even why. Most of all I think about them that died and those what lived, whether any of them deserved it or not, and wonder how it all turned out the way it did and why Im still here, with five bullets in my gut and six gone but God it hurts, still hurts, fifty years on and more.

And most of all, in this month of April I think of May.