"What the hell for?" said Filetti,
"It'll keep 'em quiet. They're noisy, but I like them. And there's a guy from Philly knows friends of mine."
Jack signaled Herman to move the table as Joe Vignola finally brought drinks to the Reagans.
"You call this gin'?" Billy said to Vignola, holding up a glass of whiskey. "Are you tryna be a funny guy? Are you lookin' for a fight?"
"Gin's gone," Vignola said.
"I think you're lookin' for a fight," Billy said.
"No, I was looking for the gin," Vignola said, laughing, moving away.
"This is some dump you got here, Jack," Billy called out.
Herman and a waiter moved Jack's table next to the Reagans, but Jack did not sit down.
"Let me tell you something, Billy," Jack said, looking down at him. "I think your mouth is too big. I said it before. Do I make myself clear?"
"I told you to shut your goddamn trap," Tim told Billy, and when Billy nodded and drank his whiskey, Jack let everybody sit down and be introduced. Charlie Filetti sat in a quiet pout. Elaine had swallowed enough whiskey so that it made no difference where she sat, as long as it was next to Jack. Jack talked about Philadelphia to Teddy Carson, but then he saw nobody was talking to Benny.
"Listen," Jack said, "I want to raise a toast to Benny here, a man who just won a battle, man headed for the welterweight crown."
"Benny?" said Billy Reagan. "Benny who?"
"Benny Shapiro, you lug," Tim Reagan said. "Right here. The fighter. Jack just introduced you."
"Benny Shapiro," Billy said. He pondered it. "'That's a yid name." He pondered it further. "What I think is yids make lousy fighters. "
Everybody looked at Billy, then at Benny.
"The yid runs, is how I see it," Billy said. "Now take Benny there and the way he runs out on Corrigan. Wouldn't meet an Irishman."
"Are you gonna shut up, Billy?" Tim Reagan said.
"What do you call Murphy?" Benny said to Billy. "'Last time I saw him tonight he's got rosin all over his back. "
"I seen you box, yid. You stink."
"You dumb fucking donkey," Jack said. "Shut your stupid mouth. "
"You wanna shut my mouth, Jack? Where I come from, the middle name is fight. That's how you shut the mouth."
Billy pushed his chair away from the table, straddling it, ready to move. As he did, Jack tossed his drink at Billy and lunged at his face with the empty glass. But Billy only blinked and grabbed Jack's hand in flight, held it like a toy. Saul Baker snatched a gun from his coat at Jack's curse and looked for a clear shot at Billy. Then Tim Reagan grabbed Saul's arm and wrestled for the gun. Women shrieked and ran at the sight of pistols, and men turned over tables to hide. Herman Zuckman yelled for the band to play louder, and customers scrambled for cover to the insanely loud strains of the "Jazz Me Blues." Elaine Walsh backed into a checkroom, Benny Shapiro, Joe Vignola, and four others there ahead of her. The bartenders ducked below bar level as Billy knocked Jack backward over chairs.
"Yes, sir," Billy said, "the middle name is fight."
Tim Reagan twisted the pistol out of Saul Baker's grip as Teddy Carson fired the first shot. It hit Saul just above the right eye as he was reaching for his second pistol, on his hip.
The second shot was Charlie Filetti's. It grazed Billy's skull, knocking him down. Filetti fired again, hitting Carson, who fell and slithered behind a table.
Jack Diamond, rising slowly with his pistol in his hand, looked at the only standing enemy, Tim Reagan, who was holding Saul's pistol. Jack shot Tim in the stomach. As Tim fell, he shot a hole in the ceiling. Standing then, Jack fired into Tim's forehead. The head gave a sudden twist and Jack fired two more bullets into it. He fired his last two shots into Tim's groin, pulling the trigger three times on empty chambers. Then he stood looking down at Tim Reagan.
Billy opened his eyes to see his bleeding brother beside him on the Floor. Billy shook Tim's arm and grunted "Timbo," but his brother stayed limp. Jack cracked Billy on the head with the butt of his empty pistol and Billy went flat.
"Let's go, Jack, let's move," Charlie Filetti said.
Jack looked up and saw Elaine's terrified face peering at him from the checkroom. The bartenders' faces were as white as their aprons. All faces looked at Jack as Filetti grabbed his arm and pulled. Jack tossed his pistol onto BilIy's chest and it bounced off onto the floor.
JACK, OUT Of DOORS
Jack lived the fugitive life after the Hotsy, the most hunted man in America, and eventually he wound up in the Catskills. I don't think I'd have ever seen him again if the 1925 meeting in the Kenmore had been our only encounter. But I know my involvement in the Hotsy case brought me back to his mind, even though we never met face to face during it. And when the heat was off in midsummer of 1930, when the Hotsy was merely history, Jack picked me out of whatever odd pigeonhole he'd put me in, called me up and asked me to Sunday dinner.
"I'm sorry," he said when he called, "but I haven't seen you since that night we talked in the Kenmore. That's been quite a while and I can't remember what you look like. I'll send a driver to pick you up, but how will he recognize you?"
"I look like St. Thomas Aquinas," I said, "and I wear a white Panama hat with a black band. Rather beat up, that hat. You couldn't miss it in a million."
"Come early," he said. "I got something I'd like to show you."
Joe (Speed) Fogarty picked me up at the Catskill railroad station, and when I saw him I said, "Eddie Diamond, right?"
"No," he said. "Eddie died in January. Fogarty's the name."
"'You look like his twin."
"So I'm told."
"You're Mr. Diamond's driver-or is he called Legs?"
"Nobody who knows him calls him anything but Jack. And I do what he asks me to do."
"Very loyal of you."
"That's the right word. Jack likes loyalty. He talks about it."
"What does he say?"
"He says, 'Pal, I'd like you to be loyal. Or else I'll break your fucking neck.' "
"The direct approach."
We got into Jack's custom, two-tone (green and gray) Cadillac sedan with whitewalls and bulletproof glass, armor panels, and the hidden pistol and rifle racks. The latter were features I didn't know existed until the following year when Jack had the occasion to open the pistol rack one fateful night. Now what I noticed were the black leather seats and the wooden dashboard with more gauges than any car seemed to need.
"How far is it to Jack's house?" I asked.
"We're not going to Jack's house. He's waiting for you over at the Biondo farm."
"That wouldn't be Jimmy Biondo, would it?"
"You know Jimmy'?"
"I met him once."
"Just once? Lucky you. The bum is a throwback. Belongs in a tree."
"I'd tend to sympathize with that view. I met him during the Hotsy Totsy business. We swapped views one day about a client of mine, Joe Vignola."
"Joe. Poor Joe"-and Fogarty gave a sad little chuckle.
"Some guys'd be unlucky even if they were born with rabbits' feet instead of thumbs."
"Then you knew Joe."
"I used to go to the Hotsy when I was in New York even before I knew Jack. It was quite a place before the big blowup. Plenty of action, plenty of gash. I met my wife there, Miss Miserable of 1929."
'"So you're married."
"Was. It broke up in four months. That dame would break up a high mass."
It was Sunday morning, not quite noon, when Fogarty left the station in Catskill and headed west toward East Durham, where Jimmy Biondo lived. My head was full of Catskill images, old Rip Van Winkle who probably would have been hustling applejack instead of sleeping it off if he'd been alive now, and those old Dutchmen with their magical ninepins that lulled you into oblivion and the headless horseman riding like a spook through Sleepy Hollow and throwing his head at the trembling Ichabod. The Catskills were magical for me because of their stories, as well as their beauty, and I was full of both, despite the little crater of acid in the pit of my stomach. After all, I was actually going to Sunday dinner with one of the most notorious men in America. Me. From Albany.