"In the penitentiary?"
"Two of them, there were, took over the prison hospital. Reggio ran his men, and the Irish hoodlums were led by a guy called Edward Cleary. That's the guy who kept his German shepherd with him in his room. Named it Screw Hater. 'Screws' are what they used to call the guards. Both of these toughs kept homing pigeons with them. Actual cotes of birds that carried notes-and probably narcotics-in and out of the jail.
"These two mobsters swaggered around while the regular crooks waited on them like slaves. Sad part is that the men who really needed medical treatment were just dumped into the general population. All the boys with social diseases-that's what we used to call it back then-they were mixing freely with the healthy ones. The whole place was a sea of misery. Full of degenerates. Faded tigers." "Excuse me?"
"Didn't you ever read Dickens, young lady? When he visited New York, he asked to be taken to see old Blackwells."
I thought I had plowed through most of him in my undergraduate days, but the phrase didn't sound at all familiar. Perhaps that explained why Dickens's sketch was on Lola Dakota's bulletin board. Just one more notable figure who had connected with this island that so fascinated her. Now what we still needed to know was why Charlotte Voight's picture was there.
Lockhart was mumbling on about Dickens's visit to the prison, inmates dressed in the black-and-buff garb that the Englishman likened to faded tigers.
"Tell me about the raid," Mike said. Skip came back into the room with chamomile tea for his grandfather and mugs of coffee for us. He put them on the table, smiling at Mike's enthusiasm for the tales he had heard so many times and walking back to the kitchen. "Did you actually go along?"
"Go along, sir? MacCormick and I led the whole thing ourselves. I handpicked the detectives and wardens to come with us, but we led the very charge into the pens. First one to fall was a deputy warden who'd been on the take the whole time. Placed him right under arrest."
"I'd like to have been at your side," Mike said, egging him on. "MacCormick had this planned to the minute. Closed down the prison switchboard so no one could call out while the raid was on. He dispatched the first men to the hospital ward to drag out Reggio and Cleary." Lockhart was chortling as he sipped his tea. "Guess he was afraid to let us get at each other. So he had them taken out of their luxurious quarters and thrown into solitary confinement." "But you, did you go into the prison itself?"
"My boy, I can still smell it today. Most of the prisoners had been turned into dope fiends."
"After they went inside the walls?"
"Reggio and Cleary were running a drug smuggling business in the jailhouse. That's how they got all their lackeys to keep them in style, and segregated. First thing I saw were rows of men, shivering on benches, pleading with us to let them take their drugs. Most of them were covered with needle scars, all up and down their arms. Word spread that Commissioner MacCormick was walking through the three-tiered cell block himself."
"Never happen today. They'd just show for the photo op." "All of a sudden we heard lots of clanging and things being thrown about. I went running to see what it was. Turns out prisoners were throwing their weapons, and their drug paraphernalia, out from between their bars. Nobody wanted to be caught with contraband in their cells. I leaned over and picked up some blackened spoons, what they cooked the drugs in. Spikes they used to shoot up. Whole sets of hypodermics. Cloths soaked in a heroin solution."
"Did you find what you expected?"
"Worse than that. Far worse. Drugs of every sort. And then the weapons started coming. We took out meat cleavers, hatchets, stilettos, butcher knives. I've got pictures, missy, front page of every newspaper in the country. Skip'll show you my scrapbooks. "These gorillas had a real pecking order. The two at the top had their henchmen. There were at least twenty-five of them who kept the lowlifes in line, living in the worst conditions, waiting on Reggio and Cleary, and doing it all to get narcotics. Meanwhile, the goon squad who helped the bosses lived off the fat of the land. Taken off by van every day to work at the warden's home and eat pretty well themselves."
"Did you actually see where Reggio lived?"
"You wouldn't believe the sight. Hell, I wouldn't have, unless I'd been there in the flesh. After he'd been taken out, MacCormick and I went up to see his lavish digs, just to find out whether the reports we'd gotten had been exaggerated. Hah! Not a bit. He had a large suite of rooms in the old hospital wing, all laid out with his finery. A maroon cashmere lounging robe was spread across the foot of his bed, with two pairs of shoes, shoe trees neatly in them, lined up underneath."
Lockhart was shaking his head and wringing his hands as though he were right in the middle of the scene he was describing.
"There was a locker below the window and I got one of the boys to break it open. Inside there were a dozen boxes of expensive cigars, bars of perfumed soap, monogrammed stationery, face cream, kid gloves, linen handkerchiefs." He shook his head. "Here I thought I'd condemned him to purgatory when he was sentenced to jail, and he was living far better than most folks I knew. That was before I saw his kitchen and his garden."
"His own kitchen?"
"Well, Reggio and Cleary shared a private one. The men downstairs were eating slop and gruel, just like the old days. These guys had gallons of fresh milk, crates of cranberries, fresh meat, pickled herrings, bags of potatoes. They had a pretty nice stash of liquor, too.
"Cleary, his room was a little less refined. Where Reggio had a crucifix over the bed and rosary beads beside it, Cleary had a dagger stuck in the wall over his head. I guess we'd interrupted him. There was an unplayed hand of pinochle on the table, some device up on the rafters that was concocting a home brew, and an empty pint bottle of whiskey. Screw Hater, the dog, was sitting next to the bed, trembling till we took him down and fed him one of his master's steaks. Then there was a little lounging area next to it where Cleary and his thugs spent the day, when he didn't choose to be out wandering the grounds."
"What grounds?"
"Behind the penitentiary. Reggio paid the other inmates to build him a garden. That's where he kept his milking cow and his pet goat. Beautiful spot it was, looking back over to Manhattan. He'd set up park benches and exquisite flowers, though they weren't in bloom that day. And he controlled who could enter the place. Kept the riffraff out.
"The pigeon cote was up in the roof above Cleary's room. Each of them had about two hundred birds, cooing themselves up a storm. MacCormick truly thought that's how they got messages in and out. Hell, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. Once they'd bought the wardens, bribed them with all the mob money that Dutch Schultz could muster, they carried anything they wanted in and out the front door of the joint. Easy as that."
"So it must have been a great day for you." Mike had picked up the framed clipping and was reading the text of the story. "I've closed down a lot of joints in my time, Mr. Lockhart, but not quite the way you did. I'm impressed."
"Shut it tight. Demolished the entire building. A fortress, it was, and now it's just a pile of old stones." He pushed himself up and walked to the window at the side of the house, looking for signs of movement in the driveway. "Where's my Lola? Always brings me licorice. Those little bits of black licorice. She likes the part about the man who was killed."
"In the raid?"
"Only one hurt in the whole damn thing. Could have cost me my job."
"Why does Lola like that part?" I asked.
"Ask Lola." He shuffled back to his seat and eased himself down.