“Goo Goo,” says I the next day, addressing himself. His boys, Newburgh Gallagher and Marty Brennan, were sitting right beside him, doing nothing in particular. “I got an idea.”
“Yeah, whuh?” burped Goo Goo, downing the last of his morning beer. Goo Goo was not what you would call a fine specimen of a man. He had sandy blond hair and nonexistent eyebrows, which gave him the look of a circus freak, although no one would have said that to his face, such as it was. For Goo Goo, like most of us in those days, would beat a man to death as soon as look at him, so hair-trigger was his temper. I had always looked upon him as Happy Jack without the grin and minus the brains.
Gallagher and Brennan, who were as matched a set of Irish dumbbells as ever was, were giving me the fisheye as I spoke. Their job was to prevent any attack upon the person of the chief, but I always had the impression that neither would mind very much if some misfortune befell the boss.
I poured some more beer for all of them. It was warm, but it didn’t seem to matter. “Yeah,” says I, “a real good one.”
Loretta reached out and squeezed my hand as I started to talk. May was right: she was my new girl. I had grown tired of Freda, who was always after me to get her more swag, and Freda had grown tired of me, on account of my getting her best friend, Margaret Everdeane, into a compromising position or two, which meant that both Freda and Margaret were now mad at me. A whole fleet of gangsters mad at you was preferable to a dame or two, to which wisdom I should have listened.
“Owney’s ideas is always good,” chirped Loretta, whose real name was Dorothy, which she never used, and her last name was Rogers, which she was more or less stuck with. Why she was called Loretta I hadn’t the slightest idea and never asked. Loretta was quick-eyed, dark-haired, with dainty wrists, ruby lips and, even at sixteen, a full bosom, which I was always fond of. She lived over on Eighth. “You mugs oughta listen to him.”
I figured my forthcoming motion stood a pretty good chance of success even before I made it.
“Whadda we done lately?” I asked by way of preamble. Brennan scratched his bollocks and Gallagher cut one, which was about as eloquent as either of them ever got. “Nothin’ is what,” answers myself. “And sure if it isn’t time we did.”
Goo Goo cast one of the eyes that wasn’t on Loretta’s headlights in my direction. As undisputed lords of the West Side, the Gophers were ready for some action and any chief that didn’t give it to them, and right quick, wasn’t going to be chief for very long. Because there’s nothing a gangster hates worse than boredom, just as there’s nothing he’d rather do than lie around unless there was a fight brewing. Which is exactly what I was counting on. “You got sumpin’ in mind?” asked Knox, widening one rheumy eye.
I pointed across the avenue, at the Central Yards, as I outlined my plan. Over the past few months I had noticed the Centrals taking on extra men as guards. As I mentioned before, these men was mostly poor drunks, fathers of some of the lads in the neighborhood to be exact, probably even the paters of some of the members of the gang, although the lads would be ashamed to admit it, and first I had figured this was simply the Tiger’s way of finding jobs for the poor harps who voted right but drank wrong. But when more and more of them kept coming—not just Das now, but young men full of fight—I figured something else was up. So I’d sent my little pal Georgie Ranft over to investigate.
Georgie was half-pretzel, half-spaghetti, about four years younger than me, who lived with his family on 41st between Ninth and Tenth. There were ten kids in the Ranft family, nine boys and one girl. I never did learn the rest of their names. Georgie was the oldest. His father was one of those stern krauts who liked to use a strap, so Georgie spent most of his time hanging out with me. Maybe it was because we were both about the same size, maybe it was because he liked me. Whatever the case, whatever I did, so did little Georgie.
I gotta say one thing for Georgie. He wasn’t much of a gangster, but that boy had a way with dames that had to be seen to be believed. There wasn’t a female of age between Eighth and Tenth Avenues who wouldn’t have willingly dropped her drawers for little Georgie. It was like some kind of magic spell or somethin’, the effect he had on women. As I was no slouch in the broads department myself, I made a mental note that perhaps little Georgie could be helpful if, during a run of bad luck or a disfigurin’ accident or something, I was in need of some assistance.
Georgie also had one advantage that I didn’t have, namely, no juvenile arrest record and no reputation in the neighborhood as an incorrigible. Everybody knew that George Ranft wanted to be a gangster in the worst way, but for some reason this was looked upon as a charming foible rather than a lust for a pact with the devil, and so Georgie was able to have it both ways, except at home, where his father beat him unmercifully whenever he returned late from one of our gang meetings, which was often.
It seems that the Centrals had had it up to their keisters with the depredations of us Gophers and had decided to smash our gang once and for all. For the bait, they was countin’ on our being interested in a particularly peachy shipment that was coming into the city from some rich fella’s estate upstate. To hear Georgie tell it, there’d be riches that woulda made a king blush, and every one of them, I knew, ill gotten and thus fair game for the likes of us. Packed up neat and ready to ship out.
The bait set, the Centrals were planning to meet the next Gopher raid with a force three times as large as ever before, and for the gang to stage a raid would be the height of folly. So here was my plan…
“You bet I do, Goo Goo. Let’s take a walk over the rail yards. Somethin’ there I wants to show ya.”