My trial was in all the papers that month of May 1915. To hear them tell it, I was personally responsible for every bad thing that occurred in the City of New York, as if I’d do anything to hurt the only place that had ever let me call it home. I made a little vow then and there that I’d never speak to a reporter as long as I lived and I’m pleased to say that’s one covenant I never had the slightest trouble keeping.
The state, in the unpleasant form of D.A. Perkins, wasn’t takin’ no chances. Judge Nott’s courthouse was ringed with bulls from the Elizabeth Street station house, and they wouldn’t let any of my friends or well-wishers into the courtroom except for George DeMange, whom I insisted was my business manager. Big Frenchy, who always did have trouble finding a suit that suited him, looked a little goofy standing there, his wrists and half his forearms shooting through his cuffs, but Shalleck vouched for his bona fides and there he was, bigger than life.
While I’d been on ice at the Tombs, Art caught eighteen and Hoppo won lucky thirteen up the river, and they both took it like a man, with nary a peep. Which was good, because Joe’s strategy was to paint me as a kind of victim myself, not only of the Dusters’ slugs heretofore but of my own lads’ hotheadedness.
You may object that was a mean and low-down sort of thing to do, double-crossing your own as it were, but it was done all the time, and no one thought the worse of you for doing it. For that was the prerogative of the boss, to get his flunkies to dangle for him if they had to, that was part of what they were paid for, and like I said, my boys sucked it down good and hard and silent.
The girls both testified against me, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get me a little hot under the collar to see them both sittin’ there on the stand, crossing and uncrossing their pretty limbs and ankles, batting their peepers at the jury johnnies, mixing a how-do-you-do with a come-hither whenever it suited their purposes, which was more or less all the time, for the sole reason of settling my hash. Such as:
Q: Is it true, in your experience, that the defendant is a no-good, low-down, no-account lowlife?
Margaret: You said a mouthful, bud.
Q: Do you recognize said lowlife?
Margaret (pointing at me): That’s the selfsame bastard right over there.
And:
Q: Would it be fair to say that this here bum in the dock is the same churl who relieved you of your virginity?
Freda: And how.
Q: Which was more or less against your will?
Freda (confused): More or less.
Q: Which is it?
Freda (thinking): I coulda never tole my mama on account a da shame.
Q: But you loved him?
Freda: Sure, I guess.
Q: Why are you testifying against him now?
Freda: On the Saturday before Easter I made up my mind to tell the truth, because I wanted to go to Communion, and I knew I couldn’t if I lied on the stand.
Q: And did you?
Freda (flummoxed): Did I what?
Q: Go to Communion.
Freda: I forget.
I wrote ’em both off on the spot, which frankly I was glad of in the case of Margaret, but a little wistful in the case of Freda, owing to how far we went back and all. One thing was for sure, which was as a consequence of all this gunplay, I was shedding dames at an alarming rate.
Shalleck didn’t much bother with either of the broads, asking only a few perfunctory questions, mostly regarding their indubitably checkered pasts, until the judge had to gavel him and remind all and sundry ’twas me on trial here, not the frails.
Then it was my turn in the box, but in Joe’s hands I was merely standing in for the late Little Patsy, and my testimony was mostly to elicit what a great and grand shitheel the little punk had been, right down to the extent of his filling me full of lead on the last occasion of our meeting, which I could tell scored some points with the twelve good and true.
“In other words, and in your humble estimation, would it be fair to say that the late unlamented, excuse me lamented, decedent Mr. Moore aka Doyle was more or less asking for the fate what befell him at Nash’s, to put it another way, did the dirty sonofabitch deserve what he got or even more?”
Needless to say, I was ordered not to answer that particular query as the district attorney did his imitation of a Mexican jumping bean and the judge pounded away at his desk like he was pickaxing for gold or something and somewhere in the back of the courtroom the ancient drab that was Moore’s ma got loudly weepy.
“Shut up, ya old biddy,” I shouted, which got me gaveled good and pronto.
Shalleck waved aside the interruption. “So your testimony is, if I may paraphrase or indeed phrase, what’s the difference, that at no time during the recent unfortunate gunplay in the matter of the lamentably late Fats did you have in your possession any kind of firearm, gat, pistol, revolver, sidearm or what have you, nor did you employ, use, utilize or otherwise handle said, or check that, unsaid, heater in the course or noncourse of any such activity in any wise?”
I took my best guess. “Are you kidding?”
“No further questions.”
The smirk on Perkins’s face told me he didn’t believe a word of what I just said, although frankly that made two of us. He was a clever bastard, I have to give him that, needlin’ me about the girls, implyin’ that maybe I wasn’t man enough to handle them the way a man should, which frosted me something fierce.
“They say you’re quite the lover boy, Madden,” he cracked, and I coulda cracked his skull for it.
“That’s for them to say and me to prove,” I replied.
He fussed with some papers, the phony. “You seem to have lost your wife somewhere along the way. Hard thing to do.” He took off his glasses and glared at me. “Lose one’s wife.”
“Only if you call Yonkers lost,” I said, and that got a laugh.
Perkins got kinda huffy. “I’ll have you know I’m from Yonkers,” he said.
“I rest my case,” said I, which got an even bigger laugh.
That made him plenty sore, so he started in on me but good, draggin’ up all sorts of ancient history regarding my various arrests and so forth, paintin’ me plug-ugly till I couldn’t take it anymore and I got up and started yelling that I was being railroaded, that they might as well just take me outside and shoot me for all the chance I had to get a fair jig.
“Objection on various and sundry grounds, Your Honor,” shouted Joe, finally coming to my assistance.
Bang! “Sit down, Mr. Shalleck.”
“…true that your brother Martin Aloysius Madden has also been arrested for the crime of…”
That tore it. I jumped out of the witness box and caught Perkins square on the kisser with a roundhouse right. “You can needle me all you want,” I bellowed at him, “but you leave my family out of this, you dirty shyster!”
I coulda sworn I heard some applause as they subdued me and started carting me back to the icehouse.
“The state rests,” sputtered Perkins, picking himself up off the ground.
Seven hours later they dragged me back into court to hear the verdict: guilty of first-degree manslaughter. Judge Nott asked if I had anything to say before he pronounced sentence, and before I could open my beak Joe was up on his feet, pleadin’ like hell, sayin’ what a splendid lad I was…but let him tell it:
“Your Honor, this here is a very fine boy. Oh, sure, he done some wrong things here and there, but I must perforce remind Your Honor that this here immigrant lad come to our shores nearly an orphan and has he become a public charge or throw himself upon the dole? He has not. He has not, Your Honor. And furthermore, he has prospered in our great City of New York, taken care of his brother and sister and above all his beloved Ma in a manner befitting their prospective station, for being Jewish I don’t know much about this, but I’m told on very considerable authority that the Maddens was royalty back in Ireland, until the late lamented English occupation of that sceptered, er emerald, isle—”
The judge spoke up. “That was more than six hundred years ago, Counselor.”
“The limeys are still there, ain’t they?”
He had Nott there. “You may proceed.”
“Owing to all these extenuatin’ circumstances, not to mention of course the fact that my client is absolutely innocent of all charges, we ask for mercy.”
“Thank you. The court will now pronounce sentence.”
Nott shuffled some papers, pretending to ruminate. Joe sat down and whispered to me, “Would you believe this guy don’t have a single vice? Ain’t human, you ask me…”
I got not less than ten and not more than twenty in Sing Sing. Shalleck leaned over and said, “Don’t sweat it, we’ll lean on the girls, knock some time off, you’re out in eight or my name ain’t Joe Shalleck.”
I could see from the look on my Ma’s face that she was taking it hard, but I knew that eight was easy time I could do standing on my head. Her head was down and she was sobbin’, but my sister, May, was looking straight ahead, not at me but at the judge, her eyes full of vinegar. I tried to flash her a glance, but she kept looking daggers straight ahead.
“Lawes is okay for a warden and I hear they got a great doc up there, a regular Hippopotamus of a sawbones.”
I remembered the card Dr. Mendoza gave me as a bull or two slapped the cuffs on me. The judge in his black robes departed and Joe went sprinting after him, but I neither wondered or cared because my sister, May, was runnin’ to me. “Owen!”
“Where ya been?” I breathed, even though they was starting to drag me away.
Ma was right behind her, as black of raiment as the judge, but her sable was widow’s weeds, sorrow and heartbreak a decade on, not phony dispassion.
Then May managed to interpose her sweet form between us and the bulls, which wasn’t easy. “Lay off, ya big apes. Can’t you see he’s talking to his mother? You got mothers, ain’t ya?”
I wasn’t too sure about that, but it seemed to work. “You always told me I was going places, Ma,” I said with as much courage as I could muster. I thought my insides were going to explode. “That I was going to be a big man. Well—look at me now.” I held up my shackles. “A big man.”
My mother’s tears were terrible to behold. I suppose if I’da been wiser at that point, I would’ve realized she wasn’t crying for me, but for all of us, the whole family, the living and the dead.
“I won’t be after visitin’ ya,” she sobbed. “I don’t t’ink me poor heart could stand it.”
I threw my arms around her as best I could. “Don’t worry about me, Ma.”
“Come on, punk,” said one of the screws, “the Big House’s waiting for ya.” He tapped me on the shoulder hard, and I woulda clocked him if I hadn’ta been holdin’ on to my Ma.
“May’ll take care of ya,” I breathed to her, “and I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”
Before me and the screw even made the door Shalleck was there again, waving some kind of magic document in his mitt. “Mr. Madden has been classified as a Class C prisoner—restricted prolonged tractable group.”
“Huh?” said the bull.
“That means you should only take it easy.” My lawyer thrust the piece of paper under the screw’s nose, which made him relax his clutch a little, for which I was thankful. While the guard puzzled out the writing, Shalleck said to me:
“While you’re in college, I’ll be workin’ on the girls getting them to change their stories, and like I say don’t worry about it even a little bit because everybody changes their story from time to time, even the four evangelists, you’re surprised I read the New Testament, well don’t be, it’s my job to know what they’re sayin’, and as for dames, well you knew about dames, they’re changeable.”
“Hey, Harry, c’mere and take a look at this,” the guard called to the bailiff and the two of them studied the order like it was in Egyptian or something.
“So that’s why what’s happenin’ to ya ain’t so bad because there’s no dames up at the Big House, just mooks, and since you’re not one of them fairies actually pines for a stretch up the old river, hell, you got nothing to worry about. Keep your nose clean and Lawes’ll take care of you and before you know it you’ll be runnin’ every racket in the joint.”
I must have grimaced in pain from my wounds. May clutched my arm.
“Look at it another way,” said Joe. “It’s like medical leave or something, like you was shot up in a war and now you’re recooperatin’ at the state’s expense. The meals’ll all be catered and that Doc Sweet is some kind of wizard with a scalpel, Jesus he’d have to be, what with all the shot-up mugs he sees.”
The uniformed clowns had finally finished reading the order. “Seems okay to me, but it’s outta my bailiwick,” said the screw. He gave a yank on the cuffs. “Get moving.”
Big George was still standing in the spectators’ area but I could hear his voice boom: “It’ll all be here when you get back, Owen. And more.”
I nodded at May, who was comforting my mother. “Make sure she is too.”
As they finally pulled me away, I could have sworn I saw Mary Frances standing at the back of the courtroom, a silent sentinel blessing my passage to the other side.
The next time I saw the sidewalk the year was 1923.