The greatest detective there never was wants an answer, and he’s tired of waiting.
“So, what happened to that martini? Like I just said, straight up, with a twist,” the heavyset bald man instructs. “In a glass. Anytime this century . . .”
That’s New York City for you. Just wait long enough and the world will go by, or maybe even sit down and order a drink. Telly Savalas has to wait, too, but only long enough for me to pick my jaw up off the counter and reach for a bottle of gin and a glass with a slice of lemon. I steady my shaking hand as I pour my childhood hero his martini.
“I . . . I have to tell you, I grew up a huge fan in Ireland, Mr. Kojak!” I finally blurt out.
“Good to hear, kid,” Savalas says, solemnly accepting my handshake. Forever the showman, he goes straight into character, the rest of the staff and customers at Brews on East Thirty-fourth Street unable to quite believe the impromptu performance they are about to witness.
“Irish, huh? Who’da guessed? Okay . . . so you claim you’re a Kojak fan. Then you tell me, mister, what was my captain’s name in the show?” the superstar challenges, turning on the tough-guy act. I reply immediately.
“Captain McNeil—Frank McNeil—played by Dan Frazer.” The words roll off my tongue.
“Say! You are a fan, kid. Top marks. Well, you know you can’t have a show about the NYPD without an Irishman, right? So we got an Irishman. Now, can I get that martini from an Irishman? Guy could die of thirst over here!”
Savalas would be dead soon enough, within a year, in fact, but on that afternoon he was full of life and looked exactly the same as he had on our TV fifteen years earlier. He took the time to chat about the show which had offered us, in days of two-tone, two-channel TV, a tantalizing taste of what life in that exciting, faraway city was surely all about: good guys and bad guys, black and white, crime and punishment. As I wiped imaginary streaks off the glasses, my star customer chatted about his New York, a city where he grew up as a son of Greek immigrants: a tough city, where he studied cops as he worked selling them newspapers and shining their shoes to help the family finances. This city which allowed an ordinary kid to lead an extraordinary life and pursue an unlikely dream. I didn’t tell him that I had already decided to follow in his footsteps—not on the screen but solving homicides, just like Kojak and McNeil.
My short stay stateside lasted longer than I had intended, and five years flew by as I worked in half the watering holes in Manhattan. The first couple of years I was illegal, but in 1988 the Donnelly visas, offering green cards to successful applicants, were released on a phased basis and, at first, were viewed with deep suspicion by many undocumented workers. A lot of people swore it was all a scam, designed by the Man to help Immigration flush us out, arrest us, and ship us all back. But the cynicism soon disappeared once it was clear that the Irish were on a roll, winning almost half the first ten thousand visas on the list. This achievement was all the more remarkable when you realized thirty-five other countries were also included.
The trick was to fill out as many applications as humanly possible—I must have completed about three hundred forms, and other applicants far more, which we returned from as many different locations as we could, driving all night across several states before dropping them in U.S. mailboxes along the way, just in case they were applying geographical quotas. I got lucky once more, and in February 1988 I took my seat on a packed Aer Lingus jet to travel back to the U.S. Embassy in Dublin. I had to do an interview and a medical assessment, both of which I needed to pass in order to get that sliver of green plastic. The jumbo was full of illegals from across the States and every one of us knew the high stakes in this game.
After a short reunion with my family, I wasted no time in getting down to the U.S. Embassy in Ballsbridge. It seemed that others were even more anxious to get an early start, and when I took my place in line I was eighth in the queue.
It was a quirk of fate which would decide my future.
One by one the seven people ahead of me were called up for their face-to-face chat with a humorless bureaucrat through three inches of security glass, and although I could only hear one side of the conversation it was clear the interviews were no mere formality.
Several applicants, including a couple of men my age, wiped tears from their eyes as they tramped dejectedly towards the door and past the U.S. Marines and onto the street outside, their lives altered indelibly by a shake of this Midwest Bertha’s head. All the interviews took about the same time, and I noticed how long into the conversation it was that the body language started to change. I realized that everyone was faltering at the same time, and presumably on the same question.
A young woman in her early twenties was ahead of me and when her name was called I slipped into her seat to get a better eye, and ear, on what was being said. I was just close enough to make out her answers. She slipped up at the same point in the interrogation.
“Oh. Well . . . I suppose, I have a few things to sort out here, but I . . . well, I could probably be there by the end of the year and start looking for anything I can get, ma’am,” the applicant replied, with a look in her eyes hovering midway between hope and desperation. Within a few moments she, too, departed in tears.
Bawling never got you far in Finglas. Neither did brawling when it wasn’t a fair fight. The key to getting ahead was to do it to them before they did it to us. It would be wrong to tell a lie here in these official circumstances—but telling the truth would be a tactical error.
The time had come to lie like a hoor.
I took my seat and cruised through the routine questions, the official noting my replies, until we came to the Dealbreaker.
“So, Mr. Waters, if your application is successful, when will you move to the USA and what will you do when you get there?” Iceberg dead ahead.
“Ma’am, I will be over in your fine country in a week, and all I want to do is to serve. I am thinking about joining the U.S. military. Marines, maybe?” I responded, remembering the stone-faced guard at the entrance.
Bertha’s smile almost cracked the thick security glass, as she ticked a box with a flourish.
There and then, I was sworn in. I had beaten the odds once more and soon received one of those coveted Donnelly visas. While the celebratory drinks flowed with family and friends in the local pub over the next couple of days, the significance of what I had achieved didn’t really sink in until I touched down on U.S. soil again, this time a fully legal new arrival, and handed the officers the envelope which Bertha had given to me.
“Hey, you guys. I got a winner! Give the guys here a wave, buddy boy. You’re a star, ’cos believe me, you jus’ won the lottery!” the Immigration official said as he broke the seal, the smile on his face replayed across the faces of his colleagues.
I never did make it to Marine boot camp, but I didn’t feel too bad about taking liberties in Ballsbridge that day.
In truth, I did toy briefly with the idea of signing up at the U.S. Armed Forces recruitment booth on Times Square, but by then I’d started dating Susan Murtagh, having met her in a bar in Queens. She was a Cavan girl from a farming background who, like me, had arrived as an illegal with little more than a couple of phone numbers. After some tough times, Sue put herself through nursing school and worked for an agency which provided staff for infirm, well-to-do clients in their own homes. Ultimately she settled into a good position looking after the Raos, an Italian clan long resident in Spanish Harlem. Her job was to care for Vincent and his wife, Annie, who lived next door to their famous restaurant, which they still ran. The place had been in the family for three generations and would eventually pass to their nephew, a singer and actor named Frankie Pellegrino, who had worked there for thirty years.
In contrast, my work situation had taken a turn for the worse and now I was picking up shifts in different bars back in the city. By 1993, I was tired of it—the time had come to throw in the bar towel and see if I could rekindle my dream.
My early experiences with Irish and U.S. officialdom had proven how important it was to read the small print, so I pored over every line of the application form for the New York Police Department between serving shots in Kennedy’s Bar. I paid particular attention to the reminders that failure to disclose any fact would see your application filed in the wastepaper basket. Thanks to Senator Donnelly, I was officially a new arrival, so I carefully cross-checked every answer to make sure that the fiction I was committing to paper read like reality.
My police recruiter, Julian Jones, a genial black detective, was helping me through the process. He had no idea that the man he had in front of him was a long-term illegal alien who had consistently bypassed U.S. Immigration controls and had also facilitated the entry of other lawbreakers into America. As if that weren’t enough, I had to persuade my father to declare that between 1985 and 1988 Luke Waters had been stacking the shelves in his corner store in Dublin, not pulling pints in Long Island and Manhattan. Da is an honest man, so it was with the greatest reluctance that he backed up my story, and then only because he knew how much all of this meant to me.
The Job left nothing to chance, and I was careful to supply only work references which corresponded with the details I had given to get my Donnelly visa, but the staff down at One Police Plaza went back as far as my school days in St. Kevin’s, checking everything in minute detail. In time I got a letter telling me to report for my medical examination, conducted in assembly-line style with dozens of other applicants, which was when my luck took a downturn.
I had taken up running again to get my fitness back and was in the best shape since my school days, but when I lay on a trolley and the nurse attached electrodes to my chest, their leads plugged into an electrocardiogram (ECG) machine which would uncover any defects that would render a candidate ineligible for service, she discovered that I had a heart murmur.
Well, maybe I had a heart murmur. She couldn’t be sure and mumbled something about how she had to speak to the doctor. That’s when I nearly had a heart attack.
“Oh . . . Hmm. I see. I really don’t like these numbers. Any history of high blood pressure in your family, Mr. Waters?” the physician said with a frown as he flicked through the results.
I explained to him that barmen picked up germs as easily as they pocketed tips, and I had arrived with a chest cold and coughed my way through the test, which might account for a false reading. I begged for another chance, confessing that I had an excellent record in passing exams the third time around, but Doc Savage shook his head and instead told me to take two aspirin and call a cardiologist in the morning.
I called Frankie Pellegrino over at Rao’s Restaurant. He gave me the name of a guy on Park Avenue in Manhattan with terrible handwriting who would be highly insulted if you called him “Doctor” instead of “Professor” until he saw your check for four hundred dollars. I arranged an appointment for the following week, which I breezed through, and I dropped my clean bill of health down to Julian Jones. He confirmed that I had now passed all the required checks, and the only thing that remained was a single sheet of paper—the one with official seals and official signatures.
“Luke, you know you need to be a citizen to come on the Job, but once you can get that paperwork down to me you’re good to go. I will have you in the very next class at the NYPD Academy, brother,” he said warmly, shaking my hand.
Jones’s congratulations were welcome but premature, because securing citizenship was the biggest obstacle I had faced so far.
Try as I might, there was little I could do to move things forward, and unlike the military, who would yank anyone out of civilian life irrespective, the department insisted that you must already be an American citizen and produce irrefutable evidence of that fact before you could see the inside of the academy. You had to be a legal resident for five years before you could even start the process—and my first few years behind the bar and below the radar did not count.
One day I was over at Rao’s, my home away from home, to visit my girlfriend.
“So, Sue has been telling me about this difficulty, Luke. You wanna be a cop, right?” Frankie Pellegrino said with a wave of his fork, as we all sat down for a late dinner, a Rao’s ritual when the last customer had been sent on his way.
I nodded as I passed the pasta to Annie, who was sitting beside Sue, dressed in her trademark white cashmere slacks, gold sandals, and dark-tinted spectacles, a thin cigar in the holder between her fingertips. Meanwhile, her nephew, between mouthfuls, offered to reach out to someone who could help get my difficulties resolved. He told me to ring him early the next day when he was at his desk.
When I telephoned Frankie to remind him about the citizenship issue, the call went well—he had already made a few inquiries and passed along a number for someone who might be able to help me out. It was Al D’Amato. The eccentric Republican senator was a real mover and shaker in politics, locally and nationally, who realized that the bigger picture was made up of a thousand tiny brushstrokes.
I called the number and his secretary explained that her boss was looking into it. The senator would be back to me as soon as possible with news of how my application was progressing. Less than twenty-four hours later she rang me back and instructed me to call a woman known only as “Mrs. X” down in Brooklyn who, she said, had my file. Good detective work is about wasting no time in following up on a lead.
“Hello. My name is Luke Waters, ma’am, and I was told to call you by—”
The voice on the other end interrupted before I could get any further. “No names. I don’t know who you are. And I don’t know what this is about. Here is what I do know: Be down here at eight a.m. tomorrow. Bring your paperwork. Goodbye.”
I could have been offended but, in truth, I didn’t care about Mrs. X. I just wanted to get my citizenship and become a cop; and I wanted to repay Frankie Pellegrino for his help in making it happen.
I turned up early the following morning at the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in Brooklyn, a well-known landmark thanks to the 120-foot-high square tower in one corner. I climbed the short flight of steps, walked through the main door, and followed the signs to the reception hall, which was buzzing with anticipation and excitement.
Some of those present had endured great hardship to make it there, in many cases literally selling everything they possessed and laying their lives on the line to cross mountains, oceans, and deserts in the hope of making it to the USA, arriving penniless, with no contacts, and without a word of English. By comparison I’d had it easy, but my relief was no less heartfelt as I stepped forward to the desk, sliding my Irish passport and my green card over to the official seated there. He glanced up to check that the picture matched the face in front of him before scanning through his printout of names, his blue pencil searching the list for Waters.
The federal employee paused, checked my passport again, and scanned the names for a last time before clearing his throat to break the news, and my heart.
“Sorry. You’re not on my list.”
I was stunned, but stayed calm and chose my words carefully before replying, telling myself that it was probably a typing error. Surely I hadn’t come this far to fail at the final hurdle.
“Can you check again, please? My name must be there,” I replied, my heart now thumping even faster, as my mind rushed through the possibilities.
“No. I’m sorry, sir. Your name is not here. I can give you a telephone number to follow up on the matter, but there’s nothing I can do for you,” he replied firmly, easing my forms back. I slid them over again. He stared at me and once more slipped them across.
I smiled and ping-ponged them over once more.
I played my final hand.
“Look, there must be some mistake. Can you talk to Mrs. . . . er . . . Mrs. . . .”
The guy looked at me blankly. The name of the dame tantalized the tip of my tongue.
“Is Mrs. . . . X here? She’s dealing with my case.”
The clerk cracked a smile for the first time that morning, maybe that week.
“Uh-huh. Why didn’t you say so earlier, Mr. Waters? I’ll call her down right away.”
Two minutes later a middle-aged black lady walked from the elevator with a sheet of foolscap in her left hand. She completely ignored me as she leaned over to talk to her colleague.
“Waters. Luke Gerard Waters. I have the file. Just add his name to the list for now. We’ll update it later.” The clerk did exactly as he was instructed.
“Congratulations, Mr. Waters. You’re good to go. You need to join the line for the swearing-in ceremony. Just take a seat. Your name will be called. My apologies for the delay,” he said, cracking another smile.
Mrs. X looked up at me for the first and only time, pursing her lips as she handed over the sheet of paper she had been holding. She didn’t offer congratulations, just a parting comment, as much a warning as a casual observation.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said, looking me in the eye, “but this isn’t right.”
I stared after the woman as she walked back towards the elevator, our meeting brief but, for me, unforgettable.
I turned over the sheet of paper she had just handed to me. I saw the watermarked certificate, complete with letterhead, seals, and signatures.
I joined the next group being sworn in, men and women from the four corners of the world, every color, creed, and hue represented in our ranks. We took our Oath of Allegiance, hand on the Bible, and were officially welcomed to the ranks of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Spontaneous applause broke out and flashbulbs lit the air as we were engulfed in a sea of tiny Stars and Stripes.
I was now proudly hyphenated—reformed, redeemed, reborn in the USA, now “Irish-American.” A Freeborn Man of the USA.