Tell Them I'll Be There (17 page)

O'Hara had rather rudely turned away from his other guests 
and was intent on quizzing Dan. Despite Dan's assertion that he was not a ‘big time broker' and was simply learning the job, O'Hara ignored his protestations. ‘I would like you to come into our little family, Dan,' O'Hara told him, as if he knew him well and had always known him. ‘Michael is doing great and there are more rewards ahead, many more. He's going a long way. So I would like you and me to get to know each other. You know,
real
well.'

Occasionally Dan had heard people say they had taken an instant dislike to someone, but this had never happened to him until now. He found Vincent O'Hara and everything about him repellent. The moment he shook his damp, fleshy hand, watched the small mouth with the cherub lips and saw the ingratiating look in those insincere eyes he knew he could never warm to the man. O'Hara didn't look like a man you could trust, he told himself, and all Lois's libellous claims that he was an evil crook were easy to believe. Dan had not yet met any of New York's feared and fabled Irish mobsters but he didn't doubt that this O'Hara was one of them.

The man kept on about stocks and bonds and which stocks were sure to rise and which were sure to fall, but Dan had little to add and would only shrug or nod here and there. He didn't want to appear discourteous. This man had a stake in Michael's future. But it wasn't easy, he found, to humour him. O'Hara went on talking even when a rather suave comedian came on and had the audience rocking with laughter. He only stopped talking when Michael appeared.

Michael had his instructions that night. He must sing
something
for the birthday girl, something special. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, ‘do you remember when you were just a kid? You were seventeen and you couldn't wait to be eighteen. Forget twenty-one. When you were eighteen you were grown up. You could smoke cigarettes and stay up late and do all those things grown ups say you shouldn't do. Well, tonight we're lucky enough to witness that beautiful transformation. Put a spotlight on that lovely girl over there. Stand up, Rose. That's it. Tonight this young lady is here with us to celebrate 
her eighteenth birthday! Eighteen! So lets have a big round of applause for one of our very own, our true Irish rose. Miss Rose O'Hara!'

Dutifully everyone joined in the applause and at that moment a chef walked in carrying a two-tier birthday cake with sparklers flashing in the darkened room as, overwhelmed, the girl sank back in her seat. Then, led by Michael, the whole room erupted into
Happy Birthday
. And, as the tribute ended, Michael immediately went into a Jolson-like rendition of Rosie, you are my posie….

Dan couldn't help smiling. Michael! Where did he get it from? He'd always been a show off. Well now he was a show
man
and he was pretty good at it, too. O'Hara was sitting back in his chair, his pink puffy cheeks shining, his flabby lips closed now in delight. He turned to Dan. ‘That brother … that brother of yours. He's …' Words seemed to fail him.

Across the table Dan noticed the girl. For all the thrill of being the centre of attention in this usually sophisticated night spot she was watching Michael. She was fascinated, couldn't take her eyes off him, and Dan wondered if Michael, as usual, was getting into a situation he couldn't control.

Despite all the fuss and the noise and the exuberant
excitement
of that evening, Vincent O'Hara was calm and cool-headed enough when Dan was leaving to grip his arm and tell him confidentially, ‘Like I was saying, Dan, you and me, we can do business. I got the dough to invest. You got the big
tip-offs
.'

‘What tip-offs are those, Mr O'Hara?' Dan asked innocently.

‘Don't tell me you don't know where Joe Baker and the smart money go. You see it every day. And don't tell me you're just a learner around the office. From what I hear you're Joe Baker's number two. So what I'm saying is, when the big deals come along, all you do is call this number.' He handed Dan a business card. ‘We back the same winners as your boss and his associates. We make our money and so do you. A big rake off on every deal. Ten per cent just for you.'

‘You forget, Mr O'Hara,' Dan said, ‘we make losses, too.' 

‘Small deals, maybe. I'm talking about the big deals. Your boss always gets those right and those are the ones where you call me. Just a little phone call.'

‘I don't think so,' Dan said.

O'Hara's fixed smile never faltered as he followed Dan out to his cab. ‘You will,' he said, ‘I promise you.'

As the cab drew away O'Hara's words hung in the air. There was an implied threat in there somewhere and Dan was not sure what it was. What could the man do? Well, he could damage Michael, call a halt to his remarkable progress. That was the worst he could do, he supposed. But he didn't know O'Hara.

M
RS O'REILLY AND
Frankie were in court when Tony was brought over from Brooklyn to stand trial. They had not seen him for more than a month and Mrs O'Reilly caught her breath. She was shocked to see how pale he was, alarmed at the dark rings under his eyes. He had lost weight, too.

When he appeared between two burly prison officers Tony looked around for a friendly face. Father Pat nodded, smiling in encouragement, but Mrs O'Reilly simply broke down. Yet it was Frankie's look of anguish that affected Tony most of all and his tears welled.

The hearing was held at the Supreme Court on Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan. At four o'clock in the afternoon Tony O'Reilly took the stand. The charge was Murder in the First Degree and each time he had been asked how he would plead he had replied, loud and clear, ‘I am not guilty. I didn't do this.' Now he was asked again and with quiet exasperation he said, ‘Not guilty.'

Dennis Casey found the case against Tony so overwhelming he decided the only sensible course was for him to plead guilty. He could then ask for leniency in view of his youth and because he had been led astray and used by older criminals. But this didn't work because the district attorney said fine, in that case, I'm sure the judge will opt for leniency if O'Reilly can prove he was connected to some criminal organization.

Tony couldn't prove any connection. He had never met Vincent O'Hara and he had never claimed he had. In the line-up 
when he was first taken into custody two police officers had no hesitation in picking him out as the person holding the gun that shot and killed Eamonn Devlin. But all Casey's manoeuvring came to nothing anyway because when it was put to him Tony refused to consider changing his plea. He was not guilty, he insisted, and he absolutely refused to say he was.

The list of cases awaiting trial on charges relating to
prohibition
violations and gang crime was unacceptably long. Both the police and the judiciary wanted things to move fast. In Tony O'Reilly's case there was little excuse for delay. In just over a week, with a unanimous verdict, he was found guilty of First Degree Murder.

Tony was dragged, protesting his innocence, from the dock. His mother collapsed. Frankie screamed at the judge, the tears rolling down his young cheeks and Tim Dolan took him from the courtroom. Father Pat stayed to comfort Mrs O'Reilly with gently reassuring words but, though Dennis Casey said he would lodge an appeal, Father Pat knew there was little hope.

In a letter featured on the front page of the
Morning News
under a two-line banner headline
PRIEST BEGS WITNESS PLEASE COME FORWARD
Father Pat pleaded with Martin Ripley. Yet, though it meant a boy barely nineteen years old would go to the chair, there was no public outcry at the verdict. And when members of the public were interviewed on radio there was little support for, as one New Yorker put it, ‘
these young hoodlums terrorizing our streets
'.

Tim said he was going to try to see Tony and he went back into the courtroom. But when he found a court official he was told that Tony O'Reilly had left. Already he was on a boat on the Hudson going ‘up the river' to Ossining and the dreaded Sing Sing prison.

The barely credible now seemed unstoppable. Never for a moment had Tim believed the judge would send a boy like Tony O'Reilly to the electric chair. The whole procedure was obscene, he raged in his head, as he rode the trolley back to the church. They couldn't let it happen, he told Father Pat later that night. But Father Pat simply said, ‘We can make all the noise we like, 
but it's too late. Dennis has no grounds for appeal. The best thing Tony could have done was plead guilty and he may well have got away with ten to twenty years.'

‘We've got to
do
something,' Tim raged.

‘Nobody's interested,' the priest told him, ‘except maybe the anti-chair gang and they're crazy anyway. I'm working on the Mayor. We might get the sentence commuted to life because of Tony's youth. And that's the best we can hope for.'

Within days members of the Anti-Chair League were marching up and down the avenues with protest banners and posters, ‘The electric chair is evil!', ‘A crime against Humanity!' they proclaimed as a variety of slogans appeared on walls. A large van with ‘Burn the chair!' stencilled on its sides crawled the streets with a loudspeaker calling for civil disobedience and a national outcry against this method of execution. But most members of the public were indifferent to such demonstrations and the van with a loudspeaker soon found it was in
competition
with an even larger vehicle with
four
loudspeakers playing the latest records available in the music shops. Street and gang crime had to be stopped was the general feeling and nobody was more in favour of the police and a stringent regime of law enforcement than Mayor Walker.

Tony O'Reilly was again opposed to his mother visiting him in jail. He didn't want her to see him handcuffed and in chains and he would not be persuaded otherwise. Mrs O'Reilly took to her bed. Frankie was being cared for by her sister who had moved into the tenement block where they lived. Frankie desperately wanted to see Tony, too. But the prison authorities said he was too young and a visit was out of the question.

Dennis Casey was the first to visit Tony and he spent most of his allotted half-hour urging him to change his plea. Without that, he told him emphatically, there was no chance of an appeal. But Tony seemed traumatized. He simply shook his head and stared at the floor. Father Pat also tried without success.

Tim wanted to see Tony, talk to him. Rightly or wrongly, he felt there was a kind of bond between them, a grudging respect perhaps, and he might somehow get through to him. Dennis 
Casey made the necessary application on Tim's behalf but it was turned down. He was not a relative. He was not a minister of the Church. He wasn't anything. But he so desperately wanted to see Tony he suggested to Father Pat maybe he should borrow a collar and apply as a priest. He was only half serious yet for a moment Father Pat seemed to consider the idea. But then he pointed out if Tim was found to be an impostor not only would he enjoy a little spell in jail himself he would probably be barred from ever entering the seminary,
any
seminary.

Father Pat made regular trips to the prison via the railroad station at Ossining and though he wanted Tim to remain on duty in the parish, Tim insisted on travelling with him. When Father Pat went through the tall gates at Sing Sing Prison, Tim would join the ever present vigil of the supporters of the condemned men along with members of the Anti-Chair League. They were angry and they were noisy but they were on the outside looking at a dense bureaucratic wall and there was little they could do.

It was only two weeks after his first visit to the Showcase that Dan Dolan was cornered into going again. Joe Baker had gone into the NY University Medical Center where he spent a night each year for a health check. Baker's wife, Barbara, was left ‘all alone', as she put it. It was time, she insisted, Dan took her to hear his brother sing. He couldn't take her out for the evening, he told her, without checking first that Pops wouldn't mind. But she brushed his objection aside. Of course Pops wouldn't mind. She had already mentioned it to him and he had simply said, ‘Fine'. But Dan was not convinced and he was not enamoured of the idea anyway. He didn't want to meet O'Hara again unless he had to. He was wary of Barbara, too. The last thing he intended was to get involved with her. It was not that he didn't think she was a very attractive woman. He just didn't trust her. He felt there was something devious about her. He had the feeling, too, that she had been in some way involved with Paul Merrick and that this was why Merrick was
persona non grata
with the boss. It could be, he guessed, that she was setting a trap 
for him, some kind of test of his loyalty and maybe Pops was in on it. If so, he told himself with a wry smile, he would just have to resist whatever temptation she might put in his way.

The Showcase was full again that night but O'Hara had reserved a table by the dance floor for Dan and Barbara. He greeted them effusively, sat with them briefly and before he left to rejoin the party at his own table told Dan he and Barbara had met before. He had seen her with Joe, he said, on numerous occasions. But when he left Barbara was adamant. She didn't know the man.

Tonight Barbara looked elegant and almost beautiful and it was difficult not to appreciate her air of cool sophistication. She was only
almost
beautiful, Dan decided, because there was a certain toughness about her, a hard edge that dented her charm.

She bristled noticeably when an unusually pretty girl came over to introduce herself. Perhaps it was because the girl was younger than her but she was less than welcoming and she only relaxed when the girl told Dan she was Annie, Michael's friend.

Dan had heard about Michael's Annie and he was more than a little impressed. She really was a lovely girl and Dan could well understand now why Michael had described her in such glowing terms. He was on his feet at once. ‘Good to meet you, Annie,' he said. ‘Michael's told me all about you. Won't you join us?'

‘I can't,' she said. ‘I'm on soon and I have to get changed. It's just that Michael wanted me to come over and say hello.'

‘Well, I'm glad you did,' Dan said, sitting down.

As Annie left Jimmy Pickles hovered. He came forward now, speaking quietly to Dan. ‘I hope that girl wasn't bothering you, Mr Dolan. She ain't supposed to talk to the customers.'

‘Not at all,' Dan said. ‘She's a very nice girl.'

‘Boss says the girls should know their place.'

‘Like I said,' Dan told him, ‘she was no bother at all.'

‘Can I sit down for a minute?' Pickles asked. Dan nodded and he sat down. ‘Mr O'Hara wants you to know he's delighted you decided to join us. We can do great business together.'

Dan looked at Barbara but she just smiled weakly. Why 
would he say a thing like that in front of Barbara? Was she in on something? ‘I don't know what you mean, Mr … er … Pickles. I'm here tonight to support my brother and to escort Mrs Baker.'

‘Sure you are,' Pickles agreed with a knowing grin. ‘Good to have you on board.'

‘What's going on, Barbara?' Dan asked, when they were alone.

‘I suppose they're looking for some financial advice,' she said.

‘What kind of financial advice?'

‘When to buy and when to sell. That's what you and Pops do. You buy and sell at the right time. I expect O'Hara and his gang want to be in on all that. The way they see it, I suppose, is if they're helping your brother to further his career you can help them further their business interests.'

‘You
do
know these people, don't you?'

‘Oh, all right, yes,' she admitted. ‘If you must know, I've known Vin O'Hara for years. Since I was a kid anyway.'

‘So why did you say you didn't?'

‘Because he's a crook.'

‘Everybody knows O'Hara is a crook,' Dan said.

‘Listen,' she said, ‘I didn't come here to talk about Vin O'Hara. The man's a – what do they call them in the movies? – a
gangster
. So what? He's helping Michael. You're in a position to help him. So you help each other. That's the way these people work.'

‘I work for Joe Baker, nobody else. I can't stay here, Barbara.'

‘Aw come on,' she said with a smile. ‘Sit down and don't be silly. You can't ruin my evening. I'm not leaving until I've heard your brother sing. And anyway, you can't leave me here on my own. Pops wouldn't like it.'

Dan felt trapped. He didn't want to be there and even when Annie's chorus-line came on to galvanize the audience with an infectious dance routine he barely noticed.

‘They're pretty good,' Barbara said, trying to interest him in what was going on. ‘Especially the one called Annie.'

‘She's lovely,' Dan said quietly. ‘Michael's very lucky.' 

‘I expect he's got lots of girlfriends. Like that kid over there.'

Michael was standing at O'Hara's table and O'Hara's niece was gazing up at him in pure adulation. But even from where he was sitting Dan got the impression Michael was not happy. He was arguing with Jimmy Pickles and shaking his head
vigorously
until O'Hara stood up and stepped between them, said something to Michael and waved Pickles away.

Barbara wanted to dance and they danced for a while until the music stopped and people drifted back to their tables. The lights were lowered and there was a drum roll. Then people were on their feet, applauding as Michael appeared. In a large spotlight he came on singing,
If I could be with you one hour tonight
…

‘You know,' Barbara said, across the small table, ‘that young man has got the world at his feet right now. But if he doesn't toe the line he's going nowhere.'

‘Very special guest here tonight, ladies and gentlemen,' Michael announced from the small stage. ‘My brother Dan.'

A second spot swung round and picked out Dan and Barbara. Embarrassed, Dan felt obliged to stand up and bow to acknowledge the unwarranted applause.

‘And just for Dan,' Michael said, ‘a special song.'

All eyes were on Michael as he hesitated. He seemed
uncertain
, unsure of what he was doing, reluctant to begin. ‘I'm sorry, folks,' he said. ‘It's not easy for me to do this.'

There was a further pause, an expectant hush now, the
audience
wholly attentive. Michael nodded at his pianist and Dan sat upright as he recognized the first few bars of the piano
introduction
. Surely not, he told himself. He can't do this. But he did. Michael broke into the
Derry Air
and Dan shaded his eyes.