The Final Adversary (4 page)

Like many other men of his age, Mark’s years in the Confederate Army had been the most traumatic of his life, yet molding him more than any other experience. He had lived through life-and-death situations in the army and later when he had fought to get the Union Pacific built. Hard experiences were good for men and women, not the easy ones. Now as he studied Andy’s smooth face and clear eyes, he thought,
He’s pretty sure of himself—but he’s never had a severe test.

“Well, sure, Dad,” Andy agreed quickly. “I didn’t mean to put Barney down. Matter of fact, I’ve felt pretty guilty about the way things turned out.” A rueful expression scored his lips. “Looking back, I can see where I could have been more thoughtful of Barney.”

His words stirred Mark’s feeling of remorse. Seeing Barney had been more painful than anything he’d known for a long time. “I know what you mean, Andy. I guess it’s too late, but I wish I had it all to do over again.”

“It’s never too late, Mark!” Lola put in quickly. “Nothing is too difficult for God.”

“You sound like my father,” Mark sighed. “I wish he’d been around. He’d have done a good job with Barney. Not like me. But I guess it will have to be God. Barney’s shut the door on all of us.”

“Aw, don’t worry, Dad,” Andy encouraged. “He just needs a little attention. I’ll start working on him.” Andy’s handsome face glowed with confidence. “I’ll start by going to the fight in Troy next week. I could see he was glad I said I’d come.”

“I wish we weren’t moving to the coast, Mark,” Lola fretted. “We won’t be able to see or encourage him while we’re there.”

“Don’t worry, Mother,” Andy nodded, patting her shoulder. “I’ll be here for the next few months. Maybe I can talk him into coming out when I do.”

“That would be wonderful!” Lola said, her dark eyes filling with hope. She leaned back, thinking,
Andy could do it if he would stick with it.

****

“Bat! Come out of it! This guy’s gonna beat your brains out if you don’t wake up!”

Benny had doused Barney with water, trying to bring him to. As the bell rang, he struggled to his feet and moved toward the weaving shape before him. He lunged at Louis Maddox, the tall, lanky fighter, but caught a hard right to his own mouth, driving him back on his heels. Barney tried to clench the man, but Maddox twisted to one side and sent two more blows to Bat’s head, then a powerful right to the stomach. Barney grabbed the man’s hand and held on, hoping his head would clear.

When the bell sounded, he turned and walked away. As he lowered himself to the stool, he looked over the crowd. Benny began to wipe Barney’s face with a sponge, saying angrily, “What’s
wrong with
ya, Bat? Why you been lookin’ out at the crowd all the time? Maddox ain’t there—he’s been right in front of you! You gotta concentrate!”

Truthfully, Barney didn’t know what was wrong. He’d been unable to shake off Andy’s last words:
I’ll come down and cheer you on in Troy.
Barney realized it had become important to see his brother and found himself searching the
crowd for him. He wanted to prove himself to his family. So when the fight started and Andy didn’t appear, Barney had become sullen. Benny was mystified, for the young fighter was usually cheerful and easy to coach.

In the end, Barney lost to Maddox, and it angered Benny. All the way back to New York, Meyers spewed out his bitterness. “You ain’t goin’ to be no champeen fightin’ like you did tonight! You looked like an old woman out there, Bat!”

Barney said nothing, and for the next ten days Meyers nearly went crazy. Barney disappeared for a week, and when the manager finally found him, he was in the drunk tank. Meyers paid his fine and tried to talk to him.

“Look, Bat,” he said as the two of them made their way down Twenty-third Street toward Barney’s rooming house, “I know you feel bad, but it ain’t the end of the world, you know? So you had a bad night. So anybody can lose a fight! John L. Sullivan himself lost a few! Now, what we do is get you cleaned up, and we go have a steak at Tony’s place. Then we start in the mornin’ with the roadwork. I got you a bout over in Jersey in two weeks. Arlie Flynn. He’s a comer, but you can take him.”

But the next day Barney didn’t show up at the gym. He had full intentions of going but after breakfast was sidetracked by a game of cards, which lasted until noon. During the game he drank freely from the bottle, and left the place broke and half drunk. Unlike most of his friends, he was unable to hold his liquor very well, and it quickly went to his head. He headed down West Thirty-second Street, morose and irritable. The loss of the fight had hurt his pride, and Meyers’ outburst hadn’t helped.

For two hours he walked the streets, glum and thick-headed from the liquor. He found himself in the Bowery and finally decided to go meet Meyers and take his tongue-lashing. But as he walked down Pearl Street, he heard his name called.

“Hey, Bat, hold on!” It was Studs Ketchel. “Let’s have a drink.”

“Can’t do it, Studs,” Barney muttered. “Got to go to the gym. Benny’s waitin’ for me. He’s going to skin me for not showin’ up for practice.”

Ketchel just laughed and pulled him inside. “Plenty of time for that. Heard you had bad luck in Troy. Well, don’t worry. You’ll nail that palooka next time!”

Ketchel was a local political boss on a minor scale. He was not intelligent enough to rise high in politics, but he was Dan Carmody’s right-hand man. Carmody, the ward boss, used Ketchel when he wanted some roughhousing done. Barney allowed himself a few drinks as Ketchel and the other men patted him on the back and told him what a great fighter he was. That helped restore his bruised pride somewhat.

As the afternoon wore on, he drank more, and by the time it was dark, he was fuzzy and unsteady on his feet. “Got to go, Studs,” he mumbled.

“Wait a minute, Bat,” Ketchel said. “I got a proposition for you.” He took Barney to a back room and studied him carefully. “Got a little something to do tonight, Bat. Nothing big, you understand, but I need one more guy with muscle.”

“I’m drunk, Studs,” Barney said. “Besides, I don’t—”

“You’re broke, too, ain’t you, Bat?” Ketchel interrupted. “When’s your next fight?”

“Two weeks.”

“Well, I’ll give you a hundred bucks for ten minutes’ work.”

“A hundred?”

“Sure.” Ketchel lowered his voice and laid out the plan. Barney tried to listen, but his brain refused to function, and he caught only snatches of Stud’s words. He knew Ketchel hired tough fellows to pressure gamblers who were behind in their payments, and he assumed that was what he was being asked to do. He didn’t like the idea, but he was dead broke—couldn’t even pay his rent.

Finally Ketchel took some money from his pocket. “Here’s half the dough, Bat. Be at the pier by Rossetti’s place at ten. Don’t be late.”

Ketchel left, and Barney tried to pull his thoughts together. He stared at the money in his hand, then at a half-full bottle of whiskey on the table. When he left the saloon an hour later, his head was so muddled he couldn’t hear the sound of his footsteps clearly.

Rossetti’s Bar was located in one of the worst parts of the city. The street was lined with saloons and gambling houses—all booming with business. He stood under a streetlight, blinking stupidly as he waited. Finally a man emerged from the alley and stood beside him. “Let’s go, Bat.”

Barney recognized the short, muscular individual as one of the toughs who sometimes came into Tony’s place. In his stupor Barney followed blindly. He felt sick, and the man turned, rasping, “You’re drunk, Bat!”

“Yeah, I better get out of here.” He had difficulty framing the words and was turning to go when the man grabbed him by the sleeve.

“None of that! I got no time to get anybody else. Come on!”

He walked down a series of side streets, stopping finally in the shadows of an alley. “You wait here, Bat. I’m going in. If you hear any trouble, come runnin’—got it?”

Barney nodded and slumped against the brick wall as the man wheeled. He didn’t even see the tough use a small bar on the front door of a little shop with a sign ADAM’S JEWELRY and enter silently. Barney’s stomach was churning, his brow cold with sweat. He tried to stay upright, but the world was whirling around. He slowly collapsed onto the pavement, unaware of the shots echoing from inside the shop, or the weight of the gun that was tossed into his lap, then clattered to the sidewalk.

The next thing he knew, rough hands were pulling him to his feet and throwing him into a vehicle. He recognized the sound of hooves on the pavement and realized by the swaying that he was in a wagon of some sort. He lay there, trying to ignore the sickness. Then the horses stopped and
he was pulled upright and carried roughly into a building and dropped onto a cold, hard floor.

Forcing his eyes open, he blinked until a form swam into focus. The thin, hard face of a policeman peered down at him. He looked around wildly, taking in the bars and the other policeman. “Wha—what am I in for?”

“Why, you’ve found a new home,” the policeman laughed harshly. “But don’t get to liking it too much. You won’t be here long!”

Barney stared, licked his dry lips, and asked, “Where will I be?”

“You’ll be in a castle,” the policeman grinned. “Ain’t that right, Hank? They call it the Castle on the Hudson.” Then he dropped his smile and gave Barney a vicious kick in the side. “You shot a man, fellow. It’s Sing Sing for you!”

“I didn’t shoot nobody!”

“ ’Course you didn’t,” the other guard laughed. “Never have had a guilty man in here. Every one of you birds is innocent as angels.” He stepped back, along with the other policeman, and slammed the door shut. “After about twenty or thirty years in Sing Sing, you’ll get some manners, I reckon!”

Barney lay still, his cheek against the cold concrete floor.
Sing Sing!
The very words riddled him with fear. He’d heard about the notorious prison. Had known a few who came out of it, mostly shells of men. He got to his feet and gripped the bars with trembling hands. Staring down the gloomy hall, he tried to think, tried to pray—but could do neither. Finally he lay down on the cot, shaking uncontrollably. The ceiling and the walls of the windowless room seemed to close in on him, and he rolled over and buried his face in the stinking mattress to keep from screaming.

CHAPTER THREE

Barney’s Day in Court

Simon Jolson was the most successful trial lawyer in the state of New York—in the entire country, he might have added. Though his appearance was not impressive, the stocky man made up for it in intellect. He had a razor-sharp mind, and could charm a jury almost like magic, to the detriment of his opponents.

But today Simon Jolson was restless as he sat in Mark Winslow’s ornate drawing room, his thighs overflowing the Chippendale chair he occupied. A beautiful Duncan Phyfe sofa and memorabilia of all kinds filled the room. His gaze focused on a tapestry of a hunting scene covering one of the walls. In the middle distance stood a majestic castle, probably owned by a great lord or king of the seventeenth century, surrounded by forests and rich foliage.

Jolson wished he’d lived in the castle, or one like it. Surely the lives of those people weren’t plagued by the problems facing Winslow. Simon had been asked to defend Barney.

He concealed his discouragement, forced a smile on his thick lips, and said, “Well, we’ll do what we can for the boy.”

Mark’s eyes clouded. He’d been dealing with men all his life and was a hard one to fool. “That means you can’t do much, doesn’t it, Simon?”

“The jury hasn’t been selected yet, Mark,” the lawyer said. “Never bet on a jury, though. They’re the most unpredictable thing in the universe. But there’s always a chance for Barney.”

“Did he say anything you could use when you talked to him yesterday?” Lola asked.

“Not really,” Jolson admitted.

“It’s plain he’s protecting somebody,” Mark growled.

“That’s what I think,” Jolson nodded, a scowl creasing his forehead. “He’s got a fool idea about ‘honor among thieves,’ or something like that. Don’t rat on your buddies. Which is nonsense! Most crooks will throw their ‘buddies’ to the wolves to save their own skin. But I can’t get that across to Barney.”

“I’ve got a feeling Barney may have had something to do with the robbery,” Mark said slowly, “but not with the shooting.”

“Could be. I wish we could get him to admit even that much.” Jolson shook his head, adding, “It would be a lesser charge.”

Lola asked quietly, “What’s going to happen to him, Simon, if he’s convicted?”

Jolson removed a cigar from his pocket and stuck it between his teeth, yellowed from smoke. “Depends on the judge. And here again, we’ve got a bad break. Presson will be on the bench. They call him a hanging judge.”

“What’s the worst he could give Barney?” Mark asked.

“Forty years.”

“Forty years!” Lola gasped. “That can’t happen!”

“We’ll try to do better,” Jolson promised. He pulled a match from his pocket, lit his cigar and sent a cloud of purplish smoke toward the ceiling. “It’s all circumstantial. Adams has failed to identify Barney. That’s in our favor.”

“But he was found outside the store with the gun,” Mark said grimly.

“That’s right. On the other hand, he was dead drunk. The police know that, but they may
forget
it when they testify.”

“Why would that make a difference?” Lola asked.

“Someone so drunk he couldn’t stand up would have been obvious to Adams. He’s told the police the man who shot
him didn’t
seem
to be drunk. I’ll get that out of him when he’s on the stand.”

Lola’s face was tense as she said, “Andy’s convinced that Barney’s protecting someone, as you say. He’s gone down to the Fourth Ward to try to dig up something about who Barney was friends with.”

Alarmed, Jolson warned, “He’d better be careful. There’s men in that Ward—even women—who’d slit your throat for a nickel.” He stood to his feet, pulled out his watch, adding, “I’ll see you in court tomorrow. Come a little early.”

****

Andy’s feet hurt. He’d spent most of the day moving from saloon to saloon. It wasn’t a good plan, perhaps, but he had to find someone who knew Barney, who his friends were.