Michael Russell - The City of Strangers

With that he ran, out into Broadway, through the traffic.

Dan Walker and Van Nosdall were already running after him. The bundle of papers was dropped. Dan put his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly. This was what they were all waiting for, this was real politics. And while a couple of men remained behind to pick up the newspapers the whole gang that had emerged from the subway only ten minutes earlier was racing through the blasting horns in pursuit of the young Jew. They had one now. And as long as they kept him in sight, they would run till they caught him.

He was in west 44 thStreet now, heading towards the Shubert Theatre. The street was quiet after Broadway and 7 thAvenue; the theatres weren’t open yet. He looked round. They weren’t far behind. The other men had almost caught up with the two he had spoken to already. There were at least a dozen of them. He turned right abruptly, into the alley that ran between the Shubert Theatre and the Broadhurst. The gates were open. He stopped for a moment, catching his breath, and walked between the two theatres for a moment.

It was dark here now, and it was a dead end. At the top of the alleyway Dan Walker and Van Nosdall were standing, watching him. The youth turned round, and stood looking up at them. The other men were there now. They grouped together, extracting a variety of batons and coshes and knuckle dusters from their coats, grinning and joshing one another. They produced a wailing wolf-like howl, all together, and started to walk down the alley towards the Jew.

He seemed remarkably, unaccountably unafraid.

Quite suddenly a door out from the back of the Broadhurst Theatre opened. The youth gave a wave to the advancing party and walked into the theatre. The door closed. The men ran forward. It was a fire exit; it was heavy, blank; it had no lock or handle on the outside. Two of the newspaper sellers hammered on the door.

At first only one man turned round and looked back up the alley. A truck had just stopped there and in the light from 44 thStreet he could see a gang of men getting out of the back. Some of the others were looking round now; then they all were.

The whole street end of the alleyway was blocked by a small crowd; there were a lot of men there, twenty-five, thirty. They carried baseball bats and pickaxe handles. There was complete silence for some seconds. No one was hammering on the Broadhurst fire door now; no one was laughing. The men from the fish truck filled the alleyway. They moved in a line towards the men from the Silver Legion and the Christian Front, looking for healthy political debate.

On West 44 thStreet Longie Zwillman’s Pontiac passed the fish truck. The driver, closing the back doors, touched his cap as the car approached.

The Pontiac carried on into Broadway.

*

There wasn’t much that was old in New York. Keens Chophouse on West 36 thStreet was as old as most places that were still standing. It had been there long enough that clay pipes still hung from the ceiling where long-dead customers had kept them. It smelled of old wood in a city where that smell was barely known. John Cavendish sat upstairs on the raised platform in front of the small-paned windows that gave on to 36 thStreet.

It was still early and there were few customers, but those there were, were kept well away from the table the Irish army officer was sitting at. It was Longie Zwillman’s table. Cavendish waited. He had been there for half an hour. It wasn’t a problem. Half an hour to sit and do nothing was welcome; half an hour to sit and think of something other than what he was doing. He thought of his wife and his children in Rathmines. It would be another two months before he went home. It was hard. He didn’t often let himself think about how hard it was. Whatever New York was, there were moments when it really wasn’t much at all, if you only stopped long enough to take a breath.

They talked for half an hour about nothing in particular: how old their children were; what was the most impressive thing at the World’s Fair; the news from Europe. They were almost strangers but for reasons neither of them was entirely sure about they trusted one another. Each had information the other wanted, or at least had some chance of getting it. As the main course arrived Longie Zwillman took out an envelope. Inside were several small photographs. He fanned them out on the table like playing cards. There was a brownstone building, cars, half a dozen men going into the building or coming out. Some faces were very clear, some indistinct.

‘This is the German bookstore on 116 thStreet. There’s a lot of stuff distributed there, not just American Nazi Party pamphlets and Bund papers, but pretty much any pro-German, Roosevelt’s-a-commie, anti-Semitic, democracy-will-eat-your-kids crap you can think of. Silver Legion, Christian Front, Social Justice, National American. You’ve seen all that already.’

‘Some of it.’

‘You’ve seen some, you’ve seen the lot. They got a meeting hall upstairs. Same people, same crap. Some of my boys keep an eye on it, to see who’s making all the noise. I got some friends who like me to do that. So it’s a favour. Also it’s where they get together to maybe go out and beat some Jews up, or just some people they don’t like, who mainly happen to be Jews. But that’s not compulsory, Jewish I mean. There’s a lot of people they don’t like. As an American I don’t regard that as entirely reasonable behaviour.’

Longie Zwillman shrugged. Captain Cavendish looked at the photos.

‘Anyone you know?’

The intelligence officer picked up four of the photographs.

‘James Stewart,’ he said, laying one of them down again. ‘I know him. He’s a Clan na Gael man in the Bronx. I wouldn’t have said he was that important, but he is close to Dominic Carroll. He raises a lot of money that goes to the IRA. He has a cousin who’s an anti-Roosevelt congressman –’

‘He’s a Christian Front man now as well,’ said Zwillman. ‘He’s not out in the street, but he’s been at some meetings where they put together a bunch of street fighters, mostly German and Irish. He says a lot of them are ex-IRA.’

‘I wouldn’t take too much notice of that. Give me a dollar for every Irishman in New York who was in the IRA and I could buy up Manhattan.’

John Cavendish put down another card.

‘Joseph McWilliams. I’ve seen him at a few Irish-American bashes. He’s big on anti-British campaigns of one sort or another, that’s all I know. But I wouldn’t have said he’s anybody big in Irish-American politics now.’

‘He’s big on the German side.’ Zwillman spoke again. ‘He speaks at a lot of Bund meetings, about Germany and Ireland – together against the British and the Jews. I guess you know how that goes. Maybe he’s a useful go-between. He speaks good German too. This meeting was no rally for the masses, though. This was small; a dozen people, Irish and German. He’s a somebody somewhere.’

Cavendish nodded; it was good information. He put down the next photo.

‘This one’s a man called Aaron Phelan. Clan na Gael organiser from Queens, and an NYPD captain. He’s also as pally as you can get with Dominic Carroll. And you know who he is now – Clan na Gael president.’

‘And the IRA’s man in New York.’

‘That’s him. If Phelan’s there, Carroll is involved in it too.’

‘So who’s left?’

The G2 man put down the last of the four photographs.

‘An old friend,’ he smiled. ‘I knew he was in New York. It’s interesting to see he’s not just giving speeches at Hibernian Club dinners.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He’s the IRA chief of staff, Seán Russell.’

‘So what are they all talking about, the German Bund and the IRA?’