William Kennedy - Legs

'"They can't tie me to it," Fogarty said on the phone from Acra. "I never went near the boat. I was in the truck taking a nap. "

"Excellent alibi. Was it Jack's booze?"

"I wouldn't know."

"As one Irishman to another, I don't trust you either."

So I drove to Philadelphia by myself.

The reception for Jack was hardly equal to the hero welcomes America gives its Lindys, but it surpassed anything I'd been involved in personally since the armistice. I talked my way onto the cutter that was to bring a customs inspector out to meet the Hannover at quarantine on Marcus Hook. A dozen newsmen were also aboard, the avant-garde eyeballs of the waiting masses.

We saw Jack on the bridge with the captain when we pulled alongside. The captain called out, "No press, no press," when the customs inspector began to board, and Jack added his greeting: "Any reporter comes near me I'll knock his fucking brains out." The press grumbled and took pictures, and then Jack saw me and I climbed aboard.

"I was just passing by," I said, "and thought I might borrow a cup of birdseed."

Jack grinned and shook hands, looking like an ad for what an ocean voyage can do for the complexion. He was in his favorite suit-the blue double-breasted-with a light gray fedora, a baby blue tie, and a white silk shirt.

"I'm big pals with these birds," he said. "Some of them whistle better than Jolson."

"You're looking fit."

"Greatest trip of my life," he said. The captain was a hell of a fellow, the food was great, the sea air did wonders for his stomach and blah blah blah. Marvelous how he could lie. I told him about the reception he was going to get, some evidence of it already in view: tugs, police launches, chartered press boats, that customs cutter, all of them steaming along with us as we glided up the Delaware toward Pier Thirty-four. Jack's navy.

"I'd estimate three thousand people and a hundred cops," I said.

"Three thousand? They gonna throw confetti or rocks?"

"Palm fronds is my guess. "

I told him about Fogarty's travel restrictions, and asked: "Was that your booze they got on that boat?"

"Mostly mine," he said. "I had a partner."

"A sizable loss-a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars."

"More. Add another twenty-five. "

"Were you on the scene?"

"Not at the dock. I was someplace else, waiting. And nobody showed. My old pal Charlie Northrup worked that one up."

"He was your partner?"

"He tipped the feds."

"Ah. So that's what this is all about."

"No, that's not even half of it. What about Jimmy Biondo?"

"I had a call from him. He wants his money."

"I don't blame him, but he's not going to get it."

"He threatened me. He thinks maybe I've got it. I didn't think he was that bright."

"How did he threaten you?"

"He said he'd make me dead."

"Don't pay any attention to that bullshit."

"It's not something I hear every day."

"I'll fix the son of a bitch."

"Why don't you just give him back his money?"

"Because I'm going back to Germany."

"Oh, Christ, Jack. Don't you learn'?"

When he talked to Schwarzkopf about greasing the way for a return trip, I took it as the necessary response of an angry reject. I couldn't imagine him really risking a second international fiasco. But I was making a logical assumption and Jack was working out of other file cabinets: his faith in his ability to triumph over hostility, his refusal to recognize failure even after it had kicked him in the crotch, and, of course, his enduring greed. As a disinterested observer I might have accepted all but the greed as admirable behavior, but now with Biondo on my back as well as Jack's, such perseverance struck me as an open invitation to assassination.

"Let's get it straight, Jack. I'm not comfortable."

"Who the hell is'?"

"I used to be. I want to get rid of that money and I want to get rid of Jimmy Biondo. I went along for the ride, but it's turned into something else. You don't know how big this Northrup thing is. In the papers every day. Biggest corpse hunt in years, which raises our old question again. Is he or isn't he? I've got to know this time."

We were on the forward deck, watching the boats watch us. The captain and his sailors were nowhere near us, but Jack looked behind and then spoke so no breeze would carry the words aft.

"Yeah," he said.

"Great. Jesus Christ, that's great news."

"It wasn't my fault. "

"No?"

"It was a mistake. "

"Then that makes everything all right. "

"Don't fuck around with this, Marcus. I said it was a mistake."

"It's a mistake I'm here."

"Then get the fuck off."

"When it's over. I don't quit on my clients. "

I think I knew even as I said it that there would be no quitting. Certainly I sensed the possibility, for just as Jack's life had taken a turning in Europe, so had mine. Our public association had done me in with the Albany crowd. They could do beer business all year long with Jack, but after mass on Sunday they could also tut-tut over the awful gangsterism fouling the city. It followed they could not run a man for the Congress who was seeking justice for an animal like Jack. Forget about Congress, was the word passed to me at the Elks Club bar after I came home from Germany. When I think back now to whether the Congress or the time with Jack would have given me more insight into American life, I always lean to Jack. In the Congress I would have learned how rudimentary hypocrisy is turned into patriotism, into national policy, and into the law, and how hypocrites become heroes of the people. What I learned from Jack was that politicians imitated his style without comprehending it, without understanding that their venality was only hypocritical. Jack failed thoroughly as a hypocrite. He was a liar, of course, a perjurer, all of that, but he was also a venal man of integrity, for he never ceased to renew his vulnerability to punishment, death, and damnation. It is one thing to be corrupt. It is another to behave in a psychologically responsible way toward your own evil.

The police came aboard, just like Belgium, with a warrant for Jack as a suspicious character. Jack was afraid of the mob, afraid he was too much of a target, but the cops formed a wedge around him and moved him through. The crowd pushed and broke the wedge, calling out hellos and welcome backs to Jack; and some even held up autograph books and pencils. When all that failed, the fan club began to reach out to feel him, shake his hand. A woman who couldn't reach him hit his arm with a newspaper and apologized-"I only wanted to touch you, lover"-and a young man made a flying leap at Jack's coat, got a cop's instead, also got clubbed.

"Murderer," someone called out.

"Go home. We don't want you here."

"Don't mind them, Jack."

"You look great, Legs. "

"He's only a bird in a gilded cage."

"Give us a smile, Legs," a photographer said and Jack swung at him, missed.

"Hello, cuz!" came a yell and Jack turned to see his cousin William, an ironworker. Jack asked the cops to let him through, and William, six four with major muscles and the facial blotch of a serious beer drinker, moved in beside the car where Jack was now ringed by police.

"Lookin' snappy, Jack," William said.

"Wish I could say the same for you, Will."

"What's that you got there in the lapel?"

"Knight Templar pin, Will."

"Son of a bitch, Jack, ain't that a Protestant bunch?"

"It's good for business, Will."

"You even turned on your own religion."

"Ah shit, Will, have you got anything to tell me? How's Aunt Elly?"

"She's fit."

"Does she need anything'?"

"Nobody needs anything from you."

"Well, it was nice seeing you, Will. Give my regards to the worms. "