William Kennedy - The Flaming Corsage

“Let’s move,” Cully yelled, and he fired again into the deck. The toughs backed away from the bar as Cadden flung the man with the broken arm into the river.

Edward picked up the fallen gun as Black Jack and men from the crowd with knives and clubs moved toward Cully and crew. Cully led his toughs up a ladder, firing over the heads of the crowd as they went. Nobody followed them.

Giles was suddenly there as Edward and Maginn lifted the wounded stranger and the two savaged policemen onto tables where Giles could treat their wounds. Edward saw Maginn going up the ladder the toughs had climbed.

Word reached the captain and he pulled his tug close to a man in a rowboat to tell him of the riot on board and to send a message to the Albany police. The captain turned the tug and the barges in a semicircle and moved at high speed back toward Albany. Edward saw the rowboat man pulling the tough with the broken arm out of the water.

Edward thought: When you look at Cully Watson you know what you’re looking at, but when you look at Maginn you don’t know what he’s become since yesterday. You could not know he would follow Cully and his gang, which scattered among the crowds on the four decks of the two barges. You might have predicted that by the time the Albany police rowed out to the barges at the Columbia Street pier, Cully and his toughs would be elsewhere. But you could not have predicted that Maginn would row Cully to the Rensselaer shore across from Albany, then row back to the barge.

When Maginn climbed back aboard from the lifeboat, he said he’d found Cully at the stern of the second barge, taking up slack on the rope of the lifeboat that trailed the barge in the water. Cully told Maginn to drop into the boat and row him and the boys ashore or he’d shoot him.

“What could I do?” Maginn asked.

“Why couldn’t he row himself?” Edward asked.

“He wanted to see who was following him.”

“Why didn’t he have one of his pals row?”

“He thinks they’re stupid.”

“But you’re intelligent enough to row a boat.”

“Cully doesn’t like me, and you don’t argue with a man with a pistol.”

“Why doesn’t he like you?”

“Something I wrote about him in the paper.”

“Will you write about this?”

“Of course.”

“Naming names?”

“Do you think I’m suicidal?”

A police sergeant, finding no culprits on either barge, arrested Maginn for aiding a felon, and for taking a lifeboat from a river vessel, a federal offense. As police led Maginn away, Felicity’s aunt waved a handkerchief at him, and Maginn, in hand chains, vigorously waved back with both hands.

Edward and Giles posted bail for Maginn, but after his interrogation, the charges against him were dropped. Cully left Albany a fugitive, the only one of the gang known by name. At a hearing Edward and Giles testified to the beating of the police, and to one tough’s shooting a man in the crowd. Police arrested three men, but ten witnesses in their behalf testified they were sunning themselves on an upper deck during the fight. No other witness came forward to testify against the wild boys, and all charges were dismissed: a victory for numerical perjury, and triumph of the worst and the least.

Maginn never wrote about the brawl for The Argus . His editor said nobody believed his rowboat-kidnapping story.

TWO WEEKS AFTER the excursion Giles called Edward to say Cadden’s head was mended, and they were ready to play. They all met at Keeler’s men’s bar and Giles revealed that Sally would welcome a visit from Maginn tonight, after nine o’clock, when the house was empty. She wanted to hear of Maginn’s encounter with the hoodlums, and had heard he was a writer, as was she. She was writing a love story on the order of Wuthering Heights.

“Where are these rooms she’s taken?” Maginn asked.

“About three miles down the river road,” Giles said.

“Then I need a ride,” said Maginn. “The trolley doesn’t go that far.”

“Are you serious about this, Fitz?” Cadden asked. “That lovely woman really wants this clown to visit her in her rooms? At night?”

“She did seem excited.”

“This is unbelievable,” Cadden said.

“It’s normal,” Maginn said.

Maginn, at forty-nine, could not be called good-looking. His hairline had moved backward, his drooping gray mustache was ineptly darkened with mustache wax. He did not fit the lothario image, but his sensuality gave him an exotic appeal to many women. Why shouldn’t the fireman’s wife be one of his herd?

“I can take you down,” Giles said, “but you’ll have to find your own way back.”

“Maybe I’ll stay the week.”

“Just be careful. Her husband’s got a temper.”

“Isn’t he in Westchester?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Then why shouldn’t we believe her?” Maginn asked. “What do you think, Edward?”

“I don’t know what to think about you, Maginn. And I certainly don’t know what to think about this woman. You’re making a career out of intrigue.”

Edward said he had a meeting but would drop by at Giles’s house later to learn the outcome. Giles and Cadden drove Maginn to the house of assignation, which was dark.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Maginn said.

“You want us to wait?” Giles asked as Maginn stepped down onto the carriage drive.

“I’ll go with him, make sure he gets in,” Cadden said.

Maginn mounted the steps, knocked, won no response. He turned to Cadden, who stood in the moonlight at the bottom of the stoop, and shrugged, knocked louder. A light went on and Maginn smiled at Cadden.

“Who is it?” a voice from inside whispered.

“Is that you, Sally? It’s Thomas Maginn, your admirer from the barge.”

The door flew open and from interior shadows a male voice boomed, “So you’re the one who’s seeing my wife! Well, you’ve seen her for the last time, you home-wrecking son of a bitch!”

A man loomed from the shadows, pistol in hand, and fired two thunderclaps at Maginn, who was already on the run down the carriageway with Cadden.

“Hurry up, for God’s sake,” Cadden said.

“So there’s two of you!” yelled the man with the gun, and he fired another shot. Cadden fell on his face and Maginn kept running, turned to see the man coming toward him, and clambered wildly into the carriage.

“He’ll kill us all,” Giles said, whipping the horse. And the carriage careened down the drive. Maginn looked back and saw the man pointing his gun at the inert Cadden.

“Christ,” Maginn said, “that bastard shot Cadden for no reason. He’s killed him. He’s a lunatic!”

“Some men are like that about their wives,” Giles said, urging the horse to a wild gallop.

“We should go back for Cadden,” Maginn said.

“You want to get us shot too?”

“But he’s hurt. We’ve got to call the cops.”

“And tell them what?”

Maginn did not answer. They drove to Giles’s town house and found Edward waiting, sipping whiskey in the drawing room. Maginn manically recounted the terror, the fall of plucky Cadden, incoherent flight, his desire to straighten things out. Edward listened with head-shaking sympathy.

“If Cadden is dead he’s dead,” Edward said. He paused for reflection. “If he’s not dead he’ll probably admit to that irate man what was happening. But if he mentions Giles’s carriage, they’ll come here looking for you.”

Edward stood and paced.

“What you need is an alibi,” he said to Maginn. “We’ll go upstairs and get you into bed and if anybody comes we’ll swear you’ve been here for hours.”