Meanwhile - Just Down the Street
Inwood - a promising Manhattan neighborhood of "model" tenements for the working class and neat row houses for the middle class scattered with small shops and businesses; Up the main thoroughfare hurries a man of middle years and greater than average weight. Then he pauses, takes his florid watch out of the pocket of his equally garish vest and stares at it distractedly. He wonders if it is too early to "honor" the unofficial mayor of Inwood with a visit. Suddenly he closed his watch, tucked it back into his vest pocket and resumed his former pace.
The name of this overgrown errand boy was Benjamin Franklin Murphy. Everybody in the neighborhood knew him, but nobody knew exactly what he did. Except that they knew he was someone you could go to when you were in trouble, when you needed the system greased- when you needed Tammany Hall on your side. They knew that in turn you would always hear from him come election day.
Murphy had already been down to the Wigwam once already and was now back in Inwood even before the sun had a chance to warm off the chill of the September morning. If it was important enough to get him moving at all ungodly hours of the morning then it important enough to get Amsterdam Vallon out of bed, Murphy finally decided. Especially since waking that most venerable sleeping tiger was precisely what the Boss had in mind.
This was going to be an exceedingly tricky, Murphy thought, Amsterdam was not a Tammany man. Yet Tammany wanted him, needed him, had to have him. The Boss had made that very clear.
Benjamin Franklin Murphy sighed, he managed to keep clear of most of Tammany's dirty business. Tammany was no gentleman's club, it was, however it was the only party that cared about them "down here". So, Murphy was loyal to Tammany and Tammany was loyal to Murphy, as long as he delivered his quarter each election day. It was a fine line that Murphy walked between loyalty to the Wigwam and loyalty to his neighborhood, yet it was precisely his ability to walk that line that made him useful to both.
Now as he walked, he thought about Amsterdam Vallon, who had in a sense become his quarry that morning. He had always had a thought that their destinies were linked somehow. This morning that thought worried him.
Benjamin Franklin Murphy
I was just a lad of fifteen on that long hot summer night of July 13, 1862. My folks didn't light a candle in the window. Instead, we boarded up our shop. Skilled tradesmen with their own workshops, even ones as low on the social scale as a tanner with a hole in the wall off Paradise Square, feared the prospect of a riot as much as they feared the draft. We spent the next day hiding in the dank, dark, cellar of our shop while the city outside determined to commit self-murder. The day after the riot, my brothers and I escaped into the streets to see if the world had changed.
In Paradise Square people milled around in small desolate clusters. The buildings were not damaged were tightly boarded. Wagons took away the bodies of the dead. Intermittently showers of fat warm raindrops fell to put out the last of the smoldering fires and wash blood into the gutters.
We fell in with a group of boys our own age, most younger than me, and exchanged stories. We were young enough to be excited by the idea that our city had been the site of battle, especially since we had cut our teeth on newspaper reports of the War. I remember one of us, I don't remember who, inventing a wild tale to explain it - it had Confederates and Lincoln's army running around like mad with British Redcoats thrown in for good measure and all of it somehow triumphant for New York in general and for us in particular. I lost my temper with - the way older kids do when they realize how little a younger compatriot understands the basic fabric of reality . In other words, I yelled at him for just being a kid.
"If it's a battle, this is, then I think we lost it, boyo!" I remember shouting.
"That's where you're wrong, Benjy," one of the others said, "I heard the Bill The Butcher's dead and the knife that's buried in his chest is belonging to Priest Vallon's own son."
Now here was a story of epic proportions that I could give a little credence to. William Cutting's thugs were a terror to every artisan and shopkeeper in the Points; that was God's honest truth. Priest Vallon was bit more on the mythical side - in some tales he was more like an avenging angel than a man, taller than life, wielding a sword and an iron cross used as a shield. But even my Mam, who didn't want aught to do the gangsters described Priest Vallon as a true Irish patriot and a defender of the Church who was deviously murdered by Cutting. If Priest Vallon's own son had killed the Butcher then the Points had a new ruler. The thought of a noble Irish boy-king ruling the Points - there was an idea capable of giving me a frisson of excitement and new possibilities.
It was the next day that someone pointed out to me a man of about six years my senior of no more than average height who glared at the world with a wary squint.
"That's Amsterdam Vallon. He killed the Butcher." My compatriot whispered in my ear.
On that day, Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall had temporarily relocated its soup dispensing operations from the docks to the streets. Looking to make a little money, I charmed my way into the company of the Tammany men. Showing myself to be a bright boy, I was picking up a few nickels fetching and carrying for them. That's exactly what I was doing when I noticed the presumed new ruler of the Five Points. He was part of a group of people, including two great huge Plug Uglies and two men dressed in the Dead Rabbit colors, who were occupying the street corner opposite where the Tammany men were distributing food. He sat there amongst them incongruously perched on a chair, watching every move the Tammany men made. My eyes kept wandering back to him, a little disappointed, a little fearful, very much fascinated.
A little later I was sent out on an errand that required me to pass them. I set my eyes in front of me careful not to look at the gangsters as I passed.
Then, "Hey boyo, I've got an errand for you" : He called me over to him.
He held out two quarter-dollars, quite a prize. I looked at him. From the closer vantage point I saw that he was wounded in one leg; that's why he was sitting. His eyes were slightly over-bright. He looked exhausted and determined.
"You're not sure you want to take my money?" he asked, matter-of-factly.
I shook my head.
"Don't worry about it." He said, "It's not like their money's any less tainted." He pointed at Tweed's lackeys.
I nodded solemnly. "I'll run you errand, sir, but first I have to do what they've already bid me."
"You do that. Then you come back."
I nodded again.
About a quarter of an hour later I was back on the street corner taking the coins into my hand. Then he entrusted me with a half dollar more and told me what to do.
"You take this half-dollar piece over there to the biggest boss that the Wigwam's got over there Make sure he knows who it's coming from. Do you know my name?"
He sounded genuinely curious. "Vallon." I replied.
"Right, like I said make sure he knows. Then grab a pail of that soup and a couple of loaves of bread and take it around to the old Satan's Circus."
"The Butcher's!" I involuntarily cut him off with my awed exclamation.
"Not no more." He said. "The Butcher's dead. We are kind of occupying it like, until things calm down and we can see what can be done with it. Now, next you go 'round back and knock on the door. Ask for Miss Everdeane. You give that food to her. We got people holed up there. You understand?"
"Yes sir."
I took the money to Pat Tilden, the man who seemed in charge and told him what had happened.
"If Vallon ever speaks to you again.No, if you ever even see him again, Boy; you let us know." Tilden said and pressed the money I had just given him back into my hand.
So, I set off with the bread and soup, reflecting on the pleasant fact that I had already made an entire dollar off the venture. No wonder I'm still running the same errand to this day. ....................................
Benjamin Franklin Murphy rang the off hours bell at the Harp and Drum and soon the shutters of an upstairs window were opened. The flame-haired moll who had answered the back door of Satan's Circus forty-years ago was the same woman as the grey-haired wife staring down at him.
"What is it you want, Murphy?" she said.
She sounded annoyed, but as usual Murphy wasn't sure if the annoyance was real, or if she was playing with him.
"I need to speak with your husband, Mrs. Vallon. It's important this time." He called up.
Jenny Vallon shook her head as if to suggest that his statement was implausible. When Murphy opened his mouth to explain, she quickly cut him off.
"Shut your gob. I can't listen to you both at the same." Then she turned away and said, "It's 'Mr. Tammany Hall' Murphy, that's who."
Then there was a slight pause in the proceedings, during which Murphy felt his mood sink lower and his anxiety level rise. He greatly suspected that Amsterdam would be in the mood to talk the blarney and he needed to talk serious.
Jenny ended the break in the conversation. "No," she said loudly to the interior of the apartment, in a tone that suggested that a monumental patience with the ways of men was being worn away, "If you want that said, get over here and say it your-ownself."
Then sure enough, she turned from the window and out of Murphy's view and Amsterdam Vallon took her place at the window.
"Murphy," he called down. "What are you doing sticking your pig-nose in my business at this time of day? Can't them that pull your chain at the old Wigwam at least wait 'til I open my shop before you hand them a report of what color socks I'm wearing today?"
Yeah, he was definitely in the mood for a bit of verbal sparring. Benjamin Franklin Murphy wished he could sincerely oblige but stood there instead, heavy of purpose nervously fingering the large gold-plated links of his watch chain.
"Please, Amsterdam, it's a serious matter I've come to discuss with you this morning: come down here so we can talk business." He said.
And as he stood there he knew that those familiar blue eyes were scanning him as they narrowed to slits. Not that he could see this, not really at this distance. But he knew it all the same - whether this knowledge was based in familiarity or whether he could actually feel that discerning gaze was not something Benjamin Murphy would like to think too much on.
"Oh, so it's official high-mucketty-muck business your Lords and Masters have sent you on. Is it, you pretentious lace-curtain buying bastard?" Vallon replied.
Murphy was pleased to hear a slight change in his old acquaintance's tone of voice and felt a corresponding weight shift from his shoulders. The wit was still engaged, but so too was that sharp steel trap of Vallon's mind. Murphy knew now that he would not have to force himself to tell the whole story: Vallon would gladly drag it out of him. He was so relieved that he took his usual cu in their ritualistic sparring.
"You bet it's official business I'm on and what I'm saying is that I'll tell you about it if you'll talk to me like a civilized man instead of yelling out an upstairs window like the bog bred tenement rat that ya are."
Inwood - a promising Manhattan neighborhood of "model" tenements for the working class and neat row houses for the middle class scattered with small shops and businesses; Up the main thoroughfare hurries a man of middle years and greater than average weight. Then he pauses, takes his florid watch out of the pocket of his equally garish vest and stares at it distractedly. He wonders if it is too early to "honor" the unofficial mayor of Inwood with a visit. Suddenly he closed his watch, tucked it back into his vest pocket and resumed his former pace.
The name of this overgrown errand boy was Benjamin Franklin Murphy. Everybody in the neighborhood knew him, but nobody knew exactly what he did. Except that they knew he was someone you could go to when you were in trouble, when you needed the system greased- when you needed Tammany Hall on your side. They knew that in turn you would always hear from him come election day.
Murphy had already been down to the Wigwam once already and was now back in Inwood even before the sun had a chance to warm off the chill of the September morning. If it was important enough to get him moving at all ungodly hours of the morning then it important enough to get Amsterdam Vallon out of bed, Murphy finally decided. Especially since waking that most venerable sleeping tiger was precisely what the Boss had in mind.
This was going to be an exceedingly tricky, Murphy thought, Amsterdam was not a Tammany man. Yet Tammany wanted him, needed him, had to have him. The Boss had made that very clear.
Benjamin Franklin Murphy sighed, he managed to keep clear of most of Tammany's dirty business. Tammany was no gentleman's club, it was, however it was the only party that cared about them "down here". So, Murphy was loyal to Tammany and Tammany was loyal to Murphy, as long as he delivered his quarter each election day. It was a fine line that Murphy walked between loyalty to the Wigwam and loyalty to his neighborhood, yet it was precisely his ability to walk that line that made him useful to both.
Now as he walked, he thought about Amsterdam Vallon, who had in a sense become his quarry that morning. He had always had a thought that their destinies were linked somehow. This morning that thought worried him.
Benjamin Franklin Murphy
I was just a lad of fifteen on that long hot summer night of July 13, 1862. My folks didn't light a candle in the window. Instead, we boarded up our shop. Skilled tradesmen with their own workshops, even ones as low on the social scale as a tanner with a hole in the wall off Paradise Square, feared the prospect of a riot as much as they feared the draft. We spent the next day hiding in the dank, dark, cellar of our shop while the city outside determined to commit self-murder. The day after the riot, my brothers and I escaped into the streets to see if the world had changed.
In Paradise Square people milled around in small desolate clusters. The buildings were not damaged were tightly boarded. Wagons took away the bodies of the dead. Intermittently showers of fat warm raindrops fell to put out the last of the smoldering fires and wash blood into the gutters.
We fell in with a group of boys our own age, most younger than me, and exchanged stories. We were young enough to be excited by the idea that our city had been the site of battle, especially since we had cut our teeth on newspaper reports of the War. I remember one of us, I don't remember who, inventing a wild tale to explain it - it had Confederates and Lincoln's army running around like mad with British Redcoats thrown in for good measure and all of it somehow triumphant for New York in general and for us in particular. I lost my temper with - the way older kids do when they realize how little a younger compatriot understands the basic fabric of reality . In other words, I yelled at him for just being a kid.
"If it's a battle, this is, then I think we lost it, boyo!" I remember shouting.
"That's where you're wrong, Benjy," one of the others said, "I heard the Bill The Butcher's dead and the knife that's buried in his chest is belonging to Priest Vallon's own son."
Now here was a story of epic proportions that I could give a little credence to. William Cutting's thugs were a terror to every artisan and shopkeeper in the Points; that was God's honest truth. Priest Vallon was bit more on the mythical side - in some tales he was more like an avenging angel than a man, taller than life, wielding a sword and an iron cross used as a shield. But even my Mam, who didn't want aught to do the gangsters described Priest Vallon as a true Irish patriot and a defender of the Church who was deviously murdered by Cutting. If Priest Vallon's own son had killed the Butcher then the Points had a new ruler. The thought of a noble Irish boy-king ruling the Points - there was an idea capable of giving me a frisson of excitement and new possibilities.
It was the next day that someone pointed out to me a man of about six years my senior of no more than average height who glared at the world with a wary squint.
"That's Amsterdam Vallon. He killed the Butcher." My compatriot whispered in my ear.
On that day, Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall had temporarily relocated its soup dispensing operations from the docks to the streets. Looking to make a little money, I charmed my way into the company of the Tammany men. Showing myself to be a bright boy, I was picking up a few nickels fetching and carrying for them. That's exactly what I was doing when I noticed the presumed new ruler of the Five Points. He was part of a group of people, including two great huge Plug Uglies and two men dressed in the Dead Rabbit colors, who were occupying the street corner opposite where the Tammany men were distributing food. He sat there amongst them incongruously perched on a chair, watching every move the Tammany men made. My eyes kept wandering back to him, a little disappointed, a little fearful, very much fascinated.
A little later I was sent out on an errand that required me to pass them. I set my eyes in front of me careful not to look at the gangsters as I passed.
Then, "Hey boyo, I've got an errand for you" : He called me over to him.
He held out two quarter-dollars, quite a prize. I looked at him. From the closer vantage point I saw that he was wounded in one leg; that's why he was sitting. His eyes were slightly over-bright. He looked exhausted and determined.
"You're not sure you want to take my money?" he asked, matter-of-factly.
I shook my head.
"Don't worry about it." He said, "It's not like their money's any less tainted." He pointed at Tweed's lackeys.
I nodded solemnly. "I'll run you errand, sir, but first I have to do what they've already bid me."
"You do that. Then you come back."
I nodded again.
About a quarter of an hour later I was back on the street corner taking the coins into my hand. Then he entrusted me with a half dollar more and told me what to do.
"You take this half-dollar piece over there to the biggest boss that the Wigwam's got over there Make sure he knows who it's coming from. Do you know my name?"
He sounded genuinely curious. "Vallon." I replied.
"Right, like I said make sure he knows. Then grab a pail of that soup and a couple of loaves of bread and take it around to the old Satan's Circus."
"The Butcher's!" I involuntarily cut him off with my awed exclamation.
"Not no more." He said. "The Butcher's dead. We are kind of occupying it like, until things calm down and we can see what can be done with it. Now, next you go 'round back and knock on the door. Ask for Miss Everdeane. You give that food to her. We got people holed up there. You understand?"
"Yes sir."
I took the money to Pat Tilden, the man who seemed in charge and told him what had happened.
"If Vallon ever speaks to you again.No, if you ever even see him again, Boy; you let us know." Tilden said and pressed the money I had just given him back into my hand.
So, I set off with the bread and soup, reflecting on the pleasant fact that I had already made an entire dollar off the venture. No wonder I'm still running the same errand to this day. ....................................
Benjamin Franklin Murphy rang the off hours bell at the Harp and Drum and soon the shutters of an upstairs window were opened. The flame-haired moll who had answered the back door of Satan's Circus forty-years ago was the same woman as the grey-haired wife staring down at him.
"What is it you want, Murphy?" she said.
She sounded annoyed, but as usual Murphy wasn't sure if the annoyance was real, or if she was playing with him.
"I need to speak with your husband, Mrs. Vallon. It's important this time." He called up.
Jenny Vallon shook her head as if to suggest that his statement was implausible. When Murphy opened his mouth to explain, she quickly cut him off.
"Shut your gob. I can't listen to you both at the same." Then she turned away and said, "It's 'Mr. Tammany Hall' Murphy, that's who."
Then there was a slight pause in the proceedings, during which Murphy felt his mood sink lower and his anxiety level rise. He greatly suspected that Amsterdam would be in the mood to talk the blarney and he needed to talk serious.
Jenny ended the break in the conversation. "No," she said loudly to the interior of the apartment, in a tone that suggested that a monumental patience with the ways of men was being worn away, "If you want that said, get over here and say it your-ownself."
Then sure enough, she turned from the window and out of Murphy's view and Amsterdam Vallon took her place at the window.
"Murphy," he called down. "What are you doing sticking your pig-nose in my business at this time of day? Can't them that pull your chain at the old Wigwam at least wait 'til I open my shop before you hand them a report of what color socks I'm wearing today?"
Yeah, he was definitely in the mood for a bit of verbal sparring. Benjamin Franklin Murphy wished he could sincerely oblige but stood there instead, heavy of purpose nervously fingering the large gold-plated links of his watch chain.
"Please, Amsterdam, it's a serious matter I've come to discuss with you this morning: come down here so we can talk business." He said.
And as he stood there he knew that those familiar blue eyes were scanning him as they narrowed to slits. Not that he could see this, not really at this distance. But he knew it all the same - whether this knowledge was based in familiarity or whether he could actually feel that discerning gaze was not something Benjamin Murphy would like to think too much on.
"Oh, so it's official high-mucketty-muck business your Lords and Masters have sent you on. Is it, you pretentious lace-curtain buying bastard?" Vallon replied.
Murphy was pleased to hear a slight change in his old acquaintance's tone of voice and felt a corresponding weight shift from his shoulders. The wit was still engaged, but so too was that sharp steel trap of Vallon's mind. Murphy knew now that he would not have to force himself to tell the whole story: Vallon would gladly drag it out of him. He was so relieved that he took his usual cu in their ritualistic sparring.
"You bet it's official business I'm on and what I'm saying is that I'll tell you about it if you'll talk to me like a civilized man instead of yelling out an upstairs window like the bog bred tenement rat that ya are."