Every Man for Himself. Mark J. Hannon

with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette in a holder. Stripper. There were three guys standing around her with their hands in their pockets, jolted from their reverie by the sudden violence. There was a midget with a big smile sitting on a stool next to the girl. Dressed in a white Union suit, he was smoking a cigar and enjoying a martini.

      No empty chairs, gotta go with the dwarf ’s, Pat thought. He took his hands clear of his overcoat pockets and grabbed the little man’s stool. The midget’s eyes went wide, and he grabbed onto the seat with a death grip as Pat pitched him and the stool through the front window, onto the street. Pat then turned to the stunned crowd, pulled out his sap, and slugged the guy with the Pall Mall, as the thug pulled out a switchblade. Swinging back, he caught the other thug across the face and drove him back, raising an arm to shield his face.

      XYZ

      Patrolman Joe McAvoy rubbed his eyes as he stood outside the back of the Palace Theater on Pearl and adjusted his hat securely forward on his head, having finished a nap in the back row of the theater. He was there ostensibly checking for overcrowding, pickpockets, and perverts, as he would report, if anyone asked. The manager was swell with this deal, and if there was any trouble in the theater, he’d wake Big Joe. Joe looked at his watch and hoped the rest of the shift would go quietly. He planned to take the wife out on the town to Ma Broderick’s Club Deluxe on Seneca after he got off. Then, he heard a crash and saw a kid in his pajamas rolling on the street and moaning.

      The crowd on the street stopped in their tracks. What the…, McAvoy thought. He pulled out his nightstick and ran to the front of the bar, where he spotted Scotty, the midget acrobat from the Palace, on the ground, the front window of the Talon Inn smashed out, and all hell breaking loose inside. He ran in and recognized Brogan, in civilian clothes, ready to swing his sap at two guys with knives, the toughs having rallied from the sap’s first blows. Before they could react to their new opponent, McAvoy grabbed his stick top and bottom and rammed it into Knife One’s stomach, and when he bent over from that blow, McAvoy slammed it over his head, swinging the billy club with both hands as hard as he could. When Knife Two hesitated, Brogan stepped in with the sap, and this time belted his target across the ear, sending him to the floor.

      McAvoy swung his stick back and jabbed a man in the chest who was headed for the door and shouted, “Nobody move, or by God, I’ll give the lot of you an all mighty crack!”

      Brogan rushed to the rear, scattering tables, bottles, and glasses to the sound of women’s shrieks, and spotted two guys holding Lou’s arms from behind.

      Lou furiously kicked his powerful legs at a third guy coming at him from the front, and had another sprawled before him. “Goddamitt! I’m the police! You fuck up my clothes and I’ll kill you bastards, every one of you!”

      Brogan grabbed the guy in front of Lou by the collar and yanked him backwards, slamming him down with his sap. Getting his feet beneath himself, Constantino swung the guy on his right arm forward towards Brogan, who backhanded him with the sap across the jaw, then got hold of the guy on his left and threw him at the cellar stairs, where people were scampering towards the back door.

      As McAvoy pushed the would-be escapee back into the barroom with his stick, he stepped towards the front door to block it, then heard feet crunching on glass and saw motion behind his left shoulder. Ducking instinctively, he felt a beer bottle come down, catching his hat and just missing his head from behind. Crouching lower, McAvoy swung his stick around, catching his assailant right across both shins. Letting out a yelp, the bartender dropped backward into a sitting position and wrapped his arms around his legs moaning, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” and rocking back and forth.

      McAvoy stood up, pulled out his long barreled revolver, and holding it at port arms, yelled, “All right, that’s enough!” Pointing his nightstick towards the back, he said “Everybody get back where I can see you!”

      The stunned, the injured, and the frightened stepped away from the door, except for the blonde on the barstool, who hadn’t moved through the entire fracas and kept her smoldering cigarette, with holder, held high.

      At the rear of the bar, Brogan and Constantino had also pulled out their revolvers and, trying to catch their breath, ordered the people coming up the stairs, back down. Kicking the guys they had wrestled and sapped, they forced them back into the bar while the sound of sirens approached, none too soon for the exhausted policemen.

      The next policeman on the scene was Vicigliano, who slid on the broken glass through the front door. Once he saw the wreckage of the bar, three guys busted up on the floor and McAvoy with his gun out, he pushed his hat back on his head and said, “Forget making the late show at Broderick’s, Mac. Judge Chimera’s not gonna like this . . .”

      As police car after police car pulled up to the scene, plainclothesmen and foot patrolmen ran up, the plainclothesmen gravitating towards the rear, and the uniformed men to the front of the bar. With the reinforcements having taken control of the situation, Brogan went to the front of the bar to identify his two assailants while Constantino went down into the cellar with Dudek, who had just arrived, while Dowd was throwing the three men in the alley against the wall, faces first.

      It was hot, smoky, and crowded, with eleven men in their shirtsleeves in the cellar, and cases of beer and liquor stashed up against the stone walls everywhere. The only exit besides the stairs at the rear was a metal trap door at the front for bringing down cases and kegs.

      Constantino could see a padlock hanging down from it. He grabbed Dudek’s shoulder and told him, “Search up front, we’re looking for slot machines, and maybe pinballs they got down here,” which got a quizzical glance from the blonde-haired policeman, who looked around the crowded cellar and saw nothing.

      The shirt-sleeved men mumbled to each other quietly while Lou pulled cases away, rolled beer barrels, and pushed people out of his way, but found nothing.

      Finally, Dudek came forward, saying, “Hey, Lieutenant, look at this,” holding a bundled up olive drab blanket. Disappointment showed on Constantino’s face when he first saw Dudek hadn’t found a machine, but he shoved a couple of the cellar’s occupants back while Dudek laid the blanket on the floor, opening it up to reveal playing cards and money.

      “Hey, looks like we gotta game goin’ on here,” the lieutenant said in triumph, crouching down to examine the blanket’s contents. “Must be a couple of hundred bucks here. Big game, eh boys? We’re gonna have to run all you guys in,” he said, standing up. “The judge is not gonna like this at all.” Then, he made eye contact with one of the gamblers in the back of the crowd. Oh Jesus, he thought, it’s Uncle George. The family’s going to kill me if he gets arrested, and the elderly man stared right at him.

      “Dudek, keep an eye on this a second,” he ordered, walking towards the stairs to consider his dilemma. When he got to the steps, Brogan was there, asking, “Whadja find?”

      “Card game, Ziginat, bunch of old guys having big time fun. No machines, though.”

      “Well, we gotta have something after we set off the atom bomb in here. How many guys we got?”

      “Uh, look Pat, there’s a guy down here, my Uncle George, and,

      XYZ

      uh. . .”

      “Lieutenant? Remember what Inspector Wachter said about ‘willful neglect?’” Pat was enjoying the turnabout with his supervisor. “He’s out front right now and wants to talk to us.”

      Lou trotted up the stairs, where a patrolman silently handed Constantino his crumpled fedora, soiled and featherless. He cursed and tried to knock some of the dirt off of it. He said to Brogan, “I just got this hat the other day, around the corner,” nodding towards Court Street, “a brand new top of the line Peller & Mure hat.” He headed for the front with Brogan, contemplating what to say to his boss.

      The rough stuff, okay, we can handle it, he thought, They started it. No slots, not yet anyway, maybe they’re upstairs. he gave himself a jolt of hope, thinking, And there’s the Ziginat game. Ah, shit, Ma’s gonna kill me for running Uncle George in.

      As