I glanced at Sean and he nodded imperceptibly.
‘It’s Scottish,’ I said.
Mickey, as I have said, sounded suspicious.
‘Whereabouts in Scotland? I’ve been there a few times. Glasgow and such like.’
‘I’m from the Lowlands, near the Borders. A place called Eyemouth. It’s on the East coast, just north of Berwick.’ I’d decided on Eyemouth on the way to Mickey’s as I’d been there on a few occasions and didn’t think the East coast was somewhere he would know much about.
Mickey nodded a couple of times, then went back to his desk and sat down behind it, lighting a cigar.
‘What’s in Eyemouth, then?’ He still didn’t believe me. He was a naturally cunning man, was old Mickey Donovan, as I would find out to my detriment a few years later.
‘Fish and seals and flat-chested women,’ I said. ‘That’s why I got the hell out of there and came to America.’
Mickey stared at me for a second. Then he roared with laughter and the two big men who flanked him, joined in a moment later. They all seemed to relax.
‘Well, Mr Deakin of Eyemouth,’ Mickey said. ‘Welcome to the USA.’
He then turned to business. I was to find out quickly that Mickey’s moods were mercurial.
‘We’ve got you all lined up, Sean,’ he said to his nephew. ‘I didn’t realise there would be two of you, though.’
‘I’m sorry, Mickey,’ said Sean. ‘Rob and me met on the boat and he hasn’t got anything sorted, jobwise. I was wondering if there was anything he could do, even if it’s only until he gets himself a permanent job sorted.’
‘I thought you knew each other from the army,’ said Mickey, quick as a snake.
Sean didn’t miss a heartbeat. He could lie as good as any man I have ever met.
‘We did. Imagine our surprise when we found ourselves on the St Agnes together!’
Mickey stared at him suspiciously before relenting. ‘I’ll sort you out with something, Rob,’ he said. ‘But for now, I want to spend a bit of time with my nephew. This calls for a drink.’
With that, he got up and nodded to one of his men, who disappeared out the door. Mickey picked up his coat and hat and then indicated for us to follow him and we went out to find a car waiting. We got in and coasted along Central Park until we got to West 67th Street. Here the car pulled up outside an innocuous-looking brownstone building.
We got out and Mickey and his men made their way up the steps. One of the men pressed a buzzer. I noticed a policeman standing on the corner and I watched him turn and walk away when Mickey glanced at him.
The door opened to reveal an old woman who smiled and held the door open when she saw Mickey. We went in and marched down a corridor towards the back of the building. As we did so, I began to notice the muted sound of music playing from somewhere.
We got to another door and another buzzer was pressed. There was a darkened window set into the door and I got the impression someone was staring at us from the other side. The door opened and the sound of the music got louder. We stepped into a small foyer-like room, with a padded door at the far end. The goon who had opened up nodded at us and then opened the far door.
And we stepped into paradise.
The Prohibition years were something I have never forgotten. It was such a grand time to be alive. It was freedom, it was hedonism, it was wonderful. Of course, it was also a time of murder, chaos and heartache but in that moment, at that point in time, it was the best thing that had happened to me in my, so far, short life.
The room was ablaze with light. Tables were laid out all around the floor, and waiters moved between them smoothly, filling the glasses of the raucous people who sat at them. Brightly coloured ticker-tape ribbons flew everywhere. At the side of the huge room was a bar doing a very healthy trade, and at the far end was a small stage where a band played lively jazz behind some dancing girls whose costumes left very little to the imagination. In front of the stage, couples danced enthusiastically. The noise was incredible.
A waiter scuttled over as soon as he saw who had come in and showed Mickey and the rest of us to a table set aside from the others. Champagne was poured and Sean looked at me in disbelief, laughing as he saw the same look on my own face. The waiter brought us menus and we chose food. I ordered steak as Mickey said to get what I wanted. I was starving because I hadn’t eaten since the previous day.
We ate our meals, drank illicit booze, and got chatted up by the girls paid to do just that.
I had encountered my first prostitutes in the cafes and bars of Belgium and France during the war and, like all the other virginal boys there, was at first shocked and dismayed by what we considered to be the loose morals of those exotic girls. However, daily life and death in the trenches soon made us realise that we had to take everything we could before we were obliterated, and we had all became enthusiastic students of their teachings.
Some of those prostitutes had been beautiful, some of them pug ugly, but the hookers in Drew’s Bar were something else. They wore their hair in short bobs, as was the fashion of the day, and draped their long legs and uncovered arms all over the willing customers, blowing smoke into their faces from their ebony cigarette holders.
Sean and I got plastered that night, as did Mickey. His goons stayed sober, however: eternally vigilant for any danger that might present itself to their boss.
I’d quickly come to the understanding that Mickey’s ‘business’ was not what one could exactly call legitimate. He was obviously involved in bootlegging, as well as prostitution and illegal gambling if the roulette wheel over in a far corner was anything to go by.
I didn’t care. I was a young man on an adventure. At the time, it all seemed to make sense. What harm was it doing to allow people to let their hair down once in a while?
The Volstead Act of 1920 had banned the manufacturing, transportation and selling of alcohol. It never banned the consuming of it and that had maybe been its mistake. The gangsters moved in to fill the hole the government had left, and to them it was just a business. As I laughed and caroused with Mickey and Sean on that, my first night in New York, I had no idea of the ugliness and murder and brutality behind the smooth facades of the criminals who ran the various activities.
I would soon find out.
*
Mickey got me a job on the wharfs of Manhattan.
The duties were simple enough: I unloaded the carefully blank boxes from the ships when they came in and transported them via truck to the various illicit drinking holes situated all over New York. It was easy money, well paid, and it meant I got to know the city very well. I was received enthusiastically wherever I went—as long as I kept away from the territory of the other gangsters littering the mean streets of the city—as it was generally known who both I, and Mickey, worked for.
William ‘Big Bill’ Dwyer owned the docks where the supplies came in. Whiskey from Canada and rum from the Caribbean were brought in on a regular basis and dispersed throughout the city by me and men like me, very much ignored by the police who were well recompensed for their inattentiveness.
We never got to meet Dwyer. He just owned everything. It was Mickey, his commander on the docks, who was our boss. We heard the stories about him, however. Tales of people ending up floating in the Hudson with their throat cut, or simply disappearing mysteriously if they got in his way. I don’t think I really believed all the accounts at the beginning, I thought them little more than tall stories concocted out of boredom or jealousy. And anyway, what did I care if some other bootlegger got chopped off at the knees, or a rival Italian ended up wearing a concrete overcoat? They were all villains so they all probably got what they deserved.