They grinned at each other. But both of them felt the difference. “Leave it to a dame to put the ring in the guy’s nose,” Johnny Blue Jaw jeered.
By summer, Willy’d put on fifteen pounds. His pants wouldn’t close and his jackets screamed at the shoulders. Alice laughed and said he deserved some new clothes anyway. In a new gray suit, his feet in fifteen dollar shoes, Willy attended the Union Convention at the Hotel Commodore. He sat between Clancy and Mallet and listened to a lot of speeches that made him yawn. Improve union conditions... A longshoreman’s lucky if he works half the year... He got more of a bang when Clancy arose to second some resolution and boom out a little speech of his own. “I started as a wagon boy on a one-horse team, a member of the teamster union! When I joined the longshoreman’s union I worked on the docks in my underwear! For thirty-three cents an hour! I worked all my life and I ain’t got a cent in the bank and I ain’t got a cent at home! Nobody gives the workingman a five cent piece...”
Later that night, in a suite of rooms over on the West Side, eight or nine delegates sat around smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, while they waited for the girls. Three call girls were en route. “Fifty bucks a lay stuff but t’night it’s free,” Clancy said to Willy. “You don’t tell my wife and I don’t tell yours. One of these girl’s not seventeen, Willy.”
“Who pays for them? The rank-and-file?” Willy smiled. It looked to him as if he’d got on that gravy train for keeps.
In the fall, at an election rally, Clancy introduced Willy to a man by the name of King who was in the contracting business. At a bar downstairs, King got to the point right away. “You boys run your local and your local unloads the biggest steamships that come into this port. Have you boys thought of getting into the stevedoring business yourself? Sure, you’re union men, but what’s to stop you from being silent partners? I’ll put up the capital but capital’s nothing. The big thing’s the in. With the in we can get our share of contracts from the lines.”
Nobody mentioned Johnny Blue Jaw, but he was the fourth man at that bar. The fourth man and the big man. Johnny Blue Jaw, who had picked Red Rizzo as hiring boss for the steamship and stevedoring companies, could also give the nod to an up-and-coming brand-new stevedore outfit out to make an honest dollar. King, Clancy and Willy met again, agreed on the details. King would get a third, Clancy and Willy between them a third, and a third for Johnny Blue Jaw. “You see him, Willy,” Clancy said later. “You’ve got the in with him. It’s a fair deal all around.”
Willy went up to Johnny Blue Jaw’s hotel room on a cool cloudy night. The sky was tinted pinkish from the bright lights on Broadway. Johnny fixed him a drink and Willy said, “I came to see you about a deal...”
When he finished Johnny Blue Jaw smiled. “You’ve got somethin’ there.”
“It’s okay then?” Willy said, beginning to smile, too.
“Sure, it’s okay. Okay for me. I don’t need this King! I don’t need nobody!”
Willy’d gained fifteen pounds or more, but now he almost seemed to sag inside his suit. His meaty cheeks went pale. He stared dumbly at Johnny Blue Jaw.
“For Christ sake, Willy! Don’t you put the cryin’ towel on with me!” Johnny Blue Jaw snapped at him.
“I thought—”
“Thought what? That I’d bite?”
“Bite? You’d be getting a third, Johnny—”
“Wouldn’t I be a sucker to take it when I can get it all?”
“But, Johnny—”
“But what? What the hell you beefin’ for! Ain’t I done enough for you?”
“Sure but—”
“Sure but,” Johnny Blue Jaw mimicked him. “You’re pullin’ down eight G’s a year at the union. Not to mention extras. So now you wanna be a stevedore boss.”
“What’s wrong with that, Johnny?” Willy pleaded, wiping his sweaty face. “What’s so wrong with that?”
“You’re what’s wrong! I send you to watch this Clancy crook and you turn crook yourself.”
“That’s a damn lie!” the big man shouted.
The little man whipped out of his chair and rushed to within a foot of where Willy was sitting. “Don’t you back-talk me!” His dark bluish lips had lifted over his teeth. “Where’d you be if not for me? Who connected you? Who made a walkin’ delegate outa you? What was you but a dumb heister?”
“Maybe I was but I’m no crook and you called me a crook.”
“What d’you call this stevedorin’ racket you and Clancy’ve rigged up?”
“You’d be getting a third!” Willy protested hoarsely as if Johnny Blue Jaw had only to be reminded of that detail and everything’d be okay.
“Ain’t that white of you and Clancy?” the mob leader yelled, the veins cording on his temples. “Whose docks’re they? Whose docks’d you be stevedorin’? The Chelsea docks or Brooklyn, or my damn docks! My docks!” he raged and lifted both his clenched fists over his head.
For a second he stood there and he no longer seemed small but big with ownership. He’d paid for his docks, all right. Paid with every kind of coin there was. With the blood-red coin of murder and the slimy thin one of treachery, with the fat coins that make no sound as they drop into the tin boxes of the politicians. Mouthpiece money, he’d paid that too. There wasn’t any kind of money that he hadn’t paid.
He stood there, not seeing Willy. Then he walked to his chair, again becoming a small black-haired man, not much bigger than a big jockey. He sat down, put a cigarette in his mouth and said flatly, “Nobody’s pullin’ a fast one on me.”
“Nobody’s trying to, Johnny—”
“Nobody will!” He had himself under control now. He was silent for a long second. “I had a hunch you shouldn’t’ve been in the union. You wanted it, I give it to you. So now you come ’round with this stevedore proposition.”
“For God’s sake, what’s so wrong with that, Johnny. Tell me, will you!” Willy pleaded.
“I think up the propositions on my docks — that’s what’s wrong with it! This King guy’s another thing wrong with it!”
“Why?”
“Who’s behind him? How do I know the Chelsea mob ain’t behind him? Burnham — hell, he’s gotta right to hate my guts. How do I know Fassetti’s not behind King? I made the wop shell out ten G’s, didn’t I? How do I know it’s not some kind of a scheme to muscle in on my docks?”
Willy said quietly, “I wouldn’t have any part of a scheme like that, Johnny.”
“You wouldn’t. But what about Clancy? That bum don’t love me.” His voice lifted. “What about Alice? Why was she so hot to get you into the union? She and Clancy—” His eyes narrowed with a hard-bitten pity. “You and me were buddies ’til you let her talk you into marryin’ her — fat-ass connivin’ whore!”
As Willy lurched up from the couch, Johnny Blue Jaw sprang to his feet and quick as a cat picked up a chair, ready for anything. But Willy was on his way out. He had his hand on the door knob when Johnny Blue Jaw hollered. “Where you goin’?”
Willy’s head pivoted on his thick neck. “No use talking to you, Johnny,” he said bitterly. “You don’t believe nobody, you don’t trust nobody! You’re crazy, that’s what you are. Crazy!”
“I’m crazy like a fox. And wait a minnit before you go! You’re through bein’ a walkin’ delegate, Willy! Clancy’s through! The rank-and-file, they can elect some new bums.” He became conscious of the chair in his hands for he lowered it to the floor. “You tell Clancy, I’ll give him a job in my stevedore firm. And you, you dumb heister, you’ll go back to collectin’ numbers. Tell that to your missus!”