Two fell on Glass, punching his face, which was drenched in blood. One tough took his revolver and two others pulled off his uniform jacket, then his pants and shoes. Jack McCall moved out of the crowd and next to Edward, a club in his hand.
“Let’s move in,” Jack said.
“Gimme his gun,” Cully Watson said, and a tough threw Glass’s gun to Cully, who fired it into the deck, halting Jack and Edward’s forward motion. Another tough took Anthony’s pistol and pulled his uniform off. With their knives the toughs sliced the uniforms into rags. Cully, pistol in hand, shoved aside the two elderly bartenders, and with his other hand held a mug under the open tap. One tough pointed Anthony’s pistol at the crowd of picnickers, keeping reinforcements at bay. Men from the excursion sent women and children to the upper deck.
Cully drew more beers and slid them across the bar to the toughs, who guzzled it. Cully left the taps open, the deck awash in beer, then tucked the pistol in his belt, picked up an empty keg, and tossed it over the bar to a tough, who caught it.
“Give Glass some beer,” Cully said, and the tough dropped the beer keg on Willie Glass’s back. Glass was unconscious, clad only in underwear, his and Anthony’s uniforms in shreds. Anthony was conscious, but bleeding profusely.
“Take a uniform away from a cop,” Cully said, “you can’t tell he’s a cop no more.”
Edward saw Francis moving up behind the tough who held the pistol, and he decided to act.
“You goddamn pack of jackals,” Edward yelled, and he threw a beer mug at the tough with the gun and hit his chin. The man fired once and hit a stranger next to Edward. Francis came up behind the tough and pinioned him with a life preserver, then kneed him in the crotch and kicked the gun toward Edward. Cully fired a second shot into the deck before Edward could pick up the pistol. Another tough rushed to pick it up, but Cadden, with the energy of rage, stood and grabbed the attacker’s arm, smashed his nose with his fist. Cadden snapped the man’s arm like an ear of corn, dragged him to the railing.
“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.
Courting the Fireman’s Wife, Juky 1, 1906
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.