The City Below Page 8

  But now Terry did take his brother's arm. "I can't hear you with that mimeo machine. Come on. I'll buy you a drink." Terry led the way toward the center of the big room, far from his colleagues, near a U-shaped arrangement of tables at which, in daytime, the ladies sat addressing envelopes. No one was there now. A water cooler stood nearby.

  "What," Squire said, "you don't want me to meet your new friends?"

  Mullen tugged at Squire's sleeve. "Did you catch that bitch sister of mine? She wouldn't even look at me."

  Terry said, "She looked at you, Jackie, long enough to see that stunt you pulled with your fucking cigarette."

  "What stunt, Charlie?"

  Terry went to the cooler and filled first one paper cone with water, then another. "Here, have a drink."

  Jackie sipped his, and his face went sour. "Jeez, Charlie, somebody's been putting water in your booze."

  Terry leaned back against a table, but his rigid white mouth betrayed his feelings. "What are you doing here?"

  "Terry, you seem different." Nick was grinning broadly. "Even the way you talk is different"

  "Yeah," Mullen piped in, a sudden recognition. "What happened to your voice?"

  Squire raised a hand to silence Mullen. "Lay off, Jackie. Can't you see how embarrassed he is?"

  "I'm not embarrassed."

  "Yes you are. But why, I wonder. Because we give your new friends an eyeful of where you come from? Or is it earful? Do we talk funny, Charlie? Do me and Jackie have dem Townie accents? Or are you embarrassed because of what we hear?"

  "Neither. But I still don't know what you're—"

  '"What's the rub'? Did you ask us that? What kind of phrase is that? And how do you do that with your voice? It's lower, ain't it? You're talking through your teeth."

  "You're full of shit, Nick."

  Squire opened his hands to show how harmless he was. "Hey, Terry, it's nothing to get pissed off about."

  "I'm not pissed off," Terry said, but so vehemently that even he laughed.

  Squire was relieved. "You can't fool me."

  The brothers looked at each other, nodding, the way they had in basketball games after a score. "I know it," Terry said. "I'm not trying to fool you, Nick"

  Nick held his eyes for a long moment. "I miss you, brother."

  Terry was surprised, a direct affirmation, no hint of sarcasm. It would have been natural, because it was true, to reply, I miss you too. But he did not.

  "So," Squire said, "what about the Garden?"

  "How do you know about that?"

  "Didi told us."

  "No, I didn't." Didi had come over from the Young Dems' corner, and beside her stood Bright McKay. "I told Ma. She must of told Jackie."

  "What's the dif?" Squire said. "When Kennedy comes back to Boston, there'll be a big hoopla. Is that some kind of secret?"

  "No. We sure hope not."

  "When is it?"

  "The night before election day."

  "Which makes it ..."

  "November seventh."

  Jackie and Squire exchanged a look Jackie said, "Plenty of time."

  Terry cocked his head. "For what?"

  Before Squire answered, an apparently oblivious McKay stepped between the brothers to help himself to water. He swallowed some, then crushed the cup, glancing at Jackie as he did. McKay was taller than Mullen but far thinner, no physical match. But for that moment he seemed a threat And then, in the next instant, the cloud had passed. McKay offered his hand to Mullen. "Bright McKay," he said. Mullen put his hand in McKay's, who squeezed it hard. "I don't think we've met"

  "I'm Jackie Mullen."

  "Sullen?" Blight's smile was like a harbor. An ocean liner could sail into it.

  "Mullen," Jackie corrected, having missed the blade.

  "Didi's brother?" Bright swooped his arm back toward her. "Didi is the queen bee here, aren't you, Didi?"

  "Who's the king," Squire asked, "the guy in charge?"

  "Of our team tonight? I guess that'd be me."

  "You?"

  McKay took the cigarette pack from his pocket and snapped a couple free. "Smoke?"

  Squire had to admire the bastard. He took one. So did Terry. Mullen refused.

  McKay flicked his lighter, lit his cigarette, then Terry's, then Squire's. While Squire was drawing on the flame, Bright said, "Third man unlucky." He snapped his Zippo shut. "You know why they say that, don't you?"

  "No."

  "The war. GIs lighting up in a foxhole. By the time the third guy has the flame in his face, the enemy sniper has his aim. Bang."

  Squire exhaled a cloud. "Maybe that's what happened to my old man." He smiled weirdly, then leaned to the water cooler for another cupful. "I hate these fucking Dixie cups, don't you?"

  Bright laughed. Fucking Dixie, fucking A. He liked the guy.

  "So, do you want to hear my proposal or not?" Squire asked.

  Terry couldn't tell whether Squire's nonchalance was an act He had never felt quite so much the observer of his brother.

  "Sure," McKay said. "Why not?"

  "So the night before the election, you got all these kids out in the street cheering for Kennedy, right?"

  "If we do our job," McKay said. "On Causeway Street, down Canal, all the way to North Washington Street."

  "For the cameras, right?"

  "It'll be on television."

  "And you'll have all these beautiful young college kids going crazy for the guy."

  "We hope so."

  "Any colored people?" Jackie put in.

  Squire's hand shot up in front of Jackie, a command, but a late one.

  McKay didn't miss a beat "Sure. Plenty." He smiled. "A lot of colored kids go to college these days."

  This blade caught Mullen. He leaned toward his sister and hissed, " You don't go to college. What are you doing with these creeps?"

  Now Squire took Jackie's arm and moved him back "Will you please?" A mask of impassivity fell across Mullen's face.

  Squire turned back to McKay. "So all these beautiful young people are waving something, right?" Squire swiveled to Terry. "Right?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Terry said.

  "It's television," Squire said like a pitchman. "I mean, they got to have something that makes an impression on the moms and dads in the living rooms of America."

  "What," Terry said wryly, "like hankies?"

  "Like flags," Bright said.

  "Wrong." Squire dropped his cup into the trash. "You are so wrong. Flags aren't Kennedy. Flags are Nixon. Flags are what schoolchildren wave, like hankies"—he bit at Terry here—"are for war brides. Besides, what happens to flags after? Thousands of flags. Dropped? Tossed aside? They get walked on, how would that go over? That's ... whatta ya call it?"

  "Desecration."

  "Right No, you want something else. Something sexy. You want something the people can throw if they feel like it. All the better if they do." Squire looked for support to Jackie.

  "Like a bullfight," Jackie said, on cue.

  "Yeah," Squire said. "Ever seen a bullfight? What do people wave at the matador? What do the fans throw at him? Isn't Kennedy our matador? The Irish matador?"

  Terry touched McKay's shoulder and he said wearily, "Flowers, Bright. He's talking about flowers."

  "That's right." Squire took McKay's other sleeve. "It could be roses, but we think carnations, with long stems."

  "Christ, Nick!" Terry came off the table and turned to go back to the corner.

  But Bright stopped him. "Wait It's not necessarily a had idea. We had been talking about confetti or ticker tape, but the buildings aren't high enough around the Garden, and it'll be dark"

  "But Bright, pay attention," Terry said. "My grandfather is—"

  "In the flower business, I know."

  "And this is my brother. He works in the store. He's just selling. He's down here selling!" Terry whipped around to Squire. "You could have talked to me first, goddamnit!"

  "You're never around,
Charlie."

  "Quit calling me that!"

  Squire and Jackie, and Bright too, pulled back. Terry said, "Have you ever heard of conflict of interest?"

  Bright touched Terry's arm. "I don't necessarily—"

  "But he thinks because I'm here, because Didi's here, he can sell—"

  "I'm not selling," Squire said firmly. "I'm talking about donated flowers. Not just Gramps's shop, but the whole fucking Flower Exchange. They all love Kennedy down there. Dineen and Reynolds are the biggest wholesalers in Boston, both micks. They'd give Kennedy flowers by the truckload if you asked them to. It won't cost Kennedy a dime. I can arrange it I know these guys."

  McKay raised an eyebrow at Squire's jacket. "You're still in high school."

  "I'm at the Exchange every morning before school—if I get to school. The Exchange is what I do."

  Bright glanced at Terry, who nodded and said, "He does know them."

  "Then what's your problem?"

  Terry shrugged. What could he say: I love my brother but he's an operator, always has been?

  McKay made a show of studying Squire. A young Negro, yet his authority was complete finally. "It's worth running by Mike, upstairs. Can you hang around?"

  "Sure." Squire let his weight fall back against a table edge. "There are a couple of things, though."

  "What?"

  "The flowers won't cost you ..."

  As Squire talked, Mullen said toward his sister, who had remained at some remove.

  "...but you have to, you know, place official orders with the various wholesalers. They'd want credit for the donations."

  "That's reasonable," McKay said.

  "And also, of course, you wouldn't have to do it this way, but ..."

  Didi ignored Jackie even as he drew close to her. He put his mouth by her ear and whispered, "How's your love life, sis?"

  Her face bloomed. She turned—how she hated him!—and walked back to the Young Dems' corner. What a defeat, to have him enter this special world of hers, so easily claim a place in it.

  "I'd appreciate it," Squire was saying, "if you or Mike or whoever could make the deals through me, so my grandfather can get his credit with the suppliers."

  "No problem," McKay said. "I'll make the point Anything else?"

  "Yeah, actually there is." Squire flashed one at his brother. "I guess you could say there is a little selling here. Was the campaign going to buy flower arrangements for the big platform? You know, where Kennedy will stand? What they speak from, inside the Garden?"

  "I have no idea."

  "I think usually platforms have floral displays."

  "Like I say—"

  "I mean, if they were going to buy flowers anyway, maybe you could put in a word for—"

  "Buying them from your grandfather."

  "Exactly."

  McKay shrugged. "You'd have to raise that with Mr. Gorman, if he wants to see you, which is what I'll find out"

  Squire was pointedly not looking at his brother. "It's just that a thing like this would be the peak of his life. He loves Kennedy." Now Squire did face Terry. "We all do. Gramps would donate the money right back, but the commercial transaction would get him a foot in the door at the Garden."

  "That's bullshit, Nick Gramps doesn't care about the Garden."

  "How would you know? When were you last in the store?"

  "I know a crock when I—"

  "Hold it, guys." McKay pulled Terry away, to a partition beyond the U-shaped tables. "This isn't a had idea, Terry. Gorman might go for it"

  "I'm out of the flower business, Bright."

  "Let it go, man. Whatever it is with you and your brother, let it go."

  Terry looked back toward Squire with a vague sadness. McKay caught it and said, "Squire'll be one of those guys who has his name on his shirt First his letter jacket, then his green uniform."

  "Mullen maybe, but not Nick He's a very ambitious guy."

  "That's what you are. So you're more alike than you think."

  "We used to be alike. Not anymore."

  "Maybe that's what's bugging him. He holds it against you that you left."

  "That's the problem, Bright. I haven't left That's what his being here means. It's a feeling I don't like."

  "It's a feeling you should shake. This flower thing is a chance for you, Terry. It's a whacky idea, carnations in the streets, but Gorman might buy it And if he does, the connection with the campaign is your grandfather. You handle it You're where the action is. If Kennedy loves the sight of ten thousand people waving flowers at him, you're made. That's how we get ahead in this business, get an idea and go with it Either that"—McKay grinned and held up his hand—"or get yourself some black skin. We're talking How to Succeed in Politics in the Sixties."

  Terry laughed. "You never quit, do you?"

  "Hey, you mick meatball, take a look." Bright held his hands out "This train is leaving the station. I don't want to leave my buddy behind." He pumped his hands, choo-choo. "Come on, Terry. It's an idea. They fucking love ideas upstairs. Anything that turns up the volume, and this would. Come upstairs with me."

  Terry glanced back toward Didi. She had returned to the mimeograph, but she was staring across the vacant room at him. Without effort he read what was written in her expression. Why did they do this to us, coming down here? And Terry wondered for both of them, Why had it seemed so important, keeping this world separate, keeping it only theirs? He faced McKay again. "Okay, let's go."

  They started toward the stairwell, but Squire called out, "One more thing." When McKay and Terry turned back, he said loudly, "We could probably get the carnations dyed. They could be green, like for St. Paddy's Day."

  McKay said, "Jesus, you're not kidding, are you? We'll go with the matador theme, Squire, not the leprechaun."

  One of the Young Dems working at a postage meter machine by the wall snorted. McKay continued to make his way across the wide room toward the heavy fire door.

  Terry remained where he was for a moment, staring back at his brother. He knew damn well that while Squire had not been kidding about dyeing carnations, he had not meant it either. Leprechaun, shit Squire had fired a parting shot was all, and now he stood there grinning, the friendliest brother a guy could ever want He had puffed his chest out to flaunt his puerile jacket, asinine name on his chest, and Terry saw him suddenly as a pot-bellied, strutting, middle-aged fart, turning the circuit from City Square out to Old Ironsides, still wearing that thing after all, a true Townie male forever.

  Only Terry Doyle could read the question hidden in his brother's phony smile, his wearing 'o' the green: Who thefook do you think you are?

  ***

  The "bull gang" at Boston Garden was famous for the speed with which it could transform the parquet basketball court into an ice arena or a boxing ring or a dirt corral. Rigidly unionized crews of carpenters and mechanics did the massive nightly work of preparing for circuses, rodeos, revivals, concerts, sports events, and political rallies. Services and equipment that the Garden crew itself could not provide were contracted out, but there too, strict controls were in place, and the levers belonged not to the Garden owner or the sports team owners but to certain union leaders and, as it happened, to a few of the Garden's North End neighbors. Particular caterers, liquor and soft-drink distributors, printers, sign painters, even veterinarians had locks on the right to service Garden events. They were known euphemistically as "preferred suppliers," but the relationship went beyond preference.

  The Garden was only a quarter of a mile from City Square in Charlestown, but the river boundary had been absolute, and the rule extended to flowers. Since 1947, the preferred florist was Joe Lombardi, whose modest shop on Endicott Street had been a North End fixture for decades. In his time, Lombardi had decked out pulpits for Bishop Sheen and Billy Graham, stages for Liberace and Tommy Dorsey, floats for the Ice Capades, and podiums for Eamon de Valera, James Michael Curley, and Winston Churchill. His arrangements, featuring long birds of paradise and gladioli
spiking out of fanning palm branches, along with sprays of mums, delphiniums, and hollyhock, always looked the same, but Lombardi knew what selections showed up from one side of an arena to another, and he also knew that nobody ever looked twice at flowers in such a place. When Sonja Henie performed, or when Mrs. Roosevelt spoke, or when some big shot's wife went with him to the platform, the same dozen roses always turned up in her arms. When Tony deMarco, a welterweight who grew up on Salem Street six blocks away, took the world title from Johnny Saxton in 1955, Lombardi himself climbed into the ring with a huge bouquet and presented it not to Tony but to the beaten Saxton. The flowers were lilies, and the fans loved the joke.

  When Walter Brown, the Garden owner, called to tell Lombardi that the Kennedy people were supplying their own flowers for the election eve rally, the old Italian reacted with silence. Brown thought they'd been disconnected. He took the phone's handset away from his face to stare at it, then put it back to his ear. Finally Lombardi asked simply, "Why?" Brown said with a shrug in his voice that Kennedys write their own rules; they weren't even paying Garden costs. Even Cardinal Cushing, when he used the place, paid costs. Lombardi thought of Dineen and Reynolds, the Irishmen who ran the Flower Exchange. They wrote their own rules too, and Lombardi understood implicitly that some mick friend had gotten to Kennedy and was using him to redraw boundary lines. "Relax, Joe," Brown said, "it's a one-time thing." Instead of answering, Lombardi hung up. The next morning he got his son to drive him up to Revere, to see what Guido would say.

  A fortnight later an exhausted John Fitzgerald Kennedy returned to Boston—77,000 miles, 45 states, and 237 cities in ten weeks. It was already dark. One hundred thousand wildly cheering supporters lined the streets on both sides of the harbor tunnels, territory over which P. I. Kennedy had ruled as an East Boston ward boss, and over which the North End's "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald had presided as mayor, and which had launched Jack Kennedy himself as the IIth District congressman.

  The plan was that he would speed through the old neighborhood, then stop and change shirts at his downtown hotel, but because the cars moved so slowly, and because cameras were waiting—television would be the real meaning of this event—the decision was made to go right to the Garden.

  The overhead lights on North Washington Street illuminated the crowd, and sure enough the jumpers were there, cueing the crowd's hysteria. Sharp-eyed political operators saw right away what the Young Dems had accomplished: the spontaneous, overwhelming emotional outburst had been carefully prepared for. Screaming boys and especially girls—was this Sinatra?—roared without stopping, "We love yuh, Jack!" Just because their leaders had rehearsed them didn't mean it wasn't true.