Read Online Streets of Gold by Evan Hunter - Free Book Online
Authors: Evan Hunter
Tags: Contemporary
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not the girl for him. In the meantime, Francesco plotted his revenge against Halloran. While Pino and Angelina talked of whom they would invite to the wedding and the reception, Francesco plotted his revenge. While Pino and Angelina talked of what furniture they would need, and where they would buy it, and where they would live, and how many children they would have, Francesco plotted his revenge. His furtive scheming may have been a form of displacement, a way of venting all the frustration, anger, and disappointment he could not express to Pino. Who the hell knows? I’m a blind man. I can only visualize that morning of June the twelfth as my grandfather gleefully described it to me many years later.
It is raining.
It has been raining for twelve days and twelve nights; this June of 1901 will go down in the records as one of the wettest in the history of New York. The tunnel in which the men work is a veritable quagmire, but to Francesco it is resplendent with the sweet sunshine of revenge. He has planned carefully. In his native Italy, he could neither read nor write, but he has been diligently practicing English ever since his encounter with Halloran; or to be more exact, he has been laboriously tracing and retracing two letters of the alphabet — P and H.
He has rejected Bardoni’s idea of hiring two Harlem hoods to bash in Halloran’s skull, but he is not so foolhardy as to believe that he can handle Halloran by himself. The turn-of-the-century equivalent of Charles Atlas as a ninety-seven-pound weakling who got sand kicked in his face throughout all the days of my boyhood, my grandfather is no match (and he knows it) for a brute like Halloran. What is needed to defeat him is another brute, a similar brute, perhaps an identical brute. Francesco has carefully studied his fellow workers in the subway tunnel (while nightly pursuing his handwriting exercises at home — P and H, P and H) and has decided that the only true match for Patrick Halloran is a total clod of an Irish mick named Sean McDonnell. (Spare me your letters, offended Irishmen of the world; to a blind man you’re all the same — wops, spies, kikes, micks, polacks, niggers; when you’ve not seen one slum you’ve not seen them all. And in any case, I am American to the core, a product of this great democratic nation. And that’s what this whole fucking thing is
about
.)
McDonnell is a beast of burden. He is six feet four inches tall, and he weighs two hundred and fifty pounds. He speaks English with such a thick brogue that even his own countrymen can barely understand him. He is fifty-two years old, partially balding, with tiny black pig’s eyes beneath a lowering brow, a bulbous nose he clears by seizing it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, holding the calloused palm away as daintily as though he is lifting a demitasse, and then snorting snot into the mud. He has a huge beer-barrel belly as hard as concrete, and is often daring the other men to punch him as hard as they can in the gut. He laughs a great deal, but seemingly without humor, the laughter unprovoked by incident or event; he finds life either terribly comical or utterly mystifying. Because he is so stupid, he often cannot tell the difference between a well-intentioned compliment and an insult, and is quick to answer any supposed affront with his fists. He is a perfect foil for Francesco’s plot.
The lunch hour comes at twelve noon. The foreman blows his whistle into the tunnel, and the men drop their picks, grab for their lunch pails, and begin to disperse. Even when the weather is good, they drift from their work areas to eat in other parts of the tunnel, the theory being that a change is as good as a rest. But this week in particular, when the mud is everywhere underfoot, they search out niches in the rock walls, higher stretches of ground, overturned wheelbarrows, the insides of carts, anything upon which they can spread their sandwiches and coffee safe from the
It is raining.
It has been raining for twelve days and twelve nights; this June of 1901 will go down in the records as one of the wettest in the history of New York. The tunnel in which the men work is a veritable quagmire, but to Francesco it is resplendent with the sweet sunshine of revenge. He has planned carefully. In his native Italy, he could neither read nor write, but he has been diligently practicing English ever since his encounter with Halloran; or to be more exact, he has been laboriously tracing and retracing two letters of the alphabet — P and H.
He has rejected Bardoni’s idea of hiring two Harlem hoods to bash in Halloran’s skull, but he is not so foolhardy as to believe that he can handle Halloran by himself. The turn-of-the-century equivalent of Charles Atlas as a ninety-seven-pound weakling who got sand kicked in his face throughout all the days of my boyhood, my grandfather is no match (and he knows it) for a brute like Halloran. What is needed to defeat him is another brute, a similar brute, perhaps an identical brute. Francesco has carefully studied his fellow workers in the subway tunnel (while nightly pursuing his handwriting exercises at home — P and H, P and H) and has decided that the only true match for Patrick Halloran is a total clod of an Irish mick named Sean McDonnell. (Spare me your letters, offended Irishmen of the world; to a blind man you’re all the same — wops, spies, kikes, micks, polacks, niggers; when you’ve not seen one slum you’ve not seen them all. And in any case, I am American to the core, a product of this great democratic nation. And that’s what this whole fucking thing is
about
.)
McDonnell is a beast of burden. He is six feet four inches tall, and he weighs two hundred and fifty pounds. He speaks English with such a thick brogue that even his own countrymen can barely understand him. He is fifty-two years old, partially balding, with tiny black pig’s eyes beneath a lowering brow, a bulbous nose he clears by seizing it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, holding the calloused palm away as daintily as though he is lifting a demitasse, and then snorting snot into the mud. He has a huge beer-barrel belly as hard as concrete, and is often daring the other men to punch him as hard as they can in the gut. He laughs a great deal, but seemingly without humor, the laughter unprovoked by incident or event; he finds life either terribly comical or utterly mystifying. Because he is so stupid, he often cannot tell the difference between a well-intentioned compliment and an insult, and is quick to answer any supposed affront with his fists. He is a perfect foil for Francesco’s plot.
The lunch hour comes at twelve noon. The foreman blows his whistle into the tunnel, and the men drop their picks, grab for their lunch pails, and begin to disperse. Even when the weather is good, they drift from their work areas to eat in other parts of the tunnel, the theory being that a change is as good as a rest. But this week in particular, when the mud is everywhere underfoot, they search out niches in the rock walls, higher stretches of ground, overturned wheelbarrows, the insides of carts, anything upon which they can spread their sandwiches and coffee safe from the
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