Jimmy the Stick by Michael Mayo

never. She’s not going to—”
    â€œMrs. Conway!” The girl raised her voice and the older woman piped down. “I can handle a gun. If that’s what it’s going to take to keep little Ethan safe, then Mrs. Pennyweight will want me to do it.”
    Mrs. Conway resumed muttering, but her heart wasn’t in it.
    I turned back to Connie. “When?”
    â€œThis evening.”
    â€œFine,” I said, yawning. “I’m bushed. Come down to the gun room later.”
    Upstairs, I stripped off my clothes, pulled the curtains closed, and crawled into bed. I was asleep immediately.

Chapter Seven
    1919
    NEW YORK CITY
    I probably should have explained that Mother Moon was my aunt or great aunt or something. She always claimed we were related. You see, she was Mother Quinn until she married that Chinaman. At least, that was the story she told after she came back from a trip out west, from either San Francisco or Cleveland, depending on which version she chose. I heard both several times. She brought back an exotically dark-haired baby girl she called her daughter, Fantan Perfect Jasmine Moon, a couple of years older than me. Nobody had actually seen this Chinaman, but if anyone doubted the old gal, they didn’t say so to her face. All that happened before I knew her anyway.
    My parents came from Ireland, and went straight from immigration to an address they’d been given. It was a building on the south side of Hell’s Kitchen. A relative back home had told them that another relative owned a tenement there, and she’d have a place for them. They moved into the building, and that’s where I was born. My mother died of tuberculosis when I was too young to understand. Not long after, my father wandered away. The only thing I think I remember is being on the roof with my parents on a bright warm day, and their saying that this was the best place they’d ever found. But chances are that’s only something I saw in a movie or made up.
    Mother Moon took care of a mob of kids who lived in the building. We usually numbered between six and twenty. Some of us had parents or other relatives. But Mother Moon fed us regularly and provided beds to the ones who needed them. Every morning, she sent us out to school or to work or to steal. She’d made arrangements with Alderman Jimmy Hines’s office as well as the local cops. They got a cut of everything we stole and on Election Day, Mother Moon’s little street apes could be counted on to help deliver the vote. Hines also steered us toward shopkeepers and stores that weren’t being cooperative enough with Tammany. We stole stuff or tore apart those places, depending on what we’d been told to do. In the rare cases when any of us got caught, the alderman contacted the cops and judges on our behalf, and had us sprung. If that didn’t work, he’d see to it that we were represented by lawyer Ira Jacobson. We almost never went to court. When we did, the alderman and the counselor made sure that things were speedily settled.
    I did well enough selling newspapers for a while. I was better at petty theft, but since I was always small, I got pounded regularly by the bigger boys. I can’t tell you how frightened and ashamed I felt after each of those beatings, no matter how trivial, until one night when I came back bleeding, crying, and humiliated, and Mother Moon instructed me in the way of the world.
    â€œYou’re never going to be the biggest boy in a fight,” she said. “So if there’s any way for you to get away, you take it and run. Remember, the last thing you want is a fair fight. Hell, there ain’t such a thing. But you are quick, Jimmy. Speed is your gift, so you’ll have to learn to use that. Do you understand?”
    I didn’t really understand but sniffed back those tears and said that I did. I’d figure it out later.
    â€œYou can never smoke, not ever. Not