the hillock of misery and violence between Market and River Streets on the Bohegan Banks.
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy Sharkey was saying, for the fifth time at least, to keep the talk going, to keep this kind of party alive, “it’ll be a long time before anybody stands up to them gorillas like Joey Doyle.”
“Enough guts for a regiment,” Moose shouted.
“A real bravadeero,” Runty Nolan put in.
And Runty knew what it was to be a bravadeero on the docks. He went back to ’14 when Local 447 got its charter. Willie Givens and Tom McGovern were charter members who worked right alongside him. Willie was a young blowhard always cadging drinks. One day he had a few too many and didn’t see a piece of steel plating swinging past him toward the hold. Willie was laid up for three months, and Runty, out of the goodness of his heart, suggested to the membership, still in its unencrusted, democratic stage, that a job be made for Willie as assistant financial secretary of the local to see him through his convalescence. Willie took to bureaucracy like a waterfront kid takes to beer. He never did a day’s work with a hook again. He went up and up. President of the Local. Vice-Chairman of the District Council. Finally President of the International. Twenty-five G and unlimited expenses. And presents from the shippers for being so understanding of management’s problems. And a secret fund for “fighting Communism” that every firm in the harbor felt it its patriotic duty to support, an ostrich-sized nest-egg accountable only to Willie himself. The last Convention, a fine group of amiable rubber-stamps, had made Willie President for life, all in favor say Aye and God help the poor slob who dares raise his voice in the negative. Thus had Willie Givens developed into a parliamentary front for Johnny Friendly below him and Big Tom McGovern on top.
Big Tom was on the Board of Directors of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club and the Gotham Club and the Mayor jumped when he whistled and he had stevedore companies and tug companies and oil companies and sand-and-gravel companies and trucking companies and companies that owned other companies. In other words, he had the city by the head and the tail and while he was pouring twenty-five-year-old for the judges and the politicos, his strong-arms in the stevedore outfits were muscling the men who refused to knuckle under. From the penthouse on Fifth Avenue to the gutter on River Street where the blood ran, Big Tom had it all. But Runty could remember when young McGovern, a two-hundred-pound bully who had been told once too often that he resembled Jim Jeffries, was loading meat for the A.E.F., with his own meat-like hands, off a horse-truck at Pier B, and steering into the black market more beef than he was loading for our boys over there.
And Runty could remember how in three years Tom McG. rose from a loader at forty cents an hour to the owner of ten meat trucks of his own. Thus was born the Enterprise Trucking Co., and enterprise of a most direct kind it was, for Big Tom acquired his first two trucks by the efficient method of threatening their owner with extreme bodily harm if he did not sign them over.
Runty saw him use his own, brine-hardened fists to fight his way up to power on the docks. And he knew of the teamster-union official taken care of in one of the first waterfront murders so that Big Tom could push one of his own stooges into the teamster leadership, as soon after he was to set easy-dollar Willie Givens in the top spot with the longshoremen. And all the time that Big Tom was punching his way into the city’s inner circle, and Weeping Willie was spreading his whiskey-tipped wings as a silver-throated labor leader, Runty Nolan remained the lowliest of longshoremen, the wielder of a hook in the hold, and that in the old days before all the equipment, when the main piece of equipment was your own back. A strong back and a weak mind was a hold-man’s formula for doing the
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy Sharkey was saying, for the fifth time at least, to keep the talk going, to keep this kind of party alive, “it’ll be a long time before anybody stands up to them gorillas like Joey Doyle.”
“Enough guts for a regiment,” Moose shouted.
“A real bravadeero,” Runty Nolan put in.
And Runty knew what it was to be a bravadeero on the docks. He went back to ’14 when Local 447 got its charter. Willie Givens and Tom McGovern were charter members who worked right alongside him. Willie was a young blowhard always cadging drinks. One day he had a few too many and didn’t see a piece of steel plating swinging past him toward the hold. Willie was laid up for three months, and Runty, out of the goodness of his heart, suggested to the membership, still in its unencrusted, democratic stage, that a job be made for Willie as assistant financial secretary of the local to see him through his convalescence. Willie took to bureaucracy like a waterfront kid takes to beer. He never did a day’s work with a hook again. He went up and up. President of the Local. Vice-Chairman of the District Council. Finally President of the International. Twenty-five G and unlimited expenses. And presents from the shippers for being so understanding of management’s problems. And a secret fund for “fighting Communism” that every firm in the harbor felt it its patriotic duty to support, an ostrich-sized nest-egg accountable only to Willie himself. The last Convention, a fine group of amiable rubber-stamps, had made Willie President for life, all in favor say Aye and God help the poor slob who dares raise his voice in the negative. Thus had Willie Givens developed into a parliamentary front for Johnny Friendly below him and Big Tom McGovern on top.
Big Tom was on the Board of Directors of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club and the Gotham Club and the Mayor jumped when he whistled and he had stevedore companies and tug companies and oil companies and sand-and-gravel companies and trucking companies and companies that owned other companies. In other words, he had the city by the head and the tail and while he was pouring twenty-five-year-old for the judges and the politicos, his strong-arms in the stevedore outfits were muscling the men who refused to knuckle under. From the penthouse on Fifth Avenue to the gutter on River Street where the blood ran, Big Tom had it all. But Runty could remember when young McGovern, a two-hundred-pound bully who had been told once too often that he resembled Jim Jeffries, was loading meat for the A.E.F., with his own meat-like hands, off a horse-truck at Pier B, and steering into the black market more beef than he was loading for our boys over there.
And Runty could remember how in three years Tom McG. rose from a loader at forty cents an hour to the owner of ten meat trucks of his own. Thus was born the Enterprise Trucking Co., and enterprise of a most direct kind it was, for Big Tom acquired his first two trucks by the efficient method of threatening their owner with extreme bodily harm if he did not sign them over.
Runty saw him use his own, brine-hardened fists to fight his way up to power on the docks. And he knew of the teamster-union official taken care of in one of the first waterfront murders so that Big Tom could push one of his own stooges into the teamster leadership, as soon after he was to set easy-dollar Willie Givens in the top spot with the longshoremen. And all the time that Big Tom was punching his way into the city’s inner circle, and Weeping Willie was spreading his whiskey-tipped wings as a silver-throated labor leader, Runty Nolan remained the lowliest of longshoremen, the wielder of a hook in the hold, and that in the old days before all the equipment, when the main piece of equipment was your own back. A strong back and a weak mind was a hold-man’s formula for doing the
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