Light of the Diddicoy by Eamon Loingsigh

another on the ready after slicing the head off it with a butter knife onto the floor with a fap . Non Connors and Frankie Byrne stand close to Lovett with drinks in their hands too, Connors double-fisting it; a shot in one hand, thin glass of beer in the other.
    Elbowing back up to the mahogany, Bill begins to transform. The stories of Bill Lovett’s drinking are not just mine. All knew him as a hard worker when sober and a ferocious fighter after drinking. As I see him, he sits on the stool after work at the Dock Loaders’ Club, staring into his drink angrily. His face now wearing the wounded staring of the drunk. And as the drink takes his reason, he sees all those round him as traitors and touts. His eyebrows pushing downward over the untrusting orbs, lips thrust outward as if he has just waken, fists clenched, he closes himself in.
    Listening to the conversations of dockbosses lit by the ancient yellow of candlelight, he moves his dulling eyes. Hears all the voices as one. He looks back and into the darkness beyond the bar to the guarded stairwell that leads to Dinny Meehan’s office above, where the authority of the gang resides with all his protectorates around him counting the day’s tribute. Bill knows Dinny is always listening for plots, and plants silent men around him, like Paddy Keenan the tender. Paddy Keenan is known to one and all as Dinny’s minister of education because he listens to stories told under the serum of truth at the bar, then debriefs Dinny upstairs. He is a tout, Paddy Keenan is, but a tout for Dinny Meehan is no crime at all within 25 Bridge Street. But Bill sees a tout as a tout, no matter whose side you’re on. And as they used to say in this neighborhood years ago when it was only Irish that lived here, “T’is clouts for the touts.” Which vaguely translates to “A hit on the head for the informer,” except it rhymes, as you can see.
    Along the stretch of the bar, and highest among the low-going men are the dockbosses and their right handers; Gibney the Lark and his cohort Big Dick Morissey take up a large part of the trough across Bill with wide-shouldered necks like bison propped on elbows. Boxheaded Red Donnelly is there next them, known too as Cute Charlie since he is so ugly and red. The lean smiler Jimmy “Cinders” Connolly sits with his big paws hanging over the bar like a long hound with his fool-mute right hander behind him, Philip Large. And Harry “the Shiv” Reynolds too casts a subtle eye at Bill here and there. Behind them all, Tommy Tuohey the pavee boxer stands at his post in the back by the rear room with his fists folded, guarding the stairwell.
    These men are the dockbosses who have their own terminals and report directly to Dinny Meehan each day. Down in the Red Hook, Bill is boss, just as the others are up in the Navy Yard, under the bridges at the Fulton and Jay terminals, and down Brooklyn Heights at the docks that terminate on Baltic Street and Atlantic Avenue. Except Tuohey, who just likes to fight on a challenge. But Bill is the youngest and newest of the bosses, just only months earlier took over with Dinny’s nod after McGowan had been sentenced to Sing Sing and then had the life beaten from him by a screw. Again Harry gives Bill a silent lookover, then looks away. McGowen was well-liked and Bill can see it on the faces of Dinny’s dockbosses. But Bill has no regard for those men, Dinny’s men. And they know it. See in that lack of honor, blame for the death of one of them and their own.
    â€œBill,” Connors leaned into his ear. “Mick’s still onto ya, whadda ya say?”
    â€œGentle when stroked, fierce when provoked,” Bill threatened like a cornered animal as Mick Gilligan strained to hear him.
    Just behind Mick the saloon door opens and the sounds of the screeching city enter again, candles wincing, lanterns tilting, and under the stiff wind a lilting call came out.