Light of the Diddicoy by Eamon Loingsigh Page A

“Look what I got for dinner!” A man shouts heartily while a cat being held by its tail upside down is at its hissing and making its wicked sounds abound, scratching into the air. Wobbling and warbling like a man on the gibbetnoose.
    Wild Bill Lovett turns round, faces the laborer with a sporting smile and tomcat in grasp, immediately pulls the .45 out from his jacket, and claps the hammer with an explosion that sends shoulders flinching, silencing the saloon. Mick Gilligan thought certain the blast was meant for himself, though it was not to be. The power of the bullet knocks the fool Scandanavian cat abuser back into the picks and shovels and coatrack and the old tom sent a flying out of his grasp, flapping across the front glass window and scraping off the edge of a table.
    Confused by the scene and out of his element, the tom darts from one side of the saloon to the other as a stampede of gangsters, soused sailors, laborers, and immigrants elbow for the exit but not before they pull their coats from beneath the man with a bullet in his chest behind the door. The dockbosses barely move however, and instead watch Bill while keeping a palm over their own weapons.
    With fear sunk into him and honor forgotten, Mick Gilligan gapes upon Bill who holds the metal canon in his small hand and a butcher’s stare in his eye among the flying elbows and the heavy tide of patrons frantically swimming and bottlenecked at the front door. At this emptying of order, Bill awakes, and shoving his .45 into the back of his trousers, storms upon Mick without effort like a man finally in his comfort only when chaos churls around him and with the horrid grates of streetcar stoppers screeching through the spliced January air. As Mick sees the intention on Bill he pushes and shoves within the crowd and yelps to get through for the exit, never mind the coat.
    Jumping over three men, Bill yanks at the back of Mick Gilligan’s shirt with a strength uncommon to men his size and with him go three others to the ground. At the lash of his down-thrusting fists Bill squeezes and grits to break the head off the coward until the crowd unintentionally throws him off balance in their rushing for the door. Standing up with his left hand still holding Mick, Bill swings at any face behind him he can see, then plows into the back of the head of Mick with a feral man’s intent.
    After losing his grip on Mick, Bill then turns his attention to the tom that has splayed himself across the flooring in a toothy hissing and a ridge of crazed hair standing on-end over his raised back, tiptoeing sideways in a miniature menace. Hoping to coax the poor animal into his arms, the tomcat continues thrashing at the mouth until finally the saloon empties entirely.
    As the dockbosses look him over with unemotional stares, Bill busies himself at his own mind’s taking. With one hand he keeps the door open while pushing the injured man deeper into the corner, the other hand again holding the .45 across his knee for someone to question him. Ignoring Non Connors’s urging until the tom has made its way out of the saloon safely, Bill whispers gentle assurances, “G’on boy, it’s right here. No worries, really. No worries, everythin’s over now. Everythin’s fine.”

CHAPTER 8
The Souper
    T HE DOOR SWINGS OPEN AND BANGS against the legs of the dying man. Head Patrolman William Brosnan looks behind it as Paddy Keenan and Patrolman Culkin turn to his entrance. A great barrel-chested man of a powerful build and the height of some three inches above six feet, Brosnan’s dark blue copper’s tunic and tilted cap contrasts the gray in his short-haired cut above the ear.
    â€œJaysus,” he booms, then looks to his son-in-law. “Who done this? Ambulance on the way?”
    Culkin steps away from Keenan and comes close to Brosnan whispering, “I called for a doctor, but this feller won’t talk, won’t say