excerpt
…daylight hours of the following Sunday, a bonus slot. Though not
mandatory, attendance at this weekly event was never anything less
than perfect. The get-together was the only opportunity for members
to carry out repairs and apply a coat of wax to the object of their
devotion. Refreshments and assorted intoxicants lent the evening a
surreal air.
The first order of business at the Sunday meet was the selection of
shifts for the upcoming week. Because the membership was exclusively
male, as such groupings were in those days, Friday and Saturday
nights—prime mating hours— were coveted. Swapping shifts, however,
was permitted (See Rule #18, second paragraph). The process was
simple: names were scribbled on the back of amatchbook and dropped
into an empty oil can. The most junior member of the club selected
names and announced the shifts, it being believed this would minimize
schemes of deception.
Neighbours could testify (but rarely dared) that the weekly conference
was a raucous affair. No doubt due to the unpredictable consequences
of mixing beer or hard spirits with hemp, fisticuffs often
spilled into the alley, inviting a look-see from Sgt. Toby McManus, who
had been policing the war veterans’ housing project since its inception.
O’Donnell must have made up this next bit, for how else could he
know the sergeant told his rookie ride-along, the grass-green patrolman
Patrick Mahoney:
– The lads are up to something. The fumes seeping through the
cracks of that lowly grease pit are not from exhaust pipes.
Though the veteran policeman could not run the length of a city
block (he suffered from an undisciplined appetite, accounting for
the sobriquet Sgt. Tubby), it was seen that he was partnered with
someone who could. The chief, a boyhood friend, excused him from
the annual fitness review, as the policeman’s experience and keen
eye—he had been a decorated sharpshooter with the Highland Dragoons
during the war — proved invaluable. No one knew better
than Sgt. McManus the whereabouts in this neighbourhood of chop
shop and bootlegger, poker den and brothel, of the most lucrative
hours of bookie joint and drug emporium. The guilty were wise to
fear a swat from his foot-long hickory stick.
Libros Libertad 