Then, Pat heard his mother crying in the back of the classroom. He looked around, and Mom and Dad were there, and Dad was dressed like a Doughboy from World War I, his campaign hat on his knee, shaking his head.
What the hell is this? It can’t be real, he thought, and that was what woke him up. It always did.
CHAPTER 28
BUFFALO, 1951
Pat had finished the last beer in the refrigerator, and was worrying that his father would notice he’d knocked off three bottles since dinner, when the phone rang. Picking it up, he looked at his watch. 7:15.
“Brogan! Lieutenant Constantino here. Get yourself dressed for work. We’re gonna pay someone a visit downtown. I’ll swing by your house in ten minutes.”
“Now?” Pat responded, looking again at his watch, as if it would change.
“Nine minutes from now. We work any time on this detail, just like the inspector said. You’re not sauced or something, are you?”
“No, not at all,” he answered quickly, thinking where he’d hung his holster, and if he had a clean shirt.
“Good, I’ll be there in eight.” Click.
Brogan ran up the stairs, rushing to beat whoever might want to use the bathroom, and brushed his teeth thoroughly. Flying into his room, he jumped out of his gabardine pants and sports shirt and rushed to put on his brown suit and a white shirt, strap on his shoulder holster, and yank a black tie off the rack. He had just finished putting a Windsor in the skinny necktie and was reaching for the coat when the doorbell rang. He was hurrying down the stairs as his father answered it, Buffalo Evening News (“the Republicans’ paper,” as he put it, grunting derisively) in hand.
“Yes?” Joe said, checking out Constantino, nattily dressed in a chocolate-colored, wide-brim fedora, with a small yellow feather in the black hatband, and a tan overcoat, tied in front.
“Pat Brogan here?”
“. . . and you would be?” Joe replied, tilting his chin up and looking down through wireless spectacles at the shorter man.
“Detective Lieutenant Louis Constantino, Gambling Squad,” he answered, putting out his hand. “I’m Bro . . . Pat’s new boss.”
“Joe Brogan,” the old man replied, giving the detective a firm shake. “Come in, Lieutenant. Are you here on business?”
Chuckling, Constantino eased up. “No, I don’t figure your house for slots, Mr. Brogan. We can work any hours. We go when my boss says jump.”
“That would be Inspector Wachter, I believe, or is Chief Mahaney running this?”
“Ah, yeah, Inspector Wachter’s the head honcho. Mike Mahaney’s moved over to Narcotics.”
“A fine man, Martin Wachter, and his father before him. Know them both from the Rowing Club. He’ll teach you lads well.”
At this, Pat reached the bottom of the stairs, hair slicked down, breath camouflaged, and necktie tight.
“Ready?” Constantino asked, glad to see Pat sharp.
“Ready for action. Dad, you met . . . Lou here? We’ve got some work tonight.”
“I have,” his father replied. “Well, go and do your duty, lads,” he said, as the two policemen went out the door.
Returning to his chair, he turned the radio down and said a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, asking him to protect these cocky young men, and then he thanked God for getting Pat out to work, and away from the drink tonight.
Lou Constantino pulled away from the curb with a squeal, accelerating down Woodward towards Amherst as Pat tossed a newspaper into the back seat.
“Your old man knows a lot of people.”
“Yeah, he’s been in business, church stuff, politics for a long time.”
“He use any pull to get you this plainclothes job?”
“No, he stays out of my job. Didn’t want me in it to begin with. Wants me to finish college, settle down in some office job, make money, get married, have kids.”
“Huh. Anyway, we got a tip that they’ve got a couple of slot machines down in the basement of the Talon Inn, down on Pearl.
You know the place?”
Pat remembered. He had been working overtime downtown when the beat man on Chippewa called for help on a stabbing. By the time he’d gotten there, an Indian was sitting on the floor, holding his stomach, trying to stanch the blood, and breathing hard. The patrolman had his stick out, keeping four guys up against the bar. Nobody else was there except the bartender, who reluctantly was calling an ambulance.
“Pat, Joe,” the first patrolman, a wiry guy named Vicigliano, said to Pat and another patrolman named McAvoy, who arrived with him. “Look around for the knife,” he said, never taking his eyes off the four men, keeping them against the bar at arm’s length with his nightstick. “I got these guys trying to leave the back way. The rest of their pals disappeared out the front.”
They searched the four men, no knife. They searched the bar, no knife. Nobody, including the Indian, saw anything. They asked the people on the street, including a couple of hookers plying the area. Nothing. After the Indian went to the hospital, the detectives asked him again. Nothing. They took the four men downtown, and the detectives interrogated them separately. Still nothing.
The three patrolmen stopped in the precinct locker room for a short break before they went back to their beats. The two older patrolmen lit up while Pat sat back and listened to what the veteran police had to say.
Vicigliano slapped Pat on the shin, saying, “Thanks there, young buck, it coulda got ugly in there without your help.”
“And let me tell you something too, lad,” McAvoy said, pointing with his hat at the young patrolman. “If you ever find yourself surrounded in a joint like that, throw something through the window to get somebody’s attention. Somebody’ll hear the commotion and get the cavalry.”
Taking his hat off and running his fingers through his wiry black hair, Vicigliano nodded and gave his take on it. “All those guys are friends of Stretch Buscarino, who owns the bar. He gets somebody in there he doesn’t like, like this Indian, he calls these guys to get rid of ’em and convince him not to come back.”
“Yeah, that Wahoo’ll do his drinking at The Quarry House
or someplace on East Chippewa, like the Red Rose from now on, I’d say,” McAvoy added.
The veteran policemen crushed out their smokes, put their hats back on, and exited the locker room, not dwelling on a crime they’d never solve.
In the car, Constantino said that, in addition to the tip about the slots, he had learned there were two guys at the back door, one outside, one inside at the top of the stairs to the basement. To get the guy inside to let you in, you used a password, “Just like during prohibition,” the lieutenant said, “And I got a snitch who gave me the password.”
Brogan remembered the layout of the place. “There’s a stairway by the back door, pretty narrow, I think. Goes down to the cellar.”
“Right. The back door goes out onto an alley, and the alley leads out onto Chippewa one way, Tupper the other.”
When they got downtown, they drove around the block, watching for the lookouts. The people on the streets seemed like they were changing shifts. Hundreds of shoppers and business people were walking down the streets, pausing to look