his left hand: a juggler's routine. Others laughed. The Reagans did not.
'Get the goddamn gin and never mind the clown act,' Billy Reagan said. 'You hear me, you waiter baloney? Get the gin.'
Jack immediately went to the Reagan table and stood over big-fisted Billy. He poked Billy's shoulder with one finger. 'You got no patience. Make noise in your own joint, but have a little patience when you're in somebody else's.'
'I keep telling him he's ignorant,' Tim Reagan said. 'Sit down, Jack, don't mind him. Have a drink. Meet Teddy Carson from Philly. We been tellin' him about you, how you come a long way from Philadelphia.'
'How you makin' out, Jack?' Teddy Carson said, another big fist. He shook Jack's hand, cracking knuckles. 'Some boys I know in Philly talk about you a lot. Duke Gleason, Wiggles Mason. Wiggles said he knew you as a kid.'
'He knocked a tooth out on me. I never got even.'
'That's what he told me.'
'You tell him I said hello.'
'He'll be glad to hear that.'
'Pull up a chair. Jack,' Tim said.
'I got a party over there.'
'Bring 'em over. Make the party bigger.'
Saul Baker left his post by the door when Jack went back to his own table. 'That's a bunch of shitheads, Jack. You want 'em thrown out'?'
'It's all right, Saul.' Pudgy little Saul Baker, chastising three elephants.
'I hate a big mouth. '
'Don't get excited.'
Jack said he wanted to have a drink with the Reagans. 'We'll all go over,' he said to Filetti, Elaine, and Benny.
'What the hell for?' said Filetti,
'It'll keep 'em quiet. They're noisy, but I like them. And there's a guy from Philly knows friends of mine.'
Jack signaled Herman to move the table as Joe Vignola finally brought drinks to the Reagans.
'You call this gin'?' Billy said to Vignola, holding up a glass of whiskey. 'Are you tryna be a funny guy? Are you lookin' for a fight?'
'Gin's gone,' Vignola said.
'I think you're lookin' for a fight,' Billy said.
'No, I was looking for the gin,' Vignola said, laughing, moving away.
'This is some dump you got here, Jack,' Billy called out.
Herman and a waiter moved Jack's table next to the Reagans, but Jack did not sit down.
'Let me tell you something, Billy,' Jack said, looking down at him. 'I think your mouth is too big. I said it before. Do I make myself clear?'
'I told you to shut your goddamn trap,' Tim told Billy, and when Billy nodded and drank his whiskey, Jack let everybody sit down and be introduced. Charlie Filetti sat in a quiet pout. Elaine had swallowed enough whiskey so that it made no difference where she sat, as long as it was next to Jack. Jack talked about Philadelphia to Teddy Carson, but then he saw nobody was talking to Benny.
'Listen,' Jack said, 'I want to raise a toast to Benny here, a man who just won a battle, man headed for the welterweight crown.'
'Benny?' said Billy Reagan. 'Benny who?'
'Benny Shapiro, you lug,' Tim Reagan said. 'Right here. The fighter. Jack just introduced you.'
'Benny Shapiro,' Billy said. He pondered it. ''That's a yid name.' He pondered it further. 'What I think is yids make lousy fighters. '
Everybody looked at Billy, then at Benny.
'The yid runs, is how I see it,' Billy said. 'Now take Benny there and the way he runs out on Corrigan. Wouldn't meet an Irishman.'
'Are you gonna shut up, Billy?' Tim Reagan said.
'What do you call Murphy?' Benny said to Billy. ''Last time I saw him tonight he's got rosin all over his back. '
'I seen you box, yid. You stink.'
'You dumb fucking donkey,' Jack said. 'Shut your stupid mouth. '
'You wanna shut my mouth, Jack? Where I come from, the middle name is fight. That's how you shut the mouth.'
Billy pushed his chair away from the table, straddling it, ready to move. As he did, Jack tossed his drink at Billy and lunged at his face with the empty glass. But Billy only blinked and grabbed Jack's hand in flight, held it like a toy. Saul Baker snatched a gun from his coat at Jack's curse and looked for a clear shot at Billy. Then Tim Reagan grabbed Saul's arm and wrestled for the gun. Women shrieked and ran at the sight of pistols, and men turned over tables to hide. Herman Zuckman yelled for the band to play louder, and customers scrambled for cover to the insanely loud strains of the 'Jazz Me Blues.' Elaine Walsh backed into a checkroom, Benny Shapiro, Joe Vignola, and four others there ahead of her. The bartenders ducked below bar level as Billy knocked Jack backward over chairs.
'Yes, sir,' Billy said, 'the middle name is fight.'
Tim Reagan twisted the pistol out of Saul Baker's grip as Teddy Carson fired the first shot. It hit Saul just above the right eye as he was reaching for his second pistol, on his hip.
The second shot was Charlie Filetti's. It grazed Billy's skull, knocking him down. Filetti fired again, hitting Carson, who fell and slithered behind a table.
Jack Diamond, rising slowly with his pistol in his hand, looked at the only standing enemy, Tim Reagan, who was holding Saul's pistol. Jack shot Tim in the stomach. As Tim fell, he shot a hole in the ceiling. Standing then, Jack fired into Tim's forehead. The head gave a sudden twist and Jack fired two more bullets into it. He fired his last two shots into Tim's groin, pulling the trigger three times on empty chambers. Then he stood looking down at Tim Reagan.
Billy opened his eyes to see his bleeding brother beside him on the Floor. Billy shook Tim's arm and grunted 'Timbo,' but his brother stayed limp. Jack cracked Billy on the head with the butt of his empty pistol and Billy went flat.
'Let's go, Jack, let's move,' Charlie Filetti said.
Jack looked up and saw Elaine's terrified face peering at him from the checkroom. The bartenders' faces were as white as their aprons. All faces looked at Jack as Filetti grabbed his arm and pulled. Jack tossed his pistol onto BilIy's chest and it bounced off onto the floor.
JACK, OUT Of DOORS
Jack lived the fugitive life after the Hotsy, the most hunted man in America, and eventually he wound up in the Catskills. I don't think I'd have ever seen him again if the 1925 meeting in the Kenmore had been our only encounter. But I know my involvement in the Hotsy case brought me back to his mind, even though we never met face to face during it. And when the heat was off in midsummer of 1930, when the Hotsy was merely history, Jack picked me out of whatever odd pigeonhole he'd put me in, called me up and asked me to Sunday dinner.
'I'm sorry,' he said when he called, 'but I haven't seen you since that night we talked in the Kenmore. That's been quite a while and I can't remember what you look like. I'll send a driver to pick you up, but how will he recognize you?'
'I look like St. Thomas Aquinas,' I said, 'and I wear a white Panama hat with a black band. Rather beat up, that hat. You couldn't miss it in a million.'
'Come early,' he said. 'I got something I'd like to show you.'
