Out In The Midnight Hour-With Robert Mitchum’s The Racket (1951) In Mind

 

 

Nick Scanlon had all the angles, had all the angles covered, maybe thought he had all the angels covered too but it would not have been wise to test him on that condition not when he still felt that mortal blows from Sister Mary Eddie and her treacherous ruler even when he became the primo outlaw crime boss in Big Town, ran everything from numbers to women to drugs and back. Had done so, had those angles figured since he was a young man, a kid really only about twenty but everybody could see he was a comer once he knocked a few heads around, cleaned out the competition for his lordship, Boyo, Boyo McNamara a name to be reckoned with before the war, before World War II. Yeah Nick was Boyo McNamara’s top up and coming “aide” when the old school ruled the action in Big Town (and lots of other places too) by fear, intimidation and leaving no witnesses and no squeakers alive to tell anybody, any law enforcement agencies anything. Zip.

 

Then Boyo, as guys who like to play the angles too smart, too sharp, or think they do once they get out of that comfort zone that got them where they were had tried to set Nick up for the fall, tried make him take the big step off for a killing Boyo had one of his boys commit over some illegal liquor haul back in Prohibition days when Boyo though Nick was getting too big for his britches (and Boyo may have been wrong on lots of thing but Nick had the fire in the belly to be Mr. Big, run the whole show himself  and so not on that suspicion). Nick had not even been in town so slipping Johnny Blaze, the guy who actually did the deed and had been Boyo’s main torpedo,  rather than take the fall he cornered Boyo one night outside the back alley of the Club Lucky, Boyos hang-out,  and put two right on the head. Since it was just a falling out among the boys, the Irish boys from Irishtown in Big Town (New York City really but Big Town is as good a name as any since every town in those days had an Irishtown filled with Nicks and Boyos) no coppers put too much effort into solving that crime, no time whatsoever. That was the last time Nick Scanlon had to kill a man but it also greased the skids for Nick to take over Boyo’s operations without a murmur, not even from Johnny Blaze who transferred his allegiance just as quickly as changing his socks.

 

No question Nick, (everybody called him Nick and it stuck except his mother and the good nuns at Saint Theresa’s Parochial School over on Vine Street until he, they had a falling out and he quite the school in eight grade to head to greener pastures, Boyo’s greener pastures and as we now know his, was a tough boy as far back as sixth grade when he and his corner boys around Higgin’s Grocery Store on West Main were beginning their careers of up to no good. Yeah, they did the usual kids starting out stuff, the extortions of milk money from fellow students for openings, the “clip” of everything in every department and jewelry store that was not nailed down and as they got older the midnight creeps over in the Tappan section of town where the Mayfair swells lived. Of course when they came of age no decent car was safe from their joy-riding pleasures.

 

Nick’s corner boys, if you know anything about Irish corner boy life, were the usual mix you expected in Irishtown then, maybe now too, guys who would wind up doing consecutive terms in stir for armed robberies like Goose Kiley and Moon Regan, a couple of guys like Slugger O’Toole and Johnny Callahan who got “connected” and took the graft with city jobs (and helped Nick along the way easing his wanting habits with easy access to hands-out city “pols” and contractors), Pat Meara who turned himself around after Father Murphy got through with him and what God wanted of him and became a priest. And of course Tommy Kelly, Tommy the copper. Tommy the copper who was as honest as any cop you could find, maybe take up an offer of coffee and crullers but every cop expected that why else become a cop. Early on Tommy had been Nick’s bright boy, the guy in sixth grade who worked out the “clips” (who was to be the look-out, who the grabber, who to watch out for, when to do the deeds stuff like that, good too since nobody ever took the fall for anything while Tommy planned stuff).

 

But Tommy could see that where Nick was heading was not where he wanted to head. Not if he wanted to get in Delores Malloy’s pants. And Tommy wanted that more than anything. So he moved away from Nick, made his peace with normal society and when he got old enough took the Big Town police exam and became a cop, and honest one (not withstanding that coffee and crullers business and a few free tickets to Yankee games from grateful citizens).

      

And that was the way things went for a while, Nick building up his operations with a big boost from prostitution when the war started and Big Town was filled with soldiers and sailors who needed sexual release and Nick could hardly get enough young women with novenas and rosary beads to fill the demand until he seduced Nora Riley, the ice queen and the rest followed. Got a big boost too from deals he made with the Italians to run the dope, everything from reefer to horse, in his sections of town. Was king of the hill and if anybody, citizens, pols, priests, whoever didn’t like they could keep silent or be found along the drag of the East River some moonless night. Made more guys take falls that you could shake a stick at.

 

The war had changed things, changed the way the really big guys saw things internationally, changed the way dope was run, women trafficked, numbers worked, and how the money got funneled. Guys, little big guys like Nick whose idea of finesse was to rub out half the city to impress the other half to stay quiet and keep him in clover were being turned out to pasture, went back to the old country. Or younger guys like Nick became “employees” of the mysterious Mister Big who now called the shots but on the low, no more bodies along any goddam rivers. And so Nick sat there in Big Town with his big angles and nowhere to go.

 

Another thing that the war changed was that some guys, war veterans, a few of them war heroes, got tired of the old graft, got tired of witless corner boys and drop-outs running stuff through their towns. Didn’t see their fight against guys like Hitler as giving guys like Nick the red light to keep doing whatever the fuck they wanted (Tommy Kelly’s term). So they took dead aim at Big Town figuring if you could clean that town up, or part of it lesser Big Towns like Chicago and more recently LA would come around. The number one boy for the job, the day to day operations, Tommy Kelly. Tommy who had a glean in his eye at the idea of putting his old corner boy Nick down, down for the count and after him, who knows, maybe the real Mister Big, but Nick first, yeah, Nick had to fall.   

        

Nick blew his top when he heard old nemesis Tommy was busting up his operations, arresting his numbers runners before they could collect (and before they could pay off the customers either) whom he paid City Hall very good money to protect. Busted up some hophead tea houses throughout the city where even Mayfair swells, including some in Mister Big’s circle if the eternal rumors about who Mister Big was held water, with wicked dope habits and deep needs for privacy could be found (also had made those pays off to City Hall for that very purpose. Busted up his cat houses where the girls gave Tommy and his men in blue, some regular customers called by first names and married too as the girls grabbed the door of the paddy wagon, more battle than any of the others.  (Tommy did privately weep when he collared Nora Riley, Nick’s queen of the madames now although she still looked good enough to turn a few tricks, for he had been sweet on her back in Saint Theresa days when she carried that novena book and rosary beads with a certain style and he watched his ass from a couple of rows behind her Sunday morning 8 o’clock Mass time.

 

So Nick did what the Nicks of the world do when they are cornered. Called Tommy in and gave him the what for. Tried to piece him off with a big chunk of change (what Nick didn’t know was that if he had upped the dough about twice, a bargain really after the fact he could have had Tommy as his man since Delores needed a big operation and he was light on insurance in those days when cops took what they got from the city and liked it). So Tommy, honest Tommy again, keep up the attacks, made numbers runners, madames, street whores, hipsters and dope fiends cry uncle. Naturally old school Nick once he could not grease the skids started a civil war. Started it tooth and nail right at Tommy’s house practically blowing the place to kingdom come with Delores in it. Yeah it was getting personal, very personal. Then he upped the ante, went for more than some symbolic gesture like blowing a guy’s house, lured Jeff Hannigan, Tommy’s best cop down to the East River one night for a parlay. Except he didn’t show but two boys did, a couple of out of towners who riddled Jeff with a spray of bullets and then dumped him naked in the East River. Yeah, Nick liked a nice touch like that to puncture what he had to say.  

 

That did it. Put Nick’s head in a noose for real. Not so much by Tommy although he personally would have liked to settle the scores in some back alleys alone but with Mister Big, the real Mister Big. Once Nick made the front pages of all the daily newspapers scream he had to be taken down, made to take the big step off, made to go to sleep. So through Mister Big’s stoolies set up to give Tommy what he wanted he found out where Nick was hiding after the cop murder that had the whole town buzzing (and a few cops and crooks squeamish since who knew where the whole thing would lead). Called him out of his hiding spot down by that East River with a platoon of back-up in patrol cars and snipers on roofs. Nick said go to hell and started blasting away with a semi-automatic which nipped a few coppers although none fatally. From the side almost in back of Nick Patrolman John Callahan gunned Nick down like a dog. And so Nick fell with two slugs in his heart.

 

What Tommy didn’t know, Nick either if it would have helped him at that point, was that Callahan was Mister Big’s guy in the police department sent to make sure Nick took the big step-off, took the fall. Had been on the payroll for years and had drinks with Nick in the old days when he looked the other way when the dope was brought in down at the Battery. Johnny Blaze took over the operation and things got very quiet again except around the variety stores and restaurants of the city when the late edition with the number came out, except at the Club Nana where the hophead Mayfair swells did their nasty dope almost in public, and around the cat houses where every one of them now had a band in the front room playing be-bop jazz and every once in a while you would see Nora Riley still looking good come out to greet the customers. Yeah, Nick knew all the angles, all the angles except that one. All the angels now too.