Mick Ballou looks at real life

One of the great characters in the Matthew Scudder books is Mick Ballou who is the crime boss of the West Side. Half Irish and Half French he is a frequent presence in the novels. He owns "Grogan's" a typical West Side Irish pub of the old school. Just like one of the ones I used to hang out in back in the day.

Hells Kitchen was one of the last bastions of the Irish in New York City. The Westies were the last remnant of the Irish gangs like the Dead Rabbits and the Hudson Dusters that went pack hundreds of years in the history of the City. The last real significant gangster was Owney Madden who left for Hot Springs in the 1930's. The Italians pushed them out. There were still gangsters but they were concentrated in places like the stage hand union and the Javitts convention center. There was a resurgence of the Irish in the 1970's and 1980's under the leadership of Jimmy Coonan who had a relationship with the Gambinos. His right hand man Mickey Featherstone eventually sold him out and all of those guys went to prison. They made a movie about it with Ed Harris and Sean Penn.

In 1978 I started working as a baby accountant. One of my accounts was Buddy's Auto Repair of 11th Avenue around 36th Street. Buddy was an old school Irishman and I am pretty sure he paid off the Westies. At least these tough looking hoods would come to whisper to him and they would walk around the corner. Buddy used to boil out radiators in taxicabs to find the leaks and then they would weld them shut. Taxicabs were pieces of junk back then. Held together with spit and bailing wire. Nowadays they have computers and credit card machines and tv's in the fuckin back seat and everything is mandated and regulated by the government.

Buddy had two black dudes working for him. Eddie and Jimmy Gourdine. Eddie was a Vietnam Vet and a stone junkie. He would work in the morning while he was feeling mellow but would need to fix in the afternoon and would nod out on a chair. One day I wanted to take a piss and opened the bathroom door and Eddie was nodded out on the toilet with a spike in his arm. Jimmie looked just like the dude in "The Shining" and sounded just like him. Jimmie used to bring his lunch everyday and always ate some sort of animal part. A bird or something but nothing like any chicken I ever saw. He would always heat it up and offer me some but I would never eat any. I ate some disgusting things in the Chinese restaurants but eating the wing or leg of an animal I couldn't identify was not gonna work for me. You see I noticed that whenever Jimmie would walk outside all the pigeons would fly away. It was weird.

Anyway after I wrote out all the taxes every once in a while we would go out for a drink in a local ginmill that was very much the same as "Grogan's" where we would line up a shot of Jamesons and a Reingold back. There were quite a few guys who looked like Mick Ballou or Andy Buckley or some of the other gangsters that Lawrence Block sketches so deftly in his books. They were into their own business and never bothered us. Of course Buddy was a fixture in the neighborhood and he paid his dues. And his protection. When I read the Scudder stories I am taken back to those days in the late '70's and early '80's. It was a different world. A different life.

The stories in "The Night and the Music" take me back to those times. It is like I am sitting next to Mick Ballou. And the craic is good. The music is on the juke box. The smokey flavor of the Jameson and the bracing rush of the ice cold beer.

I can just taste it.

Remembrance of things Pabst

Another of the characters that is immediately recognizable is "Caroline from the Carolina's" who is the erstwhile girlfriend of Tommy Tillary who is the villain of "When the Sacred Ginmill Closes."

Now Caroline is one of those regulars you always meet in a bar. A woman who is superficially attractive when you first walk into a joint. There she is sitting all alone and she kinda looks good you know. She looks clean and healthy and has all her teeth. Well most of them anyway. She comes there everyday and has a story. They all have stories. The first time you hear it you can feign interest because you are thinking "Let me buy her a few drinks and I am gonna get laid." But you are making a big mistake.

Back in the day we used to hang out in Cousins on Court St and there was this babe we used to call the "Real Estate Babe." She was a short little blond but the rumor was that she was a killer in the sack. Now they had just really started the real estate boom in Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens back then. A realtor named Penelope Karagias went to all the homeowners in Carroll Gardens and told them they could rent their apartments for $500 a month to people on Wall Street. Now the apartments at the time were going for $200 to $300 a week but there were a lot of widows of longshoreman who were paying $50 and the homeowners forced them out as fast as they could. The Realtor set up a business where she would rent out the apartment and get a finders fee or a percentage of the first years rent from the person who was renting. It started a big business in the neighborhood although it didn't turn out so good for her when she got the wrong person tossed on the street.

Anyway the Real Estate Babe used to turn up in bars in all of the neighborhood with a different dude every night. Often it was someone she had rented an apartment to and who was looking at this as a bonus. What was bad about it was that she had a kid who was about ten years old at the time. He used to show up looking for his Mom and try to drag her out of the bar and the clutches of the latest dummy who thought he found a good thing. Whenever the kid showed up....my friend and I would turn to each other and say the same thing....future serial killer.

When she didn't have fresh meat she would turn her eye to the other regulars at the bar. She was usually so drunk half the time that she didn't remember if she had met you before. Or fifty times before.

Imagine this. You are sitting at the bar minding your own business. She rolls in about three in the morning and staggers over to sit one barstool away from you. She roots around in her bag and fishes around till she comes up with a $5 dollar bill that she pulls out of her purse. It is covered in dust and pieces of tissue and an old Life Saver is stuck to it. She dusts it off and cleans it and tries to brush off the wrinkles. She orders a double vodka. Waits till it comes to her. Picks it up. Looks at it. And drinks about 75% of it in one shot. Slowly turns towards you and goes "How you do-in?"

That's Caroline from the Carolina's. There's one in every joint in America.

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

TerriW said...

Hey, I was just about to grab this from Amazon on your recommendation, but it looks like it's a sequel to "8 Million Ways to Die" -- do you think these really have to be read in order? Or should I just go with Ginmill and not worry about it?"

Terri I would grab it as the introduction to Lawrence Block's books. In my opinion it is his best. Not the most suspenseful or with the best mystery. But it takes place early in the Matt Scudder's timeline. You see Scudder is an alcoholic and many of the books deal with dealing with it everyday. The series is a great advertisement for AA and what it can do for you. They are not at all preachy but show how it kept this guy alive. But the "Sacred Ginmill" was written about a part of Matt Scudder's live when he was drinking. And it shows what drinking can be. Fun. A lot of fun.

I mean there are the blackouts and the hangovers and the meaningless sex. He doesn't gloss over it. But the scenes of camaraderie and hanging out with other people who know the score can't be beat. I think this book tells all you need to know about what New York was like in the Seventies and Eighties. It is right on the money.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Remembrance of things Pabst

When I was talking about one of my favorite books "When the Sacred Ginmill Closes" I was reminded of something that kinda troubled me. You see the book is about drinking and hanging around in bars and the types of people you meet there. There is an after hours joint which is just like one I used to hang around in Sunnyside run by some hard men from the North. And there are a couple of really recognizable characters that anybody that hangs out in a bar will know. The disturbing part was I recognized the guy that was just like me. He was the murderer!

Tommy Tillary was this salesman guy who always had a joke and knew everyone in the bar and was a hail fellow well met. He was hitting on this one woman at the bar and was always around every night drinking up a storm and being a big mouth and a generally all around obnoxious guy. That was me in my drinking days. (Shut up)

I was even more of a big mouth blowhard than I am now if you can believe it. Most people loved it because I know a lot of jokes and I used to do everybody's taxes so I had a built in appreciative audience. Plus being a Hall of Fame tipper led to the place where I could do pretty much whatever I wanted and never hear a word from the staff or the owners. But I bet it could seem overbearing to some people after awhile. Not that I give or gave a shit.

It is kinda weird when you see a character in fiction that kind of reminds you of yourself. And not your better self. The part that in the deep dark hours of the night you are not so proud of. The person you are but not the one you want to be. Or to be perceived as by the people you are hanging around with. I guess it is the same when ricpic watches "The Pawnbroker" or Titus turns on "The Bob Wright Story" or the Crack Emcee catches "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes." I guess we all wish our better side is the side that everyone sees.

This book really opened my eyes when I read it back in the day when it first came out. The bar archetypes it described were people I knew and saw every day at the Ginmill. It lead me to some bouts of introspection and self-awareness. Which is what a good book can do for you.

Hey it might be free but it's not right.

While I was discussing Lawrence Block and my favorite book "When the Sacred Ginmill Closes" I went looking on-line for a brief quote I could use in a post like I do with the movie quotes that I love to link to messed up photos. Much to my surprise I found several sites where you could download the book for free! Holy cow! That can't be right?

I mean the author should be getting a piece of the pie. Now Baen books has a free download library but that is by the publisher and by the agreement with the authors. These other sites don't seem to do that. So the author doesn't get jack shit from this . I would never download a book from one of my favorite authors. I wonder what they are doing about this?