Billy Phelan's Greatest Game Read Online Free PDF Page B

of a lifetime of books, papers, and clippings that
attested to his fame and infamy, and two unfinished plays. Edward Daugherty left Arbor Hill forever after the fire and moved into the North End of the city, politely evicting the tenants in his own
father’s former home on Main Street.
    This was the house Edward Daugherty’s parents had built on the edge of the Erie Canal the year before Martin was born, and had lived in until they died. After Edward’s first stroke,
Martin moved into the house also, with his wife and son, to nurse his father back to independence. But the man was never to be well again, and Martin remained in the house even until now, curator
of what he had come to call the Daugherty Museum.
    Martin parked his car on Colonie Street in front of the vacant lot where his former home had stood before it burned. He stepped out onto the sidewalk where he’d once pitched pennies and
election cards, and the charred roots of his early life moved beneath his feet. Chick Phelan peered out of the upstairs bay window of the house next to the empty lot. Martin did not wave. He looked
fleetingly at the outline of the foundation of the old place, slowly being buried by the sod of time.
    Patsy McCall’s house was kitty-corner to the empty lot and Martin crossed the street and climbed the stoop. He, the Phelans, the McCalls (Bindy lived two doors above Patsy), and all the
other youths of the street had spent uncountable nights on this stoop, talking, it now seemed, of three subjects: baseball, the inaccessibility of the myriad burgeoning breasts that were poking
themselves into the eyeballs and fluid dreams of every boy on the street, and politics: Would you work for Billy Barnes? Never. Packy McCabe? Sure. Who’s the man this election? Did you hear
how the Wally-Os stole a ballot box in the Fifth Ward and Corky Ronan chased ’em and got it back and bit off one of their ears?
    Martin looked at his watch: eight thirty-five. He rang the doorbell and Dick Maloney, district attorney of Albany County, a short, squat man with an argumentive mouth, answered.
    “You’re up early, Dick, me boy.”
    “Am I?”
    “Are you in possession of any news?”
    “There’s no news I know of.”
    And Maloney pointed toward the dining room, where Martin found Patsy and Matt McCall, the political leaders of the city and county for seventeen years. Cronies of both brothers sat with them at
the huge round table, its white tablecloth soiled with coffee stains and littered with cups, ashes, and butts. On the wall the painted fruit was ripening in the bowl and the folks were still up at
Golgotha. Alongside hung framed, autographed photos of Jim Jeffries, Charlie Murphy of Tammany, Al Smith as presidential candidate, and James Oliver Plunkett, who had inscribed the photo with one
of his more memorable lines: “Government of the people, by the people who were elected to govern them.”
    “Morning, gentlemen,” Martin said with somber restraint.
    “We’re not offering coffee,” said Patsy, looking his usual, overstuffed self. With his tight haircut, rounded jowls, and steel-rimmed specs, this Irish-American chieftain
looked very like a Prussian puffball out of uniform.
    “Then thanks for nothing,” said Martin.
    The cronies, Poop Powell, an ex-hurley player and ex-cop who drove for the McCalls, and Freddie Gallagher, a childhood pal of Mart’s who found that this friendship alone was the secret of
survival in the world, rose from the table and went into the parlor without a word or a nod. Martin sat in a vacated chair and said to Patsy, “There’s something tough going on, I
understand.”
    “No, nothing,” said Patsy.
    The McCalls’ faces were abulge with uncompromising gravity. For all their power they seemed suddenly powerless confronting personal loss. But many men had passed into oblivion for
misjudging the McCalls’ way with power. Patsy demonstrated it first in 1919 when he campaigned in his sailor suit for