El Paso

  “She’d suspect something immediately,” Xenia replied. “Oh, she might acquiesce once, but then she’d watch me like a hawk. No more freedom to go out on my own on afternoons like this.” She turned and made a slicing motion with her hand across Arthur’s nose. “Nez coup! N’est-ce pas, mon cher?”

  “Because you’ve done this kind of thing before?” he said peevishly.

  “No, silly, but I know Mama. She’s shrewd. There’s no way you could disguise the look in your eyes if we were to meet with her—nor I in mine. She would see you looking at me tout nu, and it would all be over. Mama is a noticer—she notices everything. She’d put me on the leash.”

  They had all been in Paris for three weeks, and it was the longest and grandest three weeks of Arthur’s life.

  He’d found out from Xenia where she’d be staying before they left England and upon arriving in Paris had immediately taken rooms a few blocks away from her hotel. He’d hung around there in the shadows for several days until he spied her and her mother at an outdoor café, which he correctly concluded was where they went in the afternoons. After several days of this, when her mother once left the table, he gave a waiter ten francs and a note he’d kept in his pocket since arriving, telling her his address and asking her to leave a note of her own at another café near his apartment if she would like to meet him sometime. She did, next morning.

  “But I can’t stand it,” Arthur said, “just seeing you for an hour or so—and not even every day, at that.”

  “It will have to do, darling,” she told him. “And now I must go.” She got up from the bed, stripping the top sheet with her and wrapping it around her figure like a Greek goddess. Her bright eyes gave Arthur a shimmering thrill of excitement, as if she were the only woman in the world for him, which of course she was. He wanted never to let her from his sight.

  “We’re going back to the Louvre in the morning,” she said. “Mama will be tired after that. She’ll take a nap after lunch. I’ll say I’m going out for a walk on the Champs. I’ll meet you at the Rive Gauche between two and three—à la bonne heure!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You must stay out of the picture for now,” Xenia said firmly. She was seated on a chair next to the bed, picking up her underclothes, and gave him a loving squeeze on his wrist. She had thought of all the Polish boys she had known back in Pittsburgh—nice enough, for Polish boys whose families had also made something of themselves other than fruit-stand peddlers or garbage men—but they were rough-and-tumble compared with Arthur Shaughnessy of Boston, Massachusetts.

  What Miss Walton’s School had taught Xenia Kzwalskci was that there was more to life than what her parents had had in mind for her, and in her four years there she’d developed a fierce determination to become something better than what was expected, which in her case was to find a nice Polish boy with a career and to bear a succession of Polish Catholic grandchildren so her parents would have a legacy of little ones bouncing on their knees for the rest of their natural days.

  That was not for Xenia, and she felt that this handsome, shy American, this collegiate man who she could tell was from an important and cultured family in the fabled and cultured New England stronghold of Boston was like a dream come true for the daughter of an ice-and-coal man from Pittsburgh. She had read of the great New England aristocracy, and Arthur seemed certainly to be one of these. His father owned a railroad company! It never occurred to her that his name, Shaughnessy, was one that, simply on the face of it, wouldn’t have allowed him to be a part of that rarefied class of Bostonians she’d read so much about.

  Dressed now, Xenia bent to Arthur in the bed and gave him a long kiss. She could scarcely believe she had actually given herself to him—and after only ten days. But it all seemed right and true, and so she did not stop to dwell on the horror with which her parents would have greeted her behavior, let alone the Church.

  “Bonjour, darling,” she said, blowing a kiss, opening the door.

  “I don’t know why you so worship the language of these people,” Arthur said as a parting shot.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “Well, for one thing,” he said, “how can you have any respect for a man who, when his house catches on fire, he starts running around in the street shouting, ‘Foo, foo, foo’?”

  She stuck out her tongue at him.

  FOR HIS PART, ARTHUR had never met anyone like Xenia, either.

  In his time with the Shaughnessys, he’d attended tea dances with the daughters of Boston’s lace-curtain Irish, smiling, snappy colleens who giggled and shrank back to their mothers and later, as they became adolescent, into the Church, so he could barely manage a kiss on the cheek. There were of course Protestant girls whom he’d met at day school or at his father’s bathing club near Gloucester, but they seemed stuffy and shy.

  Then, during his short, dreadful experience at Groton, when they’d had swaps with Miss Porter’s and other boarding schools, the girls not only ignored him but in some cases most obviously whispered about him—tuned in, as they were, by his ruthless and mean-spirited classmates: “He’s Irish,” they’d say. “He’s an orphan and a mackerel snapper,” they’d say. “He was left in a basket on the Irishman’s stoop.”

  In time Arthur managed to develop friendships with others like himself—the sons and daughters of wealthy Bostonians who were on the fringes of Yankee society like the Shaughnessys were and, because they weren’t born into it, would never be invited in, no matter how witty and charming they were, and so they formed their own outer circle with their own parties and dances at their own clubs.

  But in all of this, Arthur had never met a girl to fall in love with. Perhaps he was too busy to fall in love—or even have a girlfriend. Mostly, what hours he did not spend studying or working at the rail offices of the NE&P he spent in a top-floor room of the Shaughnessy mansion with his collections.

  When finally Xenia and her mother departed Paris several weeks later, Arthur promised to visit her in Pittsburgh on his return. When he got home to Boston the next month, there were numerous letters from Xenia, the last announcing that she was pregnant.

  The Colonel and Beatie had had great plans for Arthur that did not include the daughter of a Polack from Pittsburgh. For her part, Xenia was faced with the nauseating prospect of informing her parents of her condition. Arthur, being the gentleman he was raised to be, visited Pittsburgh as soon as possible and on his return announced to the Shaughnessys his intention to marry Xenia Kzwalskci without delay. In the uproar that followed, Arthur stood his ground for one of the few times in his life with his father. Beatie, if not happy, at least resigned herself to the event, and two weeks later, they all journeyed down to Pittsburgh in the Colonel’s private railcar to attend a Polish wedding.

  It became an awkward affair for all concerned, in no small part because, beforehand, Beatie had told everyone that Xenia was the daughter of a Polish count, which was not exactly the truth. At the reception, as the groom’s small party stood aside from the throngs of Polish guests, Colonel Shaughnessy coarsely wondered aloud whether they should have brought a pound cake. Beatie felt grateful that Mr. Kzwalskci had ordered an orchestra to play classical music (even if it was Chopin) and she managed a nice chat with Mrs. Kzwalskci about tatting lace. Afterward the couple took a brief honeymoon to New Orleans, which neither of them had seen. Then he and Xenia went back to Boston, where he joined the company full-time. All this occurred in 1903.

  Seven months later, Katherine Shaughnessy was born, and two years afterward Timothy Gray Shaughnessy came into the world. Arthur never regretted his decision, and as the years went past considered himself one of the world’s lucky men. Xenia’s finishing school in Pittsburgh had given her an abiding interest in literature, music, and the arts. They were a good fit, the Polish girl and the orphaned descendant of whatever-kind-of-immigrants, both just a generation or so removed from poverty and servitude. “Only in America,” as the Colonel was fond of saying.

&n
bsp; TEN

  In the drawing room Arthur tired of waiting. He walked outside just in time to hear Beatie, who had returned from a walk on the beach, cry, “Oh, no, John! Not before lunch!”

  “Pull!” the Colonel shouted, and snapped off two roaring shotgun blasts, powdering a double of clay pigeons out over the water. Beatie clapped her hands over her ears and Timmy Shaughnessy put his hands to his own.

  “Now you try it,” said the Colonel.

  The Colonel wasn’t at all satisfied with the way his grandson was developing, which he long ago concluded was a direct reflection on Arthur. The Colonel’s granddaughter, Katherine, going on thirteen and a true blond beauty, was coming along just fine. She rode with distinction, shot, fenced, and played a spectacular back on the girl’s field hockey team. Katherine was immensely well poised for her age—everyone said so—and, except for her blondness, it was easy to see the resemblance to her mother. She was going to be tall—was already tall, in fact—a “leaf-eater,” as the Colonel was fond of saying. She had gone immediately to the stables where one of her two black geldings was kept.

  “Pull!” the Colonel shouted again, and Bomba, who was wearing a seersucker suit and a Panama hat, let loose two more clay targets. Colonel Shaughnessy easily blasted them into little wisps of black dust.

  “John—must you?” Beatie wailed. “We were so enjoying the quiet of the morning.”

  Bomba glanced back, noticed Arthur standing on the terrace, and broke out into a big grin. Arthur had long ago concluded that Bomba understood everything on earth.

  Bomba had been hired—if that was the word for it—thirty-three years earlier when Colonel Shaughnessy fell off his yacht while drunk one night during a marlin-fishing trip in Samoa, and Bomba, then a sixteen-year-old dockhand, jumped in and rescued him. For this the young Samoan was rewarded with the splendors of the Boston world.

  The Colonel had read too many stories about anarchist assassinations in Europe and figured it wouldn’t be long before the practice reached across the Atlantic. As the owner of a railroad, he feared he would be a prime candidate, so he felt he needed someone around to act as a bodyguard.

  Bomba wasn’t his real name but the Colonel bestowed it on him because whatever he was called in Samoa was unpronounceable in English but one part of it sounded like “Bomba,” the name of one of the old-time kings of Naples.

  Bomba’s countenance was remarkably fierce but belied a more genial disposition. His grandfather had been a cannibal but Bomba’s favorite food was ice cream. He spoke little English, but understood more and, when he had to, probably could say a lot more than he let on.

  At meals at home, Bomba often sat on the Colonel’s left, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He never used a fork, though he did use a knife and spoon, except for soup—which to Beatie’s disgust he drank from the bowl and the Colonel forbade her to correct him. Around Bomba’s waist was always strapped a holstered revolver and he kept a variety of throwing knives in the lining of his jackets.

  Colonel Shaughnessy was stewing about young Timmy’s reticence with the skeet shooting . . . such a reclusive boy, bookish and tentative about horses and guns and other manly things . . . wouldn’t do—just wouldn’t do. If the Colonel hadn’t succeeded in making Arthur a mirror image of himself, he was determined to have a go at his grandson. He shouldered his gun.

  “Pull!” the Colonel shouted.

  ARTHUR, STANDING ON THE TERRACE with his drink, thought for some reason about Mick Martin, and wished he’d had his old friend down for weekend. He couldn’t understand why, when he mentioned inviting him, Xenia had burst out the way she had and paled. Arthur had kept his friendship with Mick through the years, though there were times their lives diverged and they didn’t see each other for months.

  Two years before Arthur entered Boston College, a depression closed down a shoe factory where Mick had been working and Arthur talked the Colonel into giving Mick a job in the railroad’s freight department. In summers, they worked together; evenings, they went to the boisterous saloons across from the yards to drink beer, play darts, and on more than one occasion to chase girls, an occupation in which Mick succeeded and Arthur often failed.

  Once Arthur met a girl, Betty, who was a secretary at a life insurance company. He took her out on a date to a show in the park and later they met Mick at one of the saloons.

  Then one afternoon Arthur was returning from school early on the trolley when he saw Mick and Betty walking on the Common, arm in arm, she leaning against his best friend’s shoulder and petting his hair. The trolley had turned a corner by then, so Arthur had to crane back to see them, not knowing what to think. The office where Betty worked wasn’t far from there; maybe they’d just met on the street and decided to take a walk. But obviously they weren’t walking like simply good old friends.

  Arthur quit seeing Betty after that, and didn’t blame Mick; he blamed her instead—she was just a passing fancy, anyway. Mick’s life had been hard and his own was soft, and he’d always felt a little guilty about it.

  One day, however, Mick made an astonishing announcement to Arthur.

  “I’m going to become a lawyer,” Mick said.

  “Why, for heaven’s sake? How . . .”

  “You leave the how to me,” was the answer. “And the why, well, it’s because lawyers have the power, you see. If you’re a lawyer, you can do anything. You know all the answers. You’re above it all. The only thing better is being rich.”

  To Arthur’s amazement, Mick managed to find a Boston law firm that let him “read” the law for four years and he managed to pass the bar exam. Arthur never knew exactly how Mick accomplished this moneywise, but suspected it had something to do with his employment with the Irish gang. Arthur heard rumors in the old neighborhood that Mick was in thick with a very rough bunch and part of his job was serving as a strong-arm man. He was said to be extremely handy with fists, knives, and even guns, but he was also said to have earned a reputation for fairness. It was even rumored that he’d killed a man.

  The year after Timmy Shaughnessy was born, Michael Martin hung out his shingle in a small office across from a small park in South Boston.

  By now Mick had become a fixture in the Shaughnessy families’ households. He wasn’t invited to the fashionable parties and dinners the Colonel and Beatie threw, which Mick good-naturedly understood, and even joked about. But he soon became a regular at Xenia’s intellectual salons and the free thinkers delighted in his good looks, irreverent wit, and a few even used him as a lawyer when they had a problem. Every few weeks he had dinner with Arthur and Xenia, and became “Uncle Mick” to Katherine and Timothy, always bringing them delightful little gifts when he came to the house. He brought presents for Xenia, too—flowers, perfumes, “whatnots” he’d picked up along the way. It had pleased Arthur that even his father would occasionally remark to him, “Say, where’s old Mick? We haven’t seen him lately.”

  Then Arthur would call Mick and invite him down to Cornwall on slack weekends.

  As the years passed, Mick began to establish himself as more than just an ordinary lawyer. Mick’s background excluded him from joining any of the old-line Boston firms, and even more naturally his first clients were people from the Irish gangs who found themselves in difficulty with the law. Eventually the gang leaders themselves began to use Mick for counsel. Then, in the summer of 1910, the same year Pancho Villa had seen Halley’s Comet, an event occurred that propelled Mick into a new and highly profitable area of the law.

  A leader of the principal Italian gang in Boston had kidnapped one Bobby “Bobbin Boy” O’Reilly, a onetime spinning-mill worker, whose numbers racket the Italians felt was spilling into their territory. A ransom of ten thousand dollars was demanded. Bobbing Boy O’Reilly was popular and also first cousin to the head of the main Irish gang and, with paying the ransom out of the question, the Irishmen went to Mick Martin for advice. He counseled them to negotiate and they agreed, but the first meeting nearly ended in disaster, with
guns drawn and threats hurled and the Irishmen storming away in a huff. Mick then offered to conduct the negotiation himself.

  It took nearly three weeks, but in the end Bobby O’Reilly went free and the Irishmen had parted with only two thousand and a promise not to encroach on Italian turf. Two thousand was about the average man’s yearly salary in those days. Mick got paid a hefty fee of five hundred and a party was thrown in his honor by the gang. After that, he became firmly entrenched as official arbiter for the Irishmen, and in time his particular services were in demand from other quarters as well. Kidnapping had become a popular pastime, and during the years that ensued he negotiated the release of kidnap victims from Trenton to Chicago. In time he arbitrated for everybody as well: Irish, Jewish, Italian, and even a Chinese gang in San Francisco. The U.S. Department of State even employed Mick’s services in a secret deal to secure the return of one of their diplomats in Guatemala.

  “Would you believe it,” Mick once said to Arthur, “I’ve carved me out a new niche in the law!”

  “Yes, I’ve heard you’re more in demand than Clarence Darrow,” Arthur told him. They were having a late lunch at McSweeny’s Restaurant and Mick was on his eighth highball. For several years, Arthur had been concerned that Mick drank too much, but his success in the law was undeniable. He now had a fine set of offices, a powerful Stutz motorcar, and a fine set of rooms at the Copley House.

  “Way I see it,” Mick told him, “if everybody goes away a little unhappy, but not really mad—then I’ve accomplished my purpose.”

  “That’s an interesting way to look at it,” Arthur said. “Just like King Solomon.”

  “You see, all it comes down to in my business is trust. When these guys try to work something out, nobody believes anybody. But when I step in, they know they’ll get what’s promised. Everybody knows Mick Martin can be trusted.”

  Mick was wound up and Arthur noticed he was slurring his words a little. To placate him, Arthur said, “I’d trust you with my life.”