Gangster in Town

Gangster in town

It’s not as if they were rich. No one in Quarryville was rich. It was 1939 and this small town was still in the Great Depression. Quiet desperation was the common disorder. But the Westlakes were different. The old man in his black shirt with red tie, and that short little beard like he just came form the barbershop. In the winter he wore a felt, German looking hat with a feather in it. Can you even believe that ? And there were rumors, something about the big city gangster, Jack “Legs” Diamond. Westlake was different for sure. I guess the rest of the family was sort of normal, except for that city way of talking.

Let’s see, Eddie must have been twelve, which would make me eleven. We were best buds and in sixth grade we were big stuff. Eddie was big and strong, if a little on the chubby side. He had a crooked smile from the scar he got going over the handlebars of his home built bike. I was the smart one, so it didn’t matter that I was skinny and the shortest one in the class. Most times Eddie would let me be in charge. We’d both been hearing our folks talk about Westlake, they called him Ben. They wondered how they could find out what he really did in the city, and why he moved way out here, and why he didn’t even have a job. Well, me and Eddie knew the adults would never do anything but talk, and we knew it was time for some detective work. Who better than me, with my trusty assistant, to get to the bottom of this mystery?

We had heard of “Legs” Diamond before. He was a gangster, but Diamond didn’t sound like any Eye-talian name we knew ( we liked saying “Eye-talian” cause it’s kind of an insult, but we can just say we thought that was how it was said. ). Westlake doesn’t sound Italian either, so we decided they must both be Irish gangsters. Now we had our first clue.

So Eddie and I started planning, or at least I planned while Eddie listened. Who do we know that’s Irish? Old Mr. McCann, always sitting outside in his rocker. And his wife might give us a soda too. So off we went. “Uncle Patty” as everyone called him was on his porch, sure enough, in the same brown corduroy pants, long sleeved shirt, and funny cloth cap that he always wore. We had to be friendly first, just “hello” and “don’t you like this weather”, so he wouldn’t know we were up to something. Then I asked, just casual, “you know about New York City, right Patty?” and of course he couldn’t say no to that. Then “Do you know about Legs Diamond?” And then he starts talking. “Sure, Legs is the sportiest gangster in the whole city” he says in his funny Irish way. “He even has a summer place just up there in the Catskills, about 20 miles from here. He’s a bootlegger, you know what that is?” I knew, but I let him tell me that he makes illegal whiskey.

If we were going to solve this thing, we would have to get in close. That would be tough, because the family was big, and it seemed somebody was home all the time. But Sunday was different. The family was Catholic, and the rule was that church came first, even if you were a gangster. If we were going to do some “research” on Sunday, we had to get ready. Eddie and I had played in the yard before, but this time we were planning an expedition. This time we went over there like we wanted to play, and we wandered around and cased things out. There were two good places to start searching, the cellar and the barn.

On Sunday morning we were ready. Eddie had a flashlight and I made sure he checked the batteries. I had a note pad and pencil, and a screwdriver in case a door was padlocked. I decided we should check the barn first, because it would be safer for our first trip. Going right to the house could be risky. They had church at nine o’clock, so we got there early to be sure they all left. They always all leave; it’s a rule.

We got to the barn, and I told Eddie I would open the door and he should shine the light around before we go in. He looked around and couldn’t see anything but bales of hay and some tools. But there was a door at the far end. I let Eddie go in first, cause he’s big.

Eddie pulled a pin out of the latch and slowly opened the door. It creaked, and we both jumped a little. Then he opened it enough to shine the light in. Two huge yellow eyes glared back at us, and Eddie dropped the flashlight. Then we heard a loud noise, like ah-ah-ah-ah. Eddie turned and ran, but I grabbed the light, and stepped in where I could see the horns of a very big billy goat. I knew people who have goats and most of them are small and not very scary. This goat was not small, and he had horns as wide as a car. Let me tell you, I followed Eddie out of there fast.

The next Sunday, we were ready to try again. The last week didn’t go so well, and this week was going to be harder. We had to get into the basement. The good news was that the basement door was in the back of the house so it couldn’t be seen from the road. The other good news was that you didn’t have to go down some dark stairs with spider webs. The yard sloped down in the back, so the door to the basement was like a regular door.

This time I took the flashlight, since Eddie panicked the week before. I wasn’t happy about that, being as how Eddie was big and strong, but what could I do. So just like last time we got there early to be sure they al went to church. Then we looped around to the back. We got to the door OK, but sure enough it was locked. Well, not locked like a house door, it was just a padlock. Eddie had the screwdriver, and in a minute we had the lock off, and Eddie opened the door while I held the light. I went in first and shined the light around. There was a big closet on one side, like a bedroom closet, but not with decorations on it or anything. Just plain dark wood. I told Eddie to open it, and it was full of jars with vegetables; carrots, tomatoes, beans, even beets I think, they were dark red anyway. I hope it was beets, not blood and body parts. We were about to leave when I noticed an opening to another room to the side. No door on it, just a different part of the basement. I poked the light in, and knew right away this was what we were looking for. There was a table and some big thing like a radio on it. We found the cord, but it wasn’t plugged in. But we knew it was how he sent messages to New York. Beside the radio thing there was a machine. It was kind of long and skinny, and it had a motor on one end. The long part was something like a railroad track, and in the middle of the track thing, was a part that had a short blade in it. I never saw a machine like that.

Now we had some real clues to start working on. We would have to find a way to listen in on the radio messages, and do some research on the machine. But we had a problem. School was starting, and we wouldn’t have any free time to do our detective work. Well, we would have free time, but you have to leave time for kickball, and going for ice cream sodas, and maybe even girls.

All that was sixteen years ago now. Eddie got a job at the local paper mill doing who knows what, and then he moved and we lost track of each other. He told me they had a machine there like the one we found, and it was called a lathe. I went off to Pittsburgh to study chemical engineering. We haven’t seen each other since high school graduation. During our high school years, our parents got to know old Ben Westlake. They found out he was just an insurance salesman in New York, and retired because he was sick. We never did hear how the gangster story got started. Eddie and I had more important things to think about. That was one exciting summer. Next month is our ten-year high school reunion. I hope Eddie will be there. I’ll remind him about the summer we were detectives.

© 2008 Jim Stay