Wicked, Wicked Women by Gardner Fox - Chapter 09

1961 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Historical Fiction

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Men like Mike Gannon and Black John Bennett made their living off the Erie Canal, forever battling one another for control of canal shipping.

Women like Moira Kennally—the wanton widow turned Madam -- and the Egyptian, owner of the notorious pleasure parlor, The Golden Tassel - made their living off men like Mike and Black John, offering their passionate embraces in return for the hard-earned dollars the canalers wrested from "The Big Ditch."

Together and apart they lived and loved in a mad search for power and pleasure during one of the most turbulent eras in the mainstream of American life.

You can download the whole story from the Fox Library.

CHAPTER NINE 

Dottie Alford was a crumpled ball of misery in the tiny dressing room down the hall from The Upstairs Club. Her mascara and make-up had run so that she looked like a caricature of the woman of fashion she was dressed to represent. She was moaning and sobbing uncontrollably. Even when Moira put a hand on her shoulder and shook her, she only wailed more loudly. 

"I'm going to kill myself! I'll kill myself! I will! I will!” 

“Stop it, Dottie. Now stop it, do you hear? You're a very lucky girl. You have Bill and—you do have Bill, don't you?" 

"Yes—I guess so. But—” 

She poured out words between her harsh sobbings. Moira was able to make sense from them, after a while. Dottie had sold the farm to buy a trousseau, giving up her struggle with Bill to get him to move off the canal and to a farm, resigning herself to being without him during the long hauls he would have to make. 

"B-but Bill d-didn't know that,” she wailed. "He s-sold his b-barge and b-bought all new farm equipment as a s-surprise for me. Oh, I could just die..." 

"A canal captain without a barge, and farm tools without a farm," said Penny, shrugging. "What a hell of a great start for a married life.” 

Moira bit her lip, patting Dottie soothingly. "Wait here, honey. I think I can do something about this. Just dry your tears and get ready for your act. Maybe I'll have good news for you." 

She would seek out Frank Bannerman. He was a real estate man. If anyone could help, he could. Strange how she always needed a man to lean upon, despite her hunger for independence. First it had been Richard, then Mike. Now it was the Buffalo society man.

Bannerman agreed to work, and work fast. 

At the wedding ceremony, Moira was able to hand Dottie and Bill a deed to the farm. "I bought it back as a wedding present for you," she told them, almost smothered by their delighted hugs. "Now get out of here before you have me bawling." 

Her girls and The Upstairs Club were her hobbies. The Golden Tassel continued to draw crowds night after night. More and more money went into her parlor safe, to be withdrawn and deposited to her account in the Buffalo Savings Bank. She was so wrapped up in her business dealings that even Kathleen became a stranger to her. The girl was like a living goal she had set herself, not to be enjoyed until it was attained. And she could not obtain Kathleen until she was ready to cut her ties with The Golden Tassel, The Upstairs Club, and Canal Street. 

At times, she felt she was on a treadmill. The days and the weeks went by so fast, merging into months and then into years, that she was always a little amazed when she went outside Canal Street to learn how the world was wagging. 

There was universal indignation in the air at the proposed Wilson Bill in the United States Congress, designed to institute a personal income tax of two percent on all earned money above four thousand dollars. Moira was more than indignant, for the thought of giving away two percent of her income—at a rough guess that might be in the neighborhood of one thousand dollars!—struck her almost speechless. She paid a flying visit to her lawyer in bitter protest, and was assured that the law was being attacked as unconstitutional. 

The world was changing all around her. 

The bitterest blow of all came with her sudden arrest, a few blocks above The Terrace. It was the morning of the day when Kathleen was to take the train to New York, the first leg of her journey to a girls boarding school in France. Moira had hired a brougham but the brougham had broken a wheel on a cobblestone and now she was forced to walk, hunting for another gig. As she passed The Terrace, she saw a uniformed patrolman stare hard at her, turn and begin to walk in her footsteps. She thought no more about him until he put a hand on her shoulder. 

"Hold up, dearie. You come from below The Terrace, don't you? From Canal Street?” 

"Well, of course I do,” she snapped. "I'm going to—"

"Shop?” he asked with an up-tilted eyebrow.

"I'm going to see my daughter off to Europe.” 

The policeman lost his grin. His hand tightened on the upper sleeve of her fashionable Empire dress. "That's enough sass, you two-bit chippy," he growled, and hustled her ahead of him, hand still gripping her gown, to the Delaware Avenue police station. 

She learned too late that a new law had been passed in Buffalo, forbidding a woman of the Canal Street area to come north of The Terrace. She gave her name as Daisy Frost to avoid publicity. If her name ever made the papers as the proprietor of The Golden Tassel, she would lose Kathleen forever. Her daughter would understand no reason strong enough to excuse the sort of life she led. 

She refused to seek help from Frank Bannerman or from Brandon Partridge. Cautious inquiries brought her a newspaper in which she read of Kathleen's leaving for New York, and from New York to Havre in a Cunard Line steamship. Mike Gannon—he was a famous man in Buffalo these days, with his fifty-odd canal barges and an expanding transportation empire which now included a dozen Great Lakes freighters—had been there to see her off. Gannon had presented her with a dozen American Beauty roses and a diamond watch, together with a check for five thousand dollars from her mother, who was unavoidably detained in Chicago on business. 

Good old Mike. A father, Kathleen had said. Moira bit her lip and wept. 

Thirty days later, Moira Creegan walked out of the workhouse with her chin high in the air. Kathleen was in Europe by now. Mike Gannon, the newspapers said, was in Schenectady superintending the building of a new warehouse. Frank Bannerman was in Niagara Falls on a real estate transaction. None of her friends were around to meet her, and her girls dared not come north of The Terrace. 

It struck her suddenly that no one—absolutely no one in all Buffalo—had missed her very much. Was she that unimportant? The pride which had been injured so badly during her thirty days in jail flared up again. Frank Bannerman was still in Niagara Falls. When he returned he would be treated to a little surprise.

His mistress would refuse to sleep with him. 

"But why?” he wanted to know two weeks later. "What in God's name have I done?” 

"You were away,” she explained sweetly, "when I needed you." 

It did not strike her that she was being unreasonable. 

Her moodiness grew in the months that followed. There were entire days when she remained locked in her suite of rooms, seeing no one, not even Penny Drayman. The girls could hear her striding back and forth, sometimes laughing uncontrollably, sometimes weeping in terrible loneliness. 

"She misses her daughter,” some of the girls said. 

Penny disagreed. "The woman is no spring chicken. My guess is her menopause has come. It makes her bitter and angry sometimes, sorrowful and repentant at others, proud and willful the rest of the time. Humor her, everybody." 

In her more energetic moments she would fling herself into the running of The Golden Tassel and The Upstairs Club. Her inventive mind planned small orgies for the club members. At times she gave them Roman togas to wear, especially made, and had slave girls chained to the heavy tables for their amusement. She conducted Casanova nights when the members must wear eighteenth-century costumes. Once she ordered that the guests were to appear as Greek and Roman gods, or satyrs and nymphs. The room had been so decorated that it seemed a forest glade. Statues of Priapus and Tutinus decorated the room, together with oil paintings of orgies and bacchanalia. 

Some nights when Frank Bannerman came to call he would find the heavy wooden door to her suite locked and bolted. To balance these disappointments, she often waited for him in her big double bed stretched out white and naked and fully receptive to his frenzied love-making. She was at once a challenge and a symbol, and to Frank Bannerman, a succubus who held him in fleshly thralldom.

There were letters from Kathleen every week to lighten the burden of her loneliness, and an occasional tidbit of news from some man who had been to other cities on business. 

The Egyptian was in New York City, Moira learned. She had set herself up in business in the West Seventies, and at latest report was making money hand over fist. The news infuriated her and for three days thereafter she was in a savage, morose mood.

Winter fled before spring, and became summer. 

Kathleen was visiting with friends on the French Riviera. She wrote that she was happy, meeting fascinating new people, and not to worry, she was not at all homesick. Moira cried for hours over her letter. It was her first realization that Kathleen was growing into a life of her own, that she was no longer a baby, despite the fact that her mother considered her still a child. What struck terror into Moira Creegan was the thought that the letter was an omen of the days that were to come. 

Time became an endlessness to the woman who ran The Golden Tassel. She withdrew more and more into the life she had built for herself on Canal Street. Long ago she had taken her things from Bertha Jennings' boarding house. Against the time when Kathleen would return from France, she commissioned Frank Bannerman to find her a fashionable mansion along Niagara Street or Delaware Avenue. 

Now she waited, counting the days, until Kathleen came home. 

It was Penny Drayman who brought the news, running breathlessly into The Upstairs Club room where Moira was planning a new entertainment for its members. She had to take a deep breath and put a hand to the bodice of her gown before she could speak of the news which so excited her. 

"She's back, just as big as life.”

"Back? Who's back?" 

"Lily Anders! She's taken over Frenchy Duval's old place. She's brought a dozen of her New York girls with her, too. She's setting up a Gold Key Club-copying us!” 

"Lily? Back in Buffalo? Why, she only left for New York last year—no, it was longer ago than that. Of course! That was the year..." 

Her voice trailed off. Four years? Five? Why, it must be all of that. So many things had happened since then! Kathleen was in Europe. Mike Gannon was on his way to becoming a rich man, though she never saw him anymore. She herself was now Frank Bannerman's mistress. 

She wondered if The Egyptian had come back to make trouble. Then she shrugged; Lily would make no trouble for Moira Creegan she would see to that, since she was so close to quitting The Golden Tassel. She had nothing to gain and everything to lose by reviving her feud with the dusky Anders woman. 

Mike Gannon smelled the smoke before he saw it. 

He came walking down Big Ditch Street with two of his barge captains at his back. His nostrils twitched and he drew a deep breath, shouting unintelligibly to his men, breaking into a run. As he rounded the corner of his warehouse, he saw the black, billowing clouds rising skyward. 

An instant later, flames shot out from five of his newest barges. Even as he pounded across the cobblestones, his mind was alive with suspicion. All five at once? This was no accident. A fire might break out on one barge, though safety rules were enforced from Buffalo to Albany by his captains. But all five? 

Others had seen the fires. By the time Gannon was at the pilings, half a dozen fire pumps were in operation. Years before he had insisted that his warehouse—men learn to use the hand pumps; now they were paying off for him. Steady streams of water were inundating the newly painted barges. Gusts of steam hissed and swirled through the black smoke as water sprayed the flames. 

"Who?" Mike asked bitterly. "Was it Bennett?" 

His foreman said, "Joe and Walt saw a man run from the Lucky Day, and went after him. Ought to be back by now, if they caught the bastard." 

Inaction put an itch deep inside Mike Gannon. He was in his forties, now, but he was a hard man, used to long working hours. He hefted a fire ax and went on board the Lucky Day. The damage was not as bad as he had feared. His ax battered down partitions. He roared orders for his men to wheel the hand pump onto the deck. - 

It took an hour to put all the fires out. By that time Walt and Joe were back, dragging a terrified man between them. 

To Mike's surprise he was a man he himself had hired two weeks before, named Bertie Farr. 

Grime on his face and hands, with his clothes singed from jumping sparks, the big Irishman stood over the seated Farr in his warehouse office. Joe had taken a handful of greenbacks from his pocket. They lay on the foreman's desk. 

Mike counted them. "Fifty dollars, you goddamn Judas. Who gave it to you?" 

Walt brought the back of a meaty hand across Farr's face. The smaller man whimpered and lifted his arm protectively. "Don't 'it me no more, guv'nor. Didn't want to do it. Man told me I'd get another fifty if I did it right." 

"A big man with black hair and a gold watch chain across his middle? Red face? Black eyes?" 

The small man nodded fearfully. Mike slowly clenched his fists. "Black John himself. I thought those days were over, it's been so peaceful the last eight, nine years." He shot a glance at Walt. "How many boys we got handy?” 

"Seven barge crews, loading now. The warehouse gang. A few more hangers-on I give odd jobs to." 

Gannon smiled coldly. "Twenty dollars a man for a little fight. Weapons supplied. Tell them that." 

Walt whistled softly and turned on his heel with a grin. Things had been too quiet along the Big Ditch lately. A good battle royal was years overdue. And to get paid for swinging a pick handle or a sap! This was a dream come true. 

Mike inspected every barge before he was satisfied the fires were out. He came up out of the hold of the Lucky Day and he took off his coat and ripped loose his tie. A man needed freedom of movement in a free-for-all. He took the ax handle Walt tossed him, and looked around at the grinning faces. 

"I never thought I'd be walking up this street at the head of a small army again," he told them. "I figured those days were all behind me. But if Bennett wants open war we'll give it to him.” 

They marched as once before they had marched long ago, the tramping of heavy boots behind him worked an echoing thumping in his heart. His fingers tightened on the ax handle. 

Half a dozen men were lounging in the Empire Line offices. They took one look at the huge Irishman as his brogan kicked in the office door and fled. The safe was left open. Papers were scattered here and there on desks and filing cabinets. 

"Pile 'em up," Mike told his men. "Paper, chairs, desks, everything in the middle of the floor." 

He helped until a name written on a ledger sheet caught his eye. Lily Anders. The Egyptian. Now what in the name of God was her name doing in Black John Bennett's account books? He roared a halt to all activity, and directed his men's energy in a hunt for more such ledgers. 

It took an hour and a half, but by that time Mike Gannon was armed with all the information he needed. His lips twisted wryly, bitterly, as he wrapped cords about the books he wanted. Then he struck a match and set the rest on fire. 

“We'll go on to The Golden Tassel,” he told his men. "I've a feeling the man I want to see is somewhere around those premises." 

Walt growled, "Empire ought to've showed before now. Isn't like Black John to let us ransack and burn his property without a fight.” 

Mike chuckled. "Maybe we caught him by surprise. He may be out gathering more men. I hope he is. Sure, it'd be a crying shame if I didn't get to swing this fine new ax handle against at least one Empire skull.” 

Moira Creegan sat a long time before her vanity mirror staring at the cablegram in her hands. She was trembling fitfully, poised between tears and laughter. Kathleen was coming home! By tomorrow, the train she was taking from New York would pull into the Lehigh Valley depot. 

She bowed her head, putting both hands to her cheeks, and wept with happiness. "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it," she whispered. 

Frank Bannerman came from the washroom in his shirt sleeves, toweling his hands. "It means the end of The Golden Tassel and The Upstairs Club, of course," he said. "You'll have to go into retirement." 

Her head lifted. "Have I enough money, Frank? Have I?” 

"Close to a million dollars, at last count. Isn't that enough to satisfy you?” 

"Yes, I suppose so." 

"Invested wisely, it will grow. I've gone over business opportunities with you. First mortgages. Stock issues. Certain bonds. You can increase your wealth, Moira. You don't have to turn into a little old lady just because you're leaving all this behind you." His hand made a motion around the ornate bedroom. 

He came up behind her, smiling down into her eyes. "You're still a very attractive woman. You could even marry if you wanted. I'd marry you in the morning if—if it weren't for my own wife.” 

"You could never divorce her, could you, Frank?" 

"It just isn't done in our set. Besides, she's a very wealthy woman. She's made me rather independent of business collapses and bear markets." He shook out his cuffs. "Divorce? I think not. If she died—but why bother with wishes?” 

“Why bother?" she wondered, and swung around to face the vanity mirrors. Frank was right. She was still a handsome woman. In the silk peignoir she could study her body at leisure. Her breasts were still firm, thank heaven! Her waist was small and her legs, though heavier with the years, were as curved and shapely as ever. She extended a foot and turned it, studying the white thigh and rounded calf. 

“I don't know any man I'd marry right now," she said. "But there's always someone waiting to be found, I suppose." 

His face clouded. He put hands on her shoulders. "Moira, I wish you wouldn't do any—" 

An explosion of sound swung them toward the bedroom doorway. Moira gathered her wrapper tighter about her body and moved into the front parlor. A voice was shouting from below stairs, a male voice and an angry one. 

"Who in the world?" she wondered, and went to the hall door. Hard, jarring footsteps sounded in the corridor. Suddenly indignant, she yanked open the door. 

Mike Gannon stood before her, half a dozen ledgers and account books under an arm. "Faith now, it's the lady herself. It's glad I am to see you." 

“Mike! Have you gone mad? Get out of here." 

“Ah, no. Not so fast, my fine lady. Not until I've had my little say with you.” Mike turned as Frank Bannerman came into the room, puzzled and vaguely alarmed. "Good afternoon, sir. You stay long in bed, it seems." 

Mike walked past Moira as if she did not exist. He put his account books down on the parlor table, turned and walked up to the society man. "You've had a lot of fun at my expense through the years, haven't you, Bannerman? Hiding out behind Black John Bennett and Lily Anders.” 

His hand lifted. The back of it went crashing across Bannerman's face, knocking the man backwards. Moira screamed and ran to Mike, hammering at his hard chest with tiny fists. “What goes on in that crazy head of yours, anyhow?" 

His glance raked her white body, naked under the peignoir. "I loved you once. Maybe I still love you, God forgive me. Anyhow, I thought you might like to know a few things about this gentleman friend of yours.” 

Bannerman was in the doorway, a handkerchief pressed to his bleeding mouth. His eyes were bright black pools of fury above his bruised cheeks. "Gannon, I'll see you dead for this. I—" 

Mike laughed at him. "Ah, will you? Faith, you give me the excuse I've been hankering for and not finding, this past half hour." He went up to Bannerman, caught him by his shirt front and the jacket of his coat, and drove a huge fist into his face. 

"This is for all the trouble you've caused me in the past ten, twelve years, you sneaking bastard. At least Black John is man enough to admit he hates my guts and has tried to settle matters between us man-to-man." 

The fist hit, and hit again. Moira was screaming, hands to her cheeks, staring with bulging eyes as Mike Gannon broke the other man's nose and blacked his eyes. Bannerman tried to fight back but he was no match for the big Irishman. After a while Mike flung him across the room to collapse on the thick Turkish carpet. 

"Mike, I swear to God I'll—” 

"Spare me your curses! Come and have a look at this ledger book.” 

"I won't look at anything you have to show me." 

Mike grinned coldly. "Not even if I tell you that ever since you bought out The Egyptian you've been working to put money in her pockets?"

Moira stared at him, horrified. "Now I know you're mad!"

"Am I? Don't be too sure. See here—” 

He opened an account book and held it toward her. Moira looked at him very steadily, trying to read his hard blue eyes, before she lowered her gaze to the ledger sheet. A moment she read, then gasped and swayed. 

"A transfer of a half interest in The Golden Tassel rentals to Lily Anders. You'll note the date, my love. Before your agreement with her to end your partnership." 

"I don't understand," she whispered. 

"Oh, now! Use your brains. Frank Bannerman owned The Golden Tassel before the date of the agreement written down here. Suddenly he gives a half interest to The Egyptian. Why, in Christ's name—except that he was paying her of?" 

"Paying Lily off? For what?”

Mike dropped the ledger. His fingers went into the soft flesh of her upper arms. "For playing a love scene with me the night you walked in and found us in the Morris chair. Ah, your Frankie is a smart one. He had everything worked out to a fine point. I'm back from Albany hungering for your love, ripe to the point of exploding. Lily walks into this room in little more than you're wearing yourself, right now." 

He groaned. "I'm not excusing myself. I'm guilty as hell. I admit it. I've paid a price for my guilt, though. But the whole thing wouldn't have happened if Lily hadn't been working for your precious Bannerman at the moment.” 

The society man was standing, swaying drunkenly. Mike pointed a finger at him. "Deny it, you bastard. Also deny if you can the fact that you've been a silent partner of Black John Bennett for upwards of twenty years. You and Bennett own the Empire Line together. You're as guilty as Bennett for burning my five barges today.” 

“Burning your barges? You're crazy. I distinctly told Bennett not to—” He paused—stricken, as Mike chuckled. 

"You're the reason for the truce between us, then? Soon as you got your hands on Moira here, you told Bennett to lay off me. You didn't want Moira feeling sorry for me." 

He swung on Moira angrily, flinging out a hand toward Bannerman. Moira was backing away from them both, fingers pressing into her cheeks, staring from one man to the other. Revulsion and shame tinted her face and throat a dull red. 

"To think I trusted—” 

The sound of a rock crashing through window glass brought her up short. She turned, staring. Below in the street they could hear the high-pitched scream of an angry woman. Moira ran to a curtained window and drawing back the white cretonne, stared down at the cobble-stoned stretch of Canal Street. Mike came and stood behind her. After one glance at them, Bannerman went to the other window. 

A woman in a black taffeta gown and a red pelisse was facing the front of The Golden Tassel. From the front doorway of The Golden Tassel, Penny Drayman ran to meet her. They slammed together in the middle of the street, fists flailing and fingers curved to claw. Penny locked a hand in the elaborate coiffure of the New York girl, hauling back, reaching with her left hand for the girl's cheeks. 

Two more New York women came on the run. They fell on Penny Drayman and began to kick and scratch. One of them fastened both hands in her dress and ripped it down the back. Penny was exposed in red-and-white striped corset and long red silk stockings. Instantly the three New York women began to maul and gouge her revealed flesh. They could hear her screams of agony even through the closed windows. 

Then half a dozen girls came out of The Golden Tassel. They caught the three New Yorkers and began fighting viciously, panting and cursing obscenely. More of The Egyptian's entertainers ran from the Gold Key Club. Moira saw her own girls hurry to meet them. In seconds the street was filled with scratching, pummeling women. 

Mike said, "Now look who's coming!” 

Black John Bennett was striding down Canal Street. A small mob of Empire Line roustabouts walked at his back, armed with pick handles and axes, the necks of broken bottles, knives and leather-covered saps. The Lucky Line men who had followed Mike Gannon to The Golden Tassel thrust away from the walls of the buildings where they had been loafing, laughing and egging on the girls. 

Mike whirled and grabbed the society man by the lapels of his suit jacket. "Here they come, you conniving bastard! Your men. And your toady, Black John. For once, you're going to be in the thick of the same fight I am!” 

He drew back his fist and drove it hard against Banner man's jaw. Blood spouted from his crushed nose. The society man tried to fight back. He picked up a lamp and hurled it. Glass shattered and kerosene sprayed the rug and furniture. His hand went out for his cane. A wrench of his wrist and a length of cold steel slid into view. 

"A sword cane," grunted Mike, and laughed harshly. "All right, you son of a bitch! If you want to play it this way.” 

His own big hands went out to catch up a bronze statuette. Gannon hurled it. Bannerman dodged, but not quickly enough. The heavy metal caught him in the shoulder and half-turned him. In that moment Gannon dove over the library table, scattering lamps and magazines. His fingers fastened on the cane wrist of the society man and his shoulder barreled into his chest. 

Bannerman went hard into the wall. Mike drove a big fist deep into his mid-section. The breath wheezing out of his lungs made a whistling sound. When he let him go, Bannerman sank to the floor, broken and bleeding. Mike picked up the sword cane and snapped its blade over the edge of the heavy oak library table. 

Moira followed his every move with bulging eyes.

Mike growled, "Here's your man, Moira darling. Now you'll have to excuse me. Black John will be looking for me down there on the street." 

Moira smiled faintly as she shrugged out of her silk peignoir. "Wait for me, Mike Gannon. Today it's Buffalo against New York. You say Black John is looking for you? I think Lily Anders will be hunting for me. If she isn't, I'm going to search for her!” 

Mike drew a deep breath, seeing this woman standing naked before him. She ran into the bedroom and through the open door he could see her slipping on a corset, pulling a bombazine dress down over her head, wriggling her hips to smooth it out. 

When she was ready she turned to Mike. "All right. I'm ready." 

"Moira, you stay here! It makes no difference if the police come for me during the fight. But—" 

She ran ahead of him into the hall and stood there, breathing fitfully. "Are you coming? Or am I going out there alone?” 

He ran after her and, side by side, they pounded down the hall and to the wide, curving staircase and then through The Golden Tassel out onto the cobblestones of Big Ditch Street. The fight had spread up and down the block. Black John and his Empire bunch were driving back the Lucky Line canalers. The Egyptians and her New Yorkers were getting the better of The Golden Tassel girls. 

Mike spit on his hands and rubbed them together. "All right, Moira Kennally. You wanted a fight. Here's one made to order for you!” 

Moira reached down and tore her skirt at its seams, giving her legs freedom to run. Then she moved forward slowly, tearing the sleeves from her dress. Her eyes hunted for The Egyptian but could not find her. 

Instead she leaped into a knot of girls surrounding Zizi and Hortense. Her fists thudded into soft flesh. Two girls went down before her. The bombazine dress was ripped to her navel and her breasts shook free of the fabric, but she was far beyond modesty. A tall redhead from New York was coming for her with a piece of broken glass in a hand. Moira went off her feet in a low dive, hitting the girl below her knees, taking her legs out from under her. 

As she landed, Moira whirled. Her hands sank deep into thick red hair. Lifting the girl's head, she began to pound it up and down on a cobblestone. 

Mike Gannon had picked up an ax handle seconds before he threw himself into the battle. Now he lifted and swung it again and again, delighting in the shock of contact. His voice roared incoherently but his men caught its sound and found new spirit in their tired arms and battered bodies. 

The ax handle he wielded like a sword, banging heads and faces until he cleared a path for himself and the men who formed a wedge at his back. His heavy brogans were slipping and sliding on unconscious men who had fallen at the first onslaught. As he fought, his eyes hunted for Black John Bennett. Not finding him, he roared the louder and fought the harder, hoping that Bennett would hear and seek him out. 

The handle was red with blood but still Gannon whipped it back and forth. The Empire men had begun to buckle. Sensing victory, Mike bellowed, urging his men to further efforts. He drove them as he drove the length of wood in his hand. He whipped them to an angry pitch with his voice and brought them fighting in his wake. 

His left hand caught a man and whirled him out of his path. The ax handle caught another across the back of the neck, pitching him senseless underfoot. A third rose up and suddenly Mike found himself staring at Black John Bennett. 

His shirt had long ago been ripped to shredded cloth so that half of his hairy chest was bare, with trickles of blood running down it. They pitched away ax handle and leaden sap, and came together with clenched fists. Bennett landed first, a straight left that rocked the big Irishman back on his heels. Black John came forward roaring triumph, but Mike swung a left hook to his jaw and a right to his midsection to bring him up short. Then they flung themselves forward at the same time, meeting with fists driving into bruised and bleeding flesh, feet slipping on the wet cobbles, grunting and cursing with hate and a cold, terrible anger. 

His body was moving, hitting and dodging, but Mike found himself thinking that all his troubles might well be blamed on this man who stood before him. Ah, and Frank Bannerman, too, but the real estate man lay broken and unconscious in an upstairs room of The Golden Tassel. He had settled his accounts, in a way, with Bannerman. His score with Bennett still needed to be taken care of. 

And so he neither felt the blows he took, nor the jarring impact of the clouts he was hammering at Black John. He stood suspended in a little world where he was repaying this man for the heartache of the years. Bennett and Bannerman were partners, and because Bannerman had made him lose Moira Creegan, so now he blamed Black John for his loss as well. 

Moira Creegan was flat on her back when she saw The Egyptian. Two of the New York girls had caught her by the hair and an arm and yanked her backwards. She landed hard on the cobblestones and was stretched out fighting for breath when Lily Anders came leaping for her, a high-heeled shoe raised to dig into her chest. Moira rolled over and came to her knees. The Egyptian had halted her foot in mid-kick Now she swung a rock in her right hand straight for Moira's head. 

Moira lunged forward, taking the rock on a shoulder but getting both hands on the left leg of The Egyptian, where it was exposed through the strips of her ripped dress. Moira opened her mouth and lunged. 

Her teeth sank deep in The Egyptian's thigh, some pagan part of her exulting in the screech Lily loosed at that savage bite. This dusky woman had flaunted her nakedness before her Mike. With her womanly wiles she had seduced him. At the moment, she did not hate Mike Gannon. He was a man, and weak where a woman was concerned. The Egyptian knew Mike Gannon belonged to Moira Creegan. She had deliberately set out to win him away from her. 

Moira bit again, and now she felt Lily tumbling sideways, fingers reaching for Moira's long black hair. A sharp tug thrust agony through the scalp yet she delighted in the pain. It roused her fury even further. Now her hands were long nailed claws ripping the exposed areas of the other woman's body. 

They rolled over and over across the cobblestones, kicking, raking one another with sharp fingernails. Blood ran redly from The Egyptian's naked thighs. Moira Creegan found her left eye was puffed and rapidly closing, making vision difficult. She clung to Lily, not daring to let go of her, afraid she might not be able to find her again once they were parted. 

Slowly she crawled on top of the other woman. Her rage - was a pounding aliveness in her heart. Her head rang with it. She bent and bit and gloried in the scream she heard. Now The Egyptian was babbling, crying out; trying to escape the woman who clung to her, the fight gone out of her before the pain that ran all along her veins. 

"Let go,” she screamed. "Christ, Moira-you're killing me! Oh my God-stop! Stop!” 

"Frank Bannerman hired you to seduce Mike Gannon, didn't he?” Moira sobbed bitterly. "He paid you and you took his money like the whore you are!” 

“Yes, yes, yes. It's all true but—stop biting me. I can't stand—that any—more!” 

Moira clenched both hands in The Egyptian's hair. She straddled her, legs naked to her hips, sobbing fiercely, "You were to make sure I caught you together, weren't you? Damn you, Lily—answer me!" 

She began to pound the head up and down against the cobblestones. She was whispering curses and screaming obscenities when a coarse blue sleeve caught her around the neck and dragged her back. She would not release her hold on the unconscious Egyptian's hair until a police nightstick beat down on her wrists. 

Panting heavily, Moira put a hand to her fallen hair, lifting it out of her eyes. A score of Delaware Avenue patrolmen were moving in and out of the melee, using their clubs, separating those groups of men and women who were still battling. As her vision cleared a little, she began to recognize policemen from outlying precincts. 

"More’n three-quarters of the whole damned force is down here today," a police captain told her. "The whole city's in an uproar.” 

Moira staggered drunkenly toward the paddy wagon as a hand gripped her upper arm, urging her along. Suddenly the hand went away and as Moira turned, she saw Black John Bennett reeling wildly under a flood of hammering blows that ripped into him from belt to forehead. She gasped when she saw Mike, bloody and with most of his clothes torn away. One foot was shod, the other was bare. Dark bruises ran over his entire body, from head to chest. His ankle was bleeding where a broken bottle had cut it. Someone had slashed his calf with a knife. 

Seven policemen had to drag him away from Bennett, who fell face down on the cobblestones and lay unmoving. Mike tried to fight the police, not knowing who they were, but half a dozen billies crashed into the back of his head. He stood like a great tree an instant before its felling by a timber-jack. Then he toppled, face down, onto the cobblestone, right at Moira's feet,

She stared down at him, her heart overflowing. Realization had come to her at last-on this long, bitter afternoon on Canal Street—that this man was her life. For years she had fought the sensual appeal he had for her body. She had siphoned off the love she bore for him to Kathleen, to The Golden Tassel, to her girls. She had been afraid to yield to him completely. 

Now she went to her knees in the dirt and blood of the street. She lifted his head and rested it on a scratched and bleeding white thigh. Her hands soothed back the thick, graying black hair from his forehead. 

At her touch, his eyes flickered open. "Moira, mavourneen. It was a grand fight while it lasted but—Jesus! The last time Bennett hit me he almost tore my head off.” 

Moira wept and laughed. "It was seven coppers hitting you at once with their nightsticks, darling." 

"You called me darling?” 

She bit her lip, not caring suddenly that her cheeks were wet with tears, and that her love for this big man was suddenly singing through her veins until she wanted to lie right down on the cobblestones and make love to him. Then rough hands were under her arms, raising her up, hurrying her toward the paddy wagon. Her last sight of Mike Gannon showed him struggling weakly in the hands of four burly officers, being dragged into a waiting Black Maria. 

Then she saw The Egyptian, almost naked and still out cold, being lifted and put in still a third police van. There must be a dozen of them, she realized suddenly, staring around her out of puffy eyes. 

Almost every precinct in Buffalo had a wagon here.

It had been a fight to make history.