A. "It's not my business to guess."

Q. "As one of our leading businessmen, wouldn't you say it was odd procedure to withdraw an amount of such magnitude without any vouchers to cover it?"

A. "I don't know. We do a lot of entertaining in our business."

Q. "But these sums were not applied to entertainment."

A. "I wouldn't know."

Q. "The hiring bosses and boss loaders on every one of the Interstate Stevedore Company's piers has a criminal record. Could there be any connection between the pay-offs to these men and the unexplained withdrawal of one million dollars?"

A. "I wouldn't know."

Q. "As president of Interstate, don't you follow the affairs of your company?"

A. "Not that closely. It's only one of many enterprises in which I'm interested."

Q. "But you did take time off personally to request a parole for Mr. McGown and for Mr. Karger, stating to the Parole Board that you had jobs waiting for them when they would be released?"

A. "I was told they knew their jobs. That's all I was interested in."

Evidence was then introduced to show that one hundred and fifty convicted criminals were carried on the Interstate payroll.

Q. "Mr. McGovern, four years ago you were chairman of the Mayor's Port Committee to report on conditions in the harbor. Your general conclusion was that conditions were satisfactory. Is that true?"

A. "Yes, sir."

Q. "Did you investigate the fact that your own loading operation was gangster-ridden?"

A. "No, sir."

Tom McGovern had come up a hard road and he gave hard answers, his Yes, sirs and No, sirs chopping like ax-strokes into the scaffold the Chief Counsel was trying to erect for him.

When it was all over, no one in the court room had any illusions about Big Tom McGovern. He had been chipped away at, and his wife and his ivy-league sons must have paled a little, but he was still Mr. Big. He surveyed the room with a final, ironic, go-to-hell expression and stepped down. Outside his uniformed chauffeur and his Lincoln town car were waiting to rush him home to the penthouse overlooking Central Park, forty years and fifty million dollars away from River Street.

The morning Johnny Friendly was to testify, Terry Malloy came down the aisle with a police guard and was seated in the row in back of him. Terry had been under police protection since the night he had spent with Father Barry in the rectory. He had protested that he didn't want a police guard, but Commissioner Donnelly was taking no chances. He and Mayor Burke were feeling shakier every day, and if anything should happen to Terry now, it would only dig their political graves deeper.

In these strange, unexpected surroundings Terry felt numb and spiritless. He wasn't on fire to testify, but he wasn't afraid to either. He'd like to see Johnny get his for crossing Charley, but he wasn't too sure, now that he had time to think it over, that this hearing would really put the blocks to Johnny Friendly. Father Barry seemed sure though, and he had to admit that Father Barry was as smart in one way as Johnny Friendly was in another.

Johnny Friendly was a cold, proud, hostile witness, glaring at the row of Commissioners and the counsel staff as if they were all on trial and he was in the prosecutor's seat. That was the way he felt. Here were a bunch of phonies, politicians, cop-lovers, canaries. Big Tom McGovern, Mr. Upstairs, had pointedly ignored him when they had passed each other in the lobby outside the hearing room. But the Big Guy had shown them how to do it, tell 'em nothing, admit nothing, deny everything in a big, loud Yes, sir-No, sir voice.

Q. "Mr. Friendly, has your local ever kept a bank account?"

A. "No, sir."

Q. "Why not?"

A. "That was up to Mr. Malloy, our business agent."

Q. "You don't know why Mr. Malloy never deposited the union funds in a bank?"

A. "I don't know what he done."

Q. "As president, weren't you interested?"

A. "I don't think we had enough money to put in the bank."

Q. "Mr. McGown has testified that it was coming in at the rate of at least six thousand dollars a month, hasn't he?"

A. "I wasn't in this room when he testified."

Q. "But surely you know how much your own union takes in?"

A. "I don't pay much attention to them details."

Q. "Well, what do you do as president?"

A. "Run back and forth, see that the men do their jobs, keep an eye on the shape-up, handle the meetings, and things like that."

Q. "Well, you haven't had a membership meeting in over five years, have you?"

A. "Yeah, I think we had a few."

Q. "Isn't it a fact that one of the changes the late Mr. Joseph Doyle was campaigning for was regular meetings where the members would be allowed to express themselves? And isn't it a fact that this is one of the reasons why you had young Mr. Doyle put to death?"

Johnny glanced around until he located Terry in the audience and fixed him with a baleful look. Terry pressed his lips together and stared back at him.

A. "I don't know nothin' about them killin's."

Q. "I have only asked you about one, so far."

A. "Well, you can save yourself some time because I don't know about any murders."

Q. "Do you realize that you are testifying under oath?"

Hang on, look 'em in the eye and bull it through was Johnny Friendly's witness-chair conduct, and as he was excused from the stand, he was heard to mutter, "You bunch o' sons a ..."

The next witness called was Terry Malloy. He and Johnny passed each other in the aisle. Johnny opened his mouth in a sneer and Terry just looked at him coldly. Inside he felt a nervous quiver. How had he gotten here? It seemed only the other day that he and Johnny and Charley were watching a television fight together in back of Friendly's and having a few laughs.

"Mr. Malloy," the clerk was saying, "do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

"Yeah-right."

"I do," the clerk corrected.

"I do," Terry grunted.

The Counsel led Terry through a series of sullen answers concerning his own activities on the docks and then dropped the sixty-four-dollar question.

"Mr. Malloy, is it true that on the night Joey Doyle was found dead that you were the last one to see him before he was pushed or fell off the roof?"

A. "Brother, he was pushed!"

Q. "Yes, we'll come to that in a moment, but you were the last one to see him?"

A. "Yeah-I mean-yes, you're right."

Q. "And is it true that you went ..."

A. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I mean I was the last one to see him except for the guys who pushed him off."

Q. "And you were acquainted with those gentlemen?"

A. "You mean that pair o' bums called Sonny and Specs."

Q. "Do you refer to Richard C. Flavin?"

A. "That's Specs."

Q. "And Jackson H. Rodell?"

A. "Yeah, that's Sonny."

The Chairman of the Commission interrupted. "Have Flavin and Rodell responded to their subpoenas?"

The Chief Counsel: "No, sir. They are said to be out of the State at the present time and beyond our jurisdiction."

The answers came easier as Terry felt the sharp recoil of how they had suckered him into the murder of Joey. How could he have been so stupid as not to realize what they were up to when he already knew Joey was giving them a bad time, and anybody who gives Johnny Friendly a bad time has only two choices: to change his tune or stop whistling altogether.

Q. "Now, Mr. Malloy, did Mr. Friendly ever say anything to you that would indicate his responsibility for getting rid of Joey Doyle-for wanting to end his life?"

A. "Are you kiddin'? Hell, yes!"

Q. "Now, please, Mr. Malloy, in somewhat less exclamatory language, would you be good enough to ..."

And the truth, the raw, ugly, purging truth poured out of Terry, unrehearsed, unexpurgated, uninhibited, his own sins merging with the velvet-glove racketeering of his brother Charley and the ruthless reign of terror that in the name of Johnny Friendly had made the docks of Bohegan a one-man show-and a slaughter house.

A. "Yeah, and I could tell you about the time ..."

The Chief Counsel stepped forward. "Mr. Malloy, you may stand down now. I want to thank you for your forthright statements. I might say they offer something of a contrast to some others this afternoon."

Terry stepped down, excited. Talking about Charley and that last cab ride and how he knew it must have been Danny Dondero who took him out as a substitute for himself, these violent impressions fired off inside him like hot powder flashes, and he was half dazed and trembling with it when he felt rough hands grab him and shake him. It was Johnny Friendly struggling away from a Commission guard to shriek-spit into Terry's unready face: "You stinkin', rotten cheese-eater. You just dug your own grave. Go fall in it. You're dead on this waterfront and every waterfront from Boston to New Orleans. You don't drive a truck, you don't push a baggage rack, you don't even live. You're a walking dead man."

As the Commission gavel pounded and the guards wrestled Johnny Friendly away, he spat into Terry's face. Terry started his right hand, but someone grabbed it and he was pinned from behind and pulled away. There was a swirl of faces and camera flashes and reporters full of questions. It was almost like winning a fight and being rushed back to the dressing room. But Terry knew, jostled and overexcited and confused, he knew that this one was a lot harder, and it wasn't over yet.

Twenty-four.

STILL MUMBLING ABOUT JOHNNY Friendly, Terry was hustled into a delivery elevator and led out a back entrance by two uniformed cops who had been assigned to guard him. He had hated cops all his life and the sight of them was no more welcome to him now than it was before.

They drove him to his tenement in their police car. He didn't say anything, and they didn't either. They were Donnelly men, looking to the Police Chief for advancement. Now that the Burke-Donnelly-Friendly team was under fire, their jobs on the Waterfront Squad were in jeopardy. A new police chief might even investigate their own weekly handout from the bookies, crap-game bankers and numbers men who operated on the piers under Friendly auspices.

When Terry got out of the car he started to slam the door behind him, but the cops followed him out.

"What's the story?" Terry said, wanting to walk away from them.

"We're detailed to stay with you," said Patrolman Novick.

"Who wants you? Get lost," Terry said irritably.

The officers fell into step with him. "Orders, kid. You're hot. You ought to be glad we're with you."

"Aaaah," Terry snarled at them. "Y' make me feel like a canary."

They looked at each other and smiled. "Well..."

"No kiddin', you'll drive me nuts hangin' on my tail like this. How c'n I shake you guys?"

"We've got to park outside your door tonight," Thompson, the other patrolman said. "Tomorrow, if you still feel the same way, we'll take you down to Headquarters and you can sign a release. At least then if they leave you like a Swiss cheese, our boss'll have something to show the papers to get him off the hook."

"Ho, ho, very funny," Terry said.

Terry spent the rest of that day and most of the next morning in his room. Nobody called him or came to see him and it gave him a creepy feeling, as if he was sealed in a tomb, like being buried alive. He played three-handed poker with the cops, and one of them went out and brought in some sandwiches. Then he lay on his bed, sulking and wondering where the hell everybody was. He thought about Katie; he had half hoped she might come and pat him on the back for what he did. Then he thought: for what, for admitting I had a hand in the knock-off of her brother? And could've told Runty what he had coming, but didn't quite work up the guts to? And let Charley throw himself into the pot to give me a chance to jump out of it? Yeah, I'm one heroic sonofabitch. Katie ought to run in and kiss me all over, I'm such a goddamn noble character.

By noon next day he was too restless to imprison himself any longer. So he went down to Headquarters with Novick and Thompson and signed some kind of paper, blowing them off. Some of the detectives down there gave him the horse laugh. "How's the big reformer?" one of them said. "Did you say informer?" another asked archly. Terry glared at them and told them where to put it.

Just the same it felt funny-peculiar, walking down the street alone. He felt exposed. The Bohegan Graphic carried his picture that day with a subtle caption: Marked for Mob Vengeance? It was queer seeing it in print like that. It didn't really feel like him. Somebody with the same name who looked like him. In a way he still felt as if he could saunter in to the Friendly Bar and have a beer and kid around with Johnny. Actually he was being careful to make a wide circle around Friendly's. He wasn't afraid, or anything. It was just that it would be easier not to have to see any of those guys for a while. He had a queasy feeling inside him that he would not have been able to explain to anybody. He knew he had done right. He knew Father Barry had it pegged right when he said the only possible way to get Friendly off their necks was to pack in the facts so the guys who wanted a better shake could have a chance. What the hell, if Johnny and the rest of them were going to do these things, they had to take their chances of guys on the other side getting up and fingering them. It wasn't so much that Terry felt he had done right as that he had done what he had to do when they had pushed him to the edge. Still, there was some hangover of guilt in him, something that was just there, small but uncomfortable, like an infinitesimal pebble inside a sock.

He dropped into a bar he had never patronized, a few blocks in from the waterfront, and had a few beers. He felt people staring at him. He felt alone. A couple of customers walked out. Maybe they were ready to anyway. But Terry imagined that they wanted to get out of gun range in case that crap in the Graphic turned out to be true. He decided to drop in on Hildegarde. Fat Hildegarde always liked him. She'd sort of be a test.

Hildegarde said, "Hullo, mein sweetheart. I buy you a trink," and seemed to be her usual good-natured-slob self. But Terry was more sensitive to mood than he had ever been before and he wondered if Hildegarde wasn't forcing her gaiety in order to show him that everything was as it had been before. To make it worse, a couple of longshoremen friends of Pop Doyle were in the place and they pointedly moved farther down the bar from him, whether through physical fear or ostracism, who could tell? I go down the line for them and the Doyle crowd still treat me like a bum, Terry thought bitterly. And the other side's looking to chop me. Some deal.

On his way home he passed his chums, Chick and Jackie, with whom he used to have breakfast nearly every morning at the Longdock.

"Hi, Chick-Jackie boy," he called.

They looked right through him and kept on going.

Terry was jolted. Chick and Jackie, who were always laughing at his jokes and telling him what a fighter he was. Then his divided mind tried to reassure him. What made them so great, a couple of mob hangers-on, with not enough guts to go straight and not enough moxie to qualify for a spot with Johnny Friendly? What gave those two shlagooms the right to look away from Terry Malloy?

He passed a couple of real small kids, ten or eleven, playing stick ball, and he stopped to talk to them. He had to talk to somebody. He thought of Billy and the Warriors, and his pigeons up on the roof. That was it. He'd go up and talk to them. Sometimes it seemed to him as if those pigeons could talk. Swifty would throw his neck out and make a noisy cooing sound and Terry would swear he could understand what the guy was trying to say.