The Gardener of Aria Manor Read online

  The Gardener of Aria Manor

  Copyright © 2014 by A.L. Duncan

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Other Yellow Rose Books

  About the Author

  Visit Us On Line

  **Review Copy Only -- Not For Sale Or Redistribution**

  The Gardener of Aria Manor

  by

  A.L. Duncan

  Yellow Rose Books

  by Regal Crest

  Texas

  Copyright © 2014 by A.L. Duncan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The characters, incidents and dialogue herein are fictional and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-61929-159-1 (eBook)

  eBook Conversion April 2014

  First Printing 2014

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Original cover design by Donna Pawlowski

  Final cover design by Acorn Graphics

  Published by:

  Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC

  229 Sheridan Loop

  Belton, TX 76513

  Find us on the World Wide Web at http://www.regalcrest.biz

  Published in the United States of America

  Acknowledgments

  For the heavens, that so gifted us libraries and Google, I thank you. I must also thank my Great Aunts from Chicago, who, when a child, held my undivided attention as I listened to their great, personal stories from the Depression; all of which the details escape me today, but the scent of their essence has remained.

  Dedication

  To my pal Trishy – for your unwavering encouragement.

  And to Mom – who gifted me with the best advice: “Never lose your imagination.” Your voice is the sparrow outside my window, the quiet muse in my ear.

  Part One

  Conscience does make cowards of us all

  Chapter One

  **Review Copy Only -- Not For Sale Or Redistribution**

  THERE ARE MOMENTS in one’s life, like certain scents from childhood’s first fall walk, that become embedded in one’s memory. So, when you suddenly spy a likeness of someone you thought quite forgotten, the past emotions and scenes you had shut away for so many years seem to flare up, like a buried fire that had never really been extinguished. For that brief moment, you wonder what life would have been like had the past been different. Neither cruel nor too kind, fate completes a circle we never intended on finishing. In one way or another, a circle is always completed. For Janie O’Grady, it started in New York. The year was 1932, and New York City was a very different place. Then again, Janie was a very different woman.

  Janie wasn’t known for her own graces and accomplishments nearly as much as for being the daughter of the wealthy banker and second generation Irish American, James Patrick O’Grady. Yet, on her own two feet she stood up well against the boys, even if it was unladylike. When she was young, her father always told her if ever a boy picked on her, she should punch him in the nose and sit on him. Well, just because she had become a grown woman, she didn’t think the rules had changed.

  A NEW YORK City pub near the Westies’ end of Manhattan was rocking with chanting, shouts, and laughter. A sinewy, twenty-something woman brawled toe-to-toe with a fierce drunk of hefty poundage. She looked like just another man wearing a cap, tee shirt, trousers, and suspenders. She even threw a punch like a man. But there was no disguising her slightly protruding breasts and soft, feminine features. She was definitely all woman.

  Dollar bills were clutched in waving hands, the cash crinkled into wads by white-knuckled observers. The bets continued to mount. Cheers and moans rippled through the crowd as the woman, struck by a solid blow to the jaw, back-pedaled into a host of arms.

  “Come on, Janie,” one observer encouraged, helping her to her feet. “Use your left hook!”

  “Give up?” taunted her opponent.

  With a scowling grin, she beckoned the man to come at her again. She ducked one powerful swing, then another, before jabbing him between the eyes and following up with a left to his jaw and then a right uppercut. Seeing he was stunned, she eagerly closed in for the kill. A punch to his gelatinous belly, a left hook to his ribcage and another to his chin were enough to send her opponent crashing into a table. The pub echoed with exuberant cheers and disappointed groans as the loser fell unconscious.

  All around Janie, men cackled as they sorted out their losses and winnings. Some of them slapped her on the back and followed her to the bar.

  The bartender handed her a mug of beer. “’Atta girl, Janie!” he said, beaming.

  Janie’s best friend, Frank, collected her earnings and pushed his way up to the bar. He thrust dollar bills into her sweaty palm, and she slapped a few bills onto the bar.

  “Sorry about the broken table, Stewart.”

  The bartender rested an elbow on the bar and chuckled. “Aw, it was worth it to see ’im ’umbled a bit. Keep your money. You earned it, for God’s sake.”

  She smiled and shrugged. “So, keep it for the boys. They don’t need to be throwing away money they don’t have in tough times like this.” Turning to the crowd, she called, “Drinks on the house, fellas.”

  Bodies swamped the bar. Janie and Frank managed to slip through the throng, and she stopped near her opponent where he was being assisted with his coat.

  Shoving an arm into a black sleeve, he stared at her as he caught his breath. “One of these days, Janie O’Grady, I’ll get you into my church. If it kills me, I’ll do it.”

  A smirk curled her lips as she watched him clip down his priest’s collar. “Maybe next week, Father.”

  Amid guffaws from the bystanders, Janie sauntered out of the bar, Frank close behind. The door swung shut, and the voices in the pub became muffled. Their footfalls crunched the snow-packed sidewalk, and breath hung in the cold night air like cigarette smoke, floating around light poles and parked coupes and sedans.

  Still sweating, Janie found the chill refreshing. Her coat was draped over her arm, but Frank, shivering in the bitter chill of the clear night, hunched his shoulders and shoved his hands into his coat pockets.

  Frowning, he lifted a piece of strudel from one pocket, its gooey icing mashed between his fingers. He tossed the strudel in the gutter. “Why do you throw your money away like that?” he asked, wiping his hand on his pants.

  “I don’t throw money away, Frank. I give it to friends.”

  “They’re your friends as long as you throw money around.”

  She smiled at his comment. Someone like Frank, who’d never had more than fifty dollars in his hand at one time, couldn’t understand what it was like living in a wealthy family. Frank was the son of a Jewish immigrant. His father, Abraham Ephraim, took pride in owning the best bakery on the Lower East Side. It was located on the border between the Jewish and Irish neighborhoods. A given name like Yitzhak could have been a problem with his Irish Catholic friends, so to the people on the street, he was Frank.

  “Are you going to lecture me again?”

  “Need I remind you, n
ot all of us can afford to have tea with the Roosevelts. We’re still in a freakin’ depression here.”

  “At least when I blow money, I know where it’s going,” Janie retorted, rubbing her aching knuckles and picking at the torn skin. “And where it came from. Unlike my father, who doesn’t give a damn where his money comes from or how well he can spend it.”

  Frank gestured to an old homeless man huddled in a brick doorway. “With all his money, you’d think he’d give more to the people who really need it,” he mumbled with disgust.

  Janie stooped down and draped her coat over the old man, who lifted his stubbly chin and grinned at her in recognition. “Janie.”

  “Hey, George,” she replied. “What happened to the coat I gave you last week?”

  “Donovan needed a coat.”

  Janie smiled at the old man’s kindness. “Well, keep this one, will ya? And next time someone else needs a coat, you send him to me. Okay?” She pulled her winnings from her pocket and stuffed several bills into George’s cold hand. “Here. Go get Donovan and the boys and get some coffee and a sandwich or something at Petey’s. All right?”

  The old man frowned. “Naw, you need your money.”

  “Trust me,” Frank said acidly. “She doesn’t need the money.”

  A toothless grin curled old George’s thin lips as he squinted up at Janie. “You beat Father Tom again, di’n’tcha?”

  Janie smiled back and patted his arm.

  George staggered to his feet with Frank’s assistance and joyfully stashed the money in his trouser pocket. “Oho, I woulda liked to seen the look on his face.”

  “They fought a clean fight, George,” Frank said. “Janie won fair and square.”

  George waved away Frank’s comment like a pesky gnat. “Bah, he had it comin’ to him, he did. Been boastin’ after mass all week how sure he was this next fight was a winner. He needed a bit more humblin’, if you ask me.”

  Janie grinned. “Well, I heard the church bells ring a couple of times, I have to admit.”

  “Better to hear the bells than to be struck by God’s judgment, I say,” Old George said, cackling as he dawdled on down the street.

  “Say,” Frank said, “has Father Tom ever gotten you into church?”

  Janie shrugged. “He beat me once. But that was when I had the mumps.”

  He chuckled. “I keep telling you, Janie, if you’d switch over to Judaism, you wouldn’t have to go through all the Catholic rigamarole.”

  Janie blew him a raspberry. “I don’t go to Confession as it is. Besides, Catholicism or Judaism, it’s the same God. The same dysfunctional, cantankerous old man with a beard, who apparently has fun flooding the planet and then is twisted enough to save a drunk and his family by making them put up with smelling shit for forty days and nights. Hey you, Moses! You killed somebody, right? You won’t mind if I ask you to drown the whole Egyptian army. Can’t stand their hairstyles anyway. I’ll send you a couple of memos to show the people I mean no hard feelings about their golden calf.”

  “What about your Jesus?”

  “My Jesus? I’m sure he was a nice guy. Talked a lot of crap that was way over people’s heads. Stuff like, if a seed lands on a rock, it’ll grow this way; if it lands on sand, it’ll grow that way; and if it settles on some grassy turf, it’ll grow up to be a science project. Point is, Frank, I get nervous at the thought of God sending a message to me via Father Tom. The last thing I want is your father bringing over some shaman spinning a live, squawking chicken over my head, then telling me I’m all better. I just can’t get that.”

  “It’s shammes, not shaman.”

  “Yeah, okay. Well, I don’t need anyone looking in on my life. That’s between me and God. Besides, I’ve already had the damnation lecture this week from Pop. As far as I’m concerned, my bedroom is between me and God, too.”

  Frank lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. “Everyone has a right to decide his own course with God.”

  Janie rolled her eyes at Frank’s sincerity. “That’s funny coming from someone whose father wants him to be a rabbi.”

  Tongue in cheek, he replied, “Actually, I thought about becoming a shammes.”

  The alley echoed with laughter and wild chicken clucking noises.

  Janie’s father had a place in Lower Manhattan not far from Greenwich Village. It was a two-story house like all the others on the street. They were packed like sardines, but nobody ever complained. All the Irish she ever talked to liked it that way. More space, they’d say, would only break up the clanship. The only clanship her father ever cared about, however, was providing the banking needs to the notorious Hell’s Kitchen Irish mob, the Westies. His biggest account was the Duke of the West Side, Owney ‘The Killer’ Madden, himself. He was a suave, good-looking womanizer. Janie hated him. That night Janie saw him wearing a suit like Al Capone’s. She knew Italian suits well.

  She quickly ducked down a nearby flight of stairs as Madden stepped out of her father’s house and lit a cigarette. Shortly, he and his men climbed into a vehicle and drove off down the street. She sneered as the car disappeared around the corner. There was something about the man who smiled, with blood money in his pockets, that turned her stomach. She tried not to think about the implications of Madden’s visit as she went up the front steps and went inside.

  The staircase in the foyer was always the first sight anyone saw as they walked in the door. It was a narrow house with a narrow foyer, narrow steps, and narrow halls. Despite appearances, James Patrick O’Grady lived well. He loved the color red, and the house was adorned with red rugs from France, red plush upholstery, and red lamp shades.

  Pungent cigar smoke and loud voices carried through the rooms, and Janie realized that her father was entertaining guests. The housekeeper appeared from the direction of the parlor and gasped at Janie’s bruised jaw and bloody cut she was dabbing at with a handkerchief.

  “Saints Mary and Joseph, woman, what happened to you?”

  “I’m all right, Eilis,” Janie said reassuringly.

  The large woman scrutinized Janie’s face with motherly concern. “Just look at you,” she grumbled, pulling the cap off Janie’s head. “And wearing no coat! You’re bound to freeze to death out there, child. Have ye got no better sense than an urchin? You’ve got to stop fighting, Janie. It ain’t proper.”

  Long brown hair fell limply below Janie’s shoulder blades. Eyes smiled between the lengthy bangs. “I won again, Eilis.”

  The woman stared wide-eyed at the handful of dollar bills Janie laid in her hands. “Woo—would you look at that! Well, why in hellfire didn’t you say so, child!”

  The two laughed.

  “Been fighting again, eh Janie?” came a strong voice from behind them.

  James O’Grady was a big man of six feet and weighed in over two hundred and sixty pounds. He loved his caviar and cream cheese puffs. He puffed ferociously on his Cuban cigar as he peered at Janie, a hand lodged in the pocket of his favorite red paisley smoking jacket.

  Janie glared at him sternly, hooking a finger at the door. “What the hell was Madden doing here, Pop? What did he want?”

  “He had business to discuss. You know how it is.”

  “He’s scum, Pop. I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”

  O’Grady brushed off his daughter’s concern with a grunt, and turned around to project his voice into the parlor. “I’ve got his account. I don’t need to trust him.”

  The pronouncement elicited chuckles from the men in the parlor, faces Janie had seen often. Most of the men were members of an older group of Irish immigrants that had been responsible for the war between the Italians and the Irish. The few who had survived those turbulent years had ultimately decided it was best to cooperate with the Italian syndicates rather than battle them. That notion had divided the younger generation from the older, relegating the older Irish to fade into the wallpaper, and compelling the younger ones to fight amongst themselves for leadership.

  “A little
talk, a couple of phone calls—right, fellas?” James chuckled.

  Enjoying O’Grady’s scotch and rye were Big Jake McGrew, Tom Tunney, and “Stout” Jimmie Sweeney. All acknowledged Janie’s arrival with cheerful welcomes.

  “Janie!”

  “Cracked ’im again, eh Janie?” came another voice. “Would have liked to see it.”

  Janie acknowledged the men’s smiles with a nod and sheepishly stuffed her hands in her back pockets. “Hey, fellas.” She followed her father to the fireplace. “You’re staying away from his dirty business, right, Pop?”

  He snorted. “Sure I am. I even wash behind my ears.”

  Ignoring the laughter, she whispered angrily, “I’m serious. He’s up to something. I can feel it.”

  O’Grady stared down at his streetwise daughter dispassionately. “I think you ought to wash up,” he said after a long moment. “Go on. Leave me to finish my business here.” Slapping a roll of money into her hand, he softened his tone. “We’ll talk about it later. Do me a favor. Go down to Addi’s. Grab me some corned beef and caviar.”

  Janie sighed heavily and frowned at her father’s wink.

  Big Jake raised an exuberant voice at her departure. “Nice seeing you again, Janie.”

  She waved in acknowledgment and went into the kitchen. Eilis was standing on a stool, reaching to the top shelf above the icebox. Janie turned on the sink faucet and splashed warm water on her skinned knuckles and the cut on her forehead. She turned around and leaned against the sink, blotting her face dry with a dishtowel. Eilis’s nose was in a jar as she counted dollar bills wrapped in a blue lace handkerchief. “So, how much does that give you now?” she asked.