Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 23, No. 12, December 1978

All You Need Is Luck by Jean Darling

Peewee firmly believed that money would buy anything...

Coffins held aloft by low trestle tables lined three sides of the long narrow room. From atop their lids candles stretched tiny flames to force back the shadows pressing down from the high-raftered ceiling. Beneath the candles, strips of aluminum foil protected the varnished wood from being scarred by runnels of molten wax. In the center of the floor lay an oblong of green baize.

It was Friday night at Murphy’s Coffin Factory on a quay along the River Liffey and Peewee Slattery’s crap game was open for business.

A ten-pound note secured the use of the premises for the night, blinding the watchman to any clandestine traffic that might detour into the storeroom on the way home after the pubs were closed. But the comfort of a tax-free tenner wasn’t the sole reason the watchman allowed the property to be defiled. The old man, superstitious and slightly simple, lived in awe of the abnormal and Peewee Slattery was unusual to say the least.

His head was large and capped with a shock of auburn curls, his eyes were blue beneath a high intelligent brow; his mouth was wide, his smooth-shaven jaw firm. His arms were long and wiry, his hands well formed. His lean body, broad at the shoulders, tapered to narrow hips. Seated at a table, Patrick William Slattery was handsome enough to turn any girl’s head. But the moment he dropped off the chair onto the floor he was revealed to be a dwarf barely forty-seven inches in height.

But while stares and whispers followed the dwarf as he moved through the streets of Dublin, within the candlelit room Slattery was king. Men knelt on either side of the green baize supplicating him, the god of chance, to favor them with a fistful of bank notes to take home to the missus. Their shadows flickered on the walls, imps lengthening to thrust gleeful fingers into the murk above or plunging malevolently to earth, as they bet, prayed, and cursed as they watched their money inflate the pile growing on the green cloth at Peewee’s feet.

When their money dwindled and the betting grew slack, Slattery would roll up the baize cloth, closing play for the night. “Off yuz go to your homes so,” he’d say. “Be seein’ yuz next Friday, God willin’.” An added “Maybe next week your luck’ll change” would assure the return of most of the losers. And not all the men went away broke. There were always a few winners to advertise the weekly game at Murphy’s Coffin Factory. A few winners were good for business providing they didn’t win too much, an occurrence easily avoided by a prudent switch of the dice.

Between Fridays, Slattery stocked up on candles. He acquired them one at a time from this church and that until there were enough to bum a night away. It seemed fair that God’s candles should provide light for the dwarf’s crap game, that they should shine on these other losers as God’s light had shone on him. Stealthily, Peewee would sneak candles into pockets he himself had sewn into his jacket for the purpose. When at last the coat was stiff with cylinders of white wax, he would scuttle home on his short little legs, always keeping a weather eye out for Detective Sergeant Patrick O’Byrne. The burly plain-clothesman had a knack for materializing at awkward times. Peewee’s criminal activities had always been minor, but O’Byrne had never been too tall to overlook them.

He lived above the old cattle market in the center house of a row condemned to the bulldozer. Seven little brick houses that had the misfortune to lie in the path of the housing estates spreading across Dublin’s north side, wiping away the Georgian character from the outer city. Slattery realized he was as much a chattel of fate as were the little houses — but with a difference. He would be saved, they would not.

Alone behind the cement-blocked windows, the dwarf long ago had hollowed out a cavity in the living-room wall in which to keep his winnings. Banknotes, counted and banded into hundred-pound lots, were stacked behind a flap thick with countless generations of wallpaper. A broken chest of drawers sagged drunkenly against the improvised safe, hiding the triangular tear from view. Every Saturday morning his takings were stacked away with other bundles that were to be the deformed orphan’s key to a new existence in another part of the world.

Money would buy anything, of that he was certain. It would even wipe the disgust from a woman’s face. It would add the stature denied him by nature. Money would buy him a beautiful wife with whom to beget children, long-legged boys and girls to make his life worth living. Yes, money would buy anything, even a family and respect, neither of which had been a part of the dwarfs thirty-two years of life.

Saturday afternoons, when the chest of drawers had been set in place against the wall, Peewee would walk along the North Circular Road, his body pitching from one side to the other. At the Mater Hospital he’d turn down past Dorset Street, past the church and the. Garden of Remembrance into O’Connell Street, past the Carlton Theatre and the post office and over the bridge. Tick-tock, tick-tock, his body swayed from side to side as he skirted the pillared bulge of the Bank of Ireland and crossed to the bottom of Grafton Street.

Once there, he would stand for hours gazing at the colorful posters of faraway places on the travel-agency windows. Someday soon he would be sunning himself by the pool on a cruise ship or sprawled on a beach or eating in some exotic restaurant surrounded by a loving family. One night soon he’d roll up the baize, wish everyone “Safe home, please God,” and disappear as though he had never been. All you need is luck, he told himself.

How funny it would be to leave the old watchman with palm outstretched for the tenner that would never come; and what a relief to abandon the furtive, half drunk chancers, to leave them flat with no candlelit room in which to bet away their week’s wages. There they’d all be, grumbling in the cobbled laneway outside the locked high-raftered room, getting wet in the soft rain, while he, Patrick William Slattery, necklaced with flowers, would be washing down breadfruit with rum-laced coconut milk on some palm-studded island.

Sundays he spent at home poring over travel brochures, dreaming of long-legged women, tawny Polynesian maidens with silken skin and hibiscus blossoms in their hair. Lovely creatures who would wind their fingers in his auburn curls and press their soft lips against his as they greeted him fresh from a swim, sea water glistening on his sun-browned body.

It was on one such Sunday morning that the toughs came. The door slammed shut, heavy shoes scuffed noisily up the stairs, and the three were upon him before he could move. They were young, with crew-cuts, and they wore wide-bottomed trousers.

“Where’s the ready?” one with a black eye asked, pushing Peewee back down on the bed among the travel brochures.

“It’s in the bank,” Slattery answered quickly. Black-eye’s fist slammed his head against the wall.

“Now would yuz believe the little runt’s keepin’ his money in the bank same as a regular full-sized yoke that isn’t sawed off at the knees?” the tall one by the door said as he moved toward the bed. “No, little sawed-off yokes keep their ready close by.” As he came close, Slattery recognized him. He was the watchman’s nephew. Peewee had seen him several times when he’d come to hustle his uncle for money. Once or twice he had stood at the edge of the candlelight watching the play around the oblong of green baize.

“Will a fist in the face be refreshin’ your memory, Troll?” the nephew asked Peewee.

The dwarf wondered how they had found him. Nobody knew where he lived. He had taken care each Friday to walk home by a different route, at different times.

The nephew sank his fist in Peewee’s stomach. “Where’s the money, runt?” he asked, taking a drag on his cigarette and blowing the smoke into Peewee’s face. The dwarf coughed and clamped his lips shut. “O.K., Ferg, he’s yours,” the nephew told the third man, who moved his lit cigarette toward Slattery’s cheek while Black-eye pressed open a switchblade knife.

The blade slashed the laces on Peewee’s right shoe before it travelled up the short leg, slitting the cloth of the trousers from ankle to waist. Angry red circles marked the progress of Ferg’s cigarette upward along the dwarf s thigh. It wasn’t long before the bundles of pound notes were gone, the nephew and his two friends along with them.

The day was paling to dusk before Slattery rose, bathed the burns with cold water, and put on his other pair of pants. He had spent the afternoon figuring out ways to recover his lost fortune, then realized that money could be replaced but these creatures had shattered his dream. It was vengeance he wanted — vengeance, pure and simple.

The following Friday at the usual time, he arrived at the Coffin Factory with the roll of baize cloth underneath his arm. He gave the watchman his ten pounds and moved about preparing the storeroom for the night’s play as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He watched the old man carefully but the man was just as open, just as helpful as always. Slattery was relieved. Poor scrawny wisp, he’d been wronged by him, Slattery, just as Slattery had been wronged by the nephew — more fuel to feed the fire of vengeance, if such was needed.

As the weeks passed, Peewee kept to a schedule, rising early and falling exhausted into bed well after midnight. It would take time to save enough money again to build a life elsewhere, and each Saturday new bundles of notes joined the ones already beneath the loose floorboard in the kitchen. Oddly, he had no fear of being robbed again. He had seen the nephew and his mates wearing new clothes and driving cars paid for with his money. They wouldn’t rob him again — yet. As long as the first money lasted, they would leave him to get on with the saving up of a respectable sum — then they would strike.

At last the day came when he was as ready as he ever was going to be and the number of bundles beneath the floorboards had grown to seventy-nine. The night was warm and dry, with no slick wet surface underfoot to trip him up. It was time to put the first part of his plan into action. He made one final check in the mirror before setting out.

The next morning the late editions carried the story of a body found floating face down in the canal near the meat cannery. It had been identified as belonging to one Fergus McGonigle of Summerhill. Foul play was suspected.

A few weeks later, when the rain had gone somewhere else to fall and the packets of money had reached ninety, Slattery set out once again. This time it was Macker O’Boyle, the one Peewee thought of as Black-eye, who was found dead. The body had been found in Mountjoy Square by a drunk in the early hours of the morning. A switchblade was imbedded in the heart.

By now the newspapers had decided to link the two murders beneath the streamer headline: NEW RASH OF IRA BRUTALITY ASKS CARDAI. In the story following, a tall blond man was mentioned; the police hoped he would come forward to help in their investigations.

By the time the so-called IRA murders were shunted to the inside pages by a spate of pub bombings in the North, the devaluation of the Green Pound, and u Middle East hijacking, Slattery’s winnings had reached the exact sum the three toughs had appropriated. Once again the dwarf prepared to go out into the dry still night.

Later, in the small hours before dawn, Slattery returned to the safety of the little house condemned to the bulldozer. Closed into the firelit warmth, he undid his belt letting the long trousers fall to the floor. With relief he unbuckled the wooden legs it had taken so many months of pain to learn to use. But it had been worth it, he thought, recalling the fear-rounded eyes of the watchman’s nephew.

It had all been so simple, like plucking grapes from a stem. The nephew had enjoyed his stout in the same pub as his one-time companions as though he alone among the three was somehow immune to death. Slattery almost laughed out loud when the pub lights flickered “closing time” and the nephew drifted into the street with the other late drinkers. A few die-hards hovered in the locked entrance as though in hope the publican, realizing the error of his ways, would rush them out an extra pint. Others trailed off singly or in pairs. The nephew flipped a hand in farewell and headed toward the quays with Peewee following a discreet distance behind.

Slattery caught up with him when he paused to light a cigarette halfway along a shadowed laneway near the coffin factory. His hand shot out and encircled the turtle neck of the nephew’s sweater.

“Le’ go!” the young man croaked, clawing at the arm against his throat.

“Turn around,” Peewee said, loosening his grip. “But don’t try runnin’.” He poked the nephew with the iron bar he was carrying. As the nephew turned. Slattery took up the slack on the woollen collar.

“Sure, lad, look into my face,” he said. “Ah, so you know me now, do you? The runt? The troll?” It was a treat Slattery would remember all his life, watching recognition spread over the nasty face.

Yes, it had been worth It. Peewee thought, rubbing the weals where the leather of the harness had bitten deep into his flesh, thankful that he would never have to wear the apparatus again. “It’s burned you’ll be,” he said to the suit, size 42 long, as he folded it into the grate. Next came the legs with the cleverly hinged feet, the leather straps, the blond wig. He tucked lumps of peat under and around the lot, touched a flame to the firelighter, and waited for the flames to burn away his hate.

On Saturday morning, all cleaned and pressed, Patrick Slattery checked in at the Aer Lingus counter at Dublin Airport. He had a reservation on the noon flight to New York and on across America all the way to Hawaii, the Friendly Islands of his dreams. His only luggage was a small suitcase. The bundles of bank notes were stuffed into a special pouch fastened onto his shoulder beneath his shirt. It was safe enough. The Irish were always kind to the handicapped. He wouldn’t be searched.

A pretty Ground Hostess whisked Slattery past the bomb checkpoint untouched. When his flight was called, she carried his hag to the seat-reservation desk. Being a monster has its rewards, Peewee thought, moving with the line toward the smiling girl in green who was checking tickets and alloting seat numbers. There were only two people ahead of him when a heavy hand came down on his padded shoulder.

Oh, Cod, not now! Slattery prayed, going cold. Don’t make me go hack now! Questions raced through his mind. Could the nephew have lived to identify him? No one else would have recognized him as the tall blond man.

“Peewee Slattery,” a familiar voice said.

“You!” Peewee turned to face Detective Sergeant Patrick O’Byrne. And his heart almost stopped. He knew. It was the candles. God’s candles. Sure I’ll buy you a million candles, God, his mind screamed.

“Is it yourself, Peewee Slattery?” O’Byrne said, his hand still resting on the dwarfs overstaffed shoulder. “And where would you be goin’, you bein’ a wanted man and all?”

“To see me sister,” Peewee said, the falsehood clinging to his suddenly dry mouth. “To see me sister in New York.”

“Your sister in New York,” O’Byrne repeated. “You know, of course, there’s a complaint out on you. It’s of a minor nature, but all the same I’ll have to be takin’ you in.” Bloody hell, he thought, removing his hand from Peewee’s lumped-up shoulder, I didn’t realize the little yoke was hunchbacked too. “It shouldn’t delay your trip more than a day or two,” he said apologetically, “but you have some explanations to make to Father O’Shea at St. Michael’s and a few other members of the Dublin clergy before I can let you leave. They believe a little restitution is in order. I’ve had my eye out for you, more or less, for weeks.”

Gently he led Peewee from the head of the line.

All you need is luck, Peewee reminded himself. With a bit o’ luck I can still be on my way.

“Funny,” O’Byrne said, “I almost missed you. It was just by luck I spotted you out here. I wasn’t looking for you at all.”