In New York, everyone knew some part of the story of the Brennan rise to wealth and power. In the twenties and thirties, before La Guardia became mayor, the buses feeding New York’s subway system were operated by free-lance owner-drivers who fought one another with their fists for passengers who paid five cents a ride. Because of the Depression, people facing starvation, the violence sometimes escalated to sabotage, arson, and gunplay. In Queens, the most successful of the bare-knuckle entrepreneurs was a man named Brady, a widower who operated six buses in Jackson Heights and Astoria. One of his drivers was a big boy from Brooklyn named Jim Brennan, who became his boss’s pride and joy one winter morning by putting a competitor temporarily out of business with one punch through the guy’s new, laminated safety-glass windshield. The punch busted Brennan’s hand, and when the guy got out of the bus, Brennan had to fight him with his left hand only. The night of Devlin’s wedding to Maryellen, one of Brennan’s oldest advisors remembered the fight clearly enough to regale Devlin and the Brennan pups with an account of it.

“The old man’s left was as good as his right, and he was pissed at the guy for even thinking he could set foot out of that bus. Brennan blocked the guy’s first punch, a right, so easily, completely, that the guy’s jaw dropped—and that’s where Brennan hit him, without a hitch, coming out of the block with a smooth, almost nonchalant chop downward. You could hear the bone break down the street, somebody said. That’s when the old man smiled. You don’t mess with Jim Brennan, not now, not then, not ever. You could see that the guy’s jaw was broken, it hung down off his face like a bag of dimes. The old man broke his nose next. He was fighting with one hand, remember, his left hand. The guy pulled his arms up to protect his face, and Bill hit the guy in the belly so hard he came right up off the pavement, doubled over, finished. He hit the ground like a dead animal. Later the guy spent a month in the hospital with internal bleeding. He never would say who did it, even though the story was all over the city.”