"An Author and a Gumshoe"

by Dennis Duggan

THIS IS ABOUT the Ginger Man and the cop who grew up two houses away in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx and then went their separate ways - one to become a world-famous novelist, the other to become one of the best-known detectives in New York history.

I have known the cop, retired Lt. Richard Gallagher, for many years. I met with J.P. Donleavy twice during his recent trip through the city on a promotional tour for his new book, "The History of The Ginger Man" (Houghton Mifflin).

Gallagher and Donleavy were together on a recent evening at the burnished National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, a piece of the city that time seems to have mostly ignored, and all to its advantage. The club is housed in the kind of 19-century townhouse that Henry James and Edith Wharton might have written about - and did.

While J.P. signed copies of his book, I sat at a nearby table with his sister, Rita, and his brother, T.J., a sculptor and painter. Also at the table was Gallagher, who brought with him an original copy of "The Ginger Man," the novel that so spectacularly launched Donleavy's literary career 40 years ago.

Donleavy's sister is a retired Lehman College professor emeritus who visits her home in County Wicklow when she can, but she still lives in the Donleavy family's white frame home on East 238th Street. She said this part of the Bronx reminds her more than anything else of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," a quiet enclave where friends met, married and died without much fanfare, and where living was conducted with a minimum of fuss.

Donleavy lives now on a grand 200-acre estate in County Westmeath. Gallagher, who has been a guest there, pulled out a picture showing the two of them dwarfed by the mansion in the background. "A lifelong lieutenant, head of the riverfront squad and the later of homicide in midtown Manhattan. It was there that his reputation with each homicide case he handled. He became a legendary cop, though he never fired a shot in all his years on the force.

Donleavy describes Gallagher as a "charming childhood pal," who lived two doors from him. "Of a strangely humane and fair-minded intelligence," he writes in his new book, "Gallagher, in spite of economy of means, paid fastidious attention to his clothes."

Donleavy says he once asked his old friend "as he sat over his whiskey at my fireside in Ireland...did he ever want one of his children to become a policeman like himself. And when he said no, I asked him why."

"Because, J.P., it gives you a bad opinion of people," Gallagher replied.

In a way, Gallagher reminds you more of the raffish Sebastian Dangerfield of "The Ginger Man" than of Dangerfield's originator. Gallagher has a quick turn of phrase that can catch you by surprise, and I suppose it was a quality that served him in good stead when he was inquiring into the criminal minds who made their was to his various beats in the city.

When he speaks of a pier on the Hudson that was finished just in time to see the eclipse of port activity, Gallagher calls it "the pier that missed the boat."

Donleavy, at 67, looks a bit like George Bernard Shaw, minus the argyle knee-high stockings. He was staying at the New York Athletic Club when we caught up with him. "We" were Paul Colford of this newspaper and myself. Donleavy has bee a member of the club since he was a youngster, and he regrets only one thing - it's granting admission to women.

Colford and I talked to the writer for two hours at the Essex Bar down the street - the bar looks as though it were transplanted from some upscale Irish pub with a burning fireplace surrounded by plush red-leather chairs.

Donleavy has been an Irish citizen since 1967, and he cherishes the kind of wisecrack you often hear in the pubs - "Cheer up or I'll crack your face!" - and though he feels he never got his proper due in this country, that feeling hasn't cut him off from his old friends.

At the National Arts Club T.J. Donleavy says a poem written by his father about Gallagher still pinned to a wall in their garage.

"With a raucous laugh / and a cockeye smile / He's just a lumb at heart / Just wait awhile."

No one is sure what the word "lumb" means. Donleavy pere was a firefighter with a passion for gardens. T.J. says Gallagher "did the conformist thing, but at heart he's a nonconformist."

Gallagher, who lives upstate now, is an author-in-waiting himself. J.P. wants him to write his memoirs. So does another literary friend of the gregarious cop, Richard Condon, who lives in Dallas. In Condon's new book "Prizzi's Money," the very first page has a reference to the detective - when a character named Dick Gallagher emerges.

"They all get on me all the time to write," says Gallagher

In Gallagher's copy of his old pal's new book, Donleavy wrote this inscription: "To an old friend, but not old, whose name appears in so many pages of one's memory. J.P."

Gallagher says his 12 years on the riverfront squad - 1958 - 1970 - were the best of his life. "They were busy as hell," he says, "but that was before the planes to over the travel industry."

Donleavy talks about his Irish friends, including a favorite, Brendan Behan. Gallagher recalls putting Sid Vicious into handcuffs and riding herd on the CBS murders. But aside from the company they kept all these years, it's clear they still enjoy each other's company.