“Look at this, Marsha, a real softie.”
“He’s got class,” Marsha mumbled. “Not a slob like you, Irish.” She looked at Mickey and nodded. “I appreciate this kid. I ain’t just a piece of meat.”
“It’s okay. I’ll find another place,” Mickey said.
“This one’s gotta heart,” Marsha said, pointing with her thumb. Her subtle change of attitude seemed puzzling.
“Stop the hearts and flowers and get the hell outa here,” Irish said to the girl.
The girl moved to the bed and bent to get her battered suitcase from under it.
“You should see that big ass move, tumler,” Irish said. The girl, paying little attention, put on a robe.
“You don’t have to go,” Mickey said.
“It’s not my room anyway,” the girl said. “It’s his racket. It’s a scam, kiddo.”
“For that you don’t get your cut,” Irish said, pushing a finger in the girl’s face.
“Does Gorlick know?” Mickey snapped.
“Won’t do no good. He don want no trouble with the help,” Marsha said, her gaze flitting between him and Irish. “Better don rock the boat. Right, Irish?”
When she turned to face Irish again, she looked at him with squinty eyes, her lips tight with anger.
“When the big shots come up this one will be just a little shit,” she said. Irish lifted a fisted hand.
“Ya lookin for it, Marsha,” Irish said.
“Yeah. Like your dick. Tough to find.”
“Fa that I ain’t pimping ya with the help this yeah,” Irish said, sticking a finger in front of her nose. “And if ya try on yaw own I give yaw face an acid bath, you unnerstand?”
“Big talker,” Marsha said, turning to Mickey. “Thanks, tumler.” She winked. “At least someone around here has feelings.”
She scowled at Irish and left the room with her suitcase.
“Lousy little hooer,” Irish said, hitching up his pants with his elbows. “No gratitude. Was me that got her the waitress job in the foist place, was me that woiked out the side action for the help.” Again he flipped up his pants with his elbows. “You like this room, tumler?”
It was, indeed, larger and airier with a window that overlooked the lake.
“This really was my room, Irish?” Mickey asked. “You owe me four bucks.”
“Dues, pal,” Irish muttered. “For that I put ya under my care. Now I give ya the tour. Ya tell the boss, it’s your word against mine. I been here five seasons.”
Mickey decided not to press the point. No sense starting trouble during his very first day.
Irish took him down by the back stairs. On the second floor, he led him through rooms filled with green felt craps tables, card tables with lights hanging overhead and one roulette table.
“They ever been raided here?” Mickey asked.
“Raided? You crazy? In Sullivan County? Cops are on da take here like everywhere, schmuck. Doncha know that da combination runs da city and da whole state? Whereyabeen? They got New Yawk in the palm a dere hands. Nothin happens dey give da goahead. Anyways, Big Al’s troop runs these games.”
“Anastasia?” Mickey said. He had remembered that name
from Gorlick’s explanation and his own research. Irish stopped suddenly and inspected his face. He seemed impressed.
“You know Big Al?” Irish asked.
Mickey held up two fingers close together.
“You shittin me?”
Mickey deliberately did not answer, staring instead into Irish’s green eyes.
“Kid Twist and Pittsburgh Phil?”
“You think they’d hire a strange tumler?” Mickey said, his stomach churning with the memory of his father’s beating.
“Jesus. You shoulda said.”
“You think Gorlick wants a problem like last year’s tumler?”
“Jesus. You know about dat?”
“Speaks with a squeak now,” Mickey said.
“Ya don fuck with the troop’s ladies. This shmekel he pops somebody’s quiff. Ya know how that goes down.”
“Believe me, I’ve been warned.”
“You need some pussy?” He tapped his chest with his thumb. “I put Marsha to work.” Irish chuckled. “I suppose you also knows the wops, too. The Dasher? Louis the Wop, Happy Maione?”
“You gotta know the scorecard, kid,” Mickey winked, playing the charade to the hilt.
Irish reeled out the names with a sense of unbridled awe. These were obviously his heroes, whoever they were. Mickey assumed that they were people in the “combination.” Since being hired, he had, of course, done some inquiring, but his neighborhood network was limited.
Most of his friends had been the good boys, the smart boy sissies who had a particular ambition or went to college. They were at the top level of the three-level pyramid. The lowest were boys who hung around the poolrooms, Brownsville bums, many
of whom were sure to end up as gangsters. At mid-range were the boys who hung around the corner candy store, of which there was one on almost every Brownsville corner. They were idlers but not bums, not officially, and not pushy or ruthless enough to be gangsters.
Through further research he had embellished upon Gorlick’s explanation. The so-called combination was an alliance of Jewish gangsters from Brownsville and Italian gangsters from Ocean Hill a few blocks away. This was surprising, since he knew that as a Jewish boy he was not welcome in any Italian neighborhood.
Because he went to night school, worked in the store and had a particular ambition, Mickey had little time to mix with the neighborhood boys. He had gone to public school with many of them, but they had inevitably drifted apart. Up until he had confronted those gangsters beating up his father, he had had no connection with nor did he realize the extent of the criminality of Brownsville gangsters.
He had discovered that the Brownsville combination were into loan-sharking, labor union extortion, gambling and prostitution and that many of them hung out around a candy store on Livonia and Saratoga that they called “The Corner,” and that the candy store never closed. The owner was called Midnight Rose and it was here that his father had borrowed the money from the shylocks in the combination.
But the real business of the Brownsville gang was murder. You hired them as hit men. Mostly they did piece work. If someone from the combination needed someone wacked for business reasons, they contracted with the boys who hung around Midnight Rose’s candy store. It was no secret, but so far the so-called reformers like La Guardia, who was now the mayor, and Dewey, who had been picked to clean up the racketeers and was
soon to run for New York district attorney, hadn’t been able to lay a glove on them.
But the strangest information he had garnered during the period between being hired by Gorlick and arrival was that most of those who had gone to school with him and stayed in the neighborhood were in awe of these gangsters. In fact, they worshipped them. They were heroes, even role models, defying the law, courageous and, above all, tough. You messed with them at your peril.
Proximity to them was everything for these sycophants. It did not take a genius to know that Irish was one of these and Mickey acted accordingly, larding it on.
“I was just saying to Lepke the other day,” Mickey said, remembering Gorlick having mentioned a man named Lepke. He had remembered later that he had read about a racketeer named Lepke in the newspapers.
“Ya know Lepke good enough to tawk with?”
Mickey looked at Irish and deliberately said nothing.
“And Joey A. Ya know him? And Frank Costello?”
“You know what happens to nosy punks?” Mickey said, with an Edward G. Robinson inflection.
“I ain’t lookin for no trouble,” Irish muttered. He squinted at Mickey and continued the tour. Beyond the gambling casino was another room with a long table.
“For serious troop business,” Irish said.
“Bet your ass,” Mickey replied.
Irish seemed to become reflective as he accompanied Mickey downstairs and through the dining room with large windows overlooking the lake. He pointed to a small stage at one end of the dining room.
“This is where ya do your shtick, tumler. And ya bettah be funny.”
“Maybe I’ll tie a chain around your neck, Irish, and play the organ.”
“Ha ha, tumler.” He grabbed his crotch. “The only organ I play wid is dis one.”
“I’m sure it earns a clap or two from every performance.”
Irish, missing the humor, shrugged and went on with the tour.
“Ya evah know anybody from the Purple Mob in Detroit?”
“You got a long nose for an Irish,” Mickey grunted.
“I’m Benny Markowitz for chrisakes. Irish is only my monicker. Cause I look Irish. People say there was a Mick in the woodpile.”
“No shit,” Mickey said, forcing a chuckle. Along with the rats, he thought.
When they came out into the lobby again, Irish moved closer to Mickey and held him under the arm.
“I hang out at ‘the corner.’ I never seen you there.”
“You testin me, punk?”
“Bet you nevah been on a job?”
“Not my cup a tea. I’m around for laughs mostly.” Mickey had deliberately fallen into Irish’s speech rhythms.
“Yeah, yeah,” Irish said. “You killem wid laughs.”
“Sorta.”
“I been a wheelman on a couple,” Irish said, lowering his voice. “You ask Reles.”
“You got a tongue, Irish,” Mickey said, watching Irish flush red.
“Whatayathink, Dewey’s gonna hear me all a way from Manhattan?”
“A canary’s voice travels far,” Mickey said, remembering an odd line from a gangster movie. He watched Irish squirm.
“You tink dat?” Irish said menacingly. He looked around him furtively, his head swiveling like a bird. Then he moved it in a quick, jerky way, a sign that something momentous and confidential was about to come out of his mouth.
“I been on two contracts,” he whispered. “I seen Pep slice a guy with a pick, a bad number from the baker’s union. Never knew his name. Takes da pick like dis.” Irish demonstrated with an imaginary ice pick, touching Mickey lightly on the chest and neck. “Bing, bing, bing. Ten, twenty times. Pep got pissed cause some blood spurts on his white-on-white shoit. Den we bury da fucker over in Canarsie. Me an Red Alpert. Ya wanna hear da udder?”
“If I gotta,” Mickey mumbled. Irish looked at him for a moment, not certain whether to continue, then probably deciding that it was just the tumler’s way of expressing himself. The fact was that Mickey Fine’s stomach was curdling with fear. Pep’s appearance belied his curiosity. He could have done it to his father without batting an eye. In fact, with a smile.
“A quick hit right in Borough Park in da middle of da day. Brawd daylight. I got da wheel, see, and dis guy Pipkin or Popkin or sumpin comes walkin cross the street. I pull up to da coib and Bugsy gets out with his gat wrapped in newspaper. Pop. Pop. Right in da heart. Back in da car and off befaw da bum hits the ground.”
“Nobody saw?” Mickey asked, repelled and fascinated by the matter of factness of Irish’s rendition. He searched Irish’s face for the slightest sign of regret or remorse or compassion. None were visible.
“Hot car, see. And da gat got no serials. We throwed dat down da sewer and dumped da car in Canarsie.”
“Canarsie again?”
“Who goes to Canarsie? That’s shit country.”
“You are something, Irish,” Mickey said, searching his mind for a reaction. “And I hear good things about you.”
“No shit.”
“I hear the boys talkin. ‘This Irish got a future.’”
“I told ya.”
“A good boy this Irish, they all say,” Mickey embellished.
“Someday they gonna give me jobs like Pep and da Bug. I’m damned good wid da rope, too. And I also know dem gats.”
A tremor of fear shot through Mickey. Some ambition, he thought. My son, the killer.
“People know a good man when they see one,” Mickey muttered.
Irish jabbed a thumb into his chest. “I ain’t stupid neither. Day trust Irish cause Irish knows da score.” He bent his lips close to Mickey’s ear. Mickey felt the breeze of his breath and the smell of it, something faintly sour and milky. “Section tree nine nine, Criminal Code, City of New York. Ya know what dat is?”
Mickey contemplated an answer. No, he decided. This was too esoteric to feign knowledge.
Irish studied Mickey with his bird-alert green eyes. Then he smiled.
“In this State, ya can’t convict on a crime by testimony from an accomplice.” Irish paused, proud of his rendition. “Got it.”
“Oh that,” Mickey said, not willing to surrender completely to Irish’s street knowledge of the law.
“Gotta have what dey call corrobo … corrobor …”
“Corroboration,” Mickey said, glad to have this tiny crust of redemption.
“To connect da guy wid da act.” Irish nodded his head. “See I knows dose tings, dats why dey trust me. Dey know I cut out my tongue first befaw I snitch.”
“Me,” Mickey said. “I’m partial to old age. That’s why a clam lives nearly forever.”
“No shit?”
“One thing a tumler knows in life, it’s human nature.”
Irish studied Mickey again, probably wondering if his remarks should enter his logic system, which was strictly gleaned from the streets, not from books. Irish again raised up his pants with his elbows.
“Wese can help each udder good here. I’m like a jack a all trades. Sometimes I bus tables. Sometimes I wait. Sometimes I drive. I know everting dat goes on here. I know who’s shafting who, who’s shtupping who, who shtups easy, who you keep your hands off. Anyting you want to know, I got.”
Mickey searched his mind for a specific question, seeking to validate the commitment. In this atmosphere, Irish could be quite useful.
“All right, Irish. I got one,” Mickey said. It had been on his mind since the interview with Gorlick. “Who is this Gloria?” He did, after all, partially owe his job to her.
“Gloria with the good gams and bazooms?”
“Sounds like the lady.”
Irish smiled broadly, showing a mouthful of reddish gums over bad, crooked teeth.
“Gloria runs da quiff. Got this part a Sullivan County sewed up. Got maybe ten hooer houses within thirty miles. Also sends out. Case the boys wants some. Dis here is da mob’s turf, all da action, gambling, hooers, the bank, the book, the weed, the whole shmear. Ya know, all the rackets.”
“That part I know,” Mickey lied again. “I just thought Gloria was Gorlick’s girl,” Mickey said.