Sugar Pop Moon (27 page)

No respectable young woman would be comfortable walking the streets of Hoboken alone at night. Dorothy didn't dare turn to look at the vagrants and prostitutes that loitered on the city's streets. Lifting Jersey to her shoulder, she hugged his weightless body with her hand. His back was no bigger than the size of her palm.

Jersey let out a wail that Dorothy was sure could be heard on both ends of Washington Street. She stroked his head and whispered into his ear. “It's okay now. You'll see.”

The baby dribbled onto the front of her dress, his saliva forming a round, wet bubble on the cotton above her left breast.

After leaving Ernie, Dorothy had gone back to the Hoboken train station but had no intention of boarding a train. She'd seen the way Ernie held Jersey and knew she'd found her answer. Sitting on a wooden bench in the cavernous room, she'd waited until the sun had gone down before returning to Grand Street, where the knot of men still loafed on the corner, chomping on stogies and spitting tobacco juice onto the dirt.

Her plan was straightforward, and she didn't allow herself time to change it. She would walk up the stairway next to the cigar store and do something no confession could ever wash from her soul: abandon her infant son into the dark brown calloused hands of a professional prizefighter—who also happened to be the only person she knew who could teach a motherless mulatto child to survive in a violent, hateful world.

My father walks two paces in front of me as we make our way down Weatherbee Road. He's swinging himself on a pair of crutches to avoid leaning on his bandaged left leg. It's half past two on Christmas Eve and light flurries are dusting the city of Hartford. We pass an elderly man and a young girl hanging Christmas lights on a red brick house and I wonder if they'd be interested in swapping places with a one-legged boxer and his one-armed albino son.

We stop at number 1116, a two-level Tudor with a conical slate roof that gives the house the look of a miniature castle. It's the residence of Edward Albright, the renowned gangster who runs just about every gambling parlor in the Northeast. I just found out that Albright's the button-pusher who stole the champ's title twenty-four years ago. I've also just learned that he's my mother's father.

For years, the champ has told me that he never met my mother's parents. I can't get angry with him because I know why he lied. He didn't want me coming here for favors, just like he's doing now.

“This is it,” the champ says, his tone oozing guilt and misgivings.

Part of me is itching to meet Albright to help me figure out who I am. On the other hand, I'd be just as happy to get in the Auburn and head back to the Cozy Cottages and hatch a different plan. I've heard nothing good about Albright, not from my father, not from anybody on the street, not even from crooks like Jimmy. From what I've put together, Albright took over Richard Canfield's gambling parlors after Canfield was picked up by the New York DA's office. Apparently, Albright had a flair for the business. Once he took control, he brought in more muscle, put more cops on his payroll, and opened more casinos. Even hammers like Jimmy are afraid to cross Albright—they know he staffs the nastiest stable of hatchet men north of DC.

“You sure this'll work?” I ask my father. I'm not in the mood to cross another gangster. The champ and I are running out of working body parts.

“The man said he owed me,” my father says, as if Albright has been sitting at home, waiting to live up to a promise he made more than two decades ago. “Besides, even he can't turn his back on his own grandson.”

The champ makes his way up the front walk, his crutches leaving an asymmetrical pattern of two dots and a single footprint in the snow behind him. When we reach the door, he rests his right crutch on the iron railing and raps at the knocker. I stare at the door, shivering, as the falling snow bites into my ears and the back of my neck.

A small, sixtyish Negro woman opens the arched wooden door. She's carrying a bucket of dirty water and the cotton handkerchief wrapped around her head accents the bright whites of her eyes. Her cobbler's apron is grimy around the knees, and when I picture her scrubbing Albright's floors I'm ashamed to be of his blood. If I were in Albright's shoes, I'd give her a wad of my dirty money to buy herself an evening dress. Of course, my pockets are now as empty as the pouches of her smock.

She scans my raw face, my green eyes, my yellow hair. Then she takes a gander at our worked-over bodies. She steps backward, and I don't blame her. The champ and I look as if we crawled off a battlefield, which, I suppose, we did. She asks us what we want.

“We're here to see Mr. Albright,” my father says.

“Who are you?”

“I'm an old friend of his.” The champ flashes a warm smile at the maid, but she's not buying it.

“Just a minute,” she says. She goes back inside and shuts the door behind her, leaving us in the cold.

Time stretches as we wait in silence, the snow powdering our heads and shoulders. My cheeks are burning, but I ignore the pain and try to figure out what the hell I'm going to say to Albright.

The door opens and a tall white-haired man stands in the foyer. He's wearing a red plaid bathrobe and brown leather slippers, and despite the fact that we've obviously gotten him on an off-day, he's clean-shaven and has his hair slicked into a smooth helmet. The lids over his blue eyes sag and a wad of loose skin hangs down from under his chin. He's giving off the scent of fresh tonic and his cheeks are a healthy, rosy red. I can't help but wonder why, if this is my grandfather, I couldn't have inherited his pigmented genes.

My father looks him square in the eye. “Edward Albright,” he says. It sounds more like an accusation than a question.

“Ernie Leo,” Albright says back.

He's either got an excellent memory or the champ is in better shape than I thought. Either way, it's clear from the look on Albright's face that he doesn't view this as a long-awaited homecoming. “I never expected to see you again, especially not at my front door.”

My father shuffles for balance on his crutches. Albright doesn't help him.

“I'm not happy about bein' here either,” the champ says. “But we need your help.”

Albright's got his arms across his chest—he's already saying no. “So the upstanding champ winds up needing a scum like me.”

Knowing my father, he's itching to walk back down the snowy steps, but he's standing strong because Albright could be my last chance at licking Gazzara. I'd tell the champ to walk away with his dignity intact, but we've got nowhere to turn after this.

“I'm collectin' a debt,” the champ says. “I gave you the Higgins title, remember?”

“I remember. The title, that is. Not the debt.”

The champ shakes his head. “A man's only as good as his word. I think maybe you said that, too.”

“I'm not saying I'll break the deal,” Albright says curtly. “I'm saying I don't remember making it.”

Leaning forward on his crutches, the champ looks Albright dead in the eye. “You told me to come callin' and that's what I'm doin'.”

Albright puts his hand up to stop my father from going on. “If I owe, I'll pay,” he says. Then he opens the door and motions for my father and me to enter.

The champ hops into Albright's home using his crutches to swing his legs into the entry foyer. I linger behind, wondering how in God's name we ended up here.

Albright sees my hesitation. “You too, Snowball,” he says, pointing into the house with his thumb.

I don't know where the hell he heard my name but one thing is clear: I'm the worst underground operator to grace the streets of Harlem since the invention of moonshine.

My father and I lean back in dark brown leather club chairs as Albright splashes some brandy into twinkling crystal snifters. Just watching him tip the bottle makes me miss the simplicity of pouring moon for the Joes back at the Pour House.

Albright's house is more impressive on the inside than it is from the street—and considerably more comfortable than the Cozy Cottages. The walls are lined with bookshelves and a stepstool sits nearby, no doubt to help Albright reach the encyclopedias near the coffered ceiling. There's a small bar and a burgundy-felted pool table on our right. Strips of garland wind around the curtain rods, and between the windows is a lit fireplace that gives off the scent of burning pine. If Christmas has a smell, this place has it in spades.

My father refuses a drink—which doesn't surprise me—but I take one of the crystal goblets. I sip the brandy and it's smooth enough to wash any of my misgivings away. In fact, if I knew for sure that Albright wouldn't blow our heads off, I could learn to like it here.

“I've been hearing your name a lot the past couple of weeks,” Albright says to me. “You've got a knack for tripping up the wrong people.”

“When you're in my position,” I tell him, “everybody's the wrong person.”

He nods as if he's got the same problem and pats my shoulder. Then he takes a seat in a club chair opposite my father and me, puts a shine on his lips, and tilts his head back as he swallows.

“Smooth as butter,” he says. Then he examines his brandy through the side of his glass.

I do the same and return Albright's smile. It's hard not to like the man when he's pouring liquid gold.

Albright leans forward and rests his forearms on his thighs, his snifter in his palm.

“You've got some big guns out for you,” he says. “The Gazzara brothers, Jimmy McCullough. I don't know the whole story, but these aren't penny-ante crooks. They're big spenders at my parlors. They've got muscle.”

I imagine he already knows that he can scratch Joseph Gazzara's name off his revenue sheet.

“That's why my father brought me here,” I say, my mouth going dry as I gear up to ask the favor. “He doesn't need your help. I do.”

Albright tips his glass toward my father, acknowledging that the “upstanding champ” wasn't here for a favor after all. He'd shown up to help his son.

My father turns to the fireplace to avoid eye contact with Albright. “Figured you might wanna help,” he says. Then, continuing to look into the fire, he adds, “Snowball's your blood, too. He's your grandson.”

I'm expecting Albright to whip out a gun and plug my father in his forehead for deflowering his daughter. Instead, he looks at me and sizes me up. I try to offer a lovable face as my heart races and my eyes shimmy.

Albright chuckles, as if he'd been expecting a mulatto albino to show up on his doorstep and call him grandpa.

“I figured you were my grandkid the minute I heard about your run-in with Denny Gazzara.”

For the first time since we entered the house, my father looks at Albright head-on. “You knew Dorothy had a son?”

“I haven't seen my daughter in twenty-four years, but that doesn't mean I don't keep tabs on her,” Albright says.

The laughter drains out of his face and he shoots down a healthy slug of brandy in one shot. I've been around long enough to know when a guy's downing booze to make his pain go away and this qualifies. He might as well give up, though, because there's not a drink in the world that can replace a daughter.

“But how'd you know it was me?” I say.

He gets up and takes a framed picture from a bookshelf. It's a chewed up photo of a woman about twenty years old. I can see from across the room she's albino. He puts the frame on the table in front of me.

“Caroline Barker,” he says.

“Albino,” I say, a little confused.

He nods. “Your grandmother.”

I look at the photo of the young woman, her white hair falling onto her shoulders. She's smiling, posing for the picture. I can tell that behind those pale, dimpled cheeks, a soul is crying out for acceptance. Looking into her colorless eyes makes me feel as if I've found my homeland, except it's not a place, it's a gene.