Life and Death of a Tough Guy (17 page)

Once in a blue moon, the Spotter showed his face at the old club, dropping into his old office for a private little talk with Joey. “I hear you moved into the Hotel Delmore on Forty-Fourth,” the Spotter had grinned one day.

“How’d you hear that?” Joey was surprised, but not too much. There was nothing he’d put past the Spotter.

“Never mind, kiddo. I got my ears out all over town,” and still grinning, “Bet you’d like to move to the new office?”

“Whoever told you that Spotter’s a damn liar!”

“Nobody told me. Keep your shirt on!” His eyes fixed on Joey. So sharp and so intense Joey Kasow felt them like two pressing and probing fingers almost. “Don’t you want to?” Those eyes were probing Joey’s silence now.

“It’s up to you, Spotter. You’re the boss.”

“Ted Griffin could handle your job, even Georgie.”

“It’s up to you, Spotter.”

“Sweet, ain’t you? Don’t kid the Ol’ Spotter, Joey. I know you inside out. You’re just like me. I wouldn’ be satisfied down here. You’re too smart to be runnin’ around with the gorillas down here. Only thing is, I got nothin’ for you on Broadway. Soon as there’s something I’ll let you know. That okay with you, Joey?”

“Sure, Spotter.”

• • •

That night, the Spotter lay sleeplessly in his dark hotel room, his mind roving across the night to the Hotel Delmore like a peeping tom: A regular sweet one, that Joey, he thought. Must come from sleeping with a redhead, I wouldn’t mind myself, only who the hell are you kidding, Spotter? You’re all done, done in…. Funny how she gets me, a dame I never seen even once. Funny, yeh, funny, and not so funny. She could be a blondie or a blackhair wop and I’d want her. She could be cockeye, with a shape like a sack and I’d want her. What’s good enough for Joey’s good enough for you, right Spotter? Right! That’s better, Spotter. Don’t kid yourself. You can kid the whole world but not yourself. Funny, how just because she’s Joey’s private piece you get a lil tickle. You must love that Joey something awful. Love, love, I’ll give him a shove, that’s poetry. I’ll bury him like I buried Clip Haley, me with the Bum Ticker. Aw, cripes, Spotter, you ought to give yourself up to the undertaker, what good are you. Old Fat Quinn’s a better man. He can eat, drink, and even take care of lady Quinn. So he says, anyway. Least he could, with a son and three daughters to prove it. That’s a crowd to have at a funeral. Who’ll you have, Spotter? Nobody but the devil. Who’ll get your dough? The devil and his brother. Worked like a nigger, all work and no fun, to build up a racket. Suppose you conk out. Suppose the Bum Ticker gets you? Who’ll run the racket? Old fat Quinn, with Manny Farber the shyster. More likely Big Bill Dwyer or Ownie Madden. Or Larry Fay. Or Dutch Schultz. Old Fat’s talking of retiring to that place of his out at Tom’s River, that mick Heaven-on-the-Sea. Manny Farber wants to be a magistrate. Those two’d sell out to the first big guy who makes a fist. That’s how it goes. Jesus Christ, Son of God, that’s how it goes. Aw, I’ll ride to a million funerals, to Old Fat’s, Manny Farber’s, all of them. Joey’s a better man any day, why don’t I give him a break? He’s learned his lesson. I knocked the Al Capone out of him, long ago. Him and me, we could be a pair. He’s a jewboy and I’m a mick, damn queer jewboy, damn queer mick. Who the hell knows what we really are, any of us, deep down. I ought to give him a break, I like the kid, always have. That’s the trouble, he’s too much like me. Not a wrinkle on his mug, all the wrinkles inside. Young and raring to go, the worst kind. The hell with him, I’ll bury him first, him and his redhead. Funny how she gets me. Georgie says she’s pretty, with a shape. Only one in the gang who’s ever seen her is Georgie. And that was years before Joey started laying her. Funny, how he keeps her under cover. Because she’s Jewish I’ll bet. He’s been fighting the kosher-kosher all his life. Aw, the hell with them both. You got a date with the lawyer tomorrow….

• • •

It was a good year for the lawyers, and it would be good the years after, as it had been good the year before. Coolidge was in the White House, the boom years seemed endless, strutting out one after another like drum majors, each more beautiful than the one before, whirling the dollar-batons of prosperity while behind them the whole nation marched, a flask on its hip, and the Favorite Bootlegger’s phone number in its address book.

Booze was still the Racket. In New York, it was the East Siders who were branching out of the Racket into the rackets. Some of the big West Side bootleggers had begun to invest a little money in gambling and whores, but mostly they only knew the Racket. Not the East Siders. “No wop eats an artichoke widout payin’ a cut to Terranova,” they said over on the East Side as if talking about an act of God. And Salvatore Lucania, who lately was calling himself Lucky Luciano, was beginning to wonder whether whorehouses couldn’t be organized into chains like speakeasies. While another pioneer by name of Bugsy Siegel was preaching, usually with a glass of imported whiskey in his hand, “Gambling’s the racket that’ll last! Prohibition can only last if the Republicans keep electin’ guys like Coolidge. Gambling’s, that’s the racket with a future! So what’re we doing about it? Only Al Capone out there in Chi with his dog tracks.” True. Although another East Sider by name of Frank Costello was already knee-deep in slot machines. Of Frank Costello, the East Siders in the know were saying, “Frank won’t be happy ‘til he has every one-arm bandit in the whole city and the whole damn country workin’ for him.”

The garment industry began moving wholesale into the West Side, bringing among others, Lepke and Gurrah, two East Side labor racketeers, old friends of both the garment workers and the bosses. Lepke and Gurrah, when a strike situation was cooking, would call union and management and announce, “This is L. and G. How can we get together on this?”

“Garments always been our racket,” L. and G. passed the word along to the West Side big-shots. “But this is your territory. How can we get together on this? We don’t want no trouble.”

“We been asleep at the switch,” the Spotter said to his partner Quinn. “That L. and G.’ll be down the waterfront next and from there they’ll muscle into our racket.”

“Who gave yuh a shot in the arm!” old Quinn exclaimed. But he couldn’t quiet down the Spotter. A meeting was called at the Elwood Realty. Invited were Tom Quinn, Manny Farber, the Spotter’s lawer, John Terry, a politician on the Spotter’s payroll (the Spotter suspected his Honest John of being in on two or three other tinboxes) and Hooker Alfiero, a hiring boss down the waterfront. They sat in a semi-circle inside the Spotter’s private office, the Spotter their pivot: Tom Quinn with a mug on him like Paddy Pig, Manny Farber, sharp and smiling, a dark thin needle of a man, John Terry and his beer belly, and don’t forget the steak belly, Hooker Alfiero with a grin on him as if he had an ace up his sleeve. The Spotter looked at all their faces and then swiftly evaluated the face inside. Quinn wanted to retire to Tom’s River, New Jersey, and live on the fat of the land. Farber was conniving to be a magistrate. Those two had the itch to be respectable. Not the two other crooks, the Spotter thought. John Terry was already trying to land himself on the L. and G. payroll. Only Hooker Alfiero had nothing inside, just an honest crook.

The Spotter nodded at Hooker. “He’s hiring boss down the Cunard piers and he’s gonna work with us. I been lookin’ into the waterfront. We can do ourself some good there. If we wait much longer L. and G. or some other bastid’ll be gettin’ idears. There’s a local down there, Local 23, we can control. They got two guys fightin’ to be top dog. A mick by name of Fitzpatrick. A wop by name of Luzzi. They’re both on the level. Both wanna be president. Luzzi, we leave alone. He’s a religious nut and works with the priests. We’ll work on the mick. John Terry here’ll handle the political end. Those dock wallopers’re votes, they might squawk. Manny Farber, we’ll all pitch in. Okay, any questions?”

Later, when the Spotter explained the picture to Joey, he said, “It’s your chance, kiddo. I told you I’d let you know when I had somethin’ for you. This is your chance to get into the labor racket. No reason why you can’t run that Local 23 for me. Ted Griffin, he can take over your ‘ol job.”

They had talked it over at the Spotter’s hotel. Leaving the Berkeley, Joey had intended going home; the Hotel Delmore was only two blocks away. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. He’d have to knock himself out first, and Sweetie was no good tonight. Every month these dames had to be sent back to the clock factory, Joey thought. What about Annabelle? He hopped a cab, gave the driver her address. He’d been keeping her in partnership with Big Georgie and Ted Griffin. It wasn’t his night but Ted and Georgie were up in Albany on a job. Joey grinned, he started to whistle:

“I’m sitting on top of the world just rolling along, just rolling along….” Oh, that Local 23! His lucky number from now on! 23! That big 23, and he’d give it to Annabelle 23 times. Joey laughed. Thoughts of Annabelle and thoughts of Local 23 interlaced like two clasped hands. A date with Annabelle and who had a date with the Spotter at the Elwood Realty tomorrow? Nobody but himself! A date, a date, a date, she had the whitest legs he’d ever seen on a dame, the break he’d been waiting for….

The cab curved around Columbus Circle and north up Central Park West. Joey thought, about time he got himself a car, one of them Niagara blue roadsters, he liked them conservative, none of those canary yellows or firehouse reds, and he’d have his initials put on the door: J.K Yesirree, J.K., the big-shot.

Uptown, he unlocked the door of Annabelle’s apartment, stumbled in the darkness before he managed to find the switch. “Hey, you asleep?” he shouted. He was in a living room furnished like the miniature of a movie lobby, an ornate mirror on the wall, two marble-topped tables flanking the couch. He sailed his straw hat to the couch. He walked into the bedroom. “Hey, Annabelle, if you’re out — ” he shouted, fearing she was making a little hay on his partners.

Annabelle awoke. From her bed, she reached for the light. It shone at Joey through a big blue lampshade. “That’s where I got that Niagara blue!” he said, smiling with joy.

“Don’t you say hello or nothing?” she asked. He flopped down on the bed, his hands going for her.

He pointed with his chin at the lampshade, “Niagara blue!” Joey chuckled. The blue light was on her bobbed yellow hair, on her full sulky lips. He kissed her, she pushed him away.

“This ain’t your night,” she reminded Joey. “This is Tuesday. You’re Wednesday and Sat’days. Ted’s Tuesdays.”

“It’s okay with Ted, Sweetie. He sent a telegram. ‘Go see Annabelle,’ ” Joey laughed, unknotting his necktie.

“You’re a riot,” the blonde sneered.

“Sweetie, if I get enough dough, I’ll keep you all by myself.”

The blonde was sitting upright now, her shoulders against the backboard — she seemed immovable, a white spread of solid curved flesh. “Dough? What’s that? Where would
you
get enough dough?”

“I been thinkin’ of another racket.”

“What?”

“I never talk to dames
what
,” he said, winking as he undressed.

“What about the wife when you strike it rich?”

“Hey,” he peered up at her as he unlaced his shoes. “Why do you keep callin’ her the wife? I’m not married to her.”

“No?” Annabelle shrugged a milky shoulder. “You said yourself you been with that wino four years. That makes you married in my book — ”

“You been with me close to a year. You my wife, too?”

“On third shares,” the blonde said. She stretched her arms. “I work too hard.”

“Aw, quit gripin’!”

“This isn’t your night! Go to that wino — ”

“Stop callin’ her ‘that wino’!”

“You call her that — ”

“Will you shut up, you God damn arguin’ hoor!”

“Okay, you whore-keeper,” she retorted maliciously. “Tuesdays are Ted’s! Wait’ll I tell him.”

He stared at her and all the fun was gone out of the night. It wasn’t only her, he thought. It was the Spotter who a guy could trust like he could trust a whore. “Okay, Tuesday’re Ted’s,” he yelled. “I’ll slap you silly!”

“If you stay, you treat me nice, Joey,” she said fearfully.

Joey…
. he heard her and heard the voices in the speaks and the pool parlors: Joey, he’s the toughest bastard in town. By God he was, he thought. Tough and smart and Local 23 was just a beginning. He’d waited a long time for his break. Too God damn long. “I’ll treat you nice,” he said and slapped her face, seeing the thin bony face of the Spotter under his hard hand. And even when their argument was forgotten, he felt the Spotter in the shadows of consciousness, the Spotter, always the Spotter. As he plunged down long black streets, and whether he was in pursuit or being pursued, he didn’t know….

Sunday morning Joey and Georgie climbed up the three flights of stairs to Fitzpatrick’s flat. A radio was playing, “Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Sheean,” a woman with a foghorn voice shouted at her children and the smells of late Sunday breakfasts still frying in the pan floated down the tenement stairs. “How high up’s the guy?” Georgie wanted to know.

“Want me to carry you piggy back?”

Big Georgie laughed out loud like a little kid and Joey thought: he’s a kid, that guy. How could a guy like that stand up against the Spotter? Joey frowned. The teaser he had asked himself over the years again flashed into his mind. Would he’ve double-crossed Georgie if he’d been in Georgie’s spot? Maybe yes, maybe no. Anyway, he could half-trust Georgie, he decided. Who’d he picked to come along on Fitzpatrick? Nobody but Georgie, like Georgie was a lucky dollar bill or something.

On the fourth floor, Joey called, “Hey Fitzpatrick!” A big woman, her brown hair in curlers, poked her face out of a door, eyeing them as if they were two rent collectors.

“Who yuh want?” she asked suspiciously.

“Fitzpatrick. You the wife?”

“Who’d like to know?”

“We’re from the union,” he softsoaped her. “It’s union business.”

The woman led them into her kitchen. “I’ll get Fitzpatrick,” she said and walked into the next room. Georgie pulled off his straw hat. He fanned his hot face and winked at Joey.