Life and Death of a Tough Guy (21 page)

Walter Rozak began the prosecution. “I said I’ll prove it on the Dutchman and I will. Everybody knows how he’s been soundin’ off all over town. How he’s always been an innapendent. How he’s not taking orders from no mob.” He dug into his pocket and produced a little notebook from which he read a name, “Maizie Willet. She dances in the show ‘April Moon.’ She gets around, this dame. She was at a party given by the Dutchman and Finestein was there too. She said the Dutchman got drunk and started in hollerin’ how he was gonna run the numbers racket not only in the state, but all over the country — ”

“What’re we tryin’ to prove anyway?” Chuck Tillio demanded. “We all know the kinda guy Dutch Schultz is, but he ain’t on trial here. Finestein’s the one on trial! What we wanna know is was he planted by the Dutchman on us? Or is he on the level with us?”

The judge stared at defense counsel. “You said before he wasn’t a hundred percent reliable.”

“That ain’t what I said, Charley. I said that even if Finestein wasn’t a hundred percent reliable, we needed him because we needed all the dope we could get on the Dutchman.”

“He didn’t let me finish,” the prosecutor appealed to the judge who nodded at him to continue. “At this party where Maizie Willet was, the Dutchman said he wasn’t taking orders from nobody.”

Joey blinked at the phrase —
he wasn’t taking orders from nobody
. That much could be said in the Dutchman’s favor, Joey thought. He was no order-taker like a certain bastard by name of Joey Case. A conniver, yes. A chiseler. A liar. A phoney. A sell-out artist. The Dutchman was every damn thing in the dictionary but he wasn’t an order-taker. Like every single bastard in this backroom was, from Charley Valinchi down. Order-takers one and all, not fit to wipe the Dutchman’s shoes.

“What’re we tryin’ to prove?” Chuck Tillio sing-songed. “Who’s on trial anyway?”

The judge waved at him to keep still. The prosecution went on. “At this party, the Dutchman said, ‘They call themselves big names. The big mob, the big combination, the syndicate, the central office. But all they are is a bunch of fourflushers.’”

Again Chuck Tillio protested. He was one gangland D. A. who took his duties seriously. “Alla this is no proof on Finestein — ”

“You want more proof!” Walter Rozak said viciously. “Okay, I’ll give you more proof. We been tailin’ the rat. He’s suppose to be upstate organizin’ for the Dutchman. So where is he? He’s in New York half the time with the Dutchman! Don’t that prove nothin’? The Dutchman’s no fool. Finestein has to give out to be so damn popular! Why ain’t he upstate where he should be?”

“Where’s the proof he’s sellin’ us out? All that’s no proof.”

The judge frowned and then slowly, disgustedly, stated. “One hundred percent bottled-in-bond proof don’t exist. This Finestein guy’s spending dough like a drunken sailor. Where’s that money coming from?”

“We’re payin’ him good money,” defense counsel said doggedly.

“Who’s paying you?” Charley Valinchi wanted to know and instantly smiled to demonstrate he was only kidding. “Enough crapping around on this Finestein guy! The Dutchman’s paying him good dough and the Dutchman don’t pay for nothing. So that leaves just one argument. Maybe this Finestein guy’s stooling for the Dutchman and for us. Chuck, he’s got a point there. But this is no easy time like prohibition where we can take chances. Not with this depression, and everybody hollering for action. Al Capone’s in Alcatraz and although nobody’s crying for him, who put him there? The Government. On income tax! It proves things’re tightening up. The federals’re looking for more convictions. What I’m driving at is that in a time like this we can’t take chances on guys like Finestein.”

The judge had passed the only sentence on his books: death. It was either death or acquittal.

Joey looked at Chuck Tillio, but the defense counsel was no longer in the defense business. Chuck’s thin pointy face was as set as the judge’s or the prosecution’s. “Joey, I want to talk to you a second,” Charley said when they all stood up to go. The door closed on Chuck and Walter. Charley Valinchi said, “What about Georgie Connelly?” Charley shook his head, answering himself. “He’s getting in too many fights lately. He’s drinking like a fish. You know what he done? He got drunk and went up to the Spotter’s office.”

“What for?”

“You tell me what for? You been with Georgie on enough jobs. Think he’s softening up?”

“No.”

“You sure, Joey?”

“Yeh.”

“This is the second time he’s gone up to the Spotter’s office.”

“First I ever hear. What’s he do there?”

“What’s a drunk do? Makes a pest of himself until they get him out. You better talk to Georgie, Joey.”

“I will.”

“I’ve seen it a dozen times,” Charley remarked as if to himself. “They start drinking heavy or they start jabbing a needle or crying on the shoulder of some pott. They get punchy like a fighter, and before you know it go haywire. As he spoke, his eyes were dark and speculative. Joey felt a shiver across his shoulder blades like a finger dipped in ice. He thought, there was just too much black crepe hanging in this backroom.

• • •

The next day late in the afternoon, Joey and three other enforcers, Georgie Connelly, Pete Bowers and Tunafish Tunnetti, drove out of New York City across the marshes of New Jersey onto Route 17. Georgie was at the wheel, Joey next to him, Pete and Tunafish in the back seat. They climbed the first mountains at Wurtsboro, the little lakes of upstate New York glittered in the spring sun, the first frame and stucco hotels began to crowd the roadside. “It’s called Sullivan County,” Pete announced. “But when the hebes start comin’ in the summer, it’s called Solomon County.” Only Joey didn’t laugh. He sat staring through the windshield, thinking that Pete and Tunafish didn’t know he was a hebe and Georgie wouldn’t be giving him away. (“Georgie,” he had said when he’d begun calling himself Joey Case a few years ago, “These Local 23 guys, Fitz and the others, they kiss our ass now, but they won’t forget who gave ‘em the lumps. That’s why I’m Joey Case down here, savvy? It’s bad enough without havin’ em know I’m a Jew”) Well, he didn’t look like a hebe, and maybe he wasn’t a hebe anymore, he thought now.

Sometimes he just plain didn’t know who he was. Joey Case or Joey Kasow? Sometimes he felt as if he were neither hebe or goy. Just one of Charley Valinchi’s errand boys. Just a case of tough luck on two feet, an eight of spades to himself and everybody else, the little black jinx card dealt out by Charley Valinchi to so many guys it was getting hard to remember all their names. Or to remember his own, the name inside that a man slowly makes for himself over a lifetime out of the alphabet of his hopes and ambitions and dreams.

And as he lay in bed that night at the Monticello Inn, in the town of Monticello, the old question rolled out again inside his brain like the long curving highway itself: where was he going?

Sleeplessly he whirled down the speedway of all his doubts. Here he was again cursing out Charley Valinchi and the Spotter who’d gotten him into this enforcement racket. What was the percentage in that? He listened to Georgie snoring in the second bed. That Georgie took enforcing in his stride. Or did he? Maybe Charley was right and Georgie was beginning to soften up. He’d have to talk to Georgie. This going drunk to the Spotter’s office was a dumb business. But no dumber than what he was doing, Joey thought. But how could he get out of it? Go up to the Spotter’s office himself, beg on bended knees, “Hey, Spotter, have a heart, and take me back. I’m just nothing with Charley Valinchi.”

Joey tried to sleep. Across his shuttered eyes the images of frustration slowly lost their blinding white edges, darkening. He thought of the eight of spades again, saw it as a real card moving as if from the fingers of a lightning dealer. But whether the card was for Milty “the Poet” Finestein or for himself, he wasn’t too sure.

He awoke early, groaned when he squinted at his wristwatch. It was only 7:03. He glanced at Georgie sleeping in the second bed near the windows. That sonuvabitch slept like a baby, Joey thought, listening to the singing of the birds that had aroused him. Sonuvabitch birds, he cursed to himself and stared at Georgie’s heavy face, the lips and cheeks bluish-black with stubble. “Georgie,” he called. No answer. For a second Joey felt like a heel. Why wake up the guy? Then he reached for his pillow and tossed it at Georgie’s head. Georgie grunted. Georgie slept. Joey studied the sleeping man. There was a happy boy he thought bitterly. Give Georgie dough enough for dames and he wouldn’t gripe in a thousand years. Just a happy lil sonuvabitch who maybe was beginning to soften up. Well, Georgie was no chicken no more, and neither was he. The pair of them’d be hitting thirty in another year or two. Thirty! For Christ sake! He’d be thirty and what’d he have in the sock. What was he? A God damn errand boy of Charley’s. And even that couldn’t last forever. One of these days when everything was running smooth, Dutch Schultz and all the other independents done for, there’d be a little meeting of the big-shots: “We don’t need Charley Valinchi, we don’t need Joey Case or any of those guys. What we oughta do is get rid of that whole Valinchi setup. They know too much. If one of them ever goes soft and runs to the D.A., the F.B.I., we’ll be sunk.”

I got too much imagination for my own good, Joey thought gloomily, glancing at his wristwatch. It was 7:05.

It was a long day. Their contact in town phoned at 9:20 and said, “Every-thing’ll be ready tonight.”

“We can have a second breakfast,” Georgie said when Joey told of the delay.

They were all in Joey’s and Georgie’s room. Joey said, “No second breakfasts, no goin’ for a walk. This is a hick town. We’re gonna stay put.”

Pete Bowers rubbed at his chin. “Yeh, Joey, but won’t it look queer to the hotel hicks, us hangin’ around all day?”

“They’re in a fog,” Joey said. “But even if they got a Gus-the-eagle-eye, we can’t take no chance of Georgie or Tunafish gettin’ tanked up.”

Georgie snorted. “Who’s gonna get tanked up?” Tunafish shrugged like a woman.

“Good news,” sighed Pete dropping down on one of the unmade beds. He was short and dark with the appearance of a jockey gone to seed, his eyes pouchy, and only his clefted chin still hard in his face. Tunafish was also dark-haired, his nickname wished on him not only because of the Tunnetti but even more because of his fish-like mouth. Lazily now, stretching out each second to the breaking point, he reached into his pocket for a cigar. He stripped off the wrapper, studied the red and gold label and then in slow motion bit off the end. He didn’t light up until another three or four seconds’d ticked off.

Georgie sat down on the second bed. “Wunna them hick whores,” he remarked and stretched out his long heavy body.

“No dames ‘til the job’s done,” Joey said.

“I know, I know, but can’t a guy even dream.” Georgie closed his eyes, a broad smile on his lips. “If I had me a lil dame now you know what I’d be doin’?” His left arm hugged an imaginary girl, his right hand began stroking her. His lips bunched up a kiss and he blew it off. Softly. Tunafish laughed, Pete shrugged.

Joey thought that Georgie’d sure changed. Here was a guy who once’d given out with the words like they each cost a quarter. A regular clam face. But lately Georgie was always up on a soapbox. It was the booze, the tons of booze, Georgie’d lapped up in his time. Joey’s eyes darted to Pete and Tunafish who didn’t seem to have a tongue between them. What he knew about them he could put inside his vest pocket, Joey reflected. Pete Bowers was a personal friend of Charley Valinchi’s and once he’d owned a string of speaks in Greenwich Village, but he’d gotten into trouble, welched on money he owed, strictly a guy on the downgrade. Tunafish, with his long curly hair and fishmouth, from all Joey heard, had never been much of anything, a spooky kind of a cuss who did what he was told, and gambled in his free time. The rumble was that he’d grown up with Lucky Luciano himself and that Lucky’d sent him to Charley. Anyhow, Joey summed them up to himself: I wouldn’t trust the pair of them with a nickel in cash. Or Georgie either when you got right down to it, not after that time.

He walked to the dresser, he fussed with his hair, straightened his necktie. He’d lost weight, his lips were thinner as if somebody had been filing them down to two sharp edges. He studied that mouth of his. The lips were shut but just the same he imagined, he knew, yes, he knew, what they were saying: You’re one of Charley’s enforcers. You’re tough. Man, you’re tough. You’re the toughest guy in the West Side, in the whole damn country, in the whole damn world, and you’re just a jerk.

Georgie had been watching Joey from the bed. “Hey, beyootiful!” he called. “Doncha wish you had a dame here?”

“Who’s got cards?” Joey asked.

Tunafish fetched a pack from his room and they played four-handed pinochle until lunch. After lunch, they returned to their separate rooms. Georgie tugged off his shoes, announced to Joey he was taking a nap. Joey played solitaire. He smoked and time shook itself slowly like jello in a dish. He went downstairs to the lobby, bought two western magazines from the desk clerk. He thought that Pete was right. It must look queer, four guys from the city parking in their rooms all day. The hell with it! So it looked queer! So he was getting reckless. Maybe that was how he was softening up…. He returned to his room, lay down on his bed and read of cowboys and vigilantes and double-crossing sheriffs. The hoofbeats of their mustangs died away and he yawned at the printed words. Huger than any western prairie, his mind surrounded him, the dust of his thoughts rising from the galloping horses of his imagination. They carried their own sinister riders — Charley Valinchi with a carnation in his buttonhole; the bony Spotter. God, Joey thought, the Spotter’s the only one who can get me out of this ratrace before it’s too late.

Too late? It was already too late, or almost too late. Abruptly, he chucked the magazine and woke up Georgie. He felt he had to stop thinking or go nuts.

“Hell,” Georgie mumbled sleepily.

“You’re right one hundred percent,” Joey said with a wry smile. “Georgie, what the hell’s the idea botherin’ the Spotter?”