Israel (72 page)

But first things first. A man had to start somewhere.

On that same humid August morning, as Carl Pickman's car was rolling down Fifth Avenue, Becky was readying herself for the day. Her apartment was on the fifth floor of a brownstone on the corner of Seventy-ninth and Riverside. It was a small place consisting of a tiny kitchen, a bath, a bedroom and a living room. Her apartment faced the rear, so she had no view of Riverside Park, but there was a skylight in the bathroom and a spacious balcony off the little living room, overlooking a garden courtyard. Thanks to Carl's influence the rent was reasonable, although the
landlord could have charged what he wanted in the housing shortage brought on by the war.

During her first weeks of tenancy she was deliriously happy, but as the novelty wore off, she began to miss her father and the old neighborhood. Everybody on Cherry Street knew her name and had a smile for her in passing. Without realizing it until she moved, she had come to rely on the warmth of that close-knit community to replenish her strength after a grueling day's work. Now when she came home it was to a far posher neighborhood, but here she was just another New Yorker, a stranger to all, as all were strangers to her. She resigned herself to loneliness; it was just the way her life had turned out.

She grabbed her purse and hurried down the stairs and out the front door of her building, only to stop short as she caught a glimpse of the darkening sky over the Hudson River. It sure looked like rain; she hadn't bothered to listen to the radio weather report, and she'd left her umbrella four flights up.

She was already running late. She'd called a staff meeting for nine o'clock, and she had an enormous amount of paperwork to do before then.

The subway was two blocks east. She'd gamble on making it before the storm broke. She was just reaching West End Avenue when she heard a thunderous peal, saw morning turn to dusk and felt the first hard drops of rain.

A man wearing a trench coat and a fedora pulled low was approaching the corner. She impatiently waited for the traffic light to change so she could dash across the avenue. She was preoccupied with her soaked hair and clothing and how her whole stinking day was being ruined because she forgot to bring her stinking umbrella.

The man in the trench coat got his umbrella over her head just as the downpour began in earnest. She turned to look at him, startled, and her stomach churned and her knees weakened.

“Hi, Becky,” Benny Talkin said. “Been a long time.”

Four years, three months, one week, three days, she found herself effortlessly calculating. “Uh, yeah. It has been. Hi, Benny.”

“Gee, you look great.”

“You too,” she said, and he did. He'd grown a handsome mustache. In his trench coat and fedora he looked like Humphrey Bogart in the movies—better. Humphrey Bogart probably wanted to look like Benny Talkin when he chose his costume. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. It came out like an accusation, not that Becky cared. It was all she could do to keep from crying, so great was the shock of seeing him. “You don't still live at the Dorilton?”

“Hell, no. I gave up that crib a long time ago.”

“‘Crib?'” Becky smiled. “You still lurking around those Fifty-second Street swing clubs and picking up the musicians' slang?” There! The intervening years had taught her a thing or two about disdainful superiority!

Benny didn't seem to hear the sarcasm. “No more time for music, I'm afraid. I'm partners with my father-in-law and I've got three kids.”

“Gee, that's great.”

“Yeah,” Benny grinned. “Twin boys and a girl. We live on West End and Ninety-fifth.”

This handsome bastard still had the power to turn her into jelly. “I see that your eye healed up all right.” She hated herself for digging up the past that way, but she'd forgotten Benny's ability to tune out what he didn't want to hear.

“You must live around here.” She nodded and he said, “That makes us neighbors.”

She smiled weakly. The traffic light had gone through three cycles. “I've got to go.”

“Let me walk you down to Seventy-second,” Benny
said. “You'll save time by catching the express to Pickman's.”

He began to head along West End and Becky walked with him.

“How'd you know I work at Pickman's?”

He shrugged. “Word gets around, I guess. Anyway, I know you're doing real well. I'm proud of you, Becky. You know, I feel like I got you your start.”

You almost finished me, as well
. “What are you doing so far downtown if you live on Ninety-fifth?” she asked, taking his arm.

“I was heading for midtown. I got an appointment with a restaurant owner.”

“No more maroon Cadillac convertible?”

“Oh, sure,” Benny laughed, “a new one every year, up until the war, of course. Anyway, I like to walk. You remember that, don't you?”

Right then she was trying desperately not to remember things about him. “About the war—I see you didn't feel the need to enlist.”

“That kinda thing is for chumps, honey. Anyhow, it isn't like I'm not doing my part. Stefano and I are engaged in some secret work for the Navy—”

“What?” Becky exclaimed, incredulous.

“It's true. These Navy guys came to Stefano to ask for his help . . .”

“Help for what?” Becky persisted.

Benny glanced around. “It isn't the kinda thing you're supposed to talk about on the street,” he told her quietly. Then he brightened. “Say, why don't you and me get together for a drink? I could tell you all about it.”

They were at Seventy-third and West End. Becky stopped walking. They were still a couple of blocks from the subway, but there were some things worse than getting wet. “I'm going to go on alone from here, Benny.”

“Aw, why? Because I suggested a little drink? You know you want to.”

She considered lying to him, but it hardly seemed necessary. “What I want and what I'm going to do are two different things, Benny. See you.”

“Hold on.”

“No, listen, Benny. It's nice to see you, sure, but you're a married man, with three kids, yet.” She turned to go.

Benny grabbed her arm. She glared at him and he snatched his hand away. “I just wanted to give you my umbrella,” he said in hurt tones.

Becky frowned and shook her head. “I don't need—”

“Go on and take it. It's just an umbrella, Becky. I got a coat, a hat—and you've got nothing.” He smiled coolly.

She took the umbrella. There was no point in getting wet.

“Remember what I told you,” he called after her. “You can call on me if you ever need help.”

Becky heard him but didn't acknowledge it. She didn't even look back.

Benny stood on West End Avenue and watched until Becky disappeared around the corner. It occurred to him that they'd split up in the rain and now the rain had brought them together again, at least for a little while.

Maybe that line would have worked on her. Probably not. He continued walking downtown and realized he'd forgotten to ask about her father. He'd heard about Abe's heart attack. He doubted that his sympathies for her old man would have done much to get him on her right side, either. He could understand her anger, but that didn't give her the right to imply that he was always a liar.

For instance, it was true that he and Stefano were engaged in secret work for the military, and he for one was
glad to do it. Getting drafted was a sucker's fate; it didn't happen to a guy with his connections. Anyway, he was too important to be just another Sad Sack, as the Navy would be the first to attest.

During the first years of the war the Allies lost hundreds of ships to the Germans. Washington must have gotten jittery when the S.S.
Lafayette
mysteriously burned in its berth on the Hudson. The Navy assumed the New York waterfront was riddled with spies and the Italian fishing fleet was running supplies and information out to the Kraut subs. The district attorney's office, acting as a buffer for Navy Intelligence, approached Stefano and asked him to cooperate in cleaning up the waterfront.

They began by sweet-talking Stefano, calling him master of the waterfront and stuff like that, all because of his warehouses, but it turned out that their sweet talk wasn't necessary. Stefano loved America, as did Benny, as did virtually all the Italians and Jews with whom they did business.

That was back in '42. They supplied union cards to Navy undercover agents so they could masquerade as longshoremen, fishermen, truck drivers and so on, and they passed the word to all their people to keep an eye out for Nazi rats. Their Navy contact, Captain Ronald MacDougall, and Stefano got real chummy. Stefano was elated; Mac never ceased complimenting him on the great patriotic job he was doing.

Then the Navy wanted to expand operations, but that was too much for Stefano to handle alone. He didn't have the authority to issue orders to the unions that owned the Brooklyn docks. What Stefano needed was a mandate from on high if he was to whip the syndicate into line behind the Navy.

So Captain Mac, a bunch of lawyers and Meyer Lansky, who was still Luciano's second, journeyed to Great Meadow Prison near Albany, where Lucky was
doing thirty to fifty for extortion. They met with Luciano, who agreed to help the Navy, since that would allow lots of unrecorded visits from Lansky and his people. How else could Luciano direct the antisabotage program? The Navy promised to keep his cooperation top secret, for Luciano was worried about what the angry Axis authorities would do to him if he ever got himself deported to Italy.

Since then everyone had been doing his part to keep the waterfronts clean. Lansky was proud to be getting an important job done with a minimum of violence. There were no wildcat strikes and no careless talk to supply enemy agents with information. The Navy was pleased and so was the syndicate, many of whom had been given unrestricted, unmonitored access to Luciano. He could now much more easily run his empire from his prison cell. The only dark spot was Stefano's furious jealousy when Meyer Lansky was issued an official Navy code number. These days Stefano's temper seemed to be shorter and shorter. It seemed Benny was his whipping boy.

Benny walked east, circling the slums west of Broadway, and continued downtown to Columbus Circle. Then he decided the hell with more walking and hailed a taxi. His cracked ribs were hurting.

Benny loved his kids with a passion, but unfortunately, he didn't feel the same about Dolores. Thanks to her father's power she'd long ago gained the upper hand on him. If he didn't toe the line Stefano heard about it, and Stefano de Fazio was not the kind of father-in-law a guy ought to antagonize. He and Stefano occasionally had sharp exchanges, and Stefano sometimes issued stern warnings, but Benny had never imagined that Stefano would have him physically harmed.

However, one day Tony called him out behind the warehouse on the pretext of discussing a cargo shipment. Suddenly three other guys came from nowhere to surround him. He had the time to ask, “What's going on?” and
then he was on the ground and those four impassive faces were gazing down at him like circling moons as they kicked him.

When it was over Tony Bucci carried Benny into the office and taped up his ribs. “Don't let on to Dolores,” he warned. “Tell her you fell down or something. And stay away from them hookers. That's what got Lucky thrown behind bars—”

“That's not true,” Benny gasped. Luciano hadn't been lustful so much as greedy. He'd tried to skim too much profit off his bordellos, and the outraged madams went to Special Prosecutor Dewey.

“Don't matter. You'd better get the message, or next time it won't just be cracked ribs. Do as we tell you. You ain't a physical kind of guy, Benny. You don't wanna get hit on like this. It's too risky for a guy in partnership with Stefano de Fazio to sleep with a bunch of talkative whores. Find yourself some wised-up chippy who'll know better than to spill your business to the cops.”

Benny kept quiet. He despised this four-eyed bald sadistic son of a bitch. He was also more than a little afraid.

How could he explain that it was exactly a whore's capacity to supply impersonal sex that he craved? He did not want to confide in a woman; he was sick of women. He was finding it increasingly difficult to make love to his wife; he'd begun to hate her the first time she ran to her daddy when they fought. He wasn't the man of his house; his father-in-law was. Sometimes he wondered why father and daughter didn't just sleep together and be done with it.

Damn, but his ribs ached. It was the rain, Benny guessed. He leaned back in the taxi and thought about Becky, trying to get his mind off of the pain. She looked good, really good, better than four years ago.

He wondered what it would have been like if he'd
married Becky instead of Dolores. Some nights he still found himself dreaming about Becky, a haunting, sexy ghost, making him strong and hard like Dolores never could and leaving him in turmoil when he awoke. If he'd married Becky he'd be poor, but the last four years as Stefano's partner had taught him that money wasn't everything. Without Stefano he probably would have ended up in the Army; well, he would have been a good soldier. He had guts and he could take care of himself; the fact that he hadn't the stomach for the de Fazio brand of violent retribution didn't make him a coward.

And when Benny came home from the war there would have been Becky waiting for him, ready to love him, to make him feel like a man.

Benny watched the rain slanting down on Central Park South and listened to the taxi's windshield wipers. He was trapped and he knew it. It was no longer the money; it was Stefano de Fazio's wrath that kept him caged.

Often he had thought of taking his kids and making a run for it, but it was a foolish, suicidal notion. He knew too much. Luciano, Lansky and the rest would all come after him; with or without his kids there was nowhere safe in the country.