Seventh Avenue (45 page)

“
I won’t say a word to anybody about you being a bookmaker,”
he said, but he was dying to tell Zimmerman, and Moony, just to
boast about a real underworld connection. “Does Mom know about
it? I wouldn’t even tell
her
if you didn’t want me to.”

“
I’ve let her in on the secret. We’ll have fun, Neal. I’ll take you
to ball games and to the track. Even though you’re under age, I’ll get
you in.
A guy
at the gate’s a pal of mine.”

“
Boy-oh-boy,” he shouted, with false enthusiasm.

The doorbell
rang,
and he answered it. Rhoda, with a load of packages, her face flushed and exultant, leaned against the door and Neal
took a bag from her.

“
You
two .
. . been talking?”

“
Yeah, Mom. He’s really a swell guy.”

She put down the packages on the floor and gave Neal a hug.

“
I’m so glad you hit it off. It’s the real thing, Neal. I think I’m going to marry him. For years I’ve been wandering around like a
drunken sailor, wondering where I could put my head down, and
then when I met Sports I knew that I’d found a man who would put
me first . . . above everything.”

“
You’re happy?” he asked timorously.

“
The way I hoped I would be with Jay.”

Surprisingly, Sports ignored them when they walked into the room.
He was industriously writing figures on a large piece of drawing paper
that
had ruled lines on
it
and the names of teams and horses
and racetracks. He wrote in an exquisitely neat hand as the results,
from a team of announcers, came in.

“
We mustn’t talk to him when he’s working,” Rhoda said, taking
Neal into the kitchen, “He’s got to concentrate. One wrong score can
cost him thousands of dollars, so it’s better to leave him alone.”

“
Does Jay know?”

“
Jay? Why should he? What I do is my business. He didn’t tell me
he was going to marry that slut of his. He just did, and I found out
later. The least he could’ve
done .
. .” She sounded like a woman
with an old and painful grievance
that
her new happiness had not
dispelled. “I mean to
say .
. . I was entitled to know, wasn’t I?” She
turned to
Neal,
who stared out of the window at a game of stickball
in progress in the schoolyard. He couldn’t make out the faces of the
boys. “Answer me.”

“
He says you’re going out tonight.”

“
It’s all right by you? You can look after yourself.”

“
Sure, I’ll be okay.” He had an image of the clubroom in his mind:
dark, with old camphor-smelling furniture, squalid, dank, with a laundry sink in it and clothes drying.

After dinner, which was barely edible - burned steak - Neal found
himself alone again with Sports while Rhoda dressed. She had proved incontestably that she possessed none of the domestic virtues, but Sports thought otherwise, for Neal learned that she had prepared the chopped eggs and onion and steak exactly as he liked it. Neal
would go back to the candy store and Levy’s homely cuisine with new enthusiasm. Lounging in the club chair that had formerly been Jay’s,
his long legs drooping over the ottoman as though it was his by some
divine right, Sports casually said:
“I had a good day. Need a few . . . ?”

“
I don’t getcha.”

“
Moola . . . money?”

“
I get an allowance from Jay.”

“
How much?”

“
Three dollars a week.”

He handed Neal a five-dollar bill.

“
Well, maybe there’s somethin’ special you
wanta
buy yourself?
A few extra always comes in handy.”

Neal took the money even though he was uncomfortable about
accepting it, for it put him in Sports’ camp. When he held it in his
hands, he realized that he had made a mistake, but it was too late to
hand it back. He also felt that he had compromised Jay’s position in his life, for Jay was the giver of bread, the
granter
of favors, the all-powerful lawgiver who decided right and wrong. But now he was
joined by another man, and Neal’s confusion and guilt verged on
panic. He had been a traitor to his father’s cause - he had allowed a
pretender to usurp his rightful position - but hadn’t his parents been traitors as well? Hadn’t they in effect created him out of climate of
hostility, suspicion, lying, deceit, ruthlessly and unfeelingly? Weren’t they still groping in the dark for something, a person perhaps, to give
their lives a new direction? Wasn’t treason the responsibility of the
first begetter? Why did he owe
them
loyalty when they had disclaimed responsibility for him?

It had just begun to get dark when he met Moony in the alley behind the apartment house. He didn’t see him at first, because Moony was sitting on top of
an ash
can, and not by the side of the back entrance where they had agreed to meet. He was chewing a
toothpick,
and it moved rhythmically back and forth. “Hey, what’re you doing over there?” Neal asked, a bit fearfully. The older boy had a curiously disquieting effect on him at night.

“
Sometimes people throw out money by mistake. I found a fifty-cent piece a week ago.”

“
Are we going?”

“
Yeah, sure we’re going.”

“
Where’s
Zimmie
?”

“
He just left.”

“
Without us?” Neal moaned.

“
Naw, he chickened out. I knew he had chicken shit for blood.
Talks a good game, but when it comes to doing
somethink
he punks
out. I could’ve beat his head in.”

“
You didn’t, did you?” Neal was frightened for his friend. He
didn’t think that he and Zimmerman combined could take Moony
in a fight.

“
Know what he said to me? Just ‘cause you smell from apeshit,
don’t think you’re Tarzan. I could’ve
slit
his balls off for that. Who
needs him anyway? He couldn’t do
anythink
, ‘cause he
do
n’t have
lead in his pencil.”

Neal took out his five-dollar bill and showed it to Moony.

“
The treat’s on me, Moony.”

“
A
fin
! Neal, you’re really a friend. I think I’d like you to be my
best friend.”

Neal was agreeably flattered, but he already had Zimmerman as
a best friend.
However,
he was reluctant to offend Moony. You didn’t
turn people down who offered themselves so openly, and he could
use Moony’s friendship for terror value with anyone in the neighborhood he couldn’t beat in a fight.

“
You, me and
Zimmie
. The three Musketeers.”

“
Whaaat
,
Zimmie
? After what he said to me! Not if he shit wooden
nickels.”

“
He’s a good guy,” Neal affirmed.

Moony’s eyes were transfixed on the money.

“
Waaal
,” he drawled, “if he’s such a buddy of
yours .
. . he must
have
sompin
’.”

“
We can be
buckers
,” Neal generously offered. “We’ll split the
money.”

“
Aw, Neal, that’s crazy.”

“
I want to.”

They walked up the Utica Avenue Hill and stood by the movie
theater. The lights of the marquee were blacked
out,
and a man on
a ladder was hanging the letters on top for
the new
feature, which
began the following day. Neal was restive and anxious.

“
What’re we waiting for?”

“
We’ll do
a job
first,” Moony blandly replied.

“
What for? We’ve got enough money. More than enough.”

“
That don’t matter. I like to do jobs. If I miss a week, I get rusty.
Lookit
, if you don’t
wanta
go
wid
me why do
n’tcha
wait in the drugstore?” he added diplomatically, not to put Neal’s courage to the
test. “You have an ice cream soda, and I’ll
meetcha
at ten.”

“
Isn’t that late
for .
. . ?”

“
Naw, it never starts before then. She works in Woolworth’s or
somewhere and she doesn’t get finished till late.”

The theater began to
empty,
and people crowded into the lobby.
Moony peered at the photographs advertising the coming attraction,
but out of the corner of his eye he hungrily sought a victim for his
assault. Two girls, one chubby and about thirteen and the other tall
and angular, chewing bubble gum, passed them.

“
C’mon,” Moony said out of the side of his mouth.

“
Where?”

“
Them. We’ll get them. They both got pocketbooks.”

“
Do we grab them and run?”

“
Just follow ‘em, till they go down a dark street.”

“
Maybe they live close,” Neal said hopefully.

“
Like a hunter in the jungle after a lion. We track. You Sabu, me
great white hunter with
gun
. Then bam! We
scare
their tits off.”

“
If they recognize
us .
. . ?”

Moony
took out two black
handkerchiefs
and gave one to Neal.

“
Before we attack, we put these on.”

They followed the girls for about ten minutes. They were headed
in the direction of a large park called Lincoln Terrace, which covered
about two square miles, and had innumerable exits
that
led to narrow winding streets.

“
They don’t want to walk up the hill, so they’re taking a short cut,”
Moony whispered breathlessly. Neal could not understand his accomplice’s mounting nervous excitement, for he felt only terror and
apprehension. What if they were caught? The park was patrolled
by policemen at night.
Moony
took his
hand,
and they rushed through
a narrow, muddied path, overgrown with bracken and low-hanging
trees.

“
. . . Cut them off before they get to Eastern Parkway. We jump
out of the bushes, and they’re too scared to do anything.”

Moony stuck his head out furtively over the bushes.

“
Put your hankie on,” he ordered.

Neal did as he was told. The handkerchief had a stale, rank odor
of sweat and Neal gasped when he had tied it around his face. He
couldn’t control his
breathing,
and he thought that he would have
an asthma attack before they did anything. He heard a mechanical
flicking
sound and watched Moony rubbing the blade of his knife
across the palm of his hand with the same indifferent manner as a
barber about to shave somebody. After a
second,
he closed it.

“
You’re not going to use
it .
. . ?” Neal protested. His voice
squeaked ridiculously.

“
Just scare ‘em, so they won’t try anything.”