The Hoods (9 page)

I couldn't cry.

From the church we followed poor Dommie out to Long Island to his grave. I watched as they put him in a hole. Everybody was weeping and praying as the priest blessed the grave and asked God to forgive poor Dommie for his sins.

On the ride back to New York, I tried to figure it out for myself.

Good old Dommie, laughing and joking only a few days ago, had been full of life, a nice smile on his face, when he called me, “Hey, Noodles.” Now he was lying cold in a box with a bullet in his head at the bottom of a hole. I couldn't figure it out. It was hard to understand I wouldn't see my friend Dommie again.

The district leader did everything he could for us. He said he couldn't help it. He had to make a deal. Two of us had to face the music. Pat and I decided to take the rap.

Max promised to deliver the ten dollar union money, maybe more, every week to my home.

Patsy was sent to a Catholic Protectory. I was sent to the Jewish Home, Cedar Knolls, up in Hawthorne, New York.

My stay wasn't too bad. The food was good, and there was enough of it. This was my first time out of New York, so the country atmosphere was a novelty. We weren't treated as criminals; the place was run more on the style of a boarding school. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of freedom of movement allowed. A great deal was left to our honor. Rarely did anybody abuse his privileges.

To tell the truth, I enjoyed my stay. The change of air did a lot for me. The clean, open country smells were so different from the hemmed-in stink of the poverty-stricken ghetto. What I took delight in more than anything else was the library. I buried myself in books. Through that medium I visited every country in the world as well as other worlds—the moon, Mars and other planets. I flew in planes and explored the bottom of the seas. I was a pirate, a missionary. I was a highwayman, a priest, a minister, a rabbi. I was a surgeon and his patient. I was one of the arrogant rich and a man of the people. I was a king and his lowliest subject. I was everybody and everything. I was there with Moses on the Mount: I looked over his shoulder as he sat on the rock and wrote his ten commandments. On the way down he and I discussed the best way to present it to the people. I chuckled with admiration when he told me the story he was going to tell.

I sat at the feet of Jesus, with the rest of his disciples. I listened with awe to his revolutionary teachings for the betterment of all peoples. I helped him carry the cross up Calvary. My heart bled as I watched the pain and suffering on the face of Jesus as they drove spikes into him. Then I saw how, ever after, the same type of people, in every generation, who were afraid of progress and Jesus' true teachings, prostituted his name, twisted his meanings, and crucified him over and over again for their own selfish purposes. I saw how other poor unfortunates were encouraged to use his anguished image as a fetish to fill a gap in their lives, or to cover a neurosis of some sort. All of it made me very sad.

The day I was to be dismissed from Cedar Knolls, the rabbi called me into his study and gave me his final sermon, “How a good Jewish boy should behave.” It went in one ear and out the other. In conclusion, he smiled and gave me a pat on the back.

He said, “I have a surprise for you; there's a friend outside to drive you back to New York.”

I wondered who it could be. Jauntily I walked out of the building. Leaning up against a new shiny black Cadillac, smoking a cigar and grinning at me, was Big Maxie.

Even though we had grown up together, and he had been my intimate companion since the days at Soup School, now, somehow, he seemed like a stranger. I guess it was the eighteen-month separation. He looked entirely different. Maxie had grown tall: he was well over six feet. He was big all right, big all over, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He must have done plenty of gym work while I was away. He looked in the pink. His sharp black eyes were shining. He had the same contagious grin, and showed his white perfect teeth.

“Noodles, old boy, it's good to see you. How are you?” he said.

He extended his hand; his grasp was like a vise.

A warm, embarrassing surge of affection swept over me. I returned his grin. “I'm okay. You're looking good, Max.”

“You don't look so bad yourself, Noodles. I hardly recognized you; you're almost as tall as I am.”

He turned me around.

“Some pair of shoulders on you, Noodles, you certainly developed, up here in the country. Plenty of exercise, hey?”

“You mean plenty of work,” I said, “to keep us out of mischief. We're a mutual admiration society, hey, Max?”

We both laughed.

He opened the door of the Cadillac. I felt like a man of the world, stepping in and sitting next to him. He swung the car around dexterously and shot over the gravel driveway.

“Where did you get the Caddy, Maxie?” I asked.

“This is one of my funeral cars,” he said.

He handed me a cigar in just as nonchalant a way. I bit the end off, spit it out the window and lit it. I puffed awhile; I looked at the label. It was a Corona Corona.

“Did I write to you,” he asked, “my uncle kicked the bucket?”

“Yeh,” I nodded. “What from? You didn't say.”

Maxie spit out the window. “Cancer of the liver.”

“Too bad, he was a nice old guy.”

“Yep, he was a swell guy; he left me the business. I take over when I'm twenty-one.”

“You're going to be a big shot with that business, hey, Max?”

“Yep,” Maxie smiled at me. “We'll all be big shots. We're still partners, you, me, Cockeye and Pat.”

I was thrilled. “You going to cut us in, Maxie?”

“Yep.”

I leaned back feeling secure and comfortable. My friend Maxie, I reflected, always was the generous one, an okay guy if there ever was one.

On the drive to the city, Maxie gave me a complete resume of all that had happened on the East Side during my enforced vacation.

“Yep, we're still on the union payroll. I been up to your house with your share every week. Everybody's okay. You know your kid brother is working on a newspaper? He's a reporter.”

“Yeh,” I nodded.

“Peggy turned professional, did you hear about that, Noodles?”

“No.” I shook my head, “Professional what? Dancer?”

For a minute it made me think of Dolores. I still had her in my mind.

“Dancer?” Maxie laughed. “Yep, she dances in bed. She turned from an amateur to a professional. She charges now.”

“How much?”

“A buck a throw.”

“She's worth it.”

“Yep, she's pretty good.”

“You remember we used to lay her for a charlotte russe?”

We both laughed.

“And you remember Whitey, the cop?” Maxie continued.

“Do I remember? How could I forget?”

Max continued, “Well, he's a sergeant now.”

“Honesty pays off for Whitey,” I commented drily. We both laughed.

“Yep, he's a pretty smart Irishman. He's on Peggy's payroll,” Max said.

“I bet he takes it out in trade.”

“I'll bet,” Maxie laughingly agreed.

I was dying to ask him about Dolores. I wrote her every week, but she never answered me. Instead I said, “How's Patsy and Cockeye doing?”

“Well, Cockeye took out his hack license and once in awhile he jockies one of his brother's cabs.”

“Hooknose got cabs?”

“Yep, he worked his way up to a four-cab fleet. Patsy hangs out with me; he helps around the parlor. And if we get a good steer, we step out.”

“On a heist?”

“Yep,” Maxie nodded. “It's got to be more than a couple of grand, or we don't bother. And since prohibition went into effect a few months ago, there's plenty of dough around. Once in awhile we get a contract from one of them bootleggers to lump somebody up.”

“I hear there's dough in bootlegging.”

“There must be; there're plenty of speakeasies opening around town.”

“Speakeasies?”

“Yep, that's what they call them: closed-door beer joints with peep holes on the doors.”

“Oh.”

We had reached the lower East Side. Maxie was driving the big car recklessly in and out of the heavy traffic. He almost grazed a fender off another car. Maxie leaned out of his window and yelled at the driver.

“Hey, stupid, where did you learn how to drive? At a correspondence school?”

The elderly well-dressed driver shouted back as he turned the corner, “You slum hoodlums act like you own the whole city.”

Maxie chuckled as he pulled into the garage. “You know, Noodles, that ain't a bad idea.”

“What?”

“What that guy just said, the hoods from the soup schools taking over the city.”

“The whole city?”

“Why not? You know, organize.”

In the eighteen months I had been away from the city, four memorable changes had taken place. The war was over. Prohibition was in effect. Dolores was a minor dance sensation in a Broadway musical comedy. Big Maxie, Patsy, Cockeye, with a sort of subsidiary contribution from Jake the Goniff, Pipy and Goo-Goo, had built up quite a reputation among the hoodlums of the city as a tough East Side mob.

I also discovered that in my absence a legend had grown up about my powers with the shiv. I was considered an expert shiv man. Maxie told me of some of the stories that were being told around the East Side. We both laughed at my mythical knife exploits.

Our reputation as all-around tough guys and so-called killers was the force which hurled us into the actual violence incubated by prohibition.

People came to us with what we called “contracts.” From all over town, from people we had never met or heard of came unsolicited propositions to heist big payrolls, wholesale jewelry firms, banks. Bootleggers and racketeers came to us with contracts to murder their business partners, sweethearts, brothers, husbands, wives or enemies. We were offered ridiculously small fees as well as fabulously large sums of money.

At first we ignored and laughed at this deluge of unsought assignments. Then, either because we were flattered to be sought after by people in high and low places, or because we wanted the money or for a combination of these reasons, we finally capitulated. We began living up to our reputations, but we screened the contracts we took on through the wide mesh of our peculiar code of ethics.

Like robber barons of old, by physical force and gall we took over most of the illegal activities on the crowded East Side. It was a large and lucrative domain. We were comparatively young as years are counted, but we were efficient veterans in all matters requiring nerve and brutality. Fate was kind, and our success gave us an air of cool arrogance.

In a comparatively short period we had become acquainted with little mobs which had suddenly sprung up from the soup school districts of the city. To redeem a load of whiskey we had hijacked uptown, we had a slight encounter with Arthur Flegenheimer, the Dutchman, and his mob, who came from a wretched, cheerless and impoverished section of the Bronx. On a matter relating to cigarette machines we met with Joe Adonis, Leo Bike and some of their crew, who were recruited from the unhealthy, congested, dilapidated sections of Brooklyn. We had a slight brush with Tony Bender and Vito Genovese and their outfit, who originated from the stinking hovels and pigsties of the lower part of Greenwich Village. We had a tryst with Charlie Lucky and Lupo the Wolf, who came from the destitute, stable-like tenements of east midtown Manhattan. We discussed the “Black Hand” shake-down of one of their countrymen who was currently residing in our domain, where he had come seeking our protection. We met and formed a coalition with the most gentlemanly, the most honorable and the boldest hoodlum in the city, Frank or Francisco, from a miserable, overcrowded section of east Harlem. We met them all. It was a startling and irrefutable fact that without exception, they came from the same kind of poverty-stricken background we did. They came from different parts of the city, but they were all soup school alumni.

We had six speakeasies, including the one on Delancey Street which was our general headquarters. We called that one “Fat Moe's,” in honor of Gelly's son. Fat Moe became our chief bartender and manager. Besides, we had a piece of the number racket that was being introduced into the East Side by a Porto Rican banker, and we were on many of the “off the track” bookies' payrolls. Bootleggers and “speakie” operators came to us for protection from jackal hoodlums who were shaking them down. Obviously, we charged a fee for our services. People found it hard to understand and wouldn't believe that, owing to our past experiences and deep sympathies, we shied away from profiting by labor racketeering, by selling narcotics or by prostitution.

Despite the fact that we were spending money pretty freely, there was so much of it around and more coming our way, that we were all filling up safety deposit boxes.

I was our head bookkeeper and kept the accounts of our diversified illegal enterprises. But we had one legal enterprise: the funeral parlors and undertaking business which Maxie's bachelor uncle had left him. Maxie was true to his promise; he cut us all in as equal partners. This was our cover up. On the books, and as far as the federal income tax people or any other authority was concerned, the undertaking business was our only source of income. This business was very convenient for our general scheme of operations. It answered many purposes: our funeral cars were always on call for the district Tammany leader and the politicians in general. On the surface we ran it as a legitimate business, but, for a price, we buried many a “stiff” who wasn't so legit.