by Pete Hamill
“I certainly do,” Kate said.
“Nurse,” Michael said. “Did you X-ray a rabbi here yesterday?”
“A rabbi. Yes, I believe we did. He was mugged, poor soul, wasn’t he?”
Someone called her and the conversation ended before it had begun. He heard his mother say: “He’s in the best hands here.” He heard his mother say: “It’s not like some city hospital.” He heard her say: “They’re just butcher shops.” Michael wiggled his toes, massaged his skin and muscles, and measured one leg against the other. The damaged right leg was definitely thinner. He wanted to get out into the sunshine, to exercise the leg and let the sun brown his skin. And then take care of one big thing.
“Mom, I want to see Rabbi Hirsch,” he said suddenly. “He’s here somewhere, and I’ve got to see him.”
She looked at him in an exasperated way, as if considering that the rabbi might be part of their troubles. Michael sensed this.
“It’s not his fault, what happened,” Michael said angrily. “He’s a good man and they’re not. You know it, Mom.”
“All right,” she said. “When you’re in X Ray, I’ll find out where he is.”
Then it was his turn. He followed a nurse into the X-ray room, while Kate went out to the corridor. The X ray took a few seconds. He asked the dark-haired nurse operating the machine if she had X-rayed a rabbi the day before. “I was off yesterday,” she said. Then called out: “Next.” And told Michael to wait outside. With Kate gone, he sat in the back row, behind dozens of women and children and a few men, and felt his anger throbbing like a wound. Goddamned nurse. Maybe she’s lying. Maybe she doesn’t want to tell me about his broken head. Maybe there’s brain damage. He saw the blood seeping from the rabbi’s ear. He saw the slick red puddle on the asphalt.
Kate returned, shaking her head.
“He’s up on the seventh floor,” she said. “In intensive care. No visitors, Michael.”
“I’ve got to see him,” Michael said. “I don’t want him to be alone, the way I was.”
“I know that, son,” she said, irritated. “But he’s in a coma. Do you understand what that is?” He nodded that he understood. “They’ve got a cop up there, keeping everybody away. We’ll come back when he’s better. Out of the coma. We’ll bring him pound cake and iced tea.”
That was that. They walked home together. Michael was still limping, but he kept increasing the weight on the healed leg, hoping that each step would make it stronger. It was almost noon. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky. Flowers wilted on the stands outside the florist’s shop. The asphalt was softer. Dogs huddled against walls, their pink tongues hanging. Kids sat in the shade on the side streets, sucking on lemon ices and drinking red sodas. Michael felt sweat seeping down his back under his shirt, as slow and thick as blood. It must be hot in his room at the hospital, Michael thought. He must be sweating under the bandages. But he will not die. I have to believe that. I won’t let him die.
“It’s a scorcher,” he heard Kate say, as if forcing herself back to normal conversation.
He heard his own voice, following her lead. “The radio says it’ll be ninety.”
“Human beings aren’t made for such heat,” she said. “When it’s sixty in Ireland, we think we’re in the tropics.”
The hallway was cooler than the street, but as they climbed the stairs, Michael’s stomach churned, and the heat grew clammier, as if it were pressing down from the roof. He paused at the first floor landing, touching his mother’s forearm.
“Someone’s upstairs,” he said.
She listened. They could hear the muffled sound of a flushing toilet. In the Caputo flat, pots clanged against a sink. Jo Stafford was singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” in Mrs. Griffin’s. But there were no baritone whispers above them, no shuffling of feet.
“Come on, son,” she said, leading the way.
And stopped as she turned on the second floor landing.
Sonny Montemarano and Jimmy Kabinsky were sitting on the steps.
“Hey, Michael,” Sonny said.
“Some friends you’ve been,” Kate Devlin said. “Move over and let us by.”
Sonny stood to let her pass, and for a moment Michael was afraid that he’d completely turned against the Devlins and would strike her. He tensed, ready to attack.
“I don’t blame you for being mad at us, Mrs. Devlin,” Sonny said softly. “But we didn’t have no choice.”
“Yes, you did,” she said, her anger pushing her up the steps. “You could have had guts.”
Her keys jangled as she opened the apartment door. Michael started to pass Sonny and Jimmy.
“How you feeling, man?” Jimmy said, looking ashamed.
“Fuck you,” Michael whispered.
“We gotta talk to you.”
“About what?” Michael said, and kept going.
Sonny grabbed the back of his belt.
“About Frankie McCarthy,” Sonny said. “He’s got a gun.” Michael gripped the banister. His mother appeared at the door above them.
“Are you all right?” she said. “Michael?”
“Yeah, Mom. We’re goin’ up the roof and talk.”
“Don’t go near the edge,” she said, a look of disdain on her face for Sonny and Jimmy, and went back into the kitchen.
On the roof, they leaned against a brick wall. The air was thick with heat and chimney smoke. Ridges of shiny black tar pushed through the joined seams of tarpaper. A yellowish haze shimmered over the rooftops of Brooklyn. While he talked, Sonny wouldn’t look at Michael, but his words came in an anxious rush.
“So you know Frankie got out, right? The lawyer talked some fucking judge into it, saying Frankie was too young to do time with all these bad guys in Raymond Street, being seventeen and all, and too old to go to Warwick or Youth House with the bad kids. So they give him credit for good behavior, and yesterday they tell him get the fuck out. First thing he does, he gets himself a piece. From the racket guys down President Street. I hear this from one of my cousins lives down there. Then last night, they all meet in the poolroom. Jimmy and me are hangin’ out on the fire escape in my aunt’s house, you know, by the Venus? It’s so fucking hot we can’t do nothin’ but hang there. And here comes Frankie McCarthy and the rest of them, drinking beer from containers. They sit on the steps beside the Venus. It’s closed now, you know? They always hang there. Right beneath us. And we see Frankie show them the piece.”
“Looked like a .38,” Jimmy said.
“Then they talk about having a big party,” Sonny said.
“A welcome home party,” Jimmy said.
“And Frankie says, ‘Yeah, we’ll get these fucking people out of our hair, once and for all.’”
“They mention you,” Jimmy said. “They mention your mother.”
“The Russian says they gotta let everybody know what they can do or the cops will nail them all.”
“And that Skids, you know, little guy with the muscles? He says they gotta do to you and your mother what they did to the rabbi. To set a fucking example. And Tippy Hudnut says they didn’t go far enough, they shoulda killed the Jew bastid and burned down the synagogue with him in it.”
“Then Frankie shows them the piece again,” Sonny said. “He says they can grab who they want, take them out to Gerritsen Beach or someplace and blow their heads off. He says, ‘These fuckin’ people around here, they gotta know we mean what we say.’ He says, ‘I met some Mafia guy in the can, he told me how to do it.’”
“They’re laughing all through this,” Jimmy Kabinsky said.
“Frankie says the mafioso told him he could get them plenty of work, big money,” Sonny said. “Robbing cars, muscling guys for the loan sharks, and getting people to pay protection. You know, the bars, the stores, they don’t pay, you break their fucking windows. You burn the store out. You rob everything or kick over the stands or whatever. They could make a mint of money, Frankie says. But then he says, ‘You gotta put fear in them to make it work.’�
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“So he says he wants to have his welcome home party Friday night,” Jimmy said. “At the poolroom. To make sure everybody knows he’s back. To show the cops can’t do nothing about nothing. A big party, with a sign and all, a fuck you to the parish. Let everybody know. Get drunk, get laid.”
“Then get you. Get your mother.”
“Burn the synagogue.”
“Get the guys that cleaned the synagogue that time.”
“Burn down the fucking hardware store,” Jimmy said.
“All in one night,” Sonny said.
“Jesus Christ,” Michael said.
He turned away from them, looking toward the factory roof. The hard edges of the dark brick building were dissolving in the heat. He couldn’t see the white horse. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then faced them.
“How come you came to tell me?” he said.
Sonny’s face was loose with emotion. His eyes welled.
“We don’t want nothin’ more bad to happen to you, Michael.”
“You’re still our friend,” Jimmy said. “Even though you joined up with the rabbi when you was supposed to find the treasure.”
“I found the treasure, Jimmy.”
“You did?”
Michael tapped the side of his head. “It’s up here.”
He started to leave, and Sonny grabbed him, heaving with emotion.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said, and hugged Michael.
“So am I,” Michael said, and pulled away.
33
After an early dinner, Michael went to his room, the window open to the humid August evening. He could wait no longer. Now he must do something. To save the life of Rabbi Hirsch. To make somebody pay for all the blood. He watched from the fire escape as his mother moved quickly along Ellison Avenue to the Grandview; from that height, she looked small and vulnerable. Before she left, he had heard her voice, bright and charged with hope, as she described the apartment she’d found in Sunset Park, a place with a garden, where she could grow geraniums and roses. He had heard her say that she’d already talked to the manager at the Grandview, explaining some of what had happened, and he understood why she wanted to move and would try to help her transfer to an RKO theater in Bay Ridge. He’d heard all that; heard her say she was sure she could borrow the money from the Dime Savings Bank to pay for the moving expenses.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she had said. “There’s a sickness here and we have to escape it.”
But he kept thinking of Rabbi Hirsch in the gutter, and the Falcons grabbing them in the street that night, and his crutches being smashed and Skids tearing her blouse and Tippy reaching under her skirt. She spoke of packing dishes and hiring movers, and Michael saw Frankie McCarthy raising the cash register in the air over the fallen Mister G. She talked about leaving in ten days, so he’d be eligible for the Catholic school in Bay Ridge; he flashed on Frankie McCarthy’s knife in the chilly darkness of the alley behind the Venus. He thought about the lost summer too, and his lost friends, while Kate tried to put the best face on moving.
“You’ve never lived anywhere else,” she said, “and maybe that’s not such a good thing.”
Not true, he thought. I’ve lived in Prague. I’ve moved through fog-bound streets and secret tunnels, seen two-headed alligators and unicorns, watched angels carry palaces from distant cities. I’ve seen cathedral spires rise in the air like rockets. I’ve seen rocks turn into roses.
Then she asked him who, after all, he would really miss in the parish, and he said: “Rabbi Hirsch. He’s my only friend.”
“Well, we’re not going to California,” she said. “You can visit him. He can visit us.”
And he thought: Not if Frankie McCarthy takes over the parish. Not if Rabbi Hirsch dies.
He waited until it was dark and then locked the door behind him. He went up to the roof and crossed the length of the block on the rooftops to the open door of 290 Pearse Street. Then, silent in his sneakers, he tiptoed down the stairs of that building to the vestibule. When he was sure nobody was watching, he darted into the street. His leg felt stronger now. Hugging the walls, ducking into doorways, trying to remember 13 Rue Madeleine, he moved along Ellison Avenue to the hospital. When he passed bars, he turned his head away, afraid of being spotted by friends of the Falcons. His body felt as clenched as a fist. I’m a spy, he thought. A spy in my own country.
The bright, clean lobby of Brooklyn Wesleyan was crowded with visitors. About a dozen waited on line at a desk for passes, but he didn’t bother trying to get one; they’d just say no. Then he saw the janitor from the parkside. His black face was shiny with sweat or fever, and he was standing in his striped overalls at the door marked Admissions. Nobody bothered talking to him. One nurse came out and beckoned a woman who was standing behind the janitor. It was as if he were invisible, and Michael remembered the way Jackie Robinson stood by himself on the dugout steps on that glorious day at Ebbets Field.
When a crowd of visitors started into an elevator, he joined them. They were carrying flowers or ice cream or books. Most looked concerned, but one beefy man acted like a department store elevator operator: “Fifth floor, ladies lingerie, household goods, rubber ducks…” He broke the tension. Three older women laughed. Michael wished he could laugh too, as he got off with a few others on the seventh floor.
He found Rabbi Hirsch in room 709.
He was lying in a murky darkness, and Michael could barely recognize him. There were heavy bandages around his skull. His face was swollen and distorted. His lower lip was split, and there was a blackness where his teeth used to be. One of his arms was encased in plaster from fingers to shoulder. There were tubes dripping fluid into his other arm. His eyes were swollen and shut. He had taken a terrible beating.
Michael thought: Never again.
He leaned close to the man’s right ear.
“Rabbi Hirsch,” he whispered, “it’s me. Michael Devlin.”
The rabbi’s eyes fluttered and then opened slightly.
“Michael,” he said. He breathed heavily and tried to smile. “Boychik.”
The eyelids closed, as if exhausted by the effort. Michael held the rabbi’s cold hand.
“Go away,” the rabbi croaked. “It’s not safe.”
“I know,” Michael said. “But we have to do something. We can’t let them win.”
He told the rabbi what he knew and what had happened to him and his mother and what was coming. He told him about the gun. He told him what Frankie McCarthy was planning for the synagogue. He told him that Father Heaney was gone to South America and Charlie Senator had moved away. He told the rabbi all this without knowing if the rabbi heard him. The man’s eyes remained closed, his battered face unmoving. His breathing was pained and shallow. For a moment, Michael considered calling a nurse, even if she made him leave. Then the rabbi’s eyes opened and he looked directly at Michael.
“We have to do something,” Michael said.
The rabbi’s expression said: Such as what?
Michael leaned even closer to the rabbi’s ear.
“Tell me the secret name of God,” Michael whispered.
The rabbi’s eyes widened.
34
Early Thursday morning, Michael went to the park carrying a small, rusting spade in an old canvas Brooklyn Eagle bag. He’d found both in the cellar, beside the hot-water furnace. His mother was still asleep in the smothering August heat, and he left her a note saying that he was going to church. A small lie, he thought, but the less she knew, the better.
It was almost eight o’clock and already the heat was clamped upon the city. On Pearse Street, a water wagon from the Sanitation Department lumbered uphill, and as the water sprayed the soft asphalt, steam rose into the sullen air. At the entrance to the park, a gray-haired man in khaki shorts sat on a park bench, listening to a portable radio and drinking beer from a quart bottle. His eyes were glassy. His skin was blistered with sweat. He didn’t seem to hear the news announcer s
ay that the day’s temperatures were expected in the high 90s and there was no end in sight. The man was very still, as if comforted by the rich dirt smell drifting from the dozing park.
Michael moved quickly across the moist meadows toward the dark smudge of the hill that was crowned by the Quaker cemetery. A few lone men slept on the meadow grass in a litter of beer containers. A woman walked a small dog. The ball fields were empty. Above them, clouds moved slowly but took no shape.
Michael hurried along, the canvas bag hanging from its shoulder strap. He crossed the deserted bridle path where men and women galloped on rented horses across summer afternoons. He saw two boys walking to the Big Lake with fishing poles. He paused to drink from a stone water fountain until the boys vanished past a shoulder of the hill.
Then he plunged into the woods. It was cooler here and the trees were taller, their dense foliage blocking the sun. He climbed and climbed, inhaling the deep odors of earth and rotting leaves, and then looked back. Nobody could see him here. No cops. No Falcons. Nobody. Few kids came this way either, afraid of the old graves and silent tombstones beyond the high iron fence. His mother had explained once that the cemetery had been there since before the Revolution, and when the land was laid out for the park the Quakers were allowed to keep their cemetery forever. Sometimes on foggy nights, boys traveled here and dared each other to climb the fence and walk among the dead. Michael had never joined them.
Now he turned his back on the graves and found an open spot beneath a giant elm. He cleared away a thin carpet of dead leaves. Then he began to dig. The dirt was heavy and black. As he shoveled it into the canvas bag he followed Rabbi Hirsch’s instructions and cleaned out the twigs and stones and leaves. The dirt must be pure. When the bag was full, he stopped to gasp for breath in the sticky air. Then he placed the spade on top of the dirt and swung the bag onto his shoulder. His bad leg buckled under the weight, but he felt no pain. He adjusted the bag and bent forward, and he knew he could carry it. He started back down the hill.