by Grey, Harry
The Hoods
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49 This page formatted 2005 Blackmask Online.
The Hoods
Harry Grey
This page formatted 2005 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
* * *
To my true and loyal mob M., B., H. and S.
CHAPTER 1
Cockeye Hymie leaned excitedly across his desk. His blue eyes were completely out of focus. His manner was insistent and earnest. His tone was obsequious.
“Hey, Max, aw, hey, Max. Listen, will yuh, Max?” he pleaded.
Big Maxie darted a glance at our teacher, old Safety-Pin Mons, sitting sternly at her desk far up front, at the head of our seventh grade class. He put his paper-bound Western on his lap and looked disgustedly at Cockeye. His eyes were sharp and direct; his manner, calm and authoritative. His tone was disdainful.
“Why don't you just read your book and shut up?”
He picked up his Western and muttered, “Pain in the ass.”
At that rebuke, Cockeye gave Maxie a hurt and reproachful look. He slouched back in his seat, sulking, feeling abused. Maxie eyed him good humoredly over the top of his book.
Resigned, he whispered, “All right, all right, Cockeye, what's on your mind?”
Cockeye hesitated. His excitement had cooled somewhat from Maxie's chiding. You could tell because his eyes were back to normal focus.
“I dunno. I was just thinking,” he said.
“Thinking? About what?” Max was getting impatient.
“How about we skip school and go out West and join up with Jesse James and his gang?”
Big Maxie gave Cockeye a look of deep disgust. Slowly he untangled his long legs from under the small desk. He stretched his long muscular arms leisurely, far above his head. He yawned, and nudged me with his knee. In wise-guy fashion he spoke through the corner of his mouth: “Hey, Noodles, did you hear the dumb cluck? I ask you? How can one guy be so dumb? Go ahead, you talk to him. Jesus, what a shmuck.”
“He's a shmuck with ear laps,” I agreed. I leaned over to Cockeye, with my habitual sneer of superiority, and said: “Why don't you use your noodle? Them guys are dead, long ago.”
“Dead?” Cockeye repeated, crestfallen.
“Yeh, dead, you cluck,” I sneered.
He smirked, “You know everything. You got some noodle on your shoulders. Hey, Noodles?” He gave me a sycophantic laugh. I ate up his flattery. He put it on thicker. “You're smart, that's why they call you Noodles, hey, Noodles?” He laughed again in the same fawning manner.
I shrugged in false modesty, and turned to Max, “What else can you expect from a putsy like Cockeye?”
“Expect what, about Cockeye, Noodles?” tough-looking Patsy asked. He sat on the other side of Max.
Miss Mons shot a warning angry glance in our direction. We ignored her.
Patsy brushed his black abundant hair away from his bushy eyebrows with a defiant push. He affected a snarl by curling the corner of his upper lip, making his most commonplace utterance a challenge. In a deliberate, pugnacious staccato, he asked: “What did the stupid cluck say this time?”
Pudgy little Dominick, closest to Cockeye, volunteered the information. In his high-pitched voice he said, “He wants to go out West and join the Jesse James Mob. He wants to ride a horsey.”
Dominick bounced up and down, holding an imaginary rein with one hand. With the other he beat his fat flank.
“Giddeyepp, giddeyepp, Cockeye!” he taunted.
He made a clicking noise with his tongue. The four of us joined the act, clicking and bouncing up and down together.
Cockeye smirked in embarrassment. “Aw, fellas, cut it out, I was only kidding.”
“Pssst. The old battle axe,” Patsy whispered.
Like a dark cloud traveling swiftly across a bright sky, an enormous billowy disheveled figure came down the aisle. Her gargantuan hips were covered with a multitude of black skirts fastened with safety pins. She stood looming over us.
“You—you—good-for-nothing young tramps—what are you up to?”
Miss Mons was bursting with rage. With a quick sweep of her hand she snatched the Western thriller out of Cockeye's hands. Her cheeks blew with gale-like fury.
“You... you... hoodlums! You... you... gangsters! You... you... East Side bums, reading such trash! Give me that filthy literature immediately.”
She stuck her hand under Maxie's nose. Slowly, impudently, Maxie folded the Western and put it in his back pocket.
“Give me that book instantly!” She stamped her foot savagely.
Maxie smiled sweetly up at her. “Kish mir in tauchess, dear Teacher,” he said in distinct Yiddish.
I could see by her shocked expression she understood what part of the anatomy Max wanted her to kiss.
For a split second the class sat in shocked silence. The only sound in the room was the laboring asthmatic noise from the crimson jowls of our teacher. Then a chorus of suppressed giggling broke loose. She whirled around, spluttering and wheezing. For a moment she glared angrily around the room in a furious silence. Then she retreated to her desk, her prodigious backside bouncing in angry rhythm.
Dominick slapped his left hand
on the middle of his stiffly extended right arm: an obscene Italian gesture.
“Gola Tay, Old Safety-Pins,” he shouted after her.
Patsy whacked Dominick on the back and chuckled, “Yours is too small; you need a broomstick for that one.”
Maxie made a jeering vulgar noise through the side of his mouth. The whole class broke into a hilarious roar. Miss Mons stood in front of her desk surveying the rowdy scene. She was shaking in uncontrolled fury. After a moment she regained her composure. Her passion subsided into a quiet, icy bitterness. She cleared her throat. The class became still.
“You five hoodlums who started this abominable disturbance will get your just deserts,” she said. “All through the past term I have had to put up with your filthy, vulgar East Side conduct. Never in my entire teaching career have I come across such vicious young gangsters. No, I am mistaken.” A triumphant smile played on her lips. “Years back I had some miserable scalawags of like character.” Her self-satisfied smile broadened. “And I read in last night's paper all about the illustrious end of two of them. They were ruffians exactly like you.” She pointed her finger dramatically at us. “I prophesy that you five, in due time, will also complete your careers in the same manner as those two —in the electric chair!”
She sat down smiling at us, nodding her head in happy anticipation.
Patsy growled, “She means Lefty Louie and Dago Frank.”
Maxie spit through his teeth. “A couple of dumb clucks, them guys!” He turned to me. “That Lefty Louie, was he really your uncle, Noodles?”
I shook my head regretfully. I would have been proud to admit kinship.
“No, he was just a friend of my uncle Abraham's, you know, the one his friends threw off the boat when they were diamond smuggling.”
Maxie nodded.
Our teacher took a heavy brass watch out of the folds of her black skirt. “Thank goodness, only fifteen more minutes before the dismissal bell,” she said.
She sat looking at us with a half smile on her face, pleased, relishing the end she had prophesied for us.
Maxie took his Western out of his back pocket. With an insolent look at the teacher he slouched down behind his desk. The rest of the class went back to work.
I imitated Big Maxie's careless slouch and lolled deep down behind my desk to listen to the familiar clamor of New York's lower East Side through the open window. I indulged in my favorite make-believe: the outside pandemonium was like a discordant operetta. The piercing police traffic whistle was the orchestra conductor's starting signal. The cloppetty-clop, cloppetty-clop of dray horses pulling squeaky, rumbling wagons over cobblestones was the steady rhythmic beat of the drum. The blare of truck and passenger car horns were the wind instruments playing up and down the scale. The thin whimpering of hungry or ailing infants was the sad music of the violins, and the distant low rumble of the elevated trains was the palpitating beat of the bass viol. The medley of voices calling and shouting in a profusion of dialects was the background chorus, and the stentorian singsong of the peddler calling his wares, the male lead. Finally, dominating this musical uproar, was the ear-splitting screech of a fat woman. I fitted her in as the soprano voice, the primadonna. She was leaning out of an upper window.
“Shloymie... Shloymie... Yoo-hoo, Shloymie, don't forget, tell the grocer a nice fat schmaltz herring!”
Then I imagined goblins and witches riding on these waves of sound, and on the different stinks floating in. They flew in on the stink of rotting garbage from open cans, on the stink from sewers, mingled with the sharp cooking smells from the dank tenements and the acrid urine from the school toilet in the play yard. They came through the window in suffocating waves, particularly offensive goblins discharging fetid secretions. Forever after these sounds and smells of the streets of the East Side were branded in my memory.
I came back to reality after a few moments. I looked around at Big Maxie, Patsy, Dominick and Cockeye Hymie, wondering what they were thinking. I visualized all of us on horses, six-shooters in our hands, banging away at a pursuing posse. That would be fun, I thought. I laughed to myself—me, Noodles, having kid ideas. Another few months I'll be bar-mitzvah. And I still have these dumb-cluck thoughts, like Cockeye Hymie. I laughed to myself.
“What's funny, Noodles?” Max put his book away and looked at me.
“Nuthin', just thinkin'.”
Max chuckled, “You too? About what?”
“I dunno—about Cockeye joining the Jesse James Gang.”
“Yep, pretty dumb, that Cockeye. We join up with them, them small town guys.” Maxie gave a scornful grunt. “Not that Jesse James wasn't pretty hot with a six-shooter, but you know what I mean, Noodles— using horses on a heist. That small-town old-style crap. When we get started, we'll show them.” Maxie wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “We'll make a million bucks sticking up banks and then quit.”
Dominick asked, “A million for the five of us, Max?”
“Nah, a million apiece. How would you like a million bucks, Noodles?”
Maxie was very serious.
“A million? Yeh, I would like it, but maybe a half a million is enough and we quit. A million bucks is a lot of bucks, Maxie,” I said sententiously.
“Maybe a half million is a lot of bucks for some guys, but for me it's gonna be a million.” Max looked defiant.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeh, all right, so we'll go out for a million. What the hell's the difference now?”
“We gonna quit when we get a million?” Patsy challenged.
“Yep, we'll quit and move up to the Bronx and be big shots.” Maxie's tone was final.
“Hey, fellas.” Cockeye leaned over. “How much is a million bucks?”
Maxie slapped his head in disgust. “How d'ya like that question? The guy is past thirteen and he asks how much is a million bucks?”
Dominick cut in, “Cockeye, you're a real cluck, a million bucks is a million bucks.”
“Yeh, that's right,” Cockeye smiled agreeably, “but how much is it? You tell me, Dommie. How many thousands?”
Dominick scratched his head. “I think a million is ten thousand bucks.”
“Whattcha talkin' about, it's more than fifty thousand, ain't it, Noodles?” Patsy jeered.
I was proud. I knew all the answers. That's why they called me Noodles. I said importantly, “It's ten hundred thousand bucks!”
Pat smiled sheepishly. “Yeh, I was just gonna say that.” To hide his embarrassment he quickly changed the subject. “When we gonna start collecting wood for the election fire, Max?”
Maxie gave it judicious thought. “We start collecting this Sunday.”
Cockeye was excited. “We gonna have a big fire this year, like always—even if Wilson loses?”
“Yep, don't we always have the biggest in the neighborhood? We don't care who's elected, Wilson or Hughes, we have a big fire just the same.”
The dismissal bell rang; we grabbed our books. The rest of the pupils stood respectfully to one side as we made for the door. Miss Mons stood up. She put her hand out to stop me as I passed.
“You!” she said imperiously.
“Who, me?”
I was ready to push her aside. Maxie edged up beside me ready to help.
“Yes, you, young man. Mr. O'Brien wants to talk to you.”
“The principal, again?” I said in dismay. “What for?”
“None of your impertinent questions, young man. You just march upstairs.”
I turned to Maxie. “Wait for me, I'll run up and see what the old cluck wants.”
Max walked with me to the stairway. “We'll be outside if you need any help,” he said. “Holler and we'll come up and throw the old bum out the window.”
“Nah, he's all right, he ain't such a bad guy, this O'Brien.”
“Yep, for a principal he ain't too bad,” Max agreed.
He walked outside. I waited until he was out of sight. I did not want him to see me take my cap off. I knocked timidly o
n the door. A pleasant bass voice said, “Come in, please.”
I stood politely at the open doorway. “Did you want to see me, Mr. O'Brien?” I said.
“Yes, yes, come in.”
His large red face smiled a welcome. “Come in and shut the door. Have a chair, young man, I'll be through with this in a moment. I was looking through some of your test papers; they are very good, very good.”
He looked at me. He frowned. “But your application for work papers is a disappointment to me.”
He went back to his inspection.
I sat opposite him, fidgeting uncomfortably. He pushed his chair away from his desk and tilted his chair, rocking back and forth with his hands behind his head. His understanding blue eyes twinkled. He just looked at me. He took his time about talking. I began to feel uncomfortable. Then suddenly he stopped rocking and leaned across his desk. A grim expression spread over his face.
“Sometimes I wonder why I take an interest in you,” he said. “I guess it's because I see possibilities in you. According to your school reports, you are an exceptionally intelligent boy. I thought I would talk to you—”
He stood up and began pacing the floor. “Now don't take this as another lecture. It isn't. You haven't many more months of school here, so your behavior one way or another isn't too important to us— but,” he raised a finger dramatically, “your conduct from here on is very important to you and to you alone. This moment may be a turning point in your life. I repeat, if you weren't an intelligent boy, I wouldn't waste my time with you. I wouldn't try to make you understand the road you and your companions are following—the road that leads to no good. Believe me.” He said it with excited earnestness.