by Grey, Harry
“You got the job all set up for tomorrow?” Patsy asked with admiration.
“Yep, everything will go off as scheduled. I'll give you guys all the low-down. First, let's get these trunks out of the way.”
Maxie walked from trunk to trunk, opening them up.
“Okay, you guys take your choice,” he said.
He strode to the door leading to the bar and called, “Hey, Moe. Keep this door locked, we don't want to be disturbed by anyone.”
Moe answered, “Okay, Max.”
Each of us picked up his valise and walked toward a safe. Cockeye appeared to be going for the same one I was.
I said, “Go ahead, take it. I'll take the other.”
He walked away to the remaining one, muttering, “Don't do me no favors.”
I slit open the envelope which was tied to the handle of the safe, and took out the typewritten combination. I twirled the knob to the proper number and yanked the door open. I opened my valise and began stuffing in the dough. From the corner of my eye I could see the rest of them doing the same. It was an odd sight, the four of us busily piling bundles of money from valises into safes.
Just then the phone rang. Maxie uttered a loud disgusted, “Damn” and answered it.
I continued stacking my money in the safe.
Max came away from the phone and said, “It was from the main office. We got to escort a big load of the Combine's whiskey up to Westchester this afternoon.”
Immediately I thought, boy, if only we could get pinched doing it. About five minutes later the thought flashed through my mind: this is luck. I hate to do it, but it's better to do eighteen months on a Prohibition rap than face certain death in that goddamn stupid Federal Reserve heist. Yep, I hate to do it, but I'm going to blow the whistle on all of us, to the Prohibition Agents. Yeh, I'll blow the whistle and turn informer. I'll go up to their office and tell them where to pick us up with the load.
All we would actually have to do with time off for good behavior would be twelve months, and that we can do standing on our heads. At least we'll be alive, and maybe, by that time, Maxie will get some sense in his head and forget all about that damn heist. That's the only way out. If the Combine ever found out I blew the whistle on them and made them lose a fifty-grand load of Scotch, it would be bye-bye for me, in a cement kimona. Yeh, but how the hell would they find out? They'll never suspect I blew the whistle on myself. I'll cop a sneak the first chance I get and give the Prohibition Department all the dope.
I wondered what time the storage people would come to pick up the trunks, and what company Max had made arrangements with?
I called out to him, “Hey, Max, what outfit we storing with?”
He looked up. “I didn't make any definite arrangements yet. Most of them are pretty reliable. I thought maybe, when we're ready, we'll decide on one.”
“We going to get these trunks stored before we go out to Westchester, ain't we?” Cockeye asked anxiously.
“Yep, what did you think,” Maxie snorted, “we go out and leave all this dough laying around?”
We were startled by a sharp knocking on the door leading to the bar. We stood still listening for a moment. Max walked over to the door and said, “Yes?” He put his ear to the crack of the door and listened.
He called to me. “Moe says your kid brother is outside, Noodles. It's important, he wants to see you right away.”
CHAPTER 46
An uneasy feeling shot through me. If my kid brother condescended to come down here to see me, something was wrong.
I said, “Tell him to wait a few minutes. I'll be right out.”
I hurriedly finished stacking my money away. I had difficulty locking the safe door because I was nervous and shaky.
I was in a state all right. I tried to hide my distress. I was in a fog of uncertainty. I didn't want to leave here before I was sure my dough was in a safe place. At the same time I had to get outside and get in touch with the Prohibition Department. That was the only way out of that Federal Bank heist. Now, my kid brother, of all the goddamn inopportune moments. What the hell could he want that was so important? I'd bet it was Mamma. Boy, was I in a spot. The more I thought of what I had decided to do, the more agitated and distraught I became. It took me fifteen minutes more to lock the safe and put it in the trunk.
I walked out to the front. My brother was at the bar with a glass in his hand and a bottle in front of him. I felt uneasy. If the kid deigned to come down and see me, there must be something terribly wrong. Yeh, it must be Mamma. I steadied myself and put my hand on his shoulder.
“How are you, kid?”
He shrugged my arm off angrily. “Where the hell have you been? Why did you keep me waiting?”
“Why? What's up?”
The uneasy feeling increased.
He turned and glared at me.
“What's up?” he repeated. There was scorn and anger in his voice. “You never come around to find out, you bastard.”
I looked at him. “Why, what's wrong? Mamma?” I asked.
His anger went out of his eyes, tears were forming.
He turned his head away and blubbered, “Mamma's in the hospital. She's going fast. She wants to see you.”
A shiver went down my back. My heart dropped into my belly.
I said, “Wait a minute.”
On shaky legs, I walked into the back room. I tried to control my breaking voice. “Max,” I said, “I got to go. My mother's in the hospital.”
I turned. Max followed me. He put his arm around my shoulder.
“If you need anything, let me know.”
I mumbled, “Yeh, Max, thanks.”
I said to my brother, “Come on, kid.”
We walked outside. The kid hailed a cab. Everything seemed black to me. My heart was pounding. Then the pounding went to my head. I had a terrific headache. I broke into a sweat.
The kid was quiet for awhile, then he muttered, “You lousy bastard. For years you didn't come around. Mamma was eating her heart out.”
“I sent dough,” I mumbled.
“Who the hell needs your goddamn stinking dough? I take care of Mamma.”
I was too sick at heart to argue. I was in a haze of misery.
I hardly realized we had arrived. The kid paid the cab. I walked up the steps of the hospital in a stupor. I followed the kid into a private room.
She opened her eyes and gave me her wonderful sweet smile.
“My sonny,” she murmured.
She felt for my hand. I was shaking as if in a violent fever. Everything was dark and awful. I held on tightly to my Mamma's hand.
She managed to gasp, “How—are—you—my sonny? Are you working? Like a good—boy?” She barely whispered, “You behaving? My sonny?”
“Yes, Mamma, I got a job out of town.”
That's all Mamma could say. She went into a coma. In a panic, I went looking for a doctor. I barged into his office. Incoherently I spoke to him.
He said, “There is nothing anybody can do.” He shook his head sadly. “It's a matter of hours.”
I fell apart. I cried out. My kid brother took me under the arm.
“Get hold of yourself, you stupid bastard,” he said.
He led me to a speakeasy around the corner.
We sat at a back table, drinking. I tried to drown my fear and anguish with booze. The kid went back to the hospital.
Suddenly I remembered, I had to get in touch with the Prohibition Department. I went outside, into a drug store and looked up the phone number of the New York office. I called; I gave the party on the other end all the information: where we were to pick up the trucks and the route we would take.
The voice was skeptical. It said, “How do we know it isn't some wild goose chase and you're just wasting our time? What's your motive in calling? What's your name?”
I was so befuddled that I shouted my name, and that I was one of the mob guarding the booze. I cursed him for five minutes, then I hung up and went back to the
speakeasy.
The kid came back mumbling, “Mamma is still in a coma.” I sat blubbering in my glass. The kid walked out in disgust. After awhile, I went back to the hospital. I sat looking at Mamma. She was breathing hard, gasping.
Suddenly Mamma opened her beautiful eyes. She felt for my hand.
“I'm going, my son.”
I was holding her hand.
Like a small boy trying to pull her back out of danger, I was crying, “Mamma, Mamma.”
Her face was sad and sweet.
“I'll meet you in the next world, sonny,” she said.
“I won't be allowed to go there to see you, Mamma.”
I was sobbing violently, “I'm bad, bad.”
“I'll talk to God for you, sonny.”
She stopped breathing.
My kid brother blubbered; he was standing beside me.
“You killed Mamma. You ate her heart out, you bastard.”
I staggered away from him, and went back into the “speak.” I blubbered into the whiskey.
I don't know how long I sat there crying before I realized it was getting late, and I had things to do. I had to see about storing the trunk and safe for at least two years, then that escort job up in Westchester. Yeh, I hope the Feds will let me off to attend Momma's funeral. Yeh, they always do.
I took a cab to Fat Moe's. The place was empty and everybody was gone. I stood there dazed.
“Where are the safes?” I murmured.
Moe gave me a message. It was from Max. It said he had shipped the trunks to a storagehouse and when they got back from Westchester, he would give me my check, keys and other particulars. Not to worry, they could handle this Westchester job without me.
A wonderful feeling of relief shot through me. Jesus, what luck, I thought. I'm in the clear. Yeh, but how about Max, Patsy and Cockeye? They'll get picked up, and face an eighteen-month rap.
What the hell. I didn't plan it that way. If it wasn't for that crazy Maxie and his megalomaniac idea to heist the Federal Reserve Bank, I never would have blown the whistle.
I got in touch with my brother. He had already made arrangements for the burial. Under no condition would he have it in our parlors. He gave me the address. The time was for the next morning.
I went up to my rooms. I took a bottle to bed with me. I drank and I drank until I fell into a stupor, a melancholy stupor.
Way off above me, faintly I heard a choir chanting the El Mole, the sing-song prayer for the Jewish dead. Then I heard the great cantor, Yossele Rosenblatt, join in with Cockeye Hymie's sorrowful playing on his harmonica. I was sad. My heart was crying for my mamma.
I couldn't sleep. I went out. I staggered out of one speakeasy into another.
I didn't know how it happened. I was reeling into Joey, the Chinaman's place.
He said, “What's the matter, Noodles, sick?”
I mumbled, “Fix me a pipe, Joey.”
I fell down on a cot. Joey held the pipe for me. I was shaking. He dipped the pill in the water, held it over the open flame, and pressed the opium into the pipe.
Joey whispered, “Puff, this will give you peace.”
I don't remember falling asleep or having my usual fantastic dreams. I know I awoke feeling despondent. I lay there in a fog of melancholia. Joey, the Chinaman, came in. His usually impassive face was ghastly white and screwed up with grief. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He held a newspaper in his trembling hands.
He sat down on the bed sobbing, “Awful, awful, this is awful, Noodles.”
I sat up in surprise. How could calm, serene Joey get so broken up about my mamma's death?
I patted him on the back. “Well, it was inevitable. She was a pretty sick woman.”
He looked at me strangely, and handed me the morning papers. I looked at the pictures and tried to read the story. Devils began beating me over the head with crowbars and forcing them through my heart and belly. The lights in the room went on and off. The ceiling came down on my head. The floor came up and hit me in the face. It was the end of the world.
Twice the paper fell out of my nerveless hands, and seemed to fly around the room. I sat on the floor staring at the pictures. There they were on the front page, sprawled all over that Westchester road, in pools of blood.
Good God, it was them, the three of them. My three brothers. They were better than brothers. Maxie, Patsy and Cockeye—dead, dead, dead the three of them. I loved them. I loved them. They were better than brothers. I killed them. God, I killed them. Through eyes swimming in tears I read the story. Two carloads of Prohibition agents were about to make a seizure of a van full of liquor. The bootleg guard put up a fight and shot it out.
The casualties in the battle, besides the three dead hoodlums, were one dead and four critically wounded Prohibition agents.
I sat there on the floor stunned, crying to myself over and over, “It was my fault. All my fault. I killed them. I killed them.”
Finally, I was able to compose myself. A thought hit me. I ran wildly out of the room like one possessed, as if something was chasing me. I grabbed a cab. “Delancey Street,” I shouted.
The thought of all that money lying in the trunks was pursuing me. It's all mine, close to a million bucks in beautiful cash. A crazy itch was burning in the pit of my stomach. In my head roaring motors went wide open.
I kept repeating to myself, “I got to grab it quick. I got to grab it quick. Before somebody else does. It's my brothers'. It belongs to me.”
I jumped out of the cab blocks too soon. I banged and pushed the startled pedestrians out of my way as I went tearing drunkenly through busy Delancey Street. Like a maniac I crashed through the front door of Fat Moe's, hitting and throwing the alarmed patrons out of my way. I plunged into the back room. It was empty! The trunks were gone! Yeh, now I remembered. Maxie had shipped them to a storagehouse.
I shouted for Moe. He came from behind the bar. Fear and grief were on his face. I grabbed him by the throat and shook him violently and shouted into his face, “Where are they? What happened to them?”
He misunderstood me.
He said, “They're dead; they're all dead.”
He began to blubber. “Max, Patsy and Cockeye are dead.”
Tears streamed down his fat face.
I backed him against the wall and held the knife to his throat.
I shouted frantically at him. “Not them, you fat bastard, I'm talking about the trunks, the four trunks. Where did you put them? Where are they?”
“Trunks?” he said dumbly.
“Yeh, trunks,” I shouted, “you bastard.”
“Moving men came for them,” he cried. “Maxie gave them to some moving men yesterday. I gave you a note from Maxie explaining it. Don't you remember?”
Yeh, now I remembered. How did I happen to forget?
“To what moving men?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“Honest, I don't know, Noodles, but we can find out. Take it easy, Noodles, control yourself,” he pleaded.
“Yeh, I can find out,” I muttered as I released him and slumped into a chair.
It was Maxie's big chair. When I realized where I was sitting, I began to laugh and shout hysterically.
“Maxie's chair, the baron's chair.” I laughed and cried and repeatedly shouted, “Maxie's chair,” until a feeling of nausea came over me.
I puked all over the floor. Moe came over with a wet towel. Tears poured down his fat puffed face. He wiped my face and clothes and murmured soothingly. 'Take it easy, Noodles, take it easy, you'll break down.”
I began to cry. I embraced him. I broke down and sobbed on his shoulder. We both sobbed brokenly on each other's shoulders for Maxie, Patsy and Cockeye, our dear departed brothers.
I felt terribly empty, lost, forlorn. We cried and we cried. Sobbing openly, I staggered out to the front bar and told all the patrons to please go home. I locked the door after they had left.
Moe and I each took a bottle off the shelf and began drinking. We took our s
hoes off and sat on the floor.
I said, “You and I, Moe, are going to sit shiva for my mother, Maxie, Patsy and Cockeye, right here, all week on the floor, in the orthodox Hebrew fashion.”
Then I realized I had missed my mother's funeral. I wailed the louder and vowed to sit shiva all week right here.
Drunkenly Moe murmured, “Yeh, Noodles, me and you will fast and pray and sit shiva here on the floor all week.”
We sat there on the floor in the back room, crying and rocking back and forth in the age-old fashion, beating our breasts and giving full sway to our emotions, pouring out our deep grief in loud wails of anguish. When the two quart bottles were empty, we fell into a fitful slumber.
It must have been hours later, I sat up. Day was breaking. Moe was lying on his back snoring loudly. I was numb all over. I was in a confused state. My head was pounding away. Gigantic generator wheels were whirling inside and screeching the monotonous refrain, “Money, money, money, where's the money? Money, money, money, a million dollars, cash money. Four trunks of money. Where's all that money?”
I staggered to my feet. That burning, driving itch in the pit of my stomach renewed itself, and spread fiercely through every part of me. Every nerve in my body shouted, “Money, money, money, a million dollars' worth of money,” until the refrain poured out of my lips, and I started shouting that sing-song chorus, “Money, money, money. A million dollars' worth of money. I got to look for my money. My million dollars' worth of money, my four trunks full of money.”
Like a madman I dashed out into Delancey Street again. An astonished milkman and his startled horse both stared at me as I stood in the middle of the gutter shouting, “Money, money, money. Where's my four trunks full of money?”
Abruptly I came to. I realized I was acting crazy. I said to myself, What the hell am I doing? I got to get hold of myself. Nobody knows about the money, about them trunks, only I. I got to go looking for them, sensibly and systematically. If I keep acting crazy, everybody will go looking for my money.
I kept repeating to myself, keep calm, Noodles, take it easy, old boy, as if I were two persons. I did a silly thing. I walked over to the milk wagon; the alarmed driver backed away. I took a quart bottle of milk out of the wagon and poured half of it down my burning throat. The milkman kept staring at me. It irritated me. I flung the bottle at him. It missed him by inches. With a frightened yell he ran down the street. The horse neighed, and trotted after him. They disappeared down the street.