Onion Street

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Look who it is. If it ain’t my favorite honky mothafucka. Man, I am gonna enjoy taking you apart one piece at a time.” I didn’t have to turn around to know it was Jimmy.

  “How’s the nose?” I asked.

  Susan Kasten laughed. That was twice in two days, but just like the last time, it was a humorless laugh, the laugh of a mother shark.

  “I’ll show you how the nose is, mothafucka.” And with that, Jimmy whipped the barrel of the gun across the back of my head, sending me to my knees and then to the floor. “That’s how it is, funny boy.”

  I wasn’t out of it. I wasn’t totally in it, either. The back of my head burned more than ached, and I felt something wet on my fingers when I reached to feel the damage. I was bleeding. I wasn’t exactly gushing blood. Still, blood coming out of my head wasn’t reason to celebrate. The cobwebs cleared pretty quickly, but I stayed down.

  “If you haven’t yet deduced it, Moe, Mr. Jimmy doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,” said Susan, kneeling beside me. “Four hundred years of oppression has blotted out his sense of humor. But please don’t misunderstand, he does have a strong sense of purpose.”

  “Four hundred years, huh? He looks great for his age. What’s his secret?”

  I heard the revolver’s hammer click back and thought my journey was about over.

  “Don’t be an idiot!” Susan jumped up and stood between Jimmy and me. “We already have enough on our hands. Give me the gun and get back downstairs.”

  “Don’t be orderin’ me around, bitch. Jus’ ’cause we agreed to be part of this thing don’t make you the boss a me. The white oppressor’s been orderin’ my people around for — ”

  “Give me the gun and save the speech for after the revolution, Jimmy,” Susan cut him off. “And Jimmy, if you call me a bitch again, I will have you crucified.”

  I didn’t see what was happening, but Jimmy stepped past me.

  “This ain’t over between us,” he whispered as he passed, and then a door slammed shut. I heard his boots thudding down a wooden staircase.

  “Get up, Moe, and go where I tell you. I think you know me well enough to understand that I’m not like Jimmy. I will just shoot you if you don’t answer the questions I ask you or if you make any move I don’t like.”

  Less than a minute later, we were sitting across from each other at a round kitchen table. I didn’t know much about guns, but I knew that the table was large enough so that there was no way I could get to her before she would be able to get off a shot. I didn’t have a second of doubt that she would shoot me. Whoever had picked her to run things had made the right choice. It wasn’t her fault that her soldiers were the student revolutionary equivalents of F Troop. Jimmy talked big, but he was just an angry young man. Black or white, it didn’t matter; guys my age were angry because they just were. Wind them up, put guns in their hands, and you have an army. Just ask LBJ and McNamara. Susan wasn’t like them. She was calculating, committed, and ruthless. She was what Bobby’s parents had hoped he would be.

  She aimed the gun at me. “You still in the mood to talk?”

  “Sure.”

  “So talk,” she said.

  “Isn’t it weird how Jews always wind up sitting in the kitchen even when one of them is Joe Stalin’s love child and she’s holding a gun? Where’s the sponge cake and coffee?”

  Susan smirked. “That’s your one smart remark. The next one will earn you a .38 caliber bullet in your kneecap. Once you have killed, what is a bullet in the kneecap? And Moe, be assured, we have killed before.”

  “Billy O’Day,” I said, my voice full of pride. “That was pretty cowardly.”

  She stared at me coldly. “Do you want a lollipop or a gold star? Remember, no more wisecracks, no more commentary. Now, what do you know and who else knows it? From the beginning.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “The night of the last big campus demonstration, after I bailed Bobby Friedman out of jail, I got together with Mindy Weinstock at Burgundy House. She was in the strangest mood. She was already drunk and smoking a cigarette when I got there. She said some stuff about being really sad about Samantha Hope that didn’t make any sense. Mindy always hated Sam, so I couldn’t figure it out. What was really strange was that I’d had a great talk with her just before leaving to bail Bobby out. Now, two hours later, my girlfriend was like a different person. And then, before she splits, Mindy says she’s got something to tell me only I can’t ask her any questions about it. She warns me to stay away from Bobby for a while. Bobby’s my best friend and one of Mindy’s oldest friends, so you can understand why that confused me and made me curious.”

  Susan Kasten shook her head. “I knew involving her was a mistake,” she said as if to herself. “Go on.”

  “The next day, the day of the big storm, I cut class and went over to Burgundy House to clean up, but Bobby’s car was parked out front. As I was crossing the street, he came down the driveway. All of a sudden, another car comes flying down the block, headed straight for Bobby. I shoved him out of the way. A few seconds later we heard the car crash. When Bobby and I got to the car, the driver and his passenger were gone. So I knew Mindy wasn’t just fucking around with me. Somebody was trying to kill Bobby, and the car he tried to do it with was a car stolen from your neighbor’s house.”

  She smiled at me, the smile even icier than her usual cold stare. “I would love to sit here and listen to your entire narrative, Moe, but we have other, more pressing matters to deal with tonight. What do you think you know? I don’t care about how you came to know it.”

  “I know that there’s this group called the Committee, and that they used to meet in an apartment above your grandfather’s shop. I think the Committee is set up like the Mafia’s Commission, but that instead of the Five Families, the people who are on the Committee represent all the radical groups on campus: the Panthers, the Weathermen, like that. I think both Mindy and Bobby were connected to the Committee, but I don’t know exactly how. Clearly, Bobby did something to piss you guys off, something to do with what happened to Samantha Hope and Marty Lavitz. Mindy heard you meant to execute Bobby and was torn about it. You found out she’d warned me, and you decided you had to get rid of her too. That’s why you tried to kill Bobby and sent that Abdul Salaam guy after Mindy to silence her. Then — ”

  Susan Kasten was laughing again. This time, it almost sounded like human laughter … almost.

  “Moe, have you ever heard the expression that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, you have proven it true. I suppose you think yourself very smart for all of your nosing around. You must feel like a real Mike Hammer. Well, Moe, you know nothing. You’ve gotten to the bottom of nothing. You are just like the rest of the dumb jocks on campus walking around with your heads in the sand. All you care about is not getting drafted. You all think you don’t want to be your fathers, that the lives they live aren’t worth living. You are a joke, all of you. You can’t even see that all you want is to be just like them. At least your fathers had the courage to fight fascism before they were brainwashed into turning on the best ally the working man has ever had.”

  “The Soviet Union?” I snorted. “Stalin? Yeah, he was great at murdering or imprisoning workers at a faster rate than Hitler. Look, I think Vietnam is a ridiculous war that’s gonna ruin the country. I’m with you there. You want to spew that other propaganda, Susan, feel free. Just don’t try and sell Fidel or Chairman Mao to me. You couldn’t do that with all the Green Stamps in all the world.”

  “I was wrong about you, Moe. You are not just another dumb Brooklyn College jock. You’re far worse, because you are purposefully blind. I’ve seen you in class. You have a very good mind. You are more insightful than the other robots, and for that you are a tragic figure. You have no purpose in life, no cause for being. You would have been your father if not for getting involved in this. That will all change tonight.” She stood up, her face back to its shark-eyed wa
rmth. “Downstairs. Now!”

  She marched me down the same stairs down which Jimmy had gone. As I walked carefully down the narrow, steep steps, I heard that Jimmy wasn’t alone there waiting. It was only when I got to the bottom of the steps that I realized my recent fears were justified: I was going to die.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Bobby Friedman was naked and screaming in agony, his hair wet with sweat and caked with blood. His face was more bloodied and swollen than Mindy’s had been that first day I visited her in the hospital. Bobby’s eyes were slits and it was hard to tell if he even saw me when I stepped into the basement. If Bobby wasn’t exactly handsome before this beating, he was going to be less so now. That was probably a moot issue. I was pretty sure the chances of either one of us getting to see the light of morning were fairly slim — very slim. Bobby’s wrists were tied behind him with a rope that was looped over a notched metal beam in the basement’s ceiling. A big guy with the body of a linebacker and the face of a choirboy was pulling on the other end of the rope, lifting Bobby off the ground. It was easy to see why Bobby was in such pain. His shoulders were being pulled out of their sockets by his own body weight.

  “Enough for now,” Susan ordered.

  Choirboy let go of the rope, and Bobby crashed to the floor.

  “Anything?” asked Susan. “Has he confessed? Do we know if we have been infiltrated by anyone else?”

  Jimmy said, “No. And he ain’t gonna say nothin’ neither. We jus’ wastin’ time. Let’s do what we shoulda done when we snatched the rat. Let’s waste him and his little buddy over here. I’ll do ’em both.” At least Jimmy was consistent. “Besides, ya’ll, we don’t have much time before — ”

  “Shut up, you big-mouth moron,” a voice came out of the shadows. It was a voice I recognized, Hyman Bergman’s voice. Then he followed his voice into the light.

  What the hell was the old man doing mixed up in this?

  “I don’t have to take no shit from some old — ”

  “You’ll shut your mouth and, for once, do as you’re told,” said Susan, her voice like a scalpel. Then she turned to her grandfather. “It doesn’t matter if this one knows too, Papa. No one can stop it.”

  Papa, huh. Could it be that Susan Kasten had warm blood in her veins after all, and more human emotion than a sharp stick?

  The old man shook his head with disdain. “Foolishness, Susan. Bodies are trouble. More bodies, more trouble. Just ask Eichmann.”

  “It’s too late now, Papa,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. She looked at Choirboy and pointed at Bobby. “Ask him again.”

  With that, Choirboy tugged violently on the rope. Bobby’s arms shot up behind him and he was lifted off the floor. He screamed as he struggled in vain to ease his weight off his shoulders.

  Susan Kasten walked right up to him. “Why did you sell us out to the pigs?”

  “It wasn’t me,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Bobby was stalling because he knew that to admit any relationship with the police was to sign his own bill of execution. There’d be no plea of guilty with an explanation. I had to do something, and fast. If I didn’t, I was going to watch my best friend get killed, and odds were good I’d shortly be following him into the great beyond. Problem was, I didn’t have a clue about what to do. And then, like that, I knew.

  I screamed, “Wait a second, wait a second, for chrissakes! Put him down, put him down. He doesn’t know. Put him down.”

  Jimmy wasn’t having it. “Nah, man, this Moe guy here, he don’t know shit. He’s jus’ desperate to save his friend and his own self is all.”

  “Maybe,” Susan said. “Maybe, but he found his way here on his own and though he got some stuff wrong, he actually worked a lot of things out for himself. I want to hear what he has to say.” She waved her left index finger at Choirboy for him to release the rope. Bobby went crashing to the floor once again. Susan refocused on me, and she also took dead aim with the gun right at my belly. “Okay, Moe, what is it? And if I think you’re just stalling …”

  “You wanna know who your rat is? That’s easy. Whoever ratted out Bobby to you is your Judas. Whoever had the convenient evidence to prove Bobby had sold you out to the cops is who you’re looking for. Who was it, Susan? Was it one of those two clowns who chased me into the rail yard? Him?” I nodded at Choirboy. “Jimmy?”

  She didn’t need to answer. When I saw the look on Jimmy’s face, I knew who had fingered Bobby. And all the heads in the room — Susan’s, the old man’s, the big guy’s, mine, even Bobby’s — turned to Jimmy.

  “Could be possible, what this boy says,” offered the old man. “In the camps, the SS would put in the barracks with us spies. They worried we weren’t all sheep and trouble for them we could make, so they had people to listen to our plans. To throw away suspicion from themselves, the spies would say this one was stealing bread or that one was making deals with the guards. But this trick we learned.”

  “Sure, it’s Jimmy,” I said.

  “Shut your lyin’ mouth, mothafucka.” He came for me, grabbing at my collar.

  It wasn’t a big adjustment for Susan to aim the gun away from me and at Jimmy. “Get away from him, Jimmy.”

  He let go of my collar and stepped back. “Oh, don’t go believin’ his bullshit.”

  “It isn’t bullshit,” I said, “and you all know it. Who’s got the biggest mouth here? Who always wants to kill everybody? Jimmy, right? Why? Because if we’re dead, we can’t prove him wrong.”

  I didn’t know if there was an ounce of truth in what I was saying, but it didn’t matter. Jimmy looked so guilty and defeated, he might just as well have betrayed the cause.

  Susan had come to a decision. “We’ll see about all this later. For now, we’ll just wait it out. Moe, sit over there. Jimmy, over there.” She looked at Choirboy. “How long now?”

  He checked his watch. “Two minutes.”

  Hyman Bergman seemed suddenly very twitchy. “And you are sure in the building there will be no one?”

  She ignored the question. “It will all be over soon and then they won’t be able to ignore us.”

  Now I understood. “Holy shit! The night you torched your grandfather’s building … those were boxes of explosives you were moving.”

  Susan was impressed. “Forget what I said about you before, Moe. I misjudged you. You are nothing like those other dumb jocks on campus. Given a little more time, you probably would have been able to stop us.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t say thanks. Obviously, you guys are gonna blow something up.”

  “Not just something, Moe. The 61st Precinct house on Avenue U. We have been planning this for almost a year. Sorry, Papa, but for the sake of the revolution, I had to lie to you. I knew you wouldn’t have built the bomb for us if — ”

  The old man couldn’t believe it. “The clock tower on the campus is not what you are destroying?”

  “No, Papa.”

  “A precinct house! There will be many dead police, no?”

  I said, “I think that’s the idea, Mr. Bergman.”

  Choirboy called out, “One minute.”

  “Stop this, Susan!” Bergman shouted at his granddaughter. “I want no part from this murdering.”

  “Too late, Papa.”

  Then it hit me. “You twisted old cocksucker. You built the bomb that killed Sam and Marty!”

  “That was not my work,” he said. “Susan, you tell him.”

  But it was too late. I’d gotten to my feet without even realizing it. “You lying piece of shit! I’m gonna — ”

  Susan swung the gun around to me. “You’re not going to do anything, Moe, except shut your fucking mouth. Everyone keep your mouths shut. If it’s quiet enough, we should be able to hear the explosion even at this distance. Right, Papa?”

  Bergman didn’t answer.

  Choirboy started the countdown, “Ten seconds to go.”

  Jimmy moved onto his knees.

  Nine.

&nb
sp; “Don’t be an idiot, Jimmy. I see what you’re doing.” Susan pointed the gun right at him.

  Eight.

  Bobby moaned.

  Seven.

  Susan closed her eyes in rapturous anticipation.

  Six.

  Jimmy knew he was a dead man once the bomb went off. He leapt at Susan.

  Five.

  Susan opened her eyes, stepped back, fired.

  Four.

  The gunshot was deafening in that confined space. Jimmy probably didn’t much care. He was beyond caring.

  Three.

  The hunched old man backhanded his granddaughter across the side of her head. Stunned, she tumbled over, banging her gun hand against the concrete foundation wall.

  Two.

  Bergman scooped up the gun, turned, shot Choirboy through the heart.

  One.

  Choirboy went down like a huge sack of flour.

  Zero.

  Silence.

  The only explosion was the one echoing in our ears. There was nothing from the distance. Susan, her lips dripping blood, scrambled on hands and knees over to Choirboy’s body. She grabbed at his wrist, not to check his pulse, but to check his watch.

  “Something’s wrong, Papa. There was no explosion.”

  He ignored her, turning to me instead. “Take your friend and get the hell out from here.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. When I grabbed Bobby’s arms he shrieked in pain, but the knot around his wrists was so tight and I had nothing to cut the rope with. Once I got him up, I bent down and folded him over my shoulder. We were about halfway up the stairs when I heard a third gunshot. I didn’t go back to look.