The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats

by Hesh Kestin

  Ira-Myra’s shook his head.

  “Justo?”

  “He’s not saying no to deli, boss,” Justo said. “He’s saying no to your leaving the building.”

  I looked back at him. “You’re calling me boss at the same time you’re telling me I’m a prisoner here, is that it?”

  Poor Ira. This kind of complexity was too much for him. He retired to his seat by the door, although it was not entirely clear if he were guarding against someone coming in or someone going out.

  “Boss,” Justo said. “Maybe we should talk.”

  I sat down on the green-leather couch between the two sets of clothing. Idly my left hand rested on the sleeve of one of the suits. It was some sort of light-weight wool, soft as the skin on the nape of Celeste’s neck—so this was what vicuña felt like. I looked to the right: the clothes Ira had retrieved from Eastern Parkway looked like a pile of rags some medieval peasants had worn, and worn out. I realized I was hungry for more than food: soft hand-tailored wool, a hotel suite, Shushan’s red Eldorado. I could get used to this. I gave Justo a smile of encouragement, and tapped my left ear with my right hand.

  “For the next day or two, boss, you can’t go nowhere.”

  “Because Ira is going to stop me?”

  “Because you are. Outside this hotel is like the Chosin Reservoir.”

  I stared. “There’s armed North Koreans and Red Chinese?”

  “Worse. The papers have it you’re replacing Shushan. Maybe you are, maybe not. Maybe, please Jesus, Shushan will walk in here tomorrow and say April Fool! and we’ll all have us a good laugh. But, chinga, perception rules, right? That’s what Shushan liked to say. You could have nothing in your pocket but if you’re dressed right and smell good you’re not a beggar.” He watched my hand fingering the vicuña. “One, you got certain Italians. Start with the Tintis. They been waiting for Shushan to fall since he displaced them. We know this. But we figured they’ll wait for a conviction. The trial is next week. It could take a month, even two. Even Shushan figured he was going away. The only question is how long. We know it, they know it. It’s tragic but what can you do, right? Part of the business. Like if you have a company on the New York Stock Exchange it can be worth millions Monday and zip on Friday. So that’s the Tintis. Definitely not divinity students.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Good you’re seated. Then you have Auro Sfangiullo. He expects people he works with to keep it zipped, and so far, with the odd exception, like that big Chinga Joe Valachi who snitched to Congress, maybe a few more we haven’t read about in the papers, they dummy up the way they should. They do their time, come out, are respected, end of story. But Auro doesn’t have that feeling for non-Italians. That’s why it’s a closed club. The Itals don’t like to do business with Irish, Puerto Ricans, Negroes, Jews. Why? Not because they’re degenerate dago pricks who are prejudiced against the entire non-dago human race—which by the way they are—but because when push comes to canary, if you’re not a wop you might sing. To wops, non-wops can’t be trusted.”

  “Which is one reason Shushan is probably alive. He faked his death to avoid trial.”

  “Very good, boss. I agree. That would be the reasonable assumption. But Shushan isn’t, wasn’t, afraid of doing time. He wasn’t afraid of it in Korea. He wasn’t afraid of a firing squad, so he wouldn’t be afraid of a couple of years in the can.”

  “I guess you’re going to tell me about Korea now.”

  There was a knock at the door. Ira leapt to his feet like a drowsy sentry startled by gunshots. He checked the peephole, then let in a waiter pushing a cart. If this is what it’s like to be the boss, I could get used to it. I was stuffing myself with a roast-beef sandwich layered with cole-slaw when Justo picked up the story.

  “Chosin, I don’t have to tell you, it was so bad. We were engaged with the Red Army, not the North Koreans. They were tough but the Red Chinese was the real thing. Outgunned, outmanned, outfucked. Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. Anybody who knows about Chosin knows us. The Decoy Company. We were supposed to create the impression the entire Marine force was digging in. What a laugh. The ground was froze like rock. You know how we dug in? We pushed C-3 explosive into empty C-ration cans for a shaped charge and blew holes in the ground. It was fifteen below, though it could get to thirty-five below at night. You made coffee it froze at the top before you could drink it. C-rations was so solid you had to gnaw at them like a rat. The entire Marine deployment was shifting south-southeast to regroup. We were left behind. Started with sixty men. Two days later fifteen came out.” Justo shook his head. “Our CO was a captain. I can’t say his name. I mean I can but I won’t. His family got word he was one of the casualties. He was. Shushan shot him.”

  “By accident?” Even as I said it I knew.

  “Annapolis graduate, can you imagine? He got orders to stay, create noise, action. He gave orders to surrender. Maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn’t worth forty-five Marines. But an order is an order, right?”

  I didn’t know how to answer.

  “The captain says, ‘Surrender.’ Shushan, he’s gunnery sergeant, says, ‘No surrender, sir.’ The captain raises his sidearm and tells Shushan he’ll shoot the first man who doesn’t follow orders. A lieutenant rushes up, steps between them and then says to Shushan, ‘After we finish this mission, sergeant, report to the ranking officer for arrest.’ Shushan says, ‘Oorah!’ Lieutenant must have seen the future. He doesn’t say report to me. Lost him that night. Two weeks later there’s a court martial. The court doesn’t know what to do. On the one hand somebody picked off the captain with a rifle. Nobody saw it, but the slug is USMC issue. That’s a firing squad. On the other, if we’d surrendered it would have been all over for the retreating Marine units. We were the only thing between them and the Chinese.”

  “What happened?”

  “The captain is declared killed in action. Shushan makes master gunnery sergeant, that’s the highest non-commissioned rank, gets the Navy Cross. Only thing higher is the Medal of Honor. What does that tell you about the USMC, boss?”

  “That you must be proud to be an ex-Marine, Justo.”

  “Boss, there’s no such thing as ex-Marine. There’s retired Marine. There’s veteran Marine. But never ex-Marine. Once a Marine, boss, always a Marine.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “I got out about eight months after Shushan. Found him in New York. He helped me finish college.”

  “How long ago is that?”

  “Nine years. Boss, Shushan says you’re in command, that’s good enough for me. My job is to make sure you’re healthy. For a couple of days, just keep your head down, okay? You got the Tintis. You got that creepy Sfangiullo.”

  “Sfangiullo doesn’t even know me.”

  “He might be figuring you know where Shushan is, and he’ll want you to tell him.”

  “According to the DA, Shushan got it in a mob car.”

  “Say he didn’t. We don’t know for sure. If he didn’t Sfangiullo wants to know where Shushan is so he doesn’t cut himself a deal before the trial.”

  “Unless Sfangiullo killed Shushan, or had it done.”

  “Okay, say he did. Then he must figure you know things he doesn’t want to get out. He probably figures if you’re the designated boss then you know what there is to know. Either way, this is someone you don’t want to talk to just at the moment. Then there’s the cops.”

  “Fritzi already handled the DA.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t thinking of those cops. We been paying off the other cops for years. There’s people out there who don’t want Shushan to talk.”

  “Shushan is supposed to be dead.”

  “Perception rules, boss. They’re in the same position as Sfangiullo. One way or the other they have an interest. Then there’s the FBI.”

  “I met them.”

  “They’re not happy the NYPD has jurisdiction. The Injustice Department. You ever hear
of a little twerp name of Robert Kennedy? He’s got a bug up his ass about organized crime. Maybe because his father was one of the biggest hoodlums in Boston.”

  “The attorney general of the United States is trying to arrest Shushan Cats?”

  “He’s trying to arrest everybody. But I’m sure he’s going after the non-Italians because he figures, like Sfangiullo does, they’ll be the first to talk. A piece of shit like Bobby Kennedy, who was born with a silver enema up his ass, he must figure—” The phone. “It’s for you.”

  Who would call me here?

  “What’s up, pretty boy?”

  “Terri?”

  “I’m coming over,” she said. “In an hour.”

  “It’s one in the morning.”

  “It’s not a nine-to-five job, junior. Get used to it.”

  “Shushan’s sister,” I said after the click.

  “I figured that out, boss.”

  “She’s coming over.”

  “It happens.”

  “She didn’t sound like she’s in mourning, Justo.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe she knows what we should know.”

  “Boss,” Justo said. “I don’t like to say this. I don’t want to say this. I never thought I’d have to say it. Shushan, he’s passed on. He’s in Jewish heaven. You know what, he’s been living on borrowed time since Korea, since that captain.” He paused. “You want me to answer that?”

  “Answer what?”

  “The phone.”

  I hadn’t even heard it. “Go ahead.”

  Justo picked up the receiver and handed it to me.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Newhouse?”

  “Yes?”

  “Eddy in the lobby, sir. I have a Mr. Arnold Savory. Should I send him up?”

  I covered the receiver. “Arnold Savory. In the lobby. Is this someone we know?”

  “Bookie,” Justo said. “I was expecting this. Either him or someone else. Yeah, he’s one of ours.”

  “Eddy,” I said into the phone. “Please send Mr. Savory up.” I put down the receiver. “Who is Arnold Savory?”

  “A snazzier dresser than you.”

  I took the hint and went into the bedroom to change into one of my three new suits, a meltingly soft number with high, notched lapels in some sort of gray hopsack. Along with a black knit shirt with an alligator on it and a pair of black shoes Ira had brought. I was just admiring myself in the mirror when Justo tapped on the door.

  “It’s... Arr-nold!”

  Wow, it certainly was. I don’t think I’d ever seen a man so obviously... Arr-nold! From the top of his champagne wig to the bottom of his creme and black shoes, Arnold Savory certainly was a snazzier dresser than I was, or most anyone I knew. In those days most gays—even the word was not in use—were closeted. It would be six years before gays rebelled against police intimidation in a riot at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street. It was still against the law to serve homosexuals in a premise licensed by the State Liquor Authority. Most of the bars that did have a gay clientele were in fact run by the Genovese interests, who paid off the police to look the other way, and in fact the Tintis had moved into “licensing” gay and lesbian bars on the rebound from losing the Fulton Fish Market; they also had the wholesale flower market in Chelsea—thereby earning themselves the handle of the Pansy Gang, which they did not like. But unless you went out of your way to visit Julian’s or the Creamery in the village or Hugo’s uptown—a grateful Arnold Savory would give me the full tour later that year—the average New York male’s chance of running into the overtly gay was as great as meeting Miss Rheingold—the monthly winner of a beauty contest sponsored by Rheingold, “the dry beer,” whose face was all over placards on the trains: my favorite was a Brooklyn girl-next-door who reminded me of Marie-Antonetta Provenzano, whose tight sweaters and pointy bras had convinced me Italian was a language worthy of diligent study and that the female breast was cone shaped (Marie-Antonetta never removed her bra during our trysts—she said it compounded the mortal sin). I knew even less about what we used to call fags. Eugene del Vecchio was what even he called a “homo,” but he was a poet, and had been a boxer, and presented as straight as any Kennedy brother, but beyond a few suspicious students on campus and a flamer I’d gone to high school with, my exposure to the Arnold Savorys of this world was nil.

  “Mr. Newhouse, I am so, so, so pleased to meet you,” Savory said, actually lisping a bit—I think he did it on purpose. “And I am so, so, so sorry it has to be under these unfortunate circumstances.”

  “We’re all going to miss Shushan,” I said. It struck me maybe Shushan was unmarried for a reason I hadn’t considered. Plus, Terri was bent. “We’re praying he’ll turn up.”

  Savory looked at Justo. “He doesn’t know?”

  “Tell him,” Justo said.

  “Of course we’re all chagrined to hear about Mr. Cats.” Savory spoke without opening his mouth beyond a crack, as though there was something in there that might leap out, or maybe enter. Later I realized it was simply vanity: the poor guy had awful teeth, yellow from nicotine, chipped and crooked. His champagne-colored mustache, which must have been dyed because the shade did not exist outside of bouffant-haired gum-chewers from Long Island, grew down over his upper lip like a veil. The total effect was that he had no mouth, only some sort of sounding device which delivered lisps and the occasional sigh. He wore a wide violet silk tie and an oatmeal-colored checked suit with brass buttons. On his cuffs were cat’s-eye links of gold, or gold plate, that matched his huge tie clip, and on his fingers a set of rings that appeared to have been purchased wholesale right out of the window of one of the Eighth Avenue pawnshops. All of this paled, however, before an enormous pair of rose-colored glasses framed in heavy black plastic. These kept slipping down his nose. “But I must admit I’m here on another errand altogether.”

  Where had I heard that voice? Breathless as Judy Garland and as brassily New Yawk as Barbra Streisand, who was in the middle of a seemingly endless engagement, her debut on Broadway, of I Can Get It For You Wholesale.

  Justo jumped in. “Arnie has a nice little bookmaking operation in the theater district. He’s an institution among actors.”

  “And directors, and choreographers, and stagehands, and just about anyone connected with Thespis and Terpsichore.”

  “Thespis?” I said, never having heard the word used in conversation—Terpsichore the same. “Actors bet?”

  “Oh, Mr. Newhouse. It’s been a tradition of the stage even before John Wilkes Booth gambled his life away at Ford’s Theater.” With that he sat heavily down on the couch and, in eerie mimicry of myself only moments before, idly fingered the fabric of one of the two remaining suits.

  Involuntarily I stepped back, as though his fingers might reach the third suit, on me. “How can I help you, Mr. Savory?”

  “Arr-nold!”

  “Arnold.”

  “Well,” he said, settling into the couch and further into the role. “As you know, Mr. Cats’ organization has been good enough to look after my interests over the years.”

  I looked to Justo, who nodded.

  “And I’ve always been more than satisfied. In fact, Mr. Cats always said, ‘Arnold, you’re my favorite fag bookie,’ so sweet he was, and he always said, further, that if at any time I wished to make other arrangements he would wish me well. In other words, our agreement was one of shall we say mutual benefit. Well...” His sigh filled the room with the scent of lavender, as though he had been chewing breath mints non-stop all night.

  It was 1:30 in the morning. This hoodlum business was wearing. When did they sleep? “I understand.”

  “Well, Mr. Newhouse...”

  “Russ is fine.”

  “Mr. Russ, imagine my surprise when early this evening two rather brutish persons—were I less civilized I would employ the term goons—entered my business premises and announced that they had succeeded Mr. Cats, may his memory be blessed, and that—”
>
  “We don’t know he’s dead.” This was getting tiresome.

  “Be that as it may, Mr. Russ, I’m sure you can sympathize with my shock when they said they wished to see my books.” Theatrical blank stare. “My books? Mr. Cats never asked to see my books. Mr. Cats never so much as hinted at wishing to see my books.” Deeper blank. “You do understand? These horrid people wish to charge me according to what they determine is my income, which I don’t mind saying is not quite enough to keep me in ermines and pearls, if you get my drift. Mr. Russ, please tell me you haven’t turned over my account to...” Savory appeared unable even to speak the name. “To such persons.”

  Justo said it for him. “The Tintis.”

  “Eggs-zactly,” Savory said. “Creatures is what they are.”

  I looked to Justo. “This something that happens a lot?”

  “Never. The Tintis? The theater district is ours, half of Harlem to the east side of Fifth Avenue, and all of Brooklyn. He paused. “For bookmaking. Other things, we don’t mix in. That’s the way the city is broke up.”

  “So, Mr. Russ,” Savory said, looking for all the world like he might at any moment break into tears. “What is a person to do?”

  Why ask me, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead I sucked on my tongue in imitation of thought and asked Savory if he wanted a drink. I was about to get it for him when Justo signaled with his hand palm down and went into the kitchenette. I might have sat there pretending to consider the matter forever had not the doorbell rung. Ira opened it to Terri Cats.

  22.

  If nothing else, this managed to get rid of Arnold Savory, who chugged down his vodka with a twist as though it were gasoline and he’d been running on fumes.

  If Savory was all theater, Terri was all business. And, even at two in the morning, dressed for it. In fact, it appeared we had the same tailor. Both of us were wearing black knit shirts under gray suits, hers double breasted, the jacket so short my eye dropped immediately to her hips, which bloomed out from below the jacket like an upside-down question mark. There was no question mark on her face. Terri walked over to me where I stood and kissed me twice, once on each cheek, then went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of single malt, not a common drink back then, and a brandy snifter. As she poured the scotch she began to speak, and did not pause.