Kockroach

by Tyler Knox

  A few weeks after it started, the boy followed Tony in one night but he wasn’t so pretty no more. His left eye was closed on him, his maw was a swollen mess, his nose busted but good. That night it was soup and milk and pudding mixed with cream, all sucked down by the palooka through a straw. It wasn’t long afore Tony started again to come in alone, humming his tunes and ordering his Salisbury steak and masheds and broccoli and two rolls with butter. We never again spied the pretty-boy blond who wasn’t so pretty no more.

  If you asked me then, I would have told you Tony the Tune was the worst kind of fool, starving hisself so some no-chancer could prove exactly what he was. The worst kind of fool, a fool in love with hope. Because Hubert, that sack of nothing what sacked my ma, he seeks out hope, like he seeks out fear, waits for the instant when hope wanes to rise up and seize your soul. My momma, she showed me that. Tony the Tune was Hubert bait without even knowing it. But suddenly, with the coming of Jerry Blatta into my life, I had a whole new understanding of the grumpy old mope. See, even though I knew the dire consequences of relying on hope alone, I couldn’t bring myself to reject its blandishments neither. So just like Tony, I brought my hope into the Automat, loaded his tray with food, groomed him for a shot at the title.

  I had my doubts about Jerry Blatta to be sure. Like when I put him to bed the night we met, sacking out myself on the floor so he could have the mattress. I woke the next morning to find Blatta buck naked and curled into a ball beneath the bedsprings. What that was all about I never figured. Or when I noticed he put his legs through the armholes of his undershirt and pulled it up as high as he could. I had to near bite my lip through to stop my laughing at that. He was a queer one, and I had my doubts, but I had no doubt at all about what he had done to Roscoe. And so, when the choice was to save what I needed to pay off Big Johnny or to spring the bills I needed to clean up my Suzy like he needed to be cleaned, I sprang, yes I did. I spent like a fool in love on Jerry Blatta.

  Let me tell you something, missy. You want to know who it was what made the Boss all he is today, the sweet-dressing, sweet-talking man-on-the-rise? You’re looking at him, yes you are. Kiss me twice and call me Charlie.

  So there we was, the two of us, strutting up the Great White Way. Can’t you see us? Me in the front like a herald of sorts, and Jerry Blatta behind, drawing attention what with his fancy new double-breasted suit and dark glasses, his sharp cheekbones, his syncopated jazzy jazz walk, the lit cig bobbing in his lips, the cocky air of the newly laid. He was a sight, he was, as Times Square as Georgie M. hisself, who was so Times Square they gave him a statue. Jerry Blatta, bucking for a statue of his own, following behind as I led him north through the Square. And then a few blocks west, past all them restaurants, one next to the other, French and Irish and Spanish and Italian, a whole marketplace of cheap European cuisine, until we reached a Greek joint called the Acropolis, where in the back room the Nonos, what ran all the rackets in Times Square, held court.

  Whoa, that perked you up in a hurry, hey, missy? A little organized crime never hurt a story, did it?

  Abagados. The Nonos. Which in Greek means Godfather, or maybe murderous bastard, either one, didn’t much matter the way things played out. Was a time the very whisper of his name sent a shiver through the Square. Prostitution, drugs, extortion, loan-sharking, pocket-picking, tit-shaking, cheap booze, cheap cigs, the more than occasional heist, the more than occasional murder. Abagados ruled his midtown empire from a room behind the kitchen of the Acropolis, hiring soldiers like Big Johnny Callas to patrol his streets, and he took a cut out of every crime and caper what went down, from the garment district, through the theater district, into the restaurant district, and beyond. He was a shadowy figure, no pictures in the press, no gossip in the columns, I couldn’t have ID’d him if he strolled up and bit my nose, but every step I took as I struggled to slip a score out from under his shadow, I felt the terrible weight of his power.

  And word was out on the street that Abagados, no longer content to feast on midtown, was getting ready to expand south and north and east, into territory controlled by the coloreds, the Italians, the Jews, oh my, getting ready to expand and looking to build an army.

  “What fug you doing here, Mite? Get hell out afore Yonni, he take off your head.”

  “Yo, Stavros, it’s sweet seeing you too,” I says. “Is Nemo around?”

  Stavros, tall and thin with a black fedora and an absurd black mustache, jumped off his stool at the bar of the Acropolis and lifted both his long palms at me like a copper stopping traffic.

  “I’m no kidding, Mite. Word is Yonni gonna make example you. He tells whole world he reach in you throat and pull out you arhidis.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever the hell that means, let him try.”

  “But the Nonos, he don’t want no trouble in restaurant.”

  “Well then I picked the safest spot in New York, didn’t I, Stavros, old pal? I need to see Nemo.”

  The bar sat in front of a huge mural of a bunch of maidens la-di-daing around a pile of ruins. The main dining room off to the left was near to full with the pretheater crowd sawing on their kebabs or cutting into great squares of moussaka, while waiters doused burning bits of goat cheese with juice squeezed from lemon wedges to enthusiastic shouts of “Oooopa.” The band, three men in puffy shirts and red vests, played maudlin Greek melodies with tears rolling down their cheeks.

  Stavros takes a step toward me, like he’s about to bounce me out of the joint, when he spies the man behind me.

  “Who laughing boy?”

  “His name’s Blatta.” I close an eye and thinks for a moment. “Jerzy Blatta.”

  “He Greek?”

  “How the hell should I know? I didn’t check his papers. Look, Blatta and me, we needs to see Nemo.”

  “He no here for you.”

  “It’s important, Stavros. And believe me, it’ll be worth his while.”

  “He no here. Now spam you.”

  “The word is scram. Spam is what you feeds the touristas here and call it souvlaki. And the answer is no. I came to see Nemo. I’ll just check for myself to see if he’s around.”

  As I push by him, Stavros grabs hold of me. Two other boneheads with fedoras at the bar jump off theys stools and reach into theys jackets as if about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

  “Boys, boys, boys,” I says. “Good to see you all. You’re looking swell. But you might want to step aside or I’ll start to screaming bloody murder, I swears I will. Won’t the Nonos like that, me screaming like a siren here in his quiet little restaurant? If you think that gut scraper on the violin can screech, wait till you gets a load of me. Ready?”

  I takes a deep breath, screws up my face, open my mouth wide, like I’m about to make like some fat lady with horns, when Stavros, he lets loose my arm.

  “Wait here,” says Stavros to me. “I go see if Nemo, he wants talk to a malakas like you.”

  A few minutes later Stavros returned, followed by a huge round man who squeezed through the doorway from the kitchen and made his way to the bar. The man had no neck, lips like Capone, a cigarette was held daintily in his thick fingers. Fat Nemo.

  Nemo was some sort of high underboss—the hierarchy of the Abagados organization was always Dutch to me—and yet seemed a decent sort for a gangster. As he made his tours through the Square, oozing his bulk down the crowded streets with Big Johnny Callas and Stavros behind him, he was all smiles and glad hands, tossing cigarettes and bills to the beggars, caressing the heads of the hookers with his fat fingers, buying rounds at the taverns he stepped into so as to renegotiate the payment schedules. And whenever he passed my way he always had a warm word of greeting. How is it with you, Mite? Dressing mighty sharp this evening, Mite. Someday, Mite, you and me, we’re going to do some business.

  “Mite,” says Nemo, leaning now on the bar of the Acropolis, fiddling carelessly with his cigarette, his grin a little less genuine, more pained, than on the street. “A pleasure as always t
o see your smiling face. I’d invite you back but it is a private party. Let me instead buy you a drink.” Nemo gestured to the bartender. “A glass of retsina for my friend Mite. And another for his friend…”

  “Jerzy,” I says. “Jerzy Blatta.”

  “Aaah, a fellow countryman perhaps? Then please, use one of our imported bottles, none of that swill we mix up in the bathtub.”

  The bartender, a lean dark man with hair plastered back, replaced the unmarked bottle in his hand with another, foggy on the outside, sweetly pink on the inside, and filled two of them water glasses like they had at the Automat. I took a sip, sharp like turpentine. I nodded at Blatta and he downed his in one swallow. His eyebrows, they danced just above his dark glasses.

  “Now, Mite, I need to get back to the party, so please be brief.”

  “Word on the Square, Nemo, is you boys is soldiering up.”

  Nemo carefully raised his cigarette to his lips. “The word?”

  “That’s right.”

  Nemo stared down at me as he inhaled. “On the Square.”

  “The word.”

  “And you think you, you are the very soldier we may be looking for?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Nemo blew the smoke out in a stream above my head. “Let me be frank, my friend. I have craps bigger than you.”

  “That just mean you’re eating well, Nemo, and I’m glad to hear it. But it’s not only me I’m talking about.”

  Nemo tilted his head.

  “My palsy Jerzy.”

  “Is that so?” Nemo turned his attention to Blatta. “I haven’t seen you around before, Jerzy.”

  “He’s new in the Square,” I says.

  “I’m from out of town,” says Blatta.

  “You got much experience there, Jerzy? You a fighting man? You single-handedly destroyed a regiment of Japs in the war?”

  Blatta didn’t say nothing, he just smiled his smile and Nemo’s eyes they narrowed.

  “Thank you for thinking of me, Mite, but I’ve no need now of your help. And I particularly have no need for strangers from out of town who as far as I know couldn’t slap their way out of a pita.”

  “But Nemo,” I says, “you don’t understand.”

  “I do, Mite,” he says, leaning forward now, his great bulk towering uneasily over me. “Believe me, I do. We don’t want nobody nobody sent. The cops are pouring all kinds of finger men into the street to snitch for them, all kinds of lowlifes. And you, Mite, are about the lowest life I know. So now you might want to leave before Johnny steps through that door.”

  His gaze passes over my shoulder and a dark grin appears.

  “Too late,” he says.

  I didn’t need to turn around to know what Nemo was grinning at, the hairs what pricked up on the back of my neck told me as clearly as any mirror. It was Johnny Callas, Big Johnny, what with the fists and the temper, bopping into the restaurant, two of his lackeys following tight behind. He’d be in a fancy suit, no hat to mar the thick slick of blue-black hair, his broad shoulders and deep chest bobbing up and down as he pointed first to his left, then to his right, acknowledging associates here, clients there, bobbing and pointing as he made his way to the center of the bar where stood yours truly, facing away from him. And it didn’t matter that I was facing away from him, he’d know who I was right off. There wasn’t too many guys my size who worked the Square, and none in a suit as green as mine.

  “I been looking for you, you little parasite,” he says.

  “Johnny, I’m sorry. I’m trying—” I says. But before I turns around fully, I slams his fist with my face and flip sprawling onto to my back.

  “You little parasite,” he says, leaning over me now. He sucks his teeth and slaps me on the face. “I give you the two bills for your deal of a lifetime and what do I get in return? Nothing. And then you score on Roscoe and clean him out and what do you do with that cash? You buy a fancy suit, a good sweat, a fancy shave, you splurge at the Automat and buy a ride from Sylvie. You get all that and what do I get? Nothing. You little parasite. I’m going to take you apart. But before I do, I want my five C’s.”

  “I only owes you two-fifty.”

  “There’s a late fee of fifty and I get a cut out of the Roscoe deal. I get a cut out of everything goes down in my territory, just like I got to give a cut myself, you understand?”

  “I don’t got the money no more, Johnny.”

  “You know, Mite, I was hoping you would say that. I haven’t kicked the crap out of nobody in almost two whole days and I miss it.”

  “Not in the restaurant, Johnny. You can’t do it in the restaurant.”

  “The hell I can’t,” says Big Johnny.

  “What about the Nonos? The Nonos.”

  “Well he ain’t here now to tell me no, is he?” says Big Johnny. “Stavros, get the band to playing a little louder, and the rest of you boys gather round. No one need see what I do to this loser.”

  There it was, missy, my defining moment. Not just here, in the bar of the Acropolis, but through all the stages of my pathetic life. Whatever strides I made, whatever precautions I took, it all still ended right there, with me on my back and some bully boy about to turn my face into mincemeat. Look closely and you can see the scars, under my eye, across the bridge of my nose, the white line what runs through my lower lip. My face is a road map of violent despair.

  Big Johnny grabbed my lapel, jerked me off the floor, cocked his fat fist and gave it a twirl. It was like poetry, the rightness of it, the beating of my life what was coming as surely as I deserved it. That I thought I could ever put one past the bully boys, manage a situation so over my head, stiff a stiff like Big Johnny and get away with it, all of it was proof that I had goodly earned every last stitch they was going to need to sew up my head. Off to the side Hubert was laughing at my foolish hopes. And I gave him a look of surrender, I did. The morose Greek music it grew louder, as if it was my own funeral dirge, and I didn’t squirm and wiggle like I would have in the past. I lost myself in the music, relaxed, closed my eyes, opened my heart to the righteous propriety of what was coming. All right, Big Johnny, do your worst, because I deserve every lick of it. All right, Hubert, hope is dead, come and fill me with your sweet wisdom.

  I felt a jerk forward and then a lurch and then I fell back hard on the floor. And the blow must have been worse than anything I had been dished before because I didn’t feel it, didn’t feel it, it must have numbed every nerve in my face because I didn’t feel it.

  I slowly opened my eyes and I saw why I didn’t feel it.

  Big Johnny Callas was high in the air, his legs kicking, his arms twirling, held high in the air by my own palsy Jerry Blatta. He held him there, did Blatta, in the air, held him there as if it were an actual comic book hero doing the holding. And then Big Johnny wasn’t held aloft no more, he was flying in the air, over the ducking barkeep, against the three rows of bottles up against the wall, smashing the bottles even as his own head smashed against the mural of the la-di-daing maidens, afore his carcass fell with a thud to the floor, alcohol gushing down upon him.

  The music stopped. The deep murmur of the restaurant died.

  “My God,” says Nemo.

  “Take care of my friend Mite,” says Blatta.

  The two mokes who had come in with Big Johnny made their move and in a flash Jerry Blatta had each by his necktie. As the shouts started flying, Blatta lurched forward and lifted both men in the air. Theys hung there, arms and legs swinging wildly, clutching at theys throats and fighting to find theys breaths.

  Stavros pulls his big black gun and points it at Blatta’s chest.

  I jumps to my feet and stands between the gun and Blatta, the two mokes in the air kicking me as they struggle. “Nemo,” I says. “Don’t let him. Don’t.”

  But afore Nemo could answer, the door to the kitchen, it opens and a skinny old man, bent like a question mark, leaning on a cane, hobbles hisself forward. Smoldering in his teeth is a short cigar, thick as a t
humb. The crowd silences and parts for the man as if it were the Red Sea and the old man was Moses.

  “What happen here?” the old man croaks in a thick Greek accent. “Who stop music?”

  He looks at Blatta without an ounce of shock, or even admiration, in his eyes, as if it was an everyday sight to see a man hang two of his gunsels in the air by their ties.

  “And who the hell you?” he says to Blatta.

  “There’s been complaints about a smell,” says Jerry Blatta. “Can you flush the toilet or something, Jesus?”