Inherit the Mob

by Zev Chafets

  “Game, set and match!” Millman finally called out, sounding like a country-club pro. He walked off the court with a white cotton sweater wrapped around his shoulders, and his racket under his arm.

  “Where’d you learn to play tennis?” Grossman asked.

  Millman laughed. “Tennis? In the joint. My last stretch, I was a ranked player. Number three racket on the Jackson squad. Would have been number one if they hadn’t caught two guys from Grosse Pointe on a bank fraud.”

  The green expanse of the village square was crowded with old Jews in T-shirts and shorts tossing Frisbees and chipping golf balls. In the distance Grossman heard happy shouts and splashing from the Olympic pool. “Do these alter kockers know you were in the joint?” he asked.

  “What alter kockers, they’re the same age as us,” Millman said, sounding hurt. “And I’ll tell you something, Al, there’s a lot of flanken down here. I could fix you up. You’d be surprised.”

  “Yeah,” said Grossman sourly. “You didn’t answer my question, though. Did you tell them you were in the joint?”

  “No point in broadcasting it,” said Millman. “Not that it would matter. The people around here are pretty broad-minded about the past. That’s why they come down here, most of ’em, to get away from the past. And their kids.”

  “You ever get bored?” Grossman asked.

  “Bored? Hell, no. This place is summer camp—parties, a health club, guys to play cards with, whatever. Plus you can go into town and see the ponies run, or catch a Dolphins game. This is the life, believe you me.”

  “Yeah,” said Grossman, making his voice bland. “I thought maybe you were a little bored down here, but I guess I was wrong.”

  “Look, Al, if you’re thinking about moving down yourself, trust me, you won’t regret it. There’s empty units, I could take you over to the management office right now, get you fixed up. Jeez, it’d be like the old days having you around.”

  Millman’s enthusiasm told Grossman what he wanted to know. “Not me,” he said. “I’m not the old-folks-home type.”

  “Ah, get outa here,” said Millman, flexing his stomach muscles. “This look like an old man’s stomach?”

  Grossman punched his gut lightly. He had to admit that Handsome Harry was still in good shape. “Forget it,” he said. “I’m down here on business. I just dropped by to say hello.”

  “What kind of business you doing in Florida?” asked Millman. “I thought you was retired.”

  “Something came up,” said Grossman.

  “Like what?” Millman asked.

  Grossman lowered his hoarse voice to a confidential whisper. “Nothing that would interest you anymore,” he said. He knew that Millman would identify the tone, a sound he had heard for more than half a century on the streets and in prison—the sound of conspiracy.

  “Al, are you back in the life?” he asked. “You are, aren’t you?”

  Grossman sighed. “OK, you figured out that much, I may as well tell you the rest. You remember my boy, Velvel?”

  Millman nodded. “Sure, I saw him at Max’s funeral. He looks good, Al.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s had a little misunderstanding with Luigi Spadafore. Nothing that won’t go away eventually, but right now he needs some protection. I came down here to find a couple of tough Cubans, somebody don’t know who Spadafore is.”

  “Cubans,” said Millman incredulously. “Al, what about me?”

  “You?” Grossman laughed so hard he began to cough. “Harry, you? You live in a summer camp, for Christ’s sake. I need a tennis lesson, I’ll give you a call; for this job, I need somebody a little younger.”

  “Rat momzer bastard,” said Millman. “You’re as old as me. You think I can’t handle myself anymore, you’re full of it.”

  “Harry, it’s been, what, eight, nine years since you got out the joint? And what have you done since then, besides lie in the sun and shtup Hadassah ladies. No, this isn’t for you, believe me.”

  “Al,” said Millman, tightening his grasp on Grossman’s wrist. “I want in. I mean this, Al. I’m going bananas down here, it’s worse than the joint. At least in there you figure someday you’re coming out. Here it’s a life sentence. I’ll work for free, I’ll even pay my own way. Honest to God, Al, for Max’s sake, I’m in, OK? Forget about the Cubans.”

  Grossman deliberated for a long moment. Finally he looked at Millman. He no longer saw an old dandy with a tennis racket, or a dirty young kid with the broomstick on Hester Street. This was Handsome Harry, grayer and wrinkled, but the same guy who walked into the apartment house on Dexter Avenue and took out three hoods from the Little Jewish Navy with a submachine gun.

  “Harry, it’s against my better judgment, but OK, if you’re sure you can handle it, you’re in.”

  Millman pulled Grossman to him and kissed him roughly on the cheek.

  “Hey, cut that out,” said Grossman in a gruff voice. “You want your girlfriends to think you’re a fag?”

  “Al, honest to God, I’ll never forget you for this,” he said. “How many more guys we need?”

  “Half a dozen would do it,” said Grossman. “You know how to get to the Cubans?”

  Millman shook his head impatiently. “Al, forget the Cubans, that’s what I’m telling you. Your boy’s in trouble, Max’s nephew, this is a family thing. You know who’s down here? Not right here, I mean, but in the area? Mortie Zucker, Bad Abe, Sleepout Louie Levine, Steinie—Christ, there’s a whole army down here.”

  “You don’t say,” said Grossman through half-closed eyes. “You know, that never even occurred to me.”

  Congregation Beth Israel was the last remaining synagogue on South Beach. Built around the turn of the century for merchants who needed a place to say afternoon prayers, it had once been a thriving little shul. Today it was kept going by a handful of small shopowners, most of them immigrants from Eastern Europe, who wanted somewhere to say Kaddish. On Pine Tree Drive, lined with Holiness churches, barbecue joints and party stores it stood out like gefilte fish at a clambake.

  Grossman walked in out of the glaring Miami sun and blinked to accustom his eyes to the gloom. The place smelled of old prayer books, Lysol and phlegm. He remembered the odor from his boyhood on the Lower East Side. Christ, he said to himself, these guys must carry the smell around with them in bottles and spray it wherever they go.

  There was a door off the tiny lobby marked RABBI’S STUDY. Grossman knocked and entered without waiting for an invitation. It was a small room crowded with cleaning untensils and dusty bottles of kosher wine. The walls were decorated with calendars featuring Israeli landscapes. An unmade cot stood in one corner. In the center of the room, behind a steel desk, a burly, gray-bearded man in a yarmulke sat, head bent, mumbled over a book.

  “I’d like to talk to somebody about a Bar Mitzvah.”

  “We don’t do Bar Mitzvahs,” he said, barely looking at Grossman. “Try Temple Rodef Shalom out on Forty-first Street.”

  “How about banks? You do banks?” asked Grossman. The rabbi stared and suddenly a look of recognition spread across his broad, blunt face. “Al? Al, God bless you, goddammit, it’s you!”

  “Well, it ain’t my sister Sadie,” said Grossman, shaking the old man’s hand. He noticed that the grip was still powerful. “I heard from Harry Millman that you were down here, I decided to look you up.”

  “Al, I was sorry to hear about Max alav ha-sholom,” he said. “I read about it in the papers.”

  “Thanks, Zuckie. What the hell kind of scam you got going here?” Grossman asked, looking around the room. “Since when are you a rabbi?”

  Mortie Zucker laughed, exposing two rows of misfitted false teeth. Grossman remembered the night he lost the real ones in a main-event brawl at the Garden, against Two-Ton Tony Belino. In those days, Mortie Zucker had been considered the toughest street fighter in Brooklyn. “I ain’t exactly a rabbi,” he said. “This neighborhood, the guys belong here couldn’t get nobody to take care of the place, ru
n the services. And you remember I could always doven, my old man learned me when I was a kid, and he kicked my ass if I didn’t get up with him in the morning to go to shul. One of the guys, he’s got a pawnshop around here, he asked me one day would I be interested. It ain’t much, but what the hell …”

  “So you sit here every day reading, what, the Talmud?”

  Zucker grinned, showing the yellow false teeth again. “Naw,” he said, holding up the book on his desk.

  Grossman squinted. “How to Win Money at the Races, by Nate Perlmutter?”

  “Don’t laugh,” said Zucker. “This guy used to be the head of the B’nai B’rith, a very big Jew.”

  “Yeah, a regular Ben-Gurion,” said Grossman. “Tell me something, you like the rabbi business?”

  “Well, it beats shining shoes at the Fontainebleau,” said Zucker. “My time’s my own, I got a place to stay and Mogen David on the cuff. They got my name registered as an official clergyman and everything. You need to get married sometime, I could do it. One time I even gave the prayer on TV, you know, the one they got on in the morning.”

  “Imagine that,” said Grossman dryly. “Listen, Zuckie, how’d you like to take a leave of absence from being the chief rabbi of Coontown and come back with me to New York? I got a job for you.”

  Zucker’s eyes widened with amazement. “A job? Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

  “How the hell do I know what you think I’m talking about?” said Grossman. Zucker could be stupid sometimes, but the man was a professor when it came to street instincts. He could spot cops from a mile away, had a sure sense of who and when to push, and never made foolish mistakes. This was the kind of judgment and experience that would be invaluable to Grossman. Slowly, carefully, he outlined his plan to protect his son from Luigi Spadafore. When he was finished, Zucker chuckled and tugged on his white beard.

  “Take a look up on the wall,” he said, pointing to the calendar with a picture of the Bay of Haifa. “Read the year. You come twenty years ago, you got a deal. Today?” He shrugged.

  “Yeah, Harry Millman said you’d be too old, but I wanted to see for myself,” he said.

  “Harry Millman’s in on this?”

  “Ground floor,” said Grossman. “Well, Rabbi Zucker, it was nice seeing you—”

  “Wait a minute,” said Zucker. “Al, tell the truth, you don’t think I’m too old?”

  Grossman considered. “Yes and no,” he finally said. “Yes, too old to go back to work full time. No, not too old for what I’ve got in mind. The whole thing should take a couple weeks tops, until I get things straightened out with the lokshen. Until then, simple body-guarding, no rough stuff. Yeah, you could handle that. And, just as important, you could keep Millman under control.”

  “Pardon me for asking, but you didn’t mention money,” said Zucker.

  “Ten thousand bucks for the first two weeks, and three thousand a week after that,” said Grossman. The rabbi whistled. “A sach gelt, Al,” he said. Grossman snorted. “What am I, a shnorrer? You want the best, you pay for the best.”

  “You really think that about me?” asked Zucker in a soft voice.

  “I wouldn’t be down here if I didn’t,” said Grossman.

  “In that case,” said Zucker, taking off the yarmulke, “you got yourself a boy. I just hope to God you know what you’re doing.”

  Grossman called the office of J. Kenneth Weintraub, investment counselor. “Tell him it’s Mr. Foster from Internal Revenue,” he told the secretary.

  “Hello,” said the man’s voice.

  Grossman noted the smooth tone superimposed on top of the Brooklyn honk, like a peanut butter and gravel sandwich. “You J. Kenneth Weintraub?” he asked.

  “Yes, speaking.”

  “I was wondering, Mr. Weintraub, does the J stand for jailbird by any chance?”

  “Who the hell is this?” Weintraub screamed into the receiver. The smooth inflection was gone, and only Brownsville remained.

  “Relax, J. Kenneth, it’s Al Grossman,” he said.

  “Al! Vas macht a yid?”

  “Not bad, Kasha, not bad. I hear you’re a big man these days, a regular k’nocker.”

  “In your league I’m not, but I got no complaints. What can I do you for?”

  “You don’t seem too surprised to hear from me,” said Grossman.

  “Naw, Harry called, told me you were in town.”

  “Did he say what I wanted?” asked Grossman. “It’s OK if he did, I told him he could mention it.” He had told Millman no such thing, but now would be as good a time as any to check on Handsome Harry’s discretion.

  “Yeah, he did mention something,” said Weintraub. “Listen, are you calling about me and this—”

  “Wait a minute, Kasha, how’s the phone? You sure it’s OK?”

  Weintraub laughed. “Are you kiddin’? You’re talking to a citizen, Al. The Torch Drive wants a buck, I give a buck. UJA, Heart Fund, even the policemen’s ball, whatever the hell they call it these days. The mayor sees me at the Chamber of Commerce, ‘Hi, Kenny,’ he says, like we went to cheder together. What I’m saying is, the phone is fine.”

  “Well?”

  “Al, it’s been a few years, y’know? I got arthritis in my left hand. I go to the bathroom, it takes ten minutes, and I wind up dribbling on my shoes. I’m not embarrassed to admit it, you know what it’s like.”

  “The hell I do,” snapped Grossman.

  “You still got a temper, you know that?” chuckled Weintraub. “You remember the time you and me and Bummy Katz took on those Kraut bastards up in Yorktown?”

  “Yeah, and the one guy, the one with the red nose—”

  “Un-huh, he busted out crying, ‘I vant my mama, I vant my mama,’ you remember that?”

  “Like it was yesterday,” said Grossman, his voice softer now, and a little dreamy.

  “And after, we went by Polly’s and spent the night with Lean Ilene and Jew Mary? Remember the look on Ilene’s face when you handed her the guy’s wallet with all that dough and told her that it was on Hitler? Christ, what a night—”

  “Well, what the hell, Kasha, the mayor calls you by your first name now. You got it made down here. You’re a citizen—”

  “Al, I want in,” said Weintraub. “I been thinking about it and fuck it, you only live once, right?”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Grossman.

  “I’m not in the greatest shape in the world, I already told you, but I’m not a fucking invalid yet, either. I want one last roll.”

  “Yeah, one last roll,” said Grossman. “Well, you got it, Kasha. We’ll have some fun, I promise you that.”

  “What happens now?” asked Weintraub. “I mean, when do we start?”

  “There’s a few more guys I want to talk to down here,” said Grossman. “I figure it’ll be two, three days and then we’ll head back up to the city.”

  “OK, I’ll be ready anytime. And Al—thanks for including me in.”

  When Grossman got back to the Fontainebleau he found three little white message slips from Mr. Sleepout, Bad Abe and Indian Joe. “Sounds like a vaudeville act, don’t it?” Grossman said to the bewildered message clerk.

  The phone was ringing when he opened the door to his room.

  “Al, it’s Sleepout. I left word, you don’t answer your messages?”

  “I just walked in,” said Grossman.

  “I hear you’re getting the boys back together, you don’t call me?”

  “Where did you hear that?” asked Grossman.

  “Whattya mean, where? It’s all over the place, everybody’s talking. They call me up—‘So what’s the deal with Al?’ I’m too embarrassed to say my pal Al is in town and didn’t even call me.”

  “Hey!” said Grossman. “Cut that shit out, I ain’t into guilt trips.”

  “Guilt trips, he ain’t into guilt trips. You becoming a hippie or something?”

  Grossman laughed in spite of himself; it was a ph
rase he had picked up from Bev. “Nu, you in or out?”

  “Since you’re asking, in,” he said.

  “Harry Millman will be in touch with the details,” said Grossman.

  “What’s the matter, you couldn’t take a few minutes yourself, tell me what’s happening? I have to hear from Horseface Harry?”

  “I told you, goddammit—” Grossman began, and then heard the chuckling on the other end. “OK, OK, I don’t have time to dick around. I’ll see you in the city.”

  “Not if I see you first,” said Sleepout, and hung up laughing.

  Grossman saw eight more men in the next three days. Four were too old or too sick to make the trip to New York. One, Baboon Bernstein, had become a Seventh-Day Adventist and only wanted to talk about salvation. Three—Bad Abe Abramson, Indian Joe Lapidus, and Pupik Feinsilver—were in. Along with Millman, Zucker, Weintraub and Sleepout Louie he had seven guys. There was only one more person he wanted to see—Shulman.

  Shulman’s house was located on a street of neat three-bedroom bungalows in a neighborhood of retired school principals and Midwestern insurance salesmen, a few blocks off Collins Avenue. There were well-tended beds of flowers in front of the houses, and late-model Japanese cars in the driveways. Shulman could have afforded better.

  Grossman rang the doorbell and waited. He had called ahead; Shulman was not the the kind of person you just dropped in on unannounced. They hadn’t seen each other in more than ten years, and Grossman wondered how he would look to Shulman. He had dressed with care for this meeting, in a sport shirt with some slack to hide his potbelly, a dark brown blazer, tan pants and polished loafers. As he had ever since he first met Jerry Shulman, more than fifty years before, he wanted to impress him.