by Andrew Gross
“We’ve actually met,” Morris said.
“I know you?” Buchalter stared up at him. He had the chummy, congenial grin and cocker spaniel eyes of a kid on the bima, belying his reputation. Morris had already seen how he could turn in the flick of a switch.
“Years ago. In an alley. Off Delancey,” Morris said. “You were running a card game there and I happened to come by.”
“Well, that was my office back in those days,” Buchalter said with a grin, “and lots of people used to happen by, so you just might be right.”
“And did you win or lose, Mr. Raab?” Jack Diamond asked.
“Neither. I chose not to play.”
“Smart. That’s the only way I’ve found to put the odds in your favor.”
“Raab . . . ? Wait a second. . . .” Buchalter snapped his fingers at Morris, his memory kicking in. “I remember you now. You’re that little pisher who wanted to fight us that day. Me and Gurrah, right? What has it been, eight, ten years . . . ?”
“That was me. But I think the fighting was more what you wanted,” Morris said. “Not me.”
“Maybe, but you stood right up. You stood up pretty good, as I recall, for just a young macher. . . .”
“Fight Gurrah?” Jacob Orgen nodded at Morris with surprise. “That shows moxie.”
“Morris has always had moxie,” Harry said. “And plenty of it.”
“Well, consider yourself lucky your good sense kicked in, Mr. Raab,” Jack Diamond said. “A man would have to have his brains checked if he wanted to take on that ox. So what is it you do now . . . ?”
“Morris is in the garment trade,” Harry announced.
“The garment trade . . .” Jacob Orgen looked up. “I’ve spent some time in it myself.”
“He ran the old Majestic Company for Mr. and Mrs. Kaufman until they sold it. Now he’s got his own firm with my older brother, Sol. They’re going to do real well.”
“Majestic?” Little Augie said. “I remember that old fox. So your two brothers, huh . . . ?” He raised a glass to Morris. “Mazel tov.”
“Thank you,” Morris said.
“So, tell me, how the fuck they let you escape?” Mendy Weiss elbowed Harry, leaning over to his pal Maxie with a snicker.
“I guess that kind of life just ain’t for me.” Harry shrugged, not sure if he’d suddenly become the butt of a joke.
“So tell me, Mr. Raab, what do you and your brother call yourselves in this new venture of yours?” Jacob Orgen tapped the ash off his half-smoked cigar.
“Our firm’s called Raab Brothers,” Morris said. “And there’s still room for you anytime you want, Harry. Whenever you guys feel you can let him go, of course. And we won’t even have to change the name.”
“Harry’s his own contractor.” Mendy slapped him on the shoulder. “Right? He can walk out any day he wants. Clean as a baby’s tuchis. You don’t have to worry, Morris, we got our eyes out after him. Now the rest of us . . . Ain’t so easy backing out, once you’re in. At least not on your feet.”
“So Raab Brothers, you say. . . .” Jacob Orgen flicked a cigar ash on his plate, eyeing Morris like a dog smelling meat. “Tell me, Mr. Raab, are you a union operation?”
“We’re just starting out. We’re way too small to worry about.”
“Maybe now.” Orgen shrugged. “But one thing you learn is, even in a small pond, the minnows get fat if they don’t get eaten fast enough. Maybe I ought to send around some of my boys. Just to make introductions.”
Morris said, “I think we’ve already made the introductions. Anyway, it’s just my brother and me, right now. We job out all our production.”
“Well, for when it’s time then, perhaps. . . .” The labor slugger looked at Morris; people didn’t often decline that invitation. “Tell you what, I’ll give you a little room while you fatten yourselves up.” He pointed with his cigar. “Just as long as you know, one day we’ll be calling. In the meantime, whatever you need, a brother of Harry here, you just call on me and let me know.”
Morris nodded. “Thanks, Mr. Orgen.”
“So why not sit down and join us for a drink?” Jack Diamond proposed. “The bubbly’s flowing, and the night’s just getting started. Right, girls . . . ?”
“Yeah, Morris.” Harry jumped up, offering his chair. “Jack’s right. Have a seat. They’ve got only the very best here.”
“Thanks, but I think I need to head back to my table. I’ve got some people there.”
“Can’t say I blame you a bit.” Louis Buchalter peered over and got a look at the bevy of pretty girls. “I wouldn’t leave them myself. Not for a second. Someone might gobble them up. Feel free to bring them along, if you like?”
“Actually, Harry,” Morris said, “I was just thinking why don’t you come over and join us? Irv’s with me.”
“Irv, huh . . . ? Yeah, I see him.” Harry shrugged, kind of sheepishly. “Thanks, Morris, but I’m good where I am.”
“C’mon,” Morris pushed. “Like old times.”
“It’s okay.”
“So I’m trying to figure out who’s the big brother and who’s junior?” Mendy Weiss piped up. “No one’s tying your hands, Harry. Your kid brother’d like you to leave.”
Harry grinned sheepishly and ran his hand through his thick, dark hair, almost like he did when his mother called him a moisheh kapover and he just wanted to slink out of the room. “I think I’ll just stay, if it’s all the same, Morris. Thanks for the invite though. How about I stop over before we leave?”
“Sure, stop over.” Morris looked at him with some disappointment. “Anyway, it was a pleasure to meet the lot of you. Enjoy your evening.”
“You as well,” Jacob Orgen called after him, and pointed. “And we’ll be seeing you.”
Morris wove his way back through the tables, annoyed that Harry had made the choice of staying with his table; even more annoyed that he had singled Morris out for the attention of the most notorious labor muscle in town. Right now, dealing with the union was exactly what they didn’t need.
Back at his table, the college girls seemed distracted and Irv was on the dance floor circling with the one from Skidmore who seemed even more bored.
Morris sat back down next to Ruthie. “Sorry to be so long.”
Ruthie leaned close to him on her elbow. “You know those guys?” She widened her eyes with surprise.
“One or two of ’em.”
“That was Jacob Orgen you were talking to. And everyone’s saying that’s Legs Diamond across from him. Those are two of the biggest mobsters in town.”
“The other two ain’t exactly choirboys themselves,” Morris said, referring to Maxie Dannenberg and Mendy Weiss.
“So, hey, how’s Harry doing?” Priscilla asked loudly.
“How do you know about Harry?” Morris said.
“Irv told us.”
“So your brother’s a gangster?” Ruthie said, in a tone that made Morris think his chances with her had now gone from unlikely to nil.
“My brother wouldn’t know a gun from a pressing iron,” Morris replied. But he could see how even the thought made him look in her eyes. “I don’t even know what he’s doing with that crew. All he is, is just friends with one of them, that’s all. He’s a mile out of his league.”
Priscilla, the Columbia gal, was whispering to a good-looking young man in a white dinner jacket with gold cuff links, who was leaning over her chair. “A bunch of us are moving the party,” she announced to the table. “To the Cotton Club. This guy named Ellington is playing there. Jen, Ruthie, shall we gather up Margie,” who was on the dance floor with Irv, “and head out?”
Ruthie shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe you all should just . . .”
“C’mon, I bet that guy you’re sweet on is there. Anyway, you’re not going to be a drip and break up the party.”
“C’mon, Ruthie . . . ,” her friend Jen pressed, seeing her hesitation. Morris thought maybe she liked him a bit.
Ruthie shru
gged. “All right.” She halfheartedly picked her purse off the back of her chair and got up. “It is Marge’s birthday,” she said to Morris with a sigh. “I’ve got to tag along.”
“I get it.” Morris stood up too.
“I’d invite you and your friend, but I’m not sure we can all get in. But, listen, thanks for the dance and all the bubbly. I wish you the best in what you do.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” Morris said, but with a hint of disappointment. “Listen, if it’s okay with you, maybe sometime we could—”
“C’mon, Ruthie, we can’t sit around here all night,” Priscilla cut him off. “Everyone’s waiting.”
“Maybe I’ll see you around here again sometime,” Ruthie said. “We show up from time to time.”
Morris couldn’t decide if that was an invitation or a brush-off. Likely the latter, he figured. “Sure. Maybe I’ll see you,” he said. “Why not?”
“So who’s the company?” the guy in the white dinner jacket inquired. “You gals want to bring them along?”
“Nah, just a couple of rubes from the Lower East Side,” the Columbia gal said under her breath, but loud enough for the rest to hear.
Ruthie glared at her, her eyes burning.
“Ruthie, Marge, c’mon, girls. Ben has a cab.” She grabbed her bag and turned back to Irv and Morris breezily. “I’m sure we’ll see you boys again sometime. Irv, keep up the good work with the law.”
Ruthie stayed behind a minute and looked back at Morris with a crestfallen expression. Then Priscilla took hold of her, exclaiming brightly, “Night, everyone,” and they disappeared into the crowd.
“You ought to go after her,” Irv said. “She liked you.”
“Liked me? We might as well have had a sack over our backs for all they cared.” Morris sat back down with the half-empty bottle of champagne. He was confident in all other matters, but when it came to women, especially fancy ones, with an education, he couldn’t get the right words out of his mouth. Words someone wouldn’t laugh at.
But, if that was how they really felt about them—a bunch of rubes from Delancey Street—then, hell with them. Morris filled Irv’s champagne flute. “Let’s finish this up and leave.”
“She’s right, you know,” Irv said. “That’s what we are. Rubes. We don’t belong here any more than Harry and his goons do. Look at me—I borrowed this suit just to get in. They were laughing at me the whole night. Next time I come in here, after I pass the bar . . .” He drained the last of his champagne. “No one’s gonna be laughing at me. Thanks for the evening, Morris. . . .” He stood up. “But we’re gonna spend our whole lives trying to act like we fit in here, and we’ll always be exactly what she said. Rubes.”
Morris glanced back around at Harry, who was telling a story that had Mendy and Maxie in stitches.
Irv was right. He should have never let her leave. He’d probably never see her again. “Lemme get the check,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”
He caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for the bill. It had probably cost him three hundred dollars just to pretend he was a big shot. He looked across at Harry again. He didn’t know what his brother saw in that crowd. The bubbly empowering him, he had half a mind to go over and wrestle him away. Rubes. Rubes and goons. They were no better, just because they put beer in people’s mugs and left a few bodies on the street.
“Any more of that bubbly left?” a woman’s voice said above him.
Morris looked up. Ruthie, her eyes sparkling and apologetic, stood over him. “The cab could only hold five.” She shrugged. “And anyway, I thought if you were still going to hang around a bit longer, we might catch another dance.”
“Another dance would be great,” Morris said, expansive. “Whaddya say, Irv, you’ll excuse us, right . . . ?” He got up and took Ruthie out to the crowded floor.
They danced for a while without saying much, then she finally stopped and looked at him. “I’m sorry for what Priscilla said. She’s drunk, but she’s also a bit of an ass. And just for the record, her parents bought her into Columbia. They even named a building after them. Without that, she probably couldn’t even get into Brooklyn College.”
“That’s okay,” Morris said. “Anyway, maybe she’s right about what she said.”
“She’s not right.” Ruthie looked at him. “At least not about the rube bit anyway. You’re okay. And so’s your friend. Though his suit’s in desperate need of an alteration.”
“He borrowed it.” Morris grinned and drew her a little closer. “I’m glad you came back.” The music picked up and suddenly there was the sound of a glass shattering and everyone whooped with delight, like the evening was just starting to liven up.
“They were jerks to let you go,” Morris said with her against him.
“They didn’t let me go.” Ruthie put her head on his chest. “I left. I ran back two blocks in the rain.”
“It was raining, huh?” He twirled her around, feeling like he was the most important person in the room.
Back at the table, he ordered another bottle of bubbly. Irv, who’d stayed, was now turned around, talking to a heavyset girl at the table next to them.
“So when did you actually start working?” Ruthie asked, leaning on her elbow, “if you don’t mind me asking? You do look pretty young to have started your own business.”
“A while,” was all Morris said. He didn’t want to say how much of a while. He was embarrassed to admit how little education he’d truly had.
“Well, I assume in high school?”
“I never made it to high school.” Morris twisted the flute of champagne in circles. “My father died, we were broke. We all had to help out to pay the rent.”
“So how old were you then? C’mon, you can tell me.”
“Fifteen,” Morris lied, hesitating a second. He felt a tremor of shame to do so. But he knew there was no way she would even look at him if she knew the truth. “I never told that to anyone before.”
“Fifteen?” Ruthie stared at him. “Wow.”
“Well, almost sixteen,” Morris said, sinking deeper.
She blinked and gave him an incredulous shake of her head. “Well, we do come from very different worlds, Morris Raab. When they were talking about Fitzgerald, I saw how you averted your eyes.”
“Who is he? Some lawyer?”
“Some lawyer?” Ruthie smiled. “He’s a famous writer. You probably don’t read much, do you?”
“Not that way. Made-up stuff.”
“You mean novels?”
“Whatever you call them. I read the papers though. Every day. And the trades.”
“The trades?”
“You know, Women’s Wear Daily. To see what’s going on and who’s in town.” When she merely blinked back at him, Morris grinned. “I guess you’re right, we do come from very different worlds.”
“Well, I know a book you just might like. One of those ‘made-up’ things.” She smiled. “You’ve heard of Dickens?”
“I heard of ‘scared as the dickens.’ But I guess that’s not what you mean, is it?” He felt a stab of embarrassment.
Ruthie laughed. “No, Charles Dickens, silly. Oh, come on. You’re joking, right?”
Morris didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry.” She saw his chagrin. “He’s famous, that’s all. British. He died over fifty years ago. You know, A Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Christmas Past? Every schoolkid knows it.”
“I guess I didn’t stay in school that long.”
Ruthie nodded, and put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I know that was stupid of me to say. Anyway, the book’s called Great Expectations, and if you ever come upon it, made-up or not, I think you’d find it worth a read. I think you’d like the main character. His name is Pip. You kind of remind me of him.”
“I do, huh? Why?”
“I don’t know, that you both came from very humble beginnings. That you have a kind of naïve way about you, and yet you learn the ropes and you’re clearly going place
s. I can see.”
“Going places, huh . . . ?” He liked how those words sounded coming from her. He felt like he had the prettiest girl in the place seated next to him, and from his view, maybe the smartest. “Pip, you say . . . ?” Morris had never even looked through a real book in his life, other than the Talmud or the Mishnah, and even those had been a while. He no longer went to shul more than two or three times a year.
“Yes. Pip.” She tilted her champagne flute to him. “Do read it. If we ever see each other again, you’ll thank me.”
They clinked glasses. “Great Expectations . . .” He picked up a pencil and started to write the name on a cocktail napkin. He hesitated.
“That’s with a ‘t’ and an ‘i.’ ” Ruthie pointed to what he’d written. “Here. . . .” She wrote it out on the napkin. “Great Expectations. See? By Charles Dickens.”
“Thanks. And by the way, we will. I’m sure of it.”
“We will, what . . . ?”
“See each other again. Maybe we’ll even read it together sometime.”
She cocked her head, smiling in a congenial way, but at the same time, it carried a message. That that wasn’t likely to happen. “Look, you’re a nice fella, Morris, and intriguing in a way. And I’m very glad I came back in. But we’re from very different worlds, and . . . I can’t even imagine being with a guy who . . .” She curled her hair around her ear and flicked an ash from her cigarette holder into the ashtray. He knew what she was about to say. “Maybe just don’t get your hopes up, that’s all. But I admit, there’s a certain way about you. And you’re clearly nobody’s fool. Say, want to take another run at that dance floor?”
“Sure.” He was about to get up and help her chair back when Ruthie’s gaze suddenly shifted toward the front. “Look, seems we have company.”
On the way to his table, Louis Buchalter in his white dinner jacket came up to them. He put a hand on Morris’s shoulder.
“Hello again. It’s Raab, right . . . ?” The gangster surveyed the table. “I see you’ve lost your party.”
“I don’t know, the party seems just fine as it is,” Morris said, looking him in the eye. “Meet Louis Buchalter.”