Genuine Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  I whisper, “Turn around.”

  Now wearing only a black silk half-slip, she turns to face me. I’m not sure who’s experiencing the greater pleasure: me, getting lost in the sight of her magnificent breasts, or her, watching me enjoy the sight.

  She slides the slip down, kicks it away. Then does the same with her black lace panties, revealing a delectable blond patch that tempts me to part it. “So, Cantor Gold,” she says. “What are you going to give me? Sad or angry?”

  “Both.”

  *

  She makes love to me like she knows everything about me: where to put her lips on me, where to stroke me with the tip of her tongue, when to let me fuck her, how slow or fast to move on her.

  I make love to her like I don’t know her at all, finding every inch of her like an explorer in exotic territory, my hands gliding along every curve and crevice, my mouth tasting her body’s every offering.

  And now, after our groans and the screams have quieted, I roll off of her, resist an urge to doze, but sit up and light a cigarette for each of us instead. Moonlight through the window catches the smoke, gives it a silvery tinge as it floats along Lilah’s body, curls along her face, and trails upward, blurring the Cubist angles in the painting by Picasso that hides the safe in my bedroom wall.

  I say, “So who sent you?”

  Lilah raises herself up on an elbow, takes a long drag of her smoke, then sits up the rest of the way and looks at me as though nothing in life surprises her anymore. Moonlight shines like silver points in her eyes. “How did you know?”

  “Come on. You’re not stupid,” I say, “and neither am I. In a bar full of empty seats, you sidled up to me like you had a longstanding reservation on that particular barstool. Then you flattered me with that line about me being interesting.” I smile when I say it, because, yeah, the line she gave me was a good one, and I appreciate a good line. “I would’ve just enjoyed the flattery—I’d had a lousy night, and a little flattery from a beautiful woman did wonders for my spirits—but you slipped up when you didn’t ask my name until I prompted you. And then you stiffened, like you knew you’d blundered. I’m guessing you already knew my name because someone told you. So who sent you? It had to be someone who knows my habits, knows where to find me, what I look like. So I ask you again: Why did they send you and what do they want?”

  She stubs her smoke out in the ashtray on the night table, then pulls the blanket around her and gathers up her knees. With her arms around her legs, her chin on her knees, the blanket cocooning her, she looks more like a lost little girl than the sex-smart femme fatale who just took me to all the neighborhoods of Paradise. “My brother. Mickey,” she says. If she sounded any more pitiful, I’d break down and cry.

  “Nice brother you’ve got. Pimps you out for—well, for what?”

  “I don’t know. He wanted me to get close to you, get you to like me. The rest of it…how I did it…was my idea.”

  I don’t know if I feel flattered or used, though I didn’t mind the way she used me. “Okay, it was a swell idea, but it doesn’t get me any closer to knowing what you and your brother want with me.”

  “I’m supposed to get you to come home with me, bring you to Mickey. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Wait a minute. If he knew to send you to the Green Door Club to find me, then he knows a few things about me, like who I am and maybe even how I earn my dough. Why couldn’t he find me himself? Why send you?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “You bet I’ll ask him. Get dressed and I’ll take you home. Where’s home?”

  “Brooklyn. Coney Island.”

  If she’d said Timbuktu, I couldn’t be any more thunderstruck.

  Coney Island. The tawdry, colorful, raucous, seaside amusement carny of my youth, where the sideshow barkers and midway hucksters know all the angles and can figure more ways to finagle money from your pockets than a shyster lawyer. When I finally left, when I was an ambitious youth moving up in the world from my racket of stashing stolen trinkets under the boardwalk since I was a kid, to the high-priced treasures I deal in now, I rarely went back to the old neighborhood, just now and then to visit my mom and pop. With my mom and later my pop dead and buried, I haven’t been back in years. But here it is, the past come to call, brought to my door by a cutie peddling a cute angle. Pure Coney Island.

  “We’ll take your car,” I say. “I’ll drive.

  Chapter Four

  During the summer nights of my childhood, the streets of Coney Island were crammed with people laughing it up and taking their chances at the shooting galleries, skee ball palaces, penny arcades, and other come-ons designed to pick your pocket while you’re trying to impress your girlfriend. Children, staying up late, giggled through smiles sticky with sugary ecstasy sold by cotton-candy spinners. Couples made their way to and from the thrill rides and the great amusement parks—wild Steeplechase, magical Luna Park—where thrills and chills could be had for nickels and dimes. Squeals of delight and fright collided with the barkers’ spiels and carny music echoing from every fun house, game stall, and girlie show, the noise floating in the air all the way to the beach. Zesty aromas of hot dogs, mustard, cotton candy, and saltwater taffy kept you hungry, hungry for food, hungry for all the pleasures on offer: pleasures for the family, pleasures for the flesh.

  On winter nights like tonight, though, Coney is a shadowy town, its rides and amusements empty and still, most of its penny arcades, game stalls, and bathhouses boarded up for the season. But not all. A handful of die-hard Coney operators stay open all year, and well into the night, catching nearby Brooklynites who need a bit of honky-tonk after a tough day on a crummy job. So even on a damp night in the dead of winter, a few of Coney’s neon lights throw their colors into the darkness. The thump of skee ball games, the rat-a-tat of pistol shoots, and the bells of pokerino machines jangle the air.

  I’d always wanted to take Sophie here in Coney’s off-season, show her where I grew up, the streets of neon and shadows that formed me. We never got around to it.

  Lilah’s leading me along Schweickerts Walk, an alley street that ends at the boardwalk. Except for Nathan’s hot dog joint at the corner of Surf Avenue, there’s nothing much along this stretch of Schweickerts, just some mom-and-pop game stall concessions and a bathhouse near the boardwalk, all closed for the season. A gaudy yellow glow from an all-night tattoo parlor in the middle of the block shimmers in puddles left by the earlier rain.

  Lilah stops in front of the tattoo joint. “We’re here.”

  Inside, the yellow walls are covered in colorful drawings of pinup girls, gypsy girls, movie stars—Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner are runaway favorites—sailing ships, anchors, broken or arrow-pierced hearts, and hearts with MOM written across the front in fancy letters. Otherwise, the place is empty except for a beefy ink artist dozing in a chair, his bare arms a gallery of pictures, most of them lightning bolts, skulls, devils, and a few flowers that seem like they’ve been sent to the wrong address. The guy wakes when he hears us walk in, but closes his eyes again when he sees it’s Lilah and a friend, not customers interested in getting inked. The clock on the table next to him reads a few minutes before one a.m.

  Lilah leads me to a dingy area in the back that’s tricked out like a cheap living room. The floral wallpaper is colorful but shabby, the sofa and chairs lumpy, the worn-out upholstery a neither here-nor-there green.

  The crummy decor doesn’t jibe with Lilah’s expensive evening coat and slinky dress. “You live here?” I say.

  “Sometimes.”

  Before I get a chance to ask what sometimes means, a guy a few years Lilah’s senior walks in from another room. He’s a pudgy guy in dark chinos and a sweaty white shirt, the sleeves rolled up. His hard, gray, slit-like eyes keep his round face and thinning brown hair on his balding head from being laughable.

  “You Mickey?” I say.

  He looks me over with a spreading grin, toothy, like a monkey’s. It gives me the creeps.


  “Whaddya know,” he says. “Cantor Gold, home again. The tomboy all grown up.”

  “You know me?” I take a hard look at the guy, at his monkey’s grin and steely eyes, and they suddenly look familiar. I remember eyes and a grin like that from a wild time way back in my childhood, when a turf war for the Coney rackets left lots of tough guys bleeding to death all over the neighborhood, especially under the boardwalk. The owner of those remembered eyes and grin was the loser in the war. “Solly Schwartz,” I say. “You’re Solly Schwartz’s kid.” Fat Solly. The old-time rackets boss of Coney Island, until Sig Loreale muscled in with a modern and ruthless operation Fat Solly’s old-fashioned gang couldn’t defeat. “I remember now,” I say. “I used to see you and your folks on the boardwalk before the turf war. You were—what?—four, maybe five years old? And, yeah, sure, your mother was holding a baby.”

  “Right. My sister. Only we don’t go by Schwartz no more. It’s Day. I’m Mickey Day. Aw, and don’t gimme that look that says you think I’m ashamed of my name.”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  “It ain’t what you think. I ain’t trying to fit in with the Smiths and Joneses like a lotta people do nowadays. It’s just that after Pop lost Coney to Sig Loreale, the name Schwartz became a laughingstock around here.” He reflexively balls his fists, like he’s ready to throw a punch in the face of anyone who laughs at him or his family. Must be a habit, I suppose, after all these years.

  “But people around here must know who you are,” I say.

  He shrugs. “Some do, some don’t. Lots of new people coming in. The old crowd ain’t what it used to be. But that’s enough with the auld lang syne, Gold. I had Lilah bring you out here for a reason, and it’s not to celebrate Old Home Week. And oh, by the way, little sister turned out to be quite a looker, yeah? From what I hear, I knew you’d like her.” He says it with a smile that’s more of a sneer, mean and grotesque through his monkey’s grin.

  “Is that why you didn’t come find me yourself? How generous of you.” I give him a sneer to match his own. Maybe not as grotesque, but just as snide.

  “Why should I traipse all the way to Manhattan? Wasn’t hard to figure you’d follow Lilah’s skirt wherever it led you.”

  He gestures with a snap of his head that I should sit down in one of the ratty club chairs while he seats himself on the equally ratty sofa and puts his feet up on the coffee table. Then he barks, “Lilah, bring us a coupla drinks,” before he makes slightly more polite noises at me. “What’ll you have, Gold?”

  I’m not crazy about the way this lout treats his sister, reducing her to a looker and bossing her around. I wouldn’t mind swatting him across that monkey’s mouth and washing that mouth out with soap, or maybe lye, burning out his nasty tongue. But then he couldn’t tell me what I’ve come here to find out. So though it turns my stomach, I squelch my temper and let his savagery go for now, just take my cap and coat off, sit down, and light a smoke, letting a deep drag calm me. “I’ll take Chivas, if you’ve got it.”

  “Woo-hoo! Aren’t we fancy! You really left Brooklyn and old Coney behind, Gold. Bet you don’t even go to Ebbets Field no more to see the Dodgers play.” He eyeballs me while he says it, runs his eyes up and down my duds. He looks like he’s not crazy about my color scheme of pale yellow shirt and pocket handkerchief with my navy suit. I guess he’s just a sweaty white shirt kinda guy. When he’s done looking me over, he says, “Well, I got scotch. Doubt it’s Chivas. Lilah, bring us a bottle of scotch.” Pointing at my cigarette, he says, “Got another one of those? I’m fresh out. The candy store over on Mermaid Avenue won’t open until seven in the morning.”

  I hand him one of my Chesterfields. He lights it with a match from a book on the coffee table, then sits back and blows out a stream of smoke, lord of his castle. Lowlife lord. Crummy castle.

  But I didn’t come here to be dazzled by his low-rent glory. Time to get down to business. “Well then, Schwartz—”

  “Day.”

  “Sure, yeah, Day. You lured me out here, so suppose you tell me what this is all about.”

  After another lordly exhale, he says, “I want to take Coney Island back.”

  I nearly choke on my own smoke. But before I have a chance to clear my throat and tell Day he’s nuts, Lilah’s back with a bottle and two glasses, two fingers of whiskey in each glass. I all but gulp the scotch—a cheap but not overly rotgut brand—and let it open my throat again and help my brain sort out the crazy words Mickey’s just said. I finally say, “You want to take Coney Island away from Sig Loreale? Do you have a death wish? Your father tried to tangle with him and the only thing he got for his trouble was a knife in the belly.”

  Watching the guy’s round face harden is like watching milk congeal, his expression so sour I swear it smells. “That bastard Loreale left Pop to bleed to death right there on the beach for everyone to see. And did the cops do anything about it? ’Course not, ’cause Loreale owned the cops.”

  “He still does.”

  “Not all of ’em.”

  “As many as he needs.”

  “Yeah, well, leaving Pop to rot wasn’t enough for Loreale. My mother and sister and me were left penniless. Yeah, that’s right. Loreale didn’t just steal Pop’s rackets, he had his thugs brass knuckle the president of the bank where Pop kept his money until he transferred Pop’s dough into Loreale’s account.”

  That sounds like Sig. Bet he didn’t even jostle in his underwear when he gave the order.

  Day takes another slug of whiskey. It only fuels his bitterness, tightens the slits of his gray eyes. “My family lost everything,” he says, “even our house over in Sea Gate. We wound up living in a shack in the Gut. Lilah and I are still there. Only thing he let Pop keep was his bathhouse locker.” He’s practically spitting it, and by the time he says, “How generous of Loreale to split Pop’s dough with his thugs,” the spit’s so acid it could cut through the walls.

  “All right, so Loreale did your family dirty,” I say. “Loreale does everyone dirty. What’s all that got to do with me?”

  “Way I hear it, Loreale does you a little less dirty.”

  “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “That same grapevine. Hey, you’re famous around here, Gold. Local kid makes good, and all that. So I know you do business with Loreale, get fancy stuff for him.”

  “So he’s a client from time to time. It’s just business,” I say. “But I know not to cross him, and I know not to trust him.” The first would get me killed. The second would rip my heart out with broken promises, like the promise Sig made to use his web of connections to find out what happened to Sophie—who took her, and where the flesh boat went that sailed away with her—in exchange for handing him a priceless Renaissance watercolor I risked my life to bring into port. It’s been over two years since the first time Sig made that promise. He made the promise again about a year and a half ago, and so far, he’s given me nothing, not even a whisper. “You still haven’t said what you want, Day.”

  “I want you to introduce me to Sig Loreale. You could do it. You could get me to him.”

  I polish off my drink, put the empty glass down on the coffee table with a hard thud, and get up from the chair. “Why? So you can get your revenge and plug him? And you think either of us would live to tell about it? Neither of us would live long enough to get out his front door. His outfit would shoot us full of so many holes we’d shred where we stood. You’re making the same mistake your father did, thinking he could deal with Sig Loreale.”

  “Sure, I’m my father’s son. It’s my job to restore his honor. I got roots here in Coney, Gold. A past. And by the way, so do you.”

  A past? Yeah. A life? No. “You want to stay trapped in your family’s past? Be my guest. Sorry, Day. Count me out.” I start for the door.

  Day’s up and at me quick, blocking my path. “Look, who said anything about plugging the guy? I just want to do business with him. I don’t want any rough stuff, though I co
uld if I had to. I’ve put my own outfit together, and if Loreale wants trouble, I’ll give it to him.”

  I feel my eyebrows rise even before my mouth opens and the biggest laugh I’ve had in a long time comes barreling out.

  “What’s so funny, Gold? You think I can’t stand up to Sig Loreale? Let me tell you, he’s gone soft, from what I hear. More businessman than muscle. You know what he’s planning on doing to Coney? He’s thrown in with a bunch of real estate developers. Yeah. They’re talkin’ about tearing down the Gut, throw everybody outta the bungalows and shacks and put up a bunch of big apartment buildings. For the workingman, they say. Baloney, I say. They’re out to make a killin’ collecting rents from a coupla three thousand, four thousand people. Some say they even have their eyes on leveling Steeplechase Park!”

  “Listen to me, Day,” I say. “Loreale may dress like a banker but he’s still hard as stone. There’s nothing soft about him. He’ll eat you alive.”

  “We’ll see about that. But first I have to meet with him. Get him to deal.”

  “Deal? What kind of deal could a two-bit tattoo operator like you offer Sig Loreale?”

  “Plenty.” He says it with the grin of a schoolyard tough. “I’ve got inside dope on what goes on here. I know who owns what.”

  “And you think he doesn’t?” I say. “Sig’s got eyes and ears in every neighborhood in New York, including this one. Especially this one, since Coney Island was the first brick in his empire. He probably owns every nail and screw in this building, too.”

  Day sits back down on the couch, the lord of his castle again, his arms spread wide across the back, a know-it-all grin spreading across his monkey-like mouth. “Loreale ain’t so smart. He don’t own everything. And he’s been selling off stuff, too, and now he thinks he knows the so-called Owners of Record. But he don’t know beans. For that, he needs me. And lemme tell you, Gold, when he hears what I have to say, he’ll fork over.”