The Head of the House

by Al Zuckerman

  A knock, soft, at the bedroom door, then Katerina stuck her white-haired head in. “Evangelidos?”

  His gut knotted up. “What is it?”

  “A little man, really very nice, I mean, he look okay. Just, he say, please, I tell you what his name. Then if you no want to see him, he promise he go away, with no more bother ever.”

  The cheese-headed bat, he all but exploded, wanting to curse her in three languages. But what for? The damage was already done. Someone out there now knew he was here. And if that someone were to follow him, California would be a waste. Everything would. He felt horribly depressed.

  “You angry with me, Evangelidos?”

  “Who does this person say he is?”

  “You friend, he say, your good old friend, Izzie Hargett,” and the crone smiled expectantly, as if anticipating that this news would melt away her nephew’s sadness.

  Psyllos could hardly breathe. His heart pounded like thunder. It was a joke, had to be obviously. But who would do that? And why?

  “What,” he had to moisten his lips, “what did you say this man looks like?”

  “Nice. You know, nice smile.” She motioned low with her hand, “Little. And curly hair too, yeah.”

  “And that’s all he said?”

  “Well, yeah, but,” and she knit her wrinkled brow remembering, “also he came back now, cause he gone a long time. He hear about you, like you not so good. Maybe he can help, he say.”

  Psyllos felt a pressure inside his skull pushing outward as if it might explode. The Jew had been dead more than a year now. Pete had seen a film of Hargett’s coffin being lowered into its hole, with the daughter crying, the old man collapsing. So, what was this?

  He yanked at the outside door, and confronted the lunatic intruder. The man did appear to resemble Hargett, but the light in the tenement hallway was so dim, it was hard to get a good look, to be sure.

  Then he felt himself swaying, his knees melting. He grabbed hold of the doorknob, hard. It was Izzie, no jacket, open collar shirt, cool looking.

  “You?” he finally managed to spit out.

  “So, you going to invite me in?”

  Psyllos numbly motioned for him to enter. Then, gripping side tables along the way for support, Pete led his caller into the unlit and rarely used living room, which smelled as if the down in the cushions was slightly mildewed.

  They sat.

  Psyllos’s head teemed with questions, but his mouth could form no words.

  Hargett spoke first. “I uh heard you had a few troubles.”

  “That’s true. And I heard—you had died.”

  “That’s not true. See, I get involved sometimes with rough guys. So, sometimes I have to play funny games,” and Hargett smiled.

  Suddenly Psyllos’s head felt bludgeoned with a hammer. His eyes and brain exploded with whole galaxies of ghastly lights. In that one terrible instant he understood why he was bankrupt. The hoodoo, god, weird jinxes were all only a man, who now was sitting across from him. His chest hurt terribly; he could hardly breathe. He wondered if he might be having a heart attack. Part of him wished he were.

  Izzie, sitting perfectly still, strained in the faint light to see, take in every detail, taste every second. Stringy Greek, paskudnyak, the creep had all but managed to have Iz killed, and now Psyllos himself looked like death. Iz, watching the gaunt man, saw his lips twitch and quiver, his hands reveal their every vein as they clutched the chair arms.

  Iz tingled with content, as if reacting to a zesty steam bath, a heavenly massage, closing a million-dollar sweetheart deal. Psyllos’s catastrophes had made Iz happy; but being in the same room with his enemy, his unknown and for so long unknowable tormentor, was something else altogether.

  Over the years, others had stuck knives into Iz’s back; and each time he had exacted repayment, sooner or later, but never in ways as protracted and intricate as these. He smiled to himself that Psyllos’s old hag aunt, who hovered at the room’s archway, could look right at the two of them and nonetheless have no sense at all of what really was happening.

  Iz relaxed, sat back, waited. Now what? What would the snake try next, now that he’d had his fangs extracted? Would he grovel, beg for mercy? Or would he be daring, pretend he knew nothing, that his shock had simply to do with seeing an old buddy miraculously returned from the dead? But Psyllos was too smart to jump into a song and dance act now, and still too swollen up with pride to go down on his knees. He would probably rather take the medicine, swallow poison if necessary, than stick his nose down into the dirt. And Iz respected him for that.

  Psyllos coughed, clearing his throat, then hoarsely muttered, “I know now why they call you guys the chosen people.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you got it. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s there, and it works for you; and in the long run, we can’t beat it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I was a winner. Always. But in this business with you, I could never get any farther than almost.”

  “And you really think the reason is because I’m Jewish?”

  “All you got to do is look at schoolboy history. Everybody who makes trouble for you people—Hitler, the Czars—they all got it in the end, no?”

  “They also managed to knock off a lot of poor people first. No, Pete, you didn’t make it in the end because this wasn’t your kind of business.”

  Psyllos shrugged and lowered his eyes to the floor. “So, what’s gonna happen next?”

  “When I decide, I’ll tell you. Now I want to know why you did it.”

  The metals trader slowly shook his head, as if bewildered. “Stupid.”

  “I didn’t ask why you messed up. Why’d you want to bump me in the first place?”

  “Every way I wanted to go, there was someone standing in the way, and always the same person, you.”

  “Business is a game you know. Killing is one you never learned. D’you really think you could walk in cold, and beat me at it?”

  “I almost did.”

  “Only, almost doesn’t count. Not in this game.”

  The Greek’s eyes widened with fear. “What’re you gonna do to me?”

  “I’m not gonna kill you. So whatever else it is, you’ll get used to it.”

  “What, Izzie?”

  “Not much I can do to make you more miserable than you are already, with ice water in your veins instead of blood.”

  Pete grinned feebly. “Only, I’m used to that.”

  Iz, feeling short of breath, rose. The fun of this meeting was starting to be no more fun. He wished Psyllos this second would disappear off the face of the earth. But there were questions still, things Iz had to know, and which only this Greek could tell him.

  “That creep in Washington, the one shooting at me from the roof, d’you know he was carrying Scapellatti’s card?”

  Evangelidos shrugged. “I thought it might be a possibility.”

  “Did you tell him you were Scapellatti?”

  “No, but someone else might have told the fellow that he was.”

  Well, that explained that. “And the French girl, Mireille, what ever happened with—”

  Suddenly Pete was rising and in one continuous movement lunging for the door.

  Iz, as if he were at a swimming pool, literally dove after him, just managing to grab onto the Greek’s bony wrist. The two of them toppled to the floor, knocking over a lamp and a chair, which came crashing down on top of them.

  Leroy, who’d been out in the hall, rushed in with one of his boys who quickly grabbed hold of Psyllos, while Leroy himself gagged the screeching old lady.

  Iz hurt excruciatingly, not his knees, elbows or other extremities, but inside. Strange. He felt as if a whole enormous apple were stuck in his windpipe, so that he couldn’t swallow or breathe or do anything. Psyllos was becoming a blur, hard to see. Everything was blurring. And the apple wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t get it to go down or come up. Leroy, he realized, was standing
over him now, other people too. They were talking, patting him, trying to help him probably, swallow, or breathe, or. … And somehow why couldn’t he? And then it was dark. No one was there any more, nothing except pain.

  CHAPTER 11

  Iz’s real funeral was also small. Only the intimates who’d been in on the plot against Psyllos had known that Hargett still lived; and no others except his sisters, Marilyn and Rhea and their families, and David, had been notified. Traditional prayers were spoken and chanted in Khayim’s modest synagogue in the Bronx, with the eulogy delivered by the departed’s seventy-six year old father, which was unusual, but not unheard of.

  In a steady and surprisingly strong voice, the tiny oldster explained, “This was a man, my Sroolik, who lived separate from most American people, and from the ways of Jews, and separate too from his God. It began with him when he was a boy still. I had to run from the Czarists, so I came to this beautiful country. Then my dear wife, his momma, died. He was alone, with little sisters, in a war, shootings and killings going on all around him. It was a cruel time, and he suffered. And a kind of hard rock began to grow inside of him. And when he came here after the War, this hardness already was a powerful thing. I tried to—soften him, but I was weak, and I never could.

  “It was sad. There were times it broke my heart. Because Sroolik also could be so good. His sisters, when they needed him, he took care like a momma and a poppa both. He tried to do for me, and for his brother. And he did be—was a big help. And sometimes to all the Jews. When those Nazi Bundists right here in the Bronx were painting swastikas on synagogues, and breaking windows, he was the one who made those animals stop it. And after the Second War he made sure about Israel, that our people there had guns, so the Arabs couldn’t slaughter us and push us into the ocean, the way they almost did.”

  The old man blinked, seeming to push back tears, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. Then somewhat shakily he resumed. “And his own two darlings, Dovidl and Lindeleh, I’ve been leaving out the most important. What wouldn’t he do for them? He’d do anything, anything.” Khayim paused, nodding his head up and down, moved. “So now, I can only pray, and with my whole heart, that the On High will know him for his virtues and his goodnesses, and on the Day of Judgment will redeem him.”

  The old man bent his head, and tears slipped down his wrinkled cheeks.

  The body was buried in a cemetery not far from Belmont Racetrack in a communal plot owned by the Loyal Sons of Brest-Litovsk Fraternal Society, to which Khayim had made payments over many years. Iz himself had never bought a burial plot, except the one outside Tel Aviv.

  The last part of Iz’s revenge against Psyllos, which was to have been the finale of their little get-together, was taken care of by Leroy the same day as Iz’s funeral, late that afternoon. The former billionnaire was offered a janitorial job, complete responsibility for the smooth functioning and cleanliness of the men’s lavatory off the main dining room at the Xanadu in Miami Beach. Evangelidos would be entrusted with the honor of offering towels to the guests, whisk-brushing their jackets, keeping the floor scrubbed, and the tiled walls and urinals, polishing the faucets, and flush handles; and in return, he would be entitled to keep all tips. Pete, flabbergasted, said he thought this quite a bad joke, and that rather than submit to such degradation, he would prefer to die. Leroy congratulated him on his perspicacity. Dying was his one other option. The Greek, after quick reflection, moved to Miami and took up his new job. After a few years of South Florida’s stifling summers, though, he grew arthritic, too badly to work any more, and had to be placed in a nursing home.

  Leroy, with the active support of Iz’s other close associates, strived mightily to hold together those portions of the Hargett empire which Iz had recaptured from Psyllos; but with time, it became apparent that the successful operation of many of these, especially the casinos, depended on Iz’s purely personal connections; and no one else in the Hargett entourage, not Blinkie Nathanson, or Morris, or Louis Okun, or Iz’s own son David, or Reuben Silverberg, and certainly not Leroy, could inspire or exact the same fealties.

  The process of dissolution and destruction of Iz’s dominions had of course been under way for some time, starting when Iz had sold off certain major interests to ransom David, and then picking up further momentum when he’d arranged for the whole world to think him dead and buried in Israel. Still, Leroy and Louie O. in some key places and especially in booming Las Vegas had managed (or so they thought) to retain a number of their own agents in top jobs. Actually, at Iz’s secret behest, Sally Pirone in Rome had pushed the buttons which had maintained this stability. But within days after Iz’s real death, almost every one of his people was sent packing. It became plain that in order to reestablish them, and, through them, control, most of the top Mafiosi in America would have to be zapped, and then possibly the second echelon Mafiosi as well, an exercise for which Leroy had neither the stomach nor the confidence.

  Another crown jewel of the Hargett empire, the casinos of Havana, were usurped by competitors even more extreme than the Mafiosi and more impossible to deal with, Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries.

  Still, there were businesses enough remaining, so that Iz’s intimate contemporaries one by one were able after several years to retire in comfort. Reuben Silverberg joined Morris in Miami where they were among the first to wax rich building hi-rise condominiums as homes for the elderly. Sally Pirone, because of his reputed involvement with the heroin trade, was forced by the Italian Government (Washington’s pressure really) to move from Rome to a small village where he died of lung cancer. Leroy, meanwhile, inside the burgeoning black ghettoes of Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, South Jamaica, Newark, Bridgeport, began fashioning, much as Iz had imagined he would, a new empire of interrelated enterprises: numbers banks and commercial banks, betting parlors, barbershops and beauty parlors—which in their own sphere grew to be most powerful.

  Leroy and Linda did marry after all, but not until a full year had gone by after Iz’s fatal heart attack. The business pressures on Leroy during the months following the funeral were too great for him to do anything but work. The oft-postponed wedding was a brief, sparsely attended City Hall ceremony, after which the honeymooners flew to Paris. A day later, Leroy received a cable and decided to fly right back. A new over-zealous Chief Inspector of Police in Newark had shut down his most profitable numbers bank. After not quite two years of such emergencies, Linda had had it up to her eyeballs, much as her mother had had with Izzie, and she left Leroy, divorcing him two years after that. There had been other problems too. Izzie had been right about the enormity of the racial problems. Linda and Leroy mutually had discovered that they were not strong enough to confront them.

  Linda, as a major stockholder in Dynamic Industries, then took a job assisting Leo Kremish, and within a year had become his mistress, rediscovering in Leo her beloved Scott mixed with a touch of her father.

  David Hargett stayed on in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of Commander, and skippering a destroyer, which in the mid-sixties off North Vietnam hit a mine and sank with no survivors.

  There were no male heirs to the Hargett name. It lived on only in myth.