by Steve Stern
The project he was presently at work on, with its pulleys and zinc alloy gears, had the look of an amusement park ride.
“When complete, will simulate, my machine, the bang at the birth of the world,” he declared, eyes aswim behind the horn-rimmed spectacles he’d recently affected. He further explained that the explosion he referred to had resulted from the volatility of the divine light stored in the vessels that contained the original Creation. Why he wanted to perform this particular imitation of God, he never made clear, but where his previous inventions had had (often despite his intent) some practical application, he was determined this one would defy all usefulness. Of course he was nuts, my papa, and although he was the acknowledged executive head of the business, I knew it was really Mama, consulting account books and telling the beads of her abacus, who actually ran the Ice Castle from our West Side apartment.
Papa’s mishegoss aside, I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t like working at the icehouse. Physical labor had a certain appeal for me, and slinging lettuce crates or lugging giant sea bass across sawdusted floors, I felt my body becoming toughened and strong. Sometimes I would ride the ice, sliding toboggan-style down aluminum flumes straight into an insulated van in which I would later ride shotgun, swapping indecencies with the drivers as we navigated the city streets. I liked swinging the iron tongs to hoist the cakes onto my shoulder and the sense of my own surefootedness as I carried the dripping burden up steep flights of stairs. In garlicky kitchens I drew the pick from its scabbard to split apart the ice cake, spraying shards while the daughter of the house admired the knotted muscles of my arms. Once or twice I even imagined taking over the Castle from Papa and expanding it into a veritable empire of ice. But when Naf the Sport’s ambassadors strolled onto the premises declaring that Karp’s owed their agency a fortune in back subscriptions, I was as impressed with their brass as I was outraged by their demands.
Schultz, Papa’s horse-faced foreman, shoving hands deep in his overall pockets, said he would have to discuss the issue with the proprietor, that the gorillas should come back later—which, I could tell from the smirks they exchanged, the gorillas had been told before.
“Sure, sure, take your time,” replied the spokesman of the pair, his novelty jacket pasted to his broad back with perspiration. “Take all the time you need. We’ll be back tomorrow for the cash.”
Observing all this from under the eel I was wrestling onto a meathook, I was so struck by their effrontery that I straightaway hung up my apron and followed them out into the muggy afternoon. They seemed to be in no hurry, pausing at here a candy butcher’s, there a newsstand to threaten the merchant, fanning themselves with their skimmers as they ambled leisurely over to Forsyth and Grand. There they mounted dusty stairs and entered the door of an office on the second-floor landing, gilt letters across its pebble-glass pane reading Acme Insurance Group. Hesitating only long enough to give my cap a cunning tilt, I opened the door into an anteroom that was bare but for a desk, a telephone, and a young woman applying makeup to a theatrical degree. Under the desk I could see the sheen of her crossed legs in their rolled-down stockings; I could hear a radio playing “Ukelele Lady” from beyond the inner office door.
Several moments elapsed before the young woman deigned to acknowledge my presence. When finally she did, she ran her eyes over the length of me and seemed not displeased with what she saw, though she said in a tone of bedrock boredom, “What do you want?” closing her compact with a gesture like snapping teeth.
Remembering the sign on the door, I submitted: “I wanna take out a life insurance policy.”
The feather aigrette in her sulfur-yellow hair shimmied beneath the ceiling fan. “We only deal in property insurance,” she announced in a listless impression of an actual receptionist.
“Then I wanna life insurance policy on my property.”
She smiled with her tight mouth only, apparently used to wiseguys. “You look like a nice boy,” dropping the charade. “Better get outta here if you know what’s good for you.”
Removing my cap which I used to wipe the sweat from my brow, I decided to try a different tack. “Is Mister, um…,” I began, but “Mr. the Sport” somehow didn’t seem right. “Is Mr. Kupferman in?”
“Who wants to know?”
I considered. “Tell him Ruby Kid Karp.”
She said with her kohl-ringed eyes that I had to be kidding. At that point the door to the inner office opened a crack, the radio blared, and one of the characters I’d tailed from the ice plant, the spokesman, in fact, poked his eagle beak into the anteroom. The height of his head suggested that he was seated, his chairback probably propped against the wall as he twisted his neck to peek beyond the door. “Hey, Birdie,” he said in a voice like an emery board, “how bout a shtikl your sweet pierogie later on?” Then he noticed me. “What’s this?”
She raised her plucked brows. “This,” she announced with a sigh, “is Kid Karp. Kid, meet Shtrudel Louie Shein.”
“Howdja do,” said the tough guy, whose reputation (like his boss’s) had preceded him in the lore of the neighborhood. “Now get lost.”
That’s when the righteous anger came over me again. “My papa don’t need your protection,” I practically spat at him, thrilled by my own impertinence.
Shtrudel Louie frowned, his head disappearing from view as the door shut again. I heard a muffled mumbling under the voice on the radio cautioning the audience to stay tuned; an orchestral arrangement of “Runnin’ Wild” was next on the program after a message from “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” Then the door opened again and out stepped Shtrudel Louie with his shnozzle and monobrow, his crooked bowtie, from a room I now saw was as barren as the one I stood in: a few items of furniture paying homage to the radio receiving outfit with its tuba-size speaker that served as centerpiece. Shtrudel was followed by his shorter, stockier companion from the icehouse, who was tugging his waistcoat like a corset over his tumid belly. They took up their stations on either side of me like groomsmen, as a third man emerged from the office to confront me, his expression—as he gave me the once-over—seeming to infer that this was going to be fun.
“Who comes at the Cliquot Club Eskimo Hour to disturb us?” he asked, like fee fi fo fum.
A sensible person might have beshat himself then and there, but fear didn’t yet figure in my frame of reference. “Ruby,” I told him, “Ruby Kid Karp,” exulting in the sense that now there was no turning back. “Who are you?” Of course, his patterned golf hose and knickers, along with his patent leather shoes and center-parted patent leather hair, had already identified him as Naf the Sport himself.
Ignoring my question, he continued his own line of inquiry, a heavy lid drooping over his lazy eye. “And your papa, kid? What did you say his name was?” Hearing the “kid,” I wondered was he patronizing me or earnestly employing my freshly coined nom de guerre? In either event, I saw no reason to prevaricate.
“Shmerl Karp of Karp’s Ice Castle,” I pronounced as if I were proud of it.
“Am I to understand he sent you here, your papa, to reject the generous offer of our health protection package? What other plan, I ask you, is so excellent as to give compensation for your gouged-out eye and broken skull?”
“Nobody sent me,” I assured him. “I come here on my own.”
Naf the Sport tugged at his suspenders, rocked on his heels. “Why, that demonstrates real initiative, son,” he said with questionable sincerity.
My impulse was to tell him “I’m not your son,” while on the other hand I thought that one could do worse.
“Problem is,” he continued, “our records show your papa is already on our books. Mr. Shein, Mr. Turtletaub,” he shifted his eyes, one lazy and one lynx, toward either of his colleagues, “what is our policy toward clients that get a little behind in their payments?”
Said the chinless Mr. Turtletaub, whose age I reckoned as somewhere between twenty-five and sixty, “We nail their putz to the doorpost and eat their family.”
Naf the Sport made a face. “I don’t think we need to resort to such extreme measures in this case. In fact, I think the kid here is mistaken about his own mission. Didn’t your papa send you over as a gesture of good faith? You’re like collateral, what they call surety, ain’t that right? Until he gets his finances in order, you are your papa’s marker, so to speak.”
“My papa is giving you bupkes,” I stated categorically, and felt ticklish all over.
Naf the Sport fastened a look on me with his good eye, then shrugged regretfully. “In that case,” he said, “the marker’s no good to us, is it gentlemen?” which meant he’d abandoned the hostage idea. Then he gave the nod to his yeggs, who abruptly grabbed me about the chest and ankles. Before I could wriggle free I was lifted horizontally, carried kicking across the room, and tossed through the window that Naftali Kupferman had opened onto Forsyth Street. There were some seconds when I was pleasantly airborne: laundry flapped, pigeons cooed; then I plummetted ass over elbows into the awning above a grocer’s cart. The soggy canvas tore apart from my weight, dumping me into the produce bin underneath, which itself collapsed in an avalanche of ripe tomatoes. I tumbled along with the fruit onto the pavement and scrambled instantly to my feet, saturated head to toe in pulpy juice. The shag-bearded grocer cursed me, the market wives mistaking the juice for gore screeched like magpies, but I was too incensed to even pause and inspect myself for broken bones. Setting my jaw, I charged back into the building, taking the steps three at a time; I reached the landing and flung myself into the office, where all three men and the peroxide receptionist were still gathered at the open window, looking out. The advantage of surprise in my favor, I leaped onto Shtrudel Louie’s back, somehow managing, even as I tightened my hold on Shtrudel’s throat, to deliver a battery of swift kicks to Turtletaub’s breadbasket. In the ensuing knock-down-drag-out I must have inflicted some damage and damage must have been inflicted on me, but I was unaware of anything but the euphoria of battle. At some point their dandified ringleader, looking on from his vantage by the window (the receptionist having crawled under her desk) shouted, “Cease already and desist!” His colleagues backed off without argument, leaving me to continue throwing haymakers at the stuffy air. Eventually I became conscious that my adversaries, their disordered garments stained with blood or tomato juice, their bruised heads glazed in sweat, were staring at me with something like wonder.
“So, Kid,” said Naftali, “is shlepping ice your chosen profession, or are you looking for something with more opportunity for advancement?”
It was the invitation I’d been angling for all along.
I left Karp’s Ice Castle without a backward glance, nor do I think that Karp even missed me, while my worried mama took every occasion to quiz me about where I spent my days, never mind the nights. I made sure, however, that those occasions became less frequent, and in the end Shmerl Karp and his sightly wife had to accept the fact that their son had grown beyond their control. If they were at all aware of my associations, I gave them no chance to object—though I might have pointed out that my connection with Naf the Sport was in essence a mitzvah, since my membership in his organization prompted the gangleader to give my father’s business a pass. Meanwhile, though the school term had begun again, my former alma mater saw me no more; the Acme Insurance Group and all it fronted for became my academy, and I was its true-blue cadet. From then on I was a stranger to the Upper West Side, returning to the apartment only to sleep; then I practically stopped sleeping altogether, spending my nights in the speaks operated by Naf and his affiliates, sacking out in the rooms upstairs, where I was sometimes not alone. For the receptionist Birdie Pomerantz, who moonlighted in an older profession, had taken it as her duty to introduce me to what she called, in deference to my age, “playing doctor.” Afterwards she flattered me by saying, “You’ve done this before,” a statement I heard repeated by other ladies with whom I continued to feign inexperience, a strategy that earned me many a free ride.
I was often impatient with the gang’s endless capacity for idleness. They could kill an afternoon in the Acme office speculating on the tabloid headlines of the day. They boozed, played pinochle, shot pool, ate rolled brisket slathered in schmaltz in Naf’s subsidiary interests on Ludlow or Allen Street, and I joined them, telling myself that at last I’d found my true family. But when it came time to go to work for the good of the syndicate, I was the first to volunteer. In the beginning the commissions we received kept me close to our home base south of Houston and east of the Bowery. During that time I was still a foot soldier, traveling in the ranks populated by the likes of Twinkl Saltzman, Morris “the Worm” Baumzweig, Pretty Pinski with his parboiled face, the ex-welterweight Little Lhulki, and others. In their company I was sent into the East Side’s steamy streets to grease the wheels of commerce. The gambling and prostitution rackets over which Naf presided required an experienced staff, but the extortion and loan-sharking operations wanted oversight of a less specialized kind, which was where we plug-uglies came in. Usually things went smoothly enough to qualify as routine: the delinquent debtor, having pissed himself, would hand over the vigorish without debate; though occasionally some young hothead or old duffer who thought he had nothing to lose would require a little persuasion.
My comrades were all ghetto-bred, mostly Jews, though a few stray Italians from Mulberry Street and Irishers from the East River docks had found their way into the mix. All were alumni of the state reformatories and had done time in the city jails, some despite their relative youth in federal pens. Coming as I did from what they considered a pampered background, and because of my green age, I had constantly to prove myself worthy of their fraternity. I cherished those opportunities, and while I don’t think any of my victims actually expired from their wounds, I was sometimes a little overzealous in demonstrating my allegiance to the gang.
For all his irons in the fire (and despite his graduation from turned-around golf cap to silk Borsalino), Naftali Kupferman remained a smalltime bootlegger. This was not for want of aspirations. But despite the racketeering enterprises that had made him a known and feared quantity throughout the Tenth Ward, he lacked both the financial and influential capital required to bankroll a major rum-running operation. For that you needed alliances in the higher strata of gangland; you needed the judges and politicians in your pockets, the cash to float the boats, rent the warehouses, provide the trucks, the bribes, the gunsels to guard against hijackers, and of course the alcohol itself. Still and all, Naf made quite a comfortable living by the standards of the day, though the big money always seemed to elude his grasp. He had to content himself with funding a number of basement stills and owning a piece of a brewery across the Hudson. The Hoboken Cereal Beverage Company, officially licensed to make “near beer,” turned much of its product into the headier illegal stuff, this via a system of underground pipes that led to another building several blocks away. From there the beer was barreled, bottled, and loaded onto trucks under cover of night. It was during these after-hours activities that our orbit intersected those of the more notorious underworld echelons. While they waited for delayed overseas shipments, the bigshots, through a network of hole-and-corner alliances, might approach Naf for an interim replenishment of their depleted stock—requests generally accompanied with derision for the inferior quality of the Hoboken hooch. Then, at an appointed dropoff in the meatpacking district, we would make the exchange of goods for cash. It was at these times that the envoys of Waxey Gordon, who answered only to Arnold Rothstein, prince of schemers, might feel moved to remind us of our lowly rung on the ladder of crime. This didn’t sit well with me. Though I wasn’t much concerned with the big scores they boasted, neither did I like having my face rubbed in the fact of our second-class citizenship.
One of those especially vocal in calling attention to our small potatoes status was Dago Cohen, the razor-suited captain of the bunch that worked for Waxey and his partner, Maxey Greenberg, who’d made a killing from importe
d rum. When I decided to give him and his stooges a lesson in manners in the gravel lot a stone’s throw from the Cunard pier, I was noticed for my pugilistic gifts. How could I not be when the odds were four to one, two of whom I sent to hospital with extra joints in their busted limbs?—this while my own cohort, including the palooka Lhulki, looked on and placed indolent bets. The incident led to my being “borrowed” by Waxey’s boys to help with certain of their more hazardous undertakings. It was a needless arrangement of course; there was no shortage of goons to fill the bill. But it was clear that Dago and company respected me for the drubbing I’d given them, and my enlistment amounted to an induction into a more exalted criminal sphere.
My loyalties, however, remained with Naf and his crew for having rescued me from ordinary life; nor did I have any ambition to climb a ladder that only led back to a burlesque of the ordinary. I liked our penny-ante situation in the underworld proper. Maxey’s crowd could have their Hotsy-Totsy Club, their Dempsey versus Firpo at the Garden; we had Battling Levinsky at the Roumanian Opera House, who took his legendary dive in the first seconds of Round One. They had Aqueduct and the Belmont Stakes, but we had the casinos at Hesper’s on Second Avenue and the Sans Souci on Broome, which could turn into knitting parties at the hint of a raid. We had dope sheets on the walls of every poolroom, stuss parlors where you had only to mention the Sport and your credit was good; we had the disorderly houses run by Madams Mildred the Mattress and Sadie the Chink.
Still I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I enjoyed the opportunities Dago Cohen and his bunch gave me to see the world above Houston Street. Thanks to them I traveled as far upstate as Saratoga, an important way station along the booze route’s northeastern corridor and a wide-open town totally given over to vice. I rode shotgun (for real) in the convoys coming down from Canada carrying cargos of schnapps brought from the islands off the Maritime, where the ships from England and France had dumped them. Along the way we distributed the hush money, first to the Coast Guard and then to the cops from Suffolk County on down to the City. Usually we were flagged past the checkpoints at county lines with immunity, but once we came upon some stainless state troopers that couldn’t be bought. During the chase that followed I fired a tommy gun from the running board, hanging on to a rearview mirror with my free hand to keep from being bounced into a ditch by the jackhammer report. I rode with Dago and his operatives in the speedboats that kicked up a spray like sail-fish fins out to Rum Row, where the ships were anchored past the three-mile limit off Montauk Point. From the boats we transferred the freight to a fleet of trucks that transported it in turn to a warehouse in Astoria, from which the booze was dispersed among restaurants, clubs, and two-bit bootleggers who sold it on the Manhattan streets. Naftali Kupferman, by Waxey’s lights, was one of those petty beneficiaries, though I saw to it he received the goods at a discount. (A price he then inflated by doctoring the pure spirits for resale with everything from radiator coolant to creosote.) As a go-between I was able to keep Naf abreast of the ebb and flow of the whiskey traffic; I alerted him as to which districts were flush and which wanting, so he could get a jump on the competition. In exchange for such information I was admitted into Naf’s inner circle and deemed, albeit reluctantly by his ambassadors-at-large (for Shtrudel and Turtletaub had never gotten over their shellacking), as indispensable.