Sugar Pop Moon

by John Florio

  “It’s complicated,” I say.

  I’m so rattled I almost tell her I hate myself—and that I’m only in this predicament because I look like a blanched freak. But I don’t open up to many people and I’m not about to start yapping to Larch’s mistress.

  “I’ve got an idea, Snowball,” Larch says, “but I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”

  I have no idea what he’s got up his sleeve, but I can’t imagine that he’d go too far out of bounds for me. Then again, I’ve been good to him so maybe it’s time for some payback.

  “If it gets me out of this mess, I’m all for it,” I say.

  “Alright, then trust me.”

  He grabs the flask, swigs from it, and wipes his lips with the back of his wrist. Then he turns down Broadway and heads back toward Fifty-Third Street, toward the Pour House.

  On the way, he picks up the handle of his police radio and calls for backup.

  I watch the raid from the safety of the police car, which is a far different viewpoint than the ones I’ve had in the past. It’s helpful to see the game from this side of the table—the experience can only help me if I’m ever pouring moon in a speakeasy again.

  West Fifty-Third is crawling with police. Eight squad cars and four paddy wagons line the street and a cluster of patrolmen block the intersection. A half-dozen blue jackets are positioned on the Pour House steps, ready to charge. They’re expecting to find Tony Accardo, one of Capone’s triggermen, sitting at the bar, and they’ve got good reason: Larch told them a local snitch fingered him sipping a martini behind the pocket doors.

  A stocky, barrel-chested patrolman with broad shoulders knocks on the door and Diego opens it. The cop pulls Diego out by his lapels and drags him to the first of the paddy wagons. The wagons are big, boxy, and black—they look like penitentiaries on wheels. Diego’s eyes are crazed with fear, the poor kid seems as close to crying for his mommy as he is to pulling out a machine gun and taking down the cops. Six more blue jackets rush into the Pour House, drawing their guns and barking commands; a dozen others wait in silence by the windows and basement exit. They’ve even got two marksmen stationed on the roof.

  Within minutes the police are pulling Jimmy’s men out of the Pour House, snapping handcuffs on them, and loading them into the paddy wagon. Larch has the last of the wagons reserved for his own use, though, and when my father and Pearl finally come out of the place, also in handcuffs, Larch personally escorts them to it. The champ has his head high and his jaw tight—but Pearl is begging Larch to let her go. Neither one realizes that this is all a show. They’ll sit in the wagon for a few minutes and then be on their way.

  Jimmy’s next. Two cops take him out of the Pour House and walk him over to one of the wagons. He’s as done up as ever—a dark chesterfield draped over a pinstriped suit, white tie, matching hat, and two-tone dress shoes. Underneath the hat, I can see that the sides of his hair and his sideburns are neatly waxed, as always. His hands are cuffed behind his back.

  Strange as this may sound, I feel like a heel for pulling the police into the deal—it’s as dirty a move as kneeing Hector in the nuts. Even my father would understand that calling a cop into a personal war is off-limits.

  Jimmy’s no idiot, though. He knows I’m here. He directs his sagging brown eyes into the police car and nods with an expression that says, “nice move.” I nod back and, for a brief moment, all is the way it used to be: Jimmy, proud of his best student, and me, flattered by the acknowledgment. Of course, my satisfaction will be fleeting, because I can only imagine Jimmy’s next move now that I’ve changed the rules.

  Larch orders two patrolmen to load Antonio and the rest of the Pour House busboys into the third wagon before he walks over to me.

  “We’ll let your father and Pearl go once the others are brought to the precinct. You can join them in a couple of minutes.”

  “Swell,” I say, and step out of the car onto the iced street.

  “One more thing,” he says. “Where’s the liquor? The sugar pop moon? There’s not much behind the bar.”

  Larch doesn’t want the sugar pop moon, he knows it’s bogus. He’s looking for a free score—his payment for saving my bony ass. Still, I can’t give it to him. I owe him one, that’s for sure, but I’m still hoping I can live the rest of my life without looking over my shoulder. If I tell Larch about the ratacombs and spill Jimmy’s double-dealings, Jimmy would have every right to come after me. There are some moves that can’t be undone, and for now, those are the ones I’m refusing to make. I may have pulled the cops into my shenanigans, but I won’t become one of them. I won’t sing.

  My father and Santi are all ears as I tell them about Hector and Diego. We’re sitting in my booth at the Hy-Hat, the one without the reading lamp, the tall one in the back that Pearl and I sat in, six nights a week, for years. Pearl’s here now but she’s itching to leave.

  “So when do I get to go home?” she asks me. I can hear in her voice that she’s done with me. Any hope I had of winning her over is dead now that she sees me as a refugee of Jimmy’s sleaze joint and not a volunteer helping out at the Hy-Hat.

  My eyes are twitching like crazy and I wish I had my dark glasses to cover them. Instead, I look down at the wooden table between us.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her.

  It’s embarrassing to admit that I’m flummoxed but it’s the truth. Jimmy won’t be in jail for more than a few hours and I’ve used up favors with just about everybody I know, even Larch.

  Pearl drums her fingers on the table and has me wishing I’d taken a bullet from Denny Gazzara’s machine gun. We’ve convinced her she’ll be safer at her grandmother’s place on the Lower East Side, assuming she can stay clear of Jimmy’s thugs—no strolling, no shopping, no breadlines. I’m also laying low, so Old Man Santiago will take the Auburn and drive her downtown after he closes up for the night.

  “You better come up with somethin’,” my father says. “I told McCullough that Joseph Gazzara’s got his money but he don’t care. He wants it from you.”

  Santi shakes his head. “I was hoping he’d be soundly copacetic.”

  Santi’s gibberish is lost on my father.

  “Ya know that thug at your place?” my father asks me. “I musta rammed him pretty hard. He was at the Pour House, moanin’ that he couldn’t piss right. He almost came at me but McCullough stopped him.”

  My father should be proud, but instead he’s upset that he hurt one of Jimmy’s hired guns.

  “I wouldn’t lose any sleep,” I say. “I’m sure that thug has done plenty worse.”

  My father nods, but I can tell he’s not buying it. “I almost gave McCullough more of the same,” he says.

  He’s got his head down, as if the image of Jimmy getting his head ripped off might be unnerving to anybody in the room. Had he gone ahead and done it, my only concern would have been the aftermath. The last person any sane man would jump is Jimmy McCullough. Of course, my father doesn’t see him as a captain of organized crime, he sees him as a local thug who took his boy out of college.

  “You did the smart thing,” I say. “You swung when there was no other choice.”

  “I did what I hadda do,” my father says, obviously trying to convince himself that slamming the triggerman square in the kidney was the result of some kind of moral code.

  He’s probably hoping I’ll do more to alleviate his guilt, but I’m peeking over at Pearl. Maybe it’s me, but it sure seems like she’s been stepping it up since pushing me out of her life. She’s got a stripe of eyeliner running across each lid and a smear of rouge on her cheeks. She’s also wearing a pair of red rhinestone earrings that I can only assume somebody gave to her. I want to rip them off her ears, toss them down a sewer, and watch as they splash in the sludge. Then I’d like to throw my arms around her shoulders and kiss the soft, back part of her neck that bulges over her collar.

  “Forget Jimmy McCullough,” Santi says. “Here’s a more important inquisition. How did H
ector find Jersey? What is he doing now—working for Jimmy at the Pour House?”

  “No,” my father says, nodding. “It ain’t hard to find Jersey. Everybody knows where he works.”

  I don’t look my father in the eye, because I know it kills him to admit I break the law for a living. Staring at the floor, I pretend to clean the heel of my oxford.

  “Let’s face it, Jersey,” Pearl says to me, “you’re not hard to spot.”

  She’s getting close to my nerve but I let it pass.

  “Hector probably figured he’d find you behind the bar,” my father says. “But he caught you outside.”

  His theory fits. But it’s hard to accept anything as fact since I shelled out Jimmy’s money for sugar pop moon and wound up in a standoff with a stuttering gangster at a Christmas tree farm.

  “If that’s the case,” I say, “I don’t have to worry about Hector, unless I’m in Philly or at the Pour House. So what’s my next move?”

  Santi answers before my father can speak. “We’ve got to find Joseph Gazzara. We know he takes the train back and forth from Philly, so we should start there.”

  “Didn’t I just say Hector’s in Philly? What’s Plan B?”

  Santi, my father, and Pearl stare back at me in silence. I really wanted to handle this without leaving Harlem, but I can see that’s not in the cards.

  I shrug my shoulders in agreement. “Okay, if it’s my only option, I’ll go down there, and I’ll stay clear of Hector.”

  “Just disguise yourself,” Pearl says, chuckling.

  It’s a wisecrack. I’m ready to bite back with a remark about that guy outside her house when her eyes twinkle. She’s teasing, just like she did in the old days. It stings more now knowing those times might as well be a previous life altogether.

  She looks at her watch—the small, gold Gruen I’d given her after Jimmy dumped a crate of the hot timepieces onto the Pour House floor. I’m glad things haven’t gotten so bad that she had to sell it—seeing that watch around her soft brown wrist makes me feel as though she still thinks about me.

  But then she looks toward the door for Old Man Santiago. “Where the hell is he?” she says, which answers any question I might have as to where she wants to be right now.

  I down a double shot of bourbon and chase it with a spiked beer. I’m in the Ink Well, a speakeasy in a brownstone at the corner of Juniper and Vine, a few blocks from Philadelphia City Hall. Driving down this morning wasn’t easy—the Auburn’s wipers were barely able to keep up with the blizzard of snow pelting the windshield. I’m here to meet my father’s buddy, Johalis Cervera. The champ says Johalis could fill in some of the blanks on Hector, but I’m also going to hammer him with questions about the crevices of Philadelphia—especially those that might lead me to Joseph Gazzara.

  The Ink Well is nothing like the Pour House. First of all, it’s a colored joint. It’s also in a basement. The ceilings are so low I can practically jump up and touch them. There’s a Christmas tree decorated with sparkling red lights near the entrance and a coatroom about as roomy as a phone booth hidden behind it. Three black iron tables fill the space up front and a shiny oak bar runs along the left brick wall in the back. A short Negro bartender with round dark eyes, a high forehead, and gray hair is working the bar. He looks close to sixty but still has a solid physique. The countertop behind him is stocked with all sorts of hooch and there’s a radio playing Bessie Smith’s “Empty Bed Blues.” The back room is nice and dark; the only lights worth mentioning are the small Christmas bulbs that twinkle from the cash register alongside the radio. If I were ever forced to move to Philly, I just might be a regular here.

  Unfortunately for the owners, the place is empty. I’m not sure how much business this joint needs to do, but if Jimmy owned it he’d be screaming his butt off. He wouldn’t care that Christmas is six days away and everybody in town is penniless. Lunchtime on a Friday has to bring in a few bucks.

  I’m leaning on the end of the polished oak bar. The doe-eyed brunette running the coatroom walks over and takes the stool to my right. I’m not sure why she’s saddling up next to me, but then again, there’s not exactly a rush of customers with overcoats looking for her.

  “Still waiting?” she asks me. We chatted when I first walked into the place—she knows I’m hanging on a friend, but that’s about it. Her name is Angela and she seems like a straight shooter, but I haven’t forgotten what happened the last time I trusted a woman in Philly. I’m being more careful now.

  Angela’s a chatterbox. She’s already told me she flunked out of high school six years ago; she’s working here because the tender is her uncle and he runs the place. I think about what it would be like to work at a colored joint instead of the Pour House. At least I wouldn’t be running for my life over a shipment of counterfeit moon.

  “I heard you tell Uncle Doolie you were from New York. I’m thinking of moving there.”

  I now know that the tender’s name is Doolie and that Angela has superhuman hearing.

  “Don’t,” I tell her. “Nobody’s working.” Including me, now that Jimmy’s put the screws to me.

  “Damn,” she says, shaking her head. “I guess I’m lucky.”

  “You have no idea,” I tell her.

  She’s not a peach but she’s no mutt either. She’s got a decent chassis, a load of energy, caramel skin, and a pair of dark brown eyes that seem as big and round as the buttons on her maroon jacket. The right side of her head is missing a patch of hair about the size of a silver dollar; the exposed skin is patterned with a web of pink and white lines that look like they’ve been lifted off a road map. My guess is that she was burned some time ago.

  “What’s your name?” she asks me.

  “Jersey.”

  “Jersey from New York,” she says. “That’s funny.”

  She’s laughing at my name, not my skin, and that feels nice. The warm glow of the whiskey doesn’t hurt, either.

  “Names don’t matter, people do,” I say, trying to sound philosophical but making about as much sense as Santi.

  She nods to say she knows what I mean.

  Over her shoulder I spot a tall Spanish guy walking through the door. He has a long chin and the tip of his nose is shaped like a teardrop. When he takes off his overcoat and leaves it on the counter at the coatroom, I see that he’s skinny all over except for a basketball-sized belly that pops out over his belt. That must be Johalis—my father described him to a tee.

  “I’ve been to New York once,” she says, lighting up a cigarette between her lean, tan fingers, apparently in no rush to hang Johalis’s coat.

  I’m not sure where her conversation is heading but I don’t have time to find out.

  “Here’s my friend,” I say, motioning to Johalis. My eyes shimmy so I turn away from Angela, hoping she’ll miss the show. I stare instead at a small pile of cardboard coasters that Doolie’s got sitting next to a bowl of lime wedges on his side of the bar.

  “We’ll have to pick this up another time,” I say, still looking away.

  “Okay, Jersey York Delaware,” she says, laughing, as she heads back to the coatroom.

  My eyes calm a bit and I wave Johalis to a seat in one of four booths across from the bar. I join him, but not before telling Doolie to send a couple of bourbons to our table and a whiskey sour to the coatroom.

  “So you’re here about some guy named Hector,” Johalis says. His voice belongs on radio; it’s as warm and rich as hot cocoa.

  “I’m here about a couple of people,” I say, shifting in my seat as his brown eyes size me up from behind their wrinkled lids.

  “Fire away. I’ll tell you whatever I know.” His bourbon arrives and he takes a hearty sip. “Assuming what you want to know is public knowledge.”

  His comment gives me the feeling he’s not quite as straight an arrow as my father, but in this situation that could be a good thing.

  “I know my father told you about Hector,” I say. “He carries a cleaver and he’s not
afraid to use it. He’s also got a buddy—a little guy with a busted nose. Crazy as it sounds, I think they want my bones.”

  I’m holding out hope that he’ll disagree with me, but he doesn’t. “Like I told your old man, my guess is that Hector is connected to that occult ring that’s been dropping bodies all over Philly. Those people are nuts.”

  “You’re telling me I’m dealing with the devil?” Suddenly, Denny Gazzara seems like a teddy bear.

  “In a way,” he says, dragging out the last word with his husky voice. “There have been a few killings down here. Mostly albinos. Word is they’re using the blood and the bones for some kind of crazy-shit voodoo medicine.” Then he ponders what he’s said and adds, “Hector’s got a prescription to fill.” He lets out a husky laugh, but he’s not the one with the albino bones.

  “I’ll straighten this out,” I tell him. “Thanks for your help.” I’m about to leave but his expression turns serious.

  “Hold on,” he says. He downs the rest of his bourbon and motions for Doolie to bring us another round. “I told your old man I’d help you out and I meant it. If it weren’t for him, I’d be missing a few bones of my own.”

  I’m confused and I don’t bother hiding it.

  “I don’t know how much your father told you, but he used to work with me here in Philly. He saved me from a couple of overenthusiastic bagmen. Took them on himself. They would have killed me, just like Hector would’ve dropped you, except they didn’t need a cleaver.”

  Doolie refills our glasses and Johalis and I both take a belt. I’m hoping the bourbon will wash the blood off my mind. Judging by the look on his face, Johalis is doing the same.

  I change the subject.

  “I’m also looking for a counterfeiter,” I say. “His line is booze. Joseph Gazzara. Scar across his ear, two different colored eyes.”

  Johalis is nodding. “I know him, he’s a small-time grifter who’d cheat his own mother at craps to turn a buck. One minute he’s selling Cuban sugar cane, the next he’s running card games. I didn’t know he was jacking booze, but it fits. I’ll tell you one thing. You’re lucky you’re not dealing with his brother, Denny.”