Sugar Pop Moon

by John Florio

  Walter stood outside the club, his feet planted against the base of a maple tree and his forehead resting against a windowpane, watching Albright hand his top hat to the maître d’. It was six o’clock, so Albright was most likely meeting somebody for dinner. The maître d’ led him past the piano player, who was working on a slow rag. Albright and the maître d’ went up the main stairway and into the large dining area, out of Walter’s sight. Unless Walter scrambled up the drainpipe, crawled along the gutter, and peered through one of the dormers, he would lose his man. He ran around to the back of the restaurant, mud splashing onto his leather boots. Bolting through the delivery doors, he looked around the kitchen for a waiter. A cook with a dark, stubbly beard came over to him. His apron was bright white, except for the greased and bloodstained section that stretched across his bulbous stomach.

  “What do you want?” the cook asked, shouting to be heard over a cacophony of clanging pots, pans, and dishes. The look on his face made it clear his time was precious.

  Walter tried to sound seasoned. “I’m looking for a waiter who wants to make a couple of bucks and knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

  The door leading to the restaurant swung open and two waiters, both in the club’s signature white jackets, rushed into the kitchen. The first walked to the stove and ladled soup from a tall pot into small white bowls. Behind him, a heavyset waiter with pigeon toes and a barrel chest barked out, “Table four is breaking my ass.”

  “There’s your boy,” the cook said, pointing at the bigmouth. With that, he went back to his station and manned a large, smoking kettle.

  Walter scurried to the waiter, who was leaning over a counter, rearranging greens on a flat dish. Walter put out his hand.

  “Walter Wilkins, Newark Evening-Star.”

  The waiter didn’t look up. He kept shuffling the lettuce leaves, turning the salad into a blooming flower.

  “Louis Hoenig,” he finally said, still working his creation.

  “You out of the Pub?” Walter asked, figuring if Hoenig had graduated from Hartford Public High, he would appreciate the neighborhood slang.

  “Me and everybody else in the place,” Hoenig said. “You?”

  “My cousin.”

  Hoenig smirked and turned his attention back to that damned bowl of greens.

  Walter pictured Albright chatting it up at his table as the clock ticked away. He reached into his pocket and pulled out two dollars, which amounted to two days’ worth of expenses.

  He palmed one of the coins and flashed the other, rolling it over his thumb. The silver worked. Hoenig focused on the face of Lady Liberty, suddenly losing interest in the hearts of romaine.

  “I’m looking for somebody who knows how to keep his lips glued as tight as one of your overpriced oysters.”

  Hoenig raised his chin as if he were posing for a portrait. “The Pub is a bond,” he said.

  Walter took inventory of Hoenig—arrogant, hypocritical, and money-hungry. And worth a gamble. Walter flipped one of the two coins to Hoenig, who caught it in midair.

  “I’m tailing a guy sitting somewhere upstairs, his name’s Edward Albright.” Walter figured Hoenig would know Albright, everybody did.

  Hoenig nodded. “Table sixteen,” he said as he put the coin in his pocket.

  “I need the full scoop,” Walter said. “Who he’s with. What they’re talking about. Who says what.”

  Hoenig nodded as he ticked off his assignment. “Albright, his friends, and the topic du jour.”

  “That’s it,” Walter said. Then he added a white lie to keep Hoenig honest. “And, Hoenig, you’re not the only one I’ve got on his tail, so don’t try selling me horseshit.”

  “Of course not,” Hoenig said, as if he were of the highest character even though he was about to spy on a steady customer for a dollar.

  Walter held up the second coin. “I’ll be back at closing time.”

  He put the money in his pocket and walked back out through the delivery entrance. With a little luck, Hoenig would come back with something useful, Walter would grab the front page away from Crager, and Canfield would find out that the only way to buy the Newark Evening-Star was off a newsboy on a street corner.

  Ernie Leo didn’t recognize the tall, thin man leaning against the front door of his rooming house. He had wide shoulders, the kind you get from spending your life hauling ice or digging roads. His nostrils appeared pinched closed and his eyes seemed too close to the bridge of his nose. He was leaning on the door, so nobody would be able to get in or out of the place without plowing over him.

  Since the man was white, Ernie assumed that he’d shown up to dish out the usual “how dare you touch one of our women” crap. Walter’s story on the commission came out two days ago. It had shaken Foster Werts off of Ernie’s back—the commission had decided to let Ernie keep his title—but that didn’t stop every white person on the street from making life doubly hard on him.

  “’Scuse me,” Ernie said, thinking this wouldn’t go well but hoping he was wrong.

  “Ernie Leo,” the man said. His speech was thick and he swayed from side to side as he jabbed his left index finger at Ernie. “You’re the Jersey champ.”

  The word “champ” was soaked in scorn. Ernie didn’t bother with the empty chitchat he gave to fight fans or to the Negro folk who saw him as a crusader against white bosses.

  “I need to get inside,” Ernie said.

  “I’m not done talking.” The boozer leaned forward and put his face inches from Ernie’s. His breath reeked; the putrid odor smelled of one part liquor and one part rotting stomach.

  “My people don’t like you,” he said. The look in his eyes said he wanted to settle the score right then and there.

  “Your people?” Ernie said, keeping his voice calm to avoid riling the drunkard any further.

  The man raised his right hand and aimed a gun at Ernie’s gut. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  Ernie took a single step backward but stopped. He’d be better off staying on Grand Street than disappearing into a side alley.

  “Talk here, I’m listenin’,” Ernie said, slowly putting his left foot a few inches in front of his right, positioning himself to throw a mustard-packed left.

  “You’re going to fight Higgins,” the man said, raising the gun a few inches so it pointed at Ernie’s head.

  “I just fought ’im.”

  “Again,” the man said angrily, a wad of spit now hanging from the corner of his lower lip. “You’re going to fight him again. And you’re going to lose.” His eyes twinkled as he listened to himself speak. “You’re going to take a beating and your bloody face is gonna bang the canvas. And this time they won’t take no for an answer.”

  The guy had a wild look about him, like he was thrilling at the idea of putting a bullet in a nigger’s forehead and watching his blood spill onto the grimy cobblestones of Grand Street. The creep started laughing, a raspy chuckle from deep behind his stained teeth. His gun drooped and was aiming at Ernie’s shin.

  If Ernie was going to live, he had to make his move before the guy’s trigger finger got an itch it couldn’t control. He didn’t hesitate. He uncorked a left that was rivaled only by the one he’d used to drop Higgins.

  Walter snuck behind the Hartford Club to the delivery entrance. The air was moist and the sky foggy, unnaturally warm for so late in the year. He found Louis Hoenig pacing behind the restaurant, his black necktie pulled away from his collar, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.

  “Get anything?” Walter asked. He could tell by the way Hoenig kept looking toward the window that the shifty waiter had gotten plenty.

  Hoenig nodded. “I set myself up at the table next to them and refilled all the salt shakers we had in the kitchen. Then I did the pepper.”

  “What did you hear?” Walter asked.

  Hoenig leaned forward and talked in a low whisper. “Your man Albright’s in the fight game, owns a piece of a fighter.”

  “And?”


  “And table sixteen tried to pull some strings to get their boy the title but it didn’t work out. Now they want a rematch, and it doesn’t sound like they care how they get it.”

  Sweat beaded up on the back of Walter’s neck as he thought of Albright’s roughnecks coming down on Ernie. He should have seen this coming. Bribing the commission didn’t work, so the syndicate would put Higgins back in the ring and fix it this time.

  “Who was at the table?” Walter asked.

  “I didn’t get names, except one. The guy running the show. He wasn’t there and I was glad. It’s not a name I want to tangle with.”

  “You won’t have to,” Walter said. “I will.”

  Hoenig sucked on his cigarette and blew a mushroom of smoke into the air. “The name Richard Canfield came up,” he said. “A lot.”

  Bingo. That linked Albright to Canfield, and both of them to the commission. Walter had his second source. He’d flesh out the story tonight and bring it to Glenny in the morning. The cook had been right—Hoenig had wound up being a worthwhile investment.

  “Anything else?” Walter asked him.

  “How long do you think I had?” Hoenig said. “I was refilling shakers, not barrels.”

  Walter reached into his pocket. He had two dollars left and one of them belonged to Hoenig.

  “Thanks,” he said, handing the waiter the coin.

  “Oh, one more thing you might want to know,” Hoenig said.

  “Yeah?”

  “This might be worth an extra buck.”

  “We made a deal,” Walter snapped, itching to get back to the paper.

  Hoenig flinched, but was obviously too proud of his success as an underhanded snoop to stop talking.

  “When I was serving them coffee, one guy was talking about planting a story in the Evening-Star, muscling a kid reporter to do it. Said he was a greenie, really young and desperate. Called him Wilkins. That’s you, right?”

  Hoenig knew damned well it was Walter.

  “Yeah, that’s me, young and green,” Walter said, looking directly into the waiter’s dark-ringed eyes, wondering if Hoenig had overheard the conversation, or had opened his mouth to Albright and was now delivering a message straight from the syndicate.

  “But they’re coming down on the wrong guy,” Walter said. “I’m not going to cave.” Then he reached into his pocket and flipped the last of Glenny’s coins to Hoenig.

  “Thanks,” the waiter said, smiling.

  As Walter made his way to the front of the Hartford Club, he kept thinking about Hoenig’s final comments. Young and desperate? He would show them. He would go back to the Evening-Star and expose Canfield, Albright, and the rest of the commission, regardless of the consequences.

  He skulked his way onto State Street, wondering how the tables had spun so quickly. He’d been following Albright all week and somehow wound up looking over his own shoulder.

  I’m sitting at the Ink Well with Johalis, listening to Blind Willie McTell on Doolie’s radio, waiting for my father to arrive from the Broad Street Station. The minute the champ heard that Joseph Gazzara was connected to Hector’s albino hunt, he was all too happy to help me track the bastard down.

  I called the champ late last night, right after Johalis and I had driven the albino kid, Tommy Sudnik, to his row house on Chatham Street in the Port Richmond section of Philly. It turned out that Tommy had been missing for two days and handwritten notices were tacked to every utility pole, mailbox, and store window in the neighborhood.

  We’d pulled the Auburn up to Tommy’s house at half past midnight. Johalis got out and rapped on the wooden door while I took out a cigarette, still shaky from my adventures at Saint Mark’s. I went over to a streetlamp and lit up, wrapping my chesterfield tightly across my chest to keep warm. Tommy’s mother, a chubby brown-eyed woman with dark hair that defied gravity, opened the door wearing a red flannel nightgown. Johalis must have told her how I’d slid into the church basement and rescued her son, because she vaulted the wooden steps and hugged me right there on the brick sidewalk, the streetlamp beaming down on us as she planted kisses all over my face. For the briefest of moments, I was royalty, a ray of hope for a widowed woman on the downtrodden streets of Philadelphia. I wished Pearl were there to see it.

  Tommy’s mother wanted to go to the newspapers with my heroism, but I didn’t want to advertise that I was in town. She did insist, though, on calling the cops to blow the whistle on Gazzara after Tommy told her how Hector had dragged him into Saint Mark’s with a cleaver pressed against his neck.

  “I don’t think the cops will do much,” Johalis said. He mumbled it softly but still managed to unnerve the woman.

  “But what if men come for Tommy?” she asked him in a rich Polish accent, her face taking on the panicked look of a grade-schooler who couldn’t find her parents. “The police stop them, no?”

  Johalis didn’t answer because the truth was that the Philly cops have no way to rid themselves of Joseph Gazzara. Yeah, they might slow him down by throwing him in jail for a while, but it wouldn’t take long for him to get out and start up again. To make matters worse, half the city cops are on his brother’s payroll. They sit in Denny’s speakeasies, pocket wads of hush money, and sip free shots of moon as their radios ring, unattended. If they ever got a call about Saint Mark’s, they’d surely sit on it. Or they’d start asking questions and my cover would be blown in no time.

  When Tommy’s mother realized Johalis had no answers, she turned to me. Fresh tears soaked her full, round cheeks. “If cops do nothing, what can I do?”

  I wanted to step up, to tell her that I’d be the hero. Me. Denny Gazzara’s zebra-nigger-lackey-coon, Pearl’s discarded toy, the world’s punch line. I wanted to tell her that I’d keep her son safe, that Johalis would help me, and that even my father would help protect her boy. I wanted to say I’d stop at nothing, that I’d put an end to Gazzara without any regard for the consequences. But I couldn’t make that promise in front of the kid without soiling his soul, without glorifying the street laws that have got me on the run from Jimmy McCullough.

  The woman grabbed my shoulders, looked into my eyes, and pled for justice. Then she started bawling again. She laid her head on my chest and sobbed into the dark wool lapels of my overcoat. I put my hand on her shoulder as she wailed for somebody to fight for her son—and I nearly cried myself when she looked up and begged me to stop the crooks from snatching Tommy again.

  I stood there, mute, afraid of poisoning her son with hateful promises. Buried deep in my silence, though, was a vow of retribution that didn’t need a voice to be real.

  I haven’t forgotten that vow as I sit in the Ink Well with Johalis, nursing two fingers of bourbon, and waiting for the champ to arrive. When the front door finally swings open, my father walks in wearing a tan coat over a dark blue double-breasted suit. When he sees me, he smiles, the cleft in his chin deepening as his lips curl.

  I’m as happy to see him as he is to see me. I’ve always thought this Gazzara mess was disproportionate to any crime I’d committed. Simply by showing up, the champ is telling me that he agrees.

  My mood darkens, though, when Santi slinks in behind my father. Johalis doesn’t realize I’ve been protecting the kid, so he throws up his arms and lets out a rich whoop when he sees that we’ve got extra reinforcement. He tells Doolie to bring two more glasses and leave the bottle, and within minutes the four of us are sitting around one of the Ink Well’s iron tables, a fresh shine on each of our tongues. Santi’s avoiding my glare—his eyes are darting all over the cramped room—but I soften after another belt of bourbon. I tip my glass to him and he does the same.

  My father pours himself a second shot and I’m sure the only reason he’s drinking underground whiskey is that he’s grateful I’m still in one piece. He sips the hooch and swirls it in his mouth as if it’s a fine wine. I don’t tell him that this bottle of bourbon has all the subtlety of the market crash.

  He relishes his last dr
op and puts his glass on the table. “So this was never ’bout moonshine,” he says, his round eyes sparkling.

  “Nope,” I say, impressed that his moral sense is so strong that he’s ready to fight a gang of albino bone hunters but wouldn’t go up against a lone bootlegger.

  “How does Saint Mark’s fit in?” Santi asks, keeping his voice low. He’s probably afraid I’ll send him back to New York if he shows too much enthusiasm.

  “There’s some kind of occult thing going on downstairs at the church,” Johalis says. “Hector works for Joseph Gazzara; so does the little guy with the busted nose.”

  “The devil’s in the basement,” Santi says, his lips tight as if he’s trying to crack a crossword clue.

  “It must be a ritual,” I say. “Who’d run a black mass out of a church? It’s like opening a speakeasy in a police precinct.”

  “Santeria,” Johalis whispers. “It’s gotta be a Santerian group. They’re the only nut jobs who mix Catholicism with voodoo.”

  A nervous silence fills the room, so I take out the bingo schedule I palmed on the way out of the basement. Below the list of activities are the phone numbers and addresses of each of the regular players.

  I read the fourth name out loud. “Joseph Gazzulo, 368 Tenth Street, first floor.”

  The name is too close for coincidence. The four of us clink our glasses and down our drinks. I throw a few bucks next to the bottle for Doolie.

  After we don our coats, I linger by the coatroom, wishing Angela were working.

  The champ sees me slow down but he doesn’t know why.