Sugar Pop Moon

by John Florio

  My father shuffles for balance on his crutches. Albright doesn’t help him.

  “I’m not happy about bein’ here either,” the champ says. “But we need your help.”

  Albright’s got his arms across his chest—he’s already saying no. “So the upstanding champ winds up needing a scum like me.”

  Knowing my father, he’s itching to walk back down the snowy steps, but he’s standing strong because Albright could be my last chance at licking Gazzara. I’d tell the champ to walk away with his dignity intact, but we’ve got nowhere to turn after this.

  “I’m collectin’ a debt,” the champ says. “I gave you the Higgins title, remember?”

  “I remember. The title, that is. Not the debt.”

  The champ shakes his head. “A man’s only as good as his word. I think maybe you said that, too.”

  “I’m not saying I’ll break the deal,” Albright says curtly. “I’m saying I don’t remember making it.”

  Leaning forward on his crutches, the champ looks Albright dead in the eye. “You told me to come callin’ and that’s what I’m doin’.”

  Albright puts his hand up to stop my father from going on. “If I owe, I’ll pay,” he says. Then he opens the door and motions for my father and me to enter.

  The champ hops into Albright’s home using his crutches to swing his legs into the entry foyer. I linger behind, wondering how in God’s name we ended up here.

  Albright sees my hesitation. “You too, Snowball,” he says, pointing into the house with his thumb.

  I don’t know where the hell he heard my name but one thing is clear: I’m the worst underground operator to grace the streets of Harlem since the invention of moonshine.

  My father and I lean back in dark brown leather club chairs as Albright splashes some brandy into twinkling crystal snifters. Just watching him tip the bottle makes me miss the simplicity of pouring moon for the Joes back at the Pour House.

  Albright’s house is more impressive on the inside than it is from the street—and considerably more comfortable than the Cozy Cottages. The walls are lined with bookshelves and a stepstool sits nearby, no doubt to help Albright reach the encyclopedias near the coffered ceiling. There’s a small bar and a burgundy-felted pool table on our right. Strips of garland wind around the curtain rods, and between the windows is a lit fireplace that gives off the scent of burning pine. If Christmas has a smell, this place has it in spades.

  My father refuses a drink—which doesn’t surprise me—but I take one of the crystal goblets. I sip the brandy and it’s smooth enough to wash any of my misgivings away. In fact, if I knew for sure that Albright wouldn’t blow our heads off, I could learn to like it here.

  “I’ve been hearing your name a lot the past couple of weeks,” Albright says to me. “You’ve got a knack for tripping up the wrong people.”

  “When you’re in my position,” I tell him, “everybody’s the wrong person.”

  He nods as if he’s got the same problem and pats my shoulder. Then he takes a seat in a club chair opposite my father and me, puts a shine on his lips, and tilts his head back as he swallows.

  “Smooth as butter,” he says. Then he examines his brandy through the side of his glass.

  I do the same and return Albright’s smile. It’s hard not to like the man when he’s pouring liquid gold.

  Albright leans forward and rests his forearms on his thighs, his snifter in his palm.

  “You’ve got some big guns out for you,” he says. “The Gazzara brothers, Jimmy McCullough. I don’t know the whole story, but these aren’t penny-ante crooks. They’re big spenders at my parlors. They’ve got muscle.”

  I imagine he already knows that he can scratch Joseph Gazzara’s name off his revenue sheet.

  “That’s why my father brought me here,” I say, my mouth going dry as I gear up to ask the favor. “He doesn’t need your help. I do.”

  Albright tips his glass toward my father, acknowledging that the “upstanding champ” wasn’t here for a favor after all. He’d shown up to help his son.

  My father turns to the fireplace to avoid eye contact with Albright. “Figured you might wanna help,” he says. Then, continuing to look into the fire, he adds, “Snowball’s your blood, too. He’s your grandson.”

  I’m expecting Albright to whip out a gun and plug my father in his forehead for deflowering his daughter. Instead, he looks at me and sizes me up. I try to offer a lovable face as my heart races and my eyes shimmy.

  Albright chuckles, as if he’d been expecting a mulatto albino to show up on his doorstep and call him grandpa.

  “I figured you were my grandkid the minute I heard about your run-in with Denny Gazzara.”

  For the first time since we entered the house, my father looks at Albright head-on. “You knew Dorothy had a son?”

  “I haven’t seen my daughter in twenty-four years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep tabs on her,” Albright says.

  The laughter drains out of his face and he shoots down a healthy slug of brandy in one shot. I’ve been around long enough to know when a guy’s downing booze to make his pain go away and this qualifies. He might as well give up, though, because there’s not a drink in the world that can replace a daughter.

  “But how’d you know it was me?” I say.

  He gets up and takes a framed picture from a bookshelf. It’s a chewed up photo of a woman about twenty years old. I can see from across the room she’s albino. He puts the frame on the table in front of me.

  “Caroline Barker,” he says.

  “Albino,” I say, a little confused.

  He nods. “Your grandmother.”

  I look at the photo of the young woman, her white hair falling onto her shoulders. She’s smiling, posing for the picture. I can tell that behind those pale, dimpled cheeks, a soul is crying out for acceptance. Looking into her colorless eyes makes me feel as if I’ve found my homeland, except it’s not a place, it’s a gene.

  My father shakes his head. “Dorothy’s mother was Harriet Albright.”

  “Dorothy’s mother was Caroline Barker,” Albright says. He’s annoyed with my father for butting in. “Trust me, I was there.”

  “It makes sense,” I say, remembering that the doc told me it took two carriers to make someone like me. I already knew my father’s grandmother was an albino. If the photo in my hand is my mother’s mother, it’s clear why I am what I am.

  “I didn’t even know Harriet when Caroline died,” Albright says, the creases around his eyes getting deeper as he continues talking. “The Ferraro gang killed Caroline. She was standing in front of a jewelry store and they gunned her down. Said they got the wrong woman, but that’s horseshit. The Ferraros hated anybody who wasn’t like them,” he says. His eyes glisten as he pours himself another shot.

  “That’s when I turned,” he says with disgust. “Now they’re gone and I’m still here.”

  I nod because I too was pressured into pulling a trigger. Albright is cut from a different cloth, though. He did something I could never do: he kept on shooting. And he has paid a steep price, because when the smoke from his gun finally cleared, he found himself in this big house, alone, with nothing to comfort him except a bootleg bottle of brandy. I can only hope I land in a homier place.

  “Albright?” my father says. “How’s Dorothy?” The champ’s jaw is tight. I hope for his sake she’s okay.

  Albright stands by the fireplace and gazes out his window. “She’s teaching at a school outside of Chicago.”

  The champ smiles even though Albright never really answered his question. I let it go—neither my father nor Albright is ready for an alternate version of the story.

  Albright drops another splash of booze into my snifter.

  “To family,” he says, raising his glass.

  My first thought is that our family belongs in a carnival, but then I see the edge of his lips twist in sarcasm.

  “To family,” I say.

  I hoist the crystal an
d take a hearty swig without the ritual I gave to my earlier sips. I feel my cheeks flush as the syrupy sweetness coats the back of my throat.

  Albright settles into his chair and I color the picture for him, starting with how I bought the bogus moon and finishing with my father insisting we show up at 1116 Weatherbee Road. I give all the important details, except the one about the money from Joseph Gazzara’s till. Albright doesn’t know Old Man Santiago and he may have a tough time understanding why I’d hand that money over to anybody but Jimmy. When the time comes to tell him, I will. But that time isn’t now.

  I stop singing and Albright leans back, staring at the ceiling as he thinks things out. He reminds me of Santi sitting in the Hy-Hat, and I do my best to bury my shame.

  He shifts forward in his chair. “You need to stop Denny Gazzara,” he says, as if I needed help figuring that out.

  “I know that,” I say. “But I need muscle to get at him.”

  He laughs and the skin under his chin joggles. I get a glimpse of the cocky criminal that my father spent his life trying to avoid.

  “You won’t need muscle because you’re not going at him,” he says. “We’re going to let him come to you. Just like his brother duped you into coming to him.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “Did I mention that he’s a regular at one of my parlors?”

  I have no idea what Albright’s got up his sleeve, but I can tell by the way he’s swirling his brandy that he’s already come up with a scheme. And I’ll bet my bottom dollar that it involves lies and threats—the same stuff that he spent the last hour claiming to regret.

  I grab my snifter and put a fresh coat on my lips, silently toasting my father for knowing enough to knock on grandpa’s door.

  I’ve known my grandfather, Edward Albright, for all of four hours, but here I am, an invited guest at his Over-Under Club on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. The joint’s got two floors: a speakeasy on the street level and a gambling parlor in the basement. Both are hopping and I’m not surprised. It’s Christmas Eve and anybody without a home is out looking for one.

  The minute the champ and I walked into the place, I could see Albright wasn’t hurting for money. There are maroon fabrics hanging on the polished red plaster walls—it’s an old speakeasy trick to deaden sound, but these drapes are made of thick, heavy velvet and have a gold trim. A curved mahogany bar runs the length of the room along the right wall and three tenders in white blazers are working the counter, telling jokes, lighting cigarettes, pouring moon.

  As impressed as I was with the speakeasy, I didn’t get the full picture of what Albright had built until he led us down a curved iron staircase. The gambling parlor is a bettor’s dream. There are four roulette wheels, three blackjack tables, and a lineup of slot machines surrounding the three craps tables that fill up the middle of the room. Waitresses in silky, hip-hugging black dresses walk the floor serving drinks. A piano player is working his way through “Puttin’ on the Ritz”; the tune is drowning in a din of tumbling dice, shuffling cards, and cursing gamblers. The place is filled with crooks, but they’re unarmed—the bouncers working the front door pat down everybody who walks into the joint.

  I’m watching the action from the manager’s office with Albright and my father. Albright was smart enough to sneak us into the club before it jammed up with customers. If we showed up now, the bouncers would drag us out onto the street and toss us around like dice on a craps table. It’s bad enough that I’m an albino, but my father and I are the only Negroes here, aside from the valets.

  The manager’s office is even more luxurious than Albright’s home study. The champ and I are resting our mangled bodies on an overstuffed couch. To our left, Albright is relaxing behind his carved wooden desk in a leather wingback chair, and we’re all monitoring the casino through a two-way mirror on the wall next to him. Behind him, standing in silence, are a couple of triggermen dressed in similar dark gray herringbone suits with white shirts and blue ties. It isn’t hard to imagine Albright sitting here alone, controlling the action, avoiding chance, and smashing the dreams of every unsuspecting customer who’s foolish enough to shake a pair of dice on the other side of that mirror.

  Albright’s got his eye on a group of customers at the second roulette table. A cloud of tobacco smoke hovers over their heads as they watch the wheel spin. A bald gambler with a pile of black chips sits in front of a heavyset, pockmarked galoot. They’re both screaming at the bouncing marble as if they can scare it into landing where they want. That gambler is my long-lost friend, Denny Gazzara, and I’m guessing the acne-pitted goon behind him is his new muscle.

  Gazzara is dressed to the nines. A white starched collar hugs his bloated neck.

  “C’mon, t-t-twenty-two,” he’s yelling as the marble bounces around the wheel.

  The ball ricochets and plops into the twenty-two slot. Gazzara lets out a whoop as a fortyish blond croupier slides three stacks of black chips to his spot on the table. As soon as the croupier lets go of the stacks, Gazzara reaches forward and pulls them closer to his chest, a smile stretching his waxed Vandyke to the center of his round cheeks. Even his gloating irks me.

  Albright reaches across his desk, pushes an intercom button and calls for the pit boss.

  A broad gentleman dressed in a black tuxedo hustles into the office and stands in front of Albright’s desk waiting for instructions. His mustache is so thin it looks like he painted it on with a fountain pen. His shoulders are pulled back and his spine looks about as relaxed as a broomstick.

  “Pump Gazzara up, then bring him down hard,” Albright says. “When he complains, tell him I’m back here.”

  The pit boss gives a quick mechanical jerk of his chin, and then heads back to the parlor. I don’t see him speak with the croupier, but I’m sure he flashed some kind of signal to relay the message across the room.

  “I hope this doesn’t get messy,” Albright says, the toothy smile on his face indicating the exact opposite.

  “What do you mean ‘messy’?” my father says. I’m sure he’s remembering how things turned when Albright wanted to free up the Jersey title.

  “That’s up to Gazzara,” Albright says. “He’s about to lose an awful lot of money.”

  Albright grins at me and raises his glass to toast Gazzara’s impending financial doom. I hate to disappoint my father but I hoist my glass toward Albright and slug down a gulp of whiskey. The man is nailing Gazzara and I couldn’t ask for more.

  “What’s next?” I ask Albright. “How will I get him off my back?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I have no idea what’s coming but the snicker in Albright’s tone is answer enough for me. Gazzara slides his pile of black chips onto number twenty-two; the croupier starts the roulette wheel and rolls a small white marble around the edge of it in the opposite direction. As the glass ball ricochets on the twirling numbers, I lean back on the couch, resting my damaged arm on one of Albright’s plump sofa cushions. I’m going to enjoy this.

  The croupier’s a master. Over the past hour, he’s put Gazzara on an extended hot streak and plunged him into a financial sinkhole an inch deeper than his pockets. Now he’s got the mobster on a string, allowing him to hit every four of five spins, but never letting him get on a roll large enough to pull himself out of debt. I can’t figure out how the wheel is rigged, but there are some questions I’m smart enough not to ask.

  Gazzara is banging his fist on the table and screaming for more chips. Nobody is standing near him except his hired goon. The gamblers who were sharing his table have moved to other games, obviously preferring to lose their money in peace. Gazzara’s collar is soaked, his necktie is undone, and his hairless scalp is dotted with beads of sweat that glitter under the casino lights. The croupier slides four stacks of black chips toward him. Gazzara wraps his chubby fingers around the little towers and shoves them onto the table chart, stopping when they’re all on red. When the wheel spins, he watches, his eyes bulging a
s he bites his lower lip and holds his breath. His flunky stands behind him, barking out curses at the dancing marble, begging it not to land on black.

  Albright is standing next to me as the marble skips around the spinning wheel. “Fun, isn’t it?” he says.

  My father doesn’t answer but, to me, there’s nothing more delightful than watching Gazzara regress into a stuttering infant. I guess I did inherit some of Albright’s genes, after all.

  The marble lands on black and Gazzara screams at the croupier. “You’re ch-ch-cheating!” he yells out. “This w-w-wheel is rigged.”

  The pit boss walks over to the table and whispers into Gazzara’s ear, flipping his thumb toward Albright’s office.

  “W-w-where is he?” Gazzara yells, his spit flying into the air. “D-d-damned right I want to speak to him, you p-p-p-issant.”

  The pit boss leads Gazzara and his buddy out of the parlor and into Albright’s office. I can’t stop myself from being a wisenheimer.

  “Hiya, Denny,” I say, sipping my whiskey, which is as smooth as his bald head.

  Gazzara comes at me like a Rottweiler charging a piece of raw liver. I back away on the couch, afraid he’ll land on my gimp arm, but the pit boss grabs him from behind. The goon’s staring me down but he’s too outmanned to make a move.

  “You n-n-nigger freak,” Gazzara screams at me, “I’ll rip y-y-your head off.”

  Albright’s triggermen pull their guns. The younger one points his pistol between the goon’s greasy eyebrows. The other one trains his on Gazzara’s chest. His eyes are as steady as his hands—he’s got them fixed on Gazzara as he cocks the hammer on his pistol. I’m ashamed to admit I hope he pulls the trigger and we all get to watch Denny go down once and for all.

  “Have a seat, Denny,” Albright says. He couldn’t be calmer if he were lounging on a hammock.

  Gazzara doesn’t move; neither does his goon. They just stand there and glare at me. I watch from the corner of my eye as my father shifts his weight, getting ready to swing if Gazzara comes at me again. It’s nice to know the champ is in my corner, but right now his only weapon is a crutch.