Dreams Bigger Than the Night

by Levitt, Paul M.

  Jay’s ruminations continued until he reached his destination. Although just a simple neighborhood restaurant at Meeker and Elizabeth Avenues, the Tavern attracted Newark’s political bosses, business leaders, Bears baseball players, and even mobsters, whom Sam Teiger, the owner, founder, and manager, treated like everyone else. That particular evening, Ben Unterman, a journalist, lamented, “No matter how hard I try to beat the crowd, I lose.”

  Jay didn’t mind waiting in line because Sam always supplied hors d’oeuvres, which Jews knew as forshpiesers. His wait, however, was brief because Puddy Hinkes and Willie Moretti invited him to join their table. He’d seen Moretti around and had heard about his involvement with “Longie” Zwillman, whose connections extended from the New York syndicate down to the cops on the beat and local ladies of the night.

  Puddy, a small-time hood and boxer, could juggle debits and credits as well as Abbadabba Berman, Dutch Schultz’s bookkeeper. A bagman, Puddy brought the payoffs to the mayor, the state senators, and even the governor. The guy knew the inside of federal buildings as well as a con knows the pen, and his loyalty to his employers stamped him as a comer. Four years Jay’s senior, Puddy had taken a shine to him a year before, during a pickup basketball game at the B’nai Abraham shul, when Jay sank the winning basket in a game of twenty-one. At the time, Puddy had said that Jay’s skinny legs reminded him of a spider and told him that if he ever wanted to make some extra cash, he should see him. But as the son of Honest Ike Klug, he had avoided the rackets.

  Willie Moretti kept busy overseeing the widespread New Jersey wire system and numerous plush casinos, as well as the many “sawdust” or dice barns that ran from the Garden State into Pennsylvania. A stocky, round-faced, puffy-cheeked loyalist, who talked out of the left side of his mouth, Willie had an edgy sense of humor. From the vestibule Jay had seen him bending Puddy’s ear. At the table, Puddy introduced them, and Willie cracked:

  “Been grinding it at Dreamland lately?”

  “I guess you read the papers.”

  Willie immediately began to occupy himself with the salt and pepper shakers. “Yeah, I seen them. I hear the gunsel was all bundled up. No one got a good look at him.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Except for them spats, the cops probably woulda’ never gone nosing around the Friends of the New Germany. Lucky they did.”

  Moretti was right. The killer had spats. But to that moment, Jay had forgotten, and the newspapers had never mentioned, the fact. So how did Moretti know?

  “Whoever remembered that krauts like to wear spats was no fool,” Jay said, hoping to elicit more information.

  “Yeah,” replied Willie, spilling some salt into his right hand and tossing it over his left shoulder. “Just for luck. I like to ward off any evil spirits. You know, it’s a Catholic thing.”

  “What do you do when there’s no salt around?”

  Willie guffawed. “Smart kid. I make the sign of the figa, like this.” Willie held up his fist with his thumb tucked under his fingers.

  The two men had just finished dinner. Puddy and Jay ordered coconut cream pie. Willie paused.

  “If I down another one of them cream pies, I’ll never fit into my new suit. Better I should just have cherry pie a la mode.”

  “That’ll keep you slim,” said Puddy. “So, Spider, you still working for your old man?”

  “Yeah, but a depression’s not a good time for powder puffs. And nothing else seems available.”

  “If he needs a loan . . .”

  “He would never ask.”

  “Money’s money.”

  “Not according to Honest Ike.”

  Moretti continued to play with the salt and pepper cellars.

  “What about you?”

  Before Jay could answer, Puddy said, “We could use a smart lansman.”

  “Why not?” thought Jay. His college degree had not brought him work commensurate with his education. Until now, the love he felt for his parents had kept him on the right side of the law. If his family learned that he palled around with Puddy . . . a shanda! It was rumored that even Zwillman made sure his mother never found out where his gelt came from. The bribe of bread had corrupted entire nations. Just look at Germany. “What’s the deal?” he asked.

  “Tell you what,” said Puddy. “We’ll drive over to my place. We can talk there.”

  Through the dessert, Moretti kept up a running commentary on Newark’s nightspots, especially the Kinney Club at Arlington and Augusta streets, which offered a racially mixed clientele a taste of the forbidden in the heart of Newark’s Barbary Coast. The Kinney Club was more than Jay’s pocket could afford. Hoping for a return to the spats, he listened.

  Finally, they put on their overcoats. Sam Teiger clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Say hello to your parents, Jay, and always do the right thing.” Following Puddy into the gray street, he saw a new 1934 black Packard at the curb. A former schoolmate, Irv Sugarman, who’d left in the eleventh grade, opened the door. Irv apparently now worked for Puddy and Moretti.

  “Hello, Jay. Hop in.”

  The sound of the door closing behind him, as he slid into the backseat, gave him a sense of importance. He was a capable boy with connections to people who actually ran the city. Still, he couldn’t help wondering whether he would find himself in the underworld or in the respectable one, in crime or commerce? How would his family feel if his name appeared on a police blotter?

  They drove to Puddy’s office, a small room over a delicatessen, with spindle-backed chairs and a battered rolltop desk, which depended on a deck of cards under one leg to offset the sloping floor. From downstairs rose the mingled smells of pickles in brine, chopped liver and onions, Liederkranz and Limburger cheeses. Through the one window he could see in the lamplight the pushcarts lining the curbs and the canvas awnings of the sidewalk stores.

  “Sit down, Spider.” Puddy plopped down with his feet on the desk. “You don’t smoke, right?” Jay nodded without looking at him, his attention drawn to Moretti, who gravitated toward the window. Puddy removed the paper band from a cheap cigar, slipped it on his pinky, and struck a match on the side of the desk. “This stuff ain’t good for me. I’m supposed to be in trainin’.”

  Moretti stared at the street below. “You’re a born canvasback, Puddy. I don’t know why you keep fighting.”

  “Hey, I like it. Besides, it gives me a reputation.”

  “What, as a punching bag?”

  “No, a guy you don’t lean on.”

  Moretti said nothing.

  “We may have a job for you,” said Puddy. “But before I give you my spiel, you give me yours. What do you like doin’ most?”

  “Writing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, I like to write. Stories and essays . . . that sort of thing.”

  Moretti turned and stared as if in disbelief, and then returned his gaze to the window.

  “Dutch Schultz . . .”

  Puddy’s pregnant pause was calculated. Well aware of the Dutchman’s murderous reputation, Jay asked cautiously, “Yeah, what about him?”

  “He has contacts in this part of town and we want to know more about ’em,” Moretti said casually.

  “We own office space across the street from one of the Dutchman’s drops,” Puddy added. “All you gotta do is sit and watch—and keep an accurate record. The days and times cars arrive and leave. Also license plate numbers.”

  “You might even get a glimpse of the Dutchman himself,” Moretti chuckled.

  “The papers say Tom Dewey is after him for tax evasion. I wonder where he keeps all his dough?”

  Moretti’s mood strangely changed. “Wise up, kid. If you don’t want your fuckin’ head handed to you on a platter, don’t ask questions that ain’t none of your business. Understand?”

  “Absolutely!” Jay replied f
ar too emphatically, feeling a trickle of urine escape from his pecker.

  Puddy tried to play the peacemaker. “Hey, we’re all friends here. We ain’t gonna have a fallin’ out just ’cause the kid asks a question.”

  “I don’t like snoops,” Moretti said morosely and began to pace. With each step his displeasure seemed to increase.

  “Puddy, maybe I’m not your guy. I got too many things on my mind.”

  “Like?”

  “Who’s in charge? You never said.”

  “Does it matter? Those times you ain’t watchin’, you can write. We’ll get you a nice desk, and a typewriter, too.”

  “When my old man asks where I work and the name of my employer, I got to have a story. Because sure as hell he’ll ask.”

  Moretti cracked his knuckles. “I’m fed up with your whining, kid. I thought you wanted a job with real money. Come on, Puddy, let’s go. He’s all jitters, no balls.”

  Puddy tried to mollify his companion. “He’s still wet behind the ears.”

  “So wet he’s drowning. Just remember, if anything goes wrong, he’s your guy.” Turning to Jay, Moretti snapped, “Tell your old man the Canadian-American Liquor Company.”

  “I don’t know anything about Canada. If he starts asking me questions, I’ll be in the soup.”

  A furious Moretti said, “Then try the New Jersey Vending Machine Company . . . 1464 North Broad Street in Hillside.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You talk to him, Puddy, I’m finished.”

  “Tell Honest Ike publicity. You said you wanted to write.”

  “And who’s my boss?”

  “Shit,” said Puddy, now showing his annoyance, “you’re the inkslinger, not me. Make up what you fuckin’ want.”

  “Does the company have a . . . phone?”

  Moretti had shifted his bulky body in anticipation of starting for the door. “Look it up!” the enforcer growled. “And lock the door after you.”

  On their way out, Puddy paused, “Waverly 3-3165. Maybe instead of calling you ‘Spider,’ I oughta call you Jitters.”

  A week later, Jay found himself working from a shabby room, with a new desk and typewriter, three chairs, and a battered chintz sofa, between Spruce and Market on Prince Street over Lowitz’s grocery. From his window he could see Sam Tubeman’s Radio Repairs, across the street. The Dutchman’s gang used Tubeman’s as a drop for their Third Ward drug money. The dough then left Sam’s place stuffed in the shell of a radio console, collected by one of Dutch’s lieutenants.

  Outside, he could hear the shoppers’ Yiddish banter: “You can’t dance at two weddings with one tuchis,” and “Poverty is no disgrace, but no great honor either.” The immigrants’ dreams could be gleaned from their proverbs, and the condition of their purses read in their lined faces and frayed clothes. The merchants whom they patronized offered services like tailoring and dry cleaning and sold everything from barreled pickles and herring to fruits and vegetables, bread, clothing, and paper goods, all at bargain prices. The busiest block, Jay’s, housed Kaplan’s Delicatessen, with its dull white, hexagonal tile floor. It served fat corned beef sandwiches and pickles to patrons seated on wire chairs at rectangular tables with bowls of cube sugar for the tea drinkers. A few doors away stood Moishe Hupert’s Fish Market, with “Moishe Fisher” painted on the double-glass windows. Inside, a large sheetmetal tank contained live fish—pike, carp, and perch for gefilte fish—which Mr. Hupert, as the housewives pointed into the tank, netted, killed on a butcher block with a single blow from a wooden club, scaled, and cleaned.

  Telling his father that he had found a job for twenty dollars a week—five more than his father paid—he quit the family business. Asked for details, he prevaricated, saying he was hired by a vending machine company—and passed along the phone number. He mentioned no names.

  “Jay,” his father sighed, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Does anyone—really?” Jay asked defensively.

  His father reflected for a moment and kindly answered, “I guess not. To know is to know something, but what? That’s the mystery. Good luck with it.”

  Late one afternoon, Jay ducked into Kaplan’s Delicatessen for a chopped liver on pumpernickel, heard the clack-clack of checkers, and saw at one of the rectangular tables a group of the synagogue faithful with their yarmulkes. On the white tile top rested a board with black and red pieces. A fire-engine-red alarm clock stood on the table set for fifteen seconds. Rabbi Silverman, wearing a fedora, and a well-known Negro, sporting a derby, hunched over a game of lightning-fast checkers. A lot of the schvarzes played, also Eastern Europeans. After a day of trying to grind out a living or looking for work, the men in the Third Ward migrated to Kaplan’s. When the deli closed, players continued the game on the sidewalk, even in the rain. Standing behind a Polish tailor sucking on a sugar cube, he stood with the kibitzers watching the colored fellow, who spoke perfect Yiddish and called himself “T,” short for “T-Bone Searle,” rag the rabbi. “Es vet dir gornisht helfen.”

  “T, I always tell my parishioners that win or lose if they play checkers, their wives have nothing to worry about, because they’re not drinking, gambling, or running around with women.”

  “Yeah, but checkers can’t do for them what their wives can.”

  The kibitzers chortled, as Silverman lost track of the clock and forfeited his turn.

  T-Bone, in his mid-thirties, had arms forged in brawny labor, having wielded a shovel for one of the government projects. The rabbi got beat badly. Jay waited until the next player likewise took a shellacking, which gave him just enough time to finish his sandwich and offer T-Bone a challenge. The two stacked up pretty evenly. Toward the end of the game, Jay ran off a sequence of captures but neglected to take the last piece and had to retract his moves, allowing his opponent to win.

  “You’re leavin’, Jay bird? If you want lessons . . .” T-Bone laughed.

  “I have an office just down the street. Why not meet me there for lunch tomorrow, if you’re working in the neighborhood.” Having bent a wire hanger into the shape of a miniature basketball rim and taped it to the wall, he added, “We can shoot buckets with a stuffed sock.”

  T-Bone showed up the next day, carrying two Negro newspapers, the New York Age and the New York Amsterdam News, which were featuring stories about whether or not colored athletes should boycott the 1936 Olympics to be held in Berlin. Naturally, most Jews opposed participation because it would serve as a showcase for Nazism, a subject and problem that all of America seemed to be talking about.

  “Shall we have a friendly game?” Jay asked, pointing to the board.

  Until his work project ended several weeks later, T-Bone never missed a lunch hour. Jay looked forward to his legends and laughter. T usually found a way to win at checkers, though not at B-ball, which admittedly was not his game.

  “You ever play baseball?” asked T-Bone.

  “Just stickball in the streets with a Spaldeen.”

  Slowly, T-Bone shook his head and positioned his checkers. “Great game. I’d still be playin’ if I hadn’t hurt my ankle slidin’ into second base ’gainst the Pittsburgh Crawfords.”

  “You played pro?”

  “Yeah, for the Kansas City Monarchs. The hot corner. I had an arm like a rifle and could one hop the ball better than any white boy in the majors.”

  Having started in 1920, the Monarchs were the New York Yankees of the Negro leagues.

  “How old are you, T-Bone?”

  “Thirty-six . . . twenty-eight when I got injured and started swingin’ a pick and a shovel. If the Man upstairs had made me white, maybe my name would be right up there with Ruth and Gehrig and Lefty Gomez. But that can be said about a lotta black ballplayers, ’specially Satchel Paige and James ‘Cool Papa’ Bell.”

  One evening, Jay accompanied T back to his digs at t
he Douglas-Harrison Apartments, a long row of redbrick buildings, and sat next to him on the couch leafing through his scrapbook. The living room had few amenities: a wooden cable spool that held a radio topped with a lace doily and a porcelain figurine of Mary cradling Jesus, a rocker, some chairs missing spindles, a couch that had given up the fight to support any weight, and a framed needlepoint expressing the hopes of an oppressed people: “When all is done, there is God.”

  T-Bone’s mother, bedridden with emphysema, asked to meet her son’s newfound friend. A white-haired handsome woman, she shook Jay’s hand and apologized for not getting out of bed.

  “Too many cigarettes,” she wheezed.

  “You gonna be all right, Mamma, you just wait and see.”

  “In heaven, maybe, but not here.”

  “Everything happens for the best, Mamma. Trust in God.”

  She took her son’s hand and beamed. “I do. And you also.”

  Shortly after T-Bone’s work crew transferred to another ward, she died. Jay attended the funeral out of respect, the only white person present. Held in the basement of a church, the funeral took place in a room that had about twenty folding chairs, a table with crackers and cheese, and two pitchers of nonalcoholic punch. The mourners, in their frayed Sunday best, sat with hands folded through the service. Then two brass players—trombone and trumpet—played “Amazing Grace” as T-Bone, whose real name was Randall, wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  On Saturday, March 17, 1934, around eight p.m., Puddy and Jay drove to a party in West Orange. It was a date Jay would never forget. Puddy had said a pal of his wanted friends to join him for a festive occasion.

  “Who is this guy?”

  “You’ll meet him, just hold your horses.”

  “He doesn’t know me from Adam.”

  “Relax, Spider. He said to bring friends. You’re a friend, ain’t you?”