“Come on,” he said to her. “Get the tablecloth and let’s get started. And read me Pop’s note while I’m making the eggs. And get the cream and cottage cheese out of the icebox. But first read the note.”
Alice picked up the three dollar bills and the two quarters from the kitchen table and read the note which was lying under the money. “Poppa says that he and Mom’ll be working late tonight and that we should eat out. As if we don’t all the time.”
Frank moved the eggs around in the frying pan to keep them from sticking. “Shut up and read.”
“They said you should do your homework and not come home too late and that you should be sure to get some ice. And I should dust.”
“For crying out loud.” He scooped the scrambled eggs onto two plates. “Look, kid, there’s three and a half dollars there. I was going to take two dollars and give you the rest. But I’ve got some money. So you go to the ice dock, get one of the kids who has a wagon, and give him a dime for carrying it upstairs. So I’ll give you the two bucks and you’ll come out ahead of the deal. How about it?”
“Won’t you be coming home right after school?” she asked him.
“No.”
“Where’re you going?”
“None of your business!”
“I was only asking you.”
“So I’m only telling you. You want the two bucks?”
Alice held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
They finished their breakfast, and Frank told her to leave and he would do the dishes. As soon as she left the apartment he rinsed the dishes and put them on the wash-tub to dry. The flat certainly was getting dirty. The windows hadn’t been washed in months, and the rooms were full of dust and fuzzy-wuzzies. No question about it, it was a dump. He looked at the alarm clock. Eight-twenty. He’d have to step on it. Frank made certain that the door to their apartment was locked, and then he opened the bottom drawer of his dresser, reached back under a pile of underwear, and removed a small metal box which he opened with one of the keys on his chain. He took out a packet of three Ramses and put them in his pocket, placed three reefers in his cigarette case, and removed his homemade pistol and five .22-caliber shells.
Frank hefted the gun in his hand. He had made the grip and stock in his manual-training class at New Lots Vocational, and he had sanded and stained the stock dark mahogany. The stock had been drilled through from end to end, and a five-and-a-half-inch piece of steel tubing with a three-eighth-inch bore had been inserted into the stock. Frank had removed the trigger and firing-pin assembly from a cap pistol, and he had filed the cap detonator to a sharp point, so that it now served as a firing pin. When he pulled the trigger a strong rubber band jerked the firing pin against the cartridge. The revolver was loaded through the muzzle, and there was no accuracy, but it could send a bullet a couple of city blocks. Frank’s gun was one of the best in the Amboy Dukes. He squinted along the barrel before he placed the gun in his right hip pocket. The cartridges he dropped into the pocket that held the Ramses.
For the last time he stood before the mirror and adjusted his hat. Alice had piled his books on the night table, and he took two of them at random because he wasn’t going to school. As he walked down the dark narrow steps of the tenement he felt as he always did. That he was in a prison and walking to his freedom, but instead of walking up to the light he was walking down. He passed the doors on the landings with their dirty opaque glass panels and ducked as he passed the electric-light fixture which hung awry and looked as if it might at any moment tear away from the ceiling. It was good to get out on the street, and he hurried up to the corner of Amboy and Pitkin because he saw two of the boys there. One was Black Benny, who went to Vocational with him, and the other was Moishe Perlman. Moishe worked in the Todd Shipyard in Red Hook and between being a calker, second class, and manipulating a hot pair of dice, he was making more than a hundred bucks a week. Frank envied him.
“Walkin’ to the station with us?” Moishe asked Frank.
Frank looked at Black Benny. “Not going to school?”
“Want to go to the Paramount?” Benny replied. “They’ve got a good picture.”
“Sure.” Frank laughed. “We haven’t cut school for a couple of days.”
“I don’t know why the hell you guys are wasting your time in school,” Moishe said as they walked along Pitkin Avenue to Saratoga. “Why don’t you get your working papers and make yourselves some real dough before the Army gets you?”
“I’d like to,” Frank said, “but my old man won’t let me. He wants me to get my diploma, and now he’s even talking about my going to college.”
“College!” Benny punched him in the ribs. “He must be nuts!”
Frank hit him over the head with his books. “Shut your hole about my old man. He’s a hell of a lot smarter than you.”
“I didn’ mean nothin’.”
“All right. Just watch your mouth.”
Moishe began to run. “The bus is coming. Hurry up.”
They pushed onto the bus, and Frank watched Black Benny and Moishe get a nice-looking broad between them and give her a rub. Moishe and Benny hemmed the girl between them, skillfully pocketing her and preventing her escape. In her eyes there was loathing and fear of the two hoodlums, who did not look at her but nevertheless pressed against her lasciviously, pinioning her against their rigid hot bodies. Moishe pushed against the girl’s buttocks, thighs, and legs while Benny pressed against her stomach and breasts. The girl wanted to scream, to cry out, but she did not dare, for innocence shone in the eyes of Black Benny and Moishe, between whom no sign of recognition had passed, and she feared to create a scene. Frank watched them, the snicker of a dirty smile playing about his lips. As the bus lurched to a stop at Livonia Avenue, Benny fell forward against the girl, and his free hand, seemingly by accident, passed across her breasts.
The boys did not speak to each other until they stood at the station waiting for the New Lots train.
“She wasn’t bad,” Moishe said.
Frank laughed. “You sure gave it to her good. She didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s a good way to start the morning,” Moishe agreed. “And I’ve picked up a couple that way.”
“Should we do it some more?” Benny asked him.
“No,” Moishe said. “We’ll talk.”
As the train rocked through the tunnels toward Manhattan they stood in the vestibule of the subway car and spoke in low voices about Lenny Assante and the counterfeit gasoline coupons some of the boys were selling for him. It was an easy way to pick up some money.
“Hell,” Moishe said, “he sells you A coupons that are so good that even the OPA can’t tell them, and all he asks is twenty-five bucks for a hundred. Then you can sell them easy, for fifty or sixty cents apiece, and you make twenty-five. People’ll rather buy the coupons than pay sixty cents a gallon without a coupon. I’ve been selling some down at the yard and they’re going fast.”
Benny looked at Frank. “How about it?”
Frank shrugged his shoulders. “Where can we sell them?”
“How about the poolroom?”
“No good,” Frank said. “Then some of the guys’ll want to get cut in on it.”
“Let’s think it over,” Benny said to Moishe. “We’ve got to figure the angles. If we can get rid of them we’ll buy some. How about selling me some for my brother’s car? He doesn’t mind my using his car, but he doesn’t want me to use his gas. This way, if I give him some coupons, he won’t bitch so much.”
Moishe told them to hold his lunch and extracted a little booklet from a pocket of his denim shirt. He passed three coupons into Black Benny’s hand. “I’m giving you these at a bargain price. One buck.”
Benny gave him a dollar. “You’re a white guy, Moishe. Thanks.”
“That’s all right.”
“We’ll let you know,” Frank called after Moishe as he left the train at the Atlantic Avenue station.
Moishe waved to them.
<
br /> Nevins Street was the next station, and Benny and Frank went up to the street and into Bickford’s for a second breakfast. They had almost thirty minutes before the theater opened, and they sat at the white marble-topped table sipping their coffee and looking out of the large plate-glass windows of the restaurant. Flatbush Extension and Fulton Street were full of people and traffic, and Frank decided that this was a hell of a lot more fun than sitting over the drawing board at Vocational and making three perspective drawings of cones. School was a lot of crap, Benny agreed, but what the hell could you do when your old man and your old lady insisted that you get an education? Frank winked at some trim-looking kids who passed the restaurant, and two of them turned around and motioned for Frank and Benny to come along with them.
“Let them alone,” Benny said as Frank started to stand up. “We can pick them up easy in the show. This way we’ve got to pay for their tickets.”
“But they were nice-looking.”
“The hell with that.” Benny pulled a paper napkin from the container on the table and wiped his lips and hands. “You can’t see them in the dark.”
“Give me the checks,” Frank said. “I’ll treat.”
Benny nodded. “Anything you say, sport.”
For three and a half hours they sat in the Paramount balcony with the two high school babes who were also on the hook. First Frank necked with one of the girls, then he swapped with Benny. He liked Benny’s babe better. She didn’t kiss as wet and she smelled cleaner than the one he’d first had.
“Suppose I call you up,” Frank asked her. “Will you meet me?”
“Sure,” she said. “We can go dancing.”
“That sounds pretty good.” Frank’s hand slipped Into the neck of her blouse, but she moved away from him.
“Only on the outside,” she whispered into his ear. “I don’t like to get mussed up in the movies.”
“And after we go dancing, then what?” he asked her.
“We can go to the movies.” She giggled.
“Hell no.” He shook his head “I can see the movies alone. I don’t need any help.”
She pressed his hand down on a breast. “I’m only kidding you. We can go anyplace you say.”
“Down my club?”
“All right with me.” She nodded.
“Look, babe,” Frank said to her. “I’m a square guy. If you go out with me you’ve got to come across. I’m one guy that don’t like passion cramps.”
“I won’t give you any, honey,” she whispered to him. “Now be a nice guy and sit still and let me watch the show.”
“Last kiss.” Frank bent forward again. “I like you swell, babe.”
The girl slid low in her seat and placed her head on Frank’s shoulder. “I like you too.” She placed his hand on her breast again and held it. “Now let’s see the show.”
It was half-past one when they walked out of the lobby into the street, and the bright warm sun made them blink. They stood in front of the theater, and now that Frank could see the girl he’d been necking he was glad he had swapped with Benny. She was about sixteen and wore high-heeled shoes with Betty Jane straps that came across her ankles, and the hem of her gray flannel skirt was above her knees. She had nice legs and she knew it. She wore a red blouse open at the collar, and Frank could feel himself getting warm when he imagined what it would have been like if she’d let him give her a real feel. The gray flannel jacket was so long that it almost reached the hem of her skirt. When she laughed her teeth showed white and even, and her lipstick was put on in a heavy carmine smear. She was a smooth-looking kid, fast, certain, sure of herself.
“Come over here.” He pulled her to one side. “I want to write your phone number in my book.”
“I’ll give it to you when we get a soda.”
“Sure,” Frank said. “Hey, Benny, let’s take the girls in for some sodas.”
“Sure,” Benny agreed. “Let’s go.”
Frank was glad they had someone to kid around with so that the time would pass more rapidly. The only thing he didn’t like about going on the hook was that after he came out of the show he didn’t know what to do or where to go. It wasn’t any fun going to the poolroom in the afternoon because there wasn’t anyone around. Frank could remember when he was a kid they would hardly ever let him into the poolroom, that the tables were always crowded. Any time he would peek through the doors of the poolroom on Sutler and Hopkinson, there would be guys shooting a game and sitting around gabbing. And over at Beecher’s Gym on Rockaway Avenue there was always a crowd to watch Bummy Davis work out. But now the poolrooms were crowded only at night. Everyone was out working or hustling, so it wasn’t any fun to go to Katzie’s in the afternoon. But sitting in Childs’ with the two babes and kidding around and telling dirty jokes made the time pass so fast that it was almost four o’clock when they left the babes, after promising to call them up that night so they could make a date to see them the next day.
“Boy”—Frank rubbed his hands—“we’re sure going to have a time with them tomorrow.”
“I shouldn’t have swapped with you,” Benny said. “You got the better-looking babe. Aw, what the hell, Frank, you always get the better-looking women.”
“Cut it out.” Frank was embarrassed.
“Honest,” Benny said, “I’m not sore. They’re both all right. I’m going to ask my brother for the car tomorrow night, and we’ll take them for a ride and then we’ll take them over my house and we’ll have a party.”
“What about your folks?”
“They’re on the swing shift this month. My brother Sam’ll get home about midnight, but he’s regular. If we get in we’ll fix him up too.”
“Must we?” Frank asked.
“Sure,” Benny said. “Aw, what the hell, Frank, I’ll fix him up with my babe. So stop looking as if I stepped on your feet.”
“You’re one swell guy, Benny,” Frank said appreciatively. “One swell guy.”
“So”—Benny tweaked Frank’s cheek—“maybe you wanta kiss me to show your appreciation?”
Frank pulled away from him. “Stop clowning and let’s get on the train.”
They walked from the station on Saratoga Avenue and stopped to look into Davidson’s Restaurant. None of the guys were there yet.
“I want to go home and drop off these books,” Frank said. “Then I’ll meet you on the corner at six. No, wait. I wanta eat with my kid sister. She gets sorta lonesome and she’s upset today.”
“What’s the matter?” Benny wanted to know.
“Nothing. Something that happened this morning. You know how kids are.”
“Then I’ll see you down the club?”
“Sure. About eight-thirty.”
As soon as Frank turned the corner from Pitkin into Amboy he stopped whistling. There it was. That dirty, stinking block. The ugly gray and red tenements, tombstones of disease, unrest, and the smoldering violence which has its birth in misery, were crowded close together and rose straight up on both sides of the street to shut off all but a narrow expanse of sky. It was as if nothing bright would ever shine on Amboy Street. Each tenement had before it a rusting iron fence against which leaned the twisted and dented garbage cans, and paper bags of refuse were piled against the cans. Women and children flanked the entrances to the tenements, and when Frank saw Alice talking to some girls on the stoop he motioned for her to follow him upstairs.
“You’re waiting long, kid?” he asked her as he looked into the icebox and saw that Alice had got the ice.
“I stayed in school for a little while and then I went over to the weaving class at the Center.”
“What’re you making?”
“Baskets.”
Frank laughed. “You like to do that?”
“I guess so.”
“You’re sort of lonesome, aren’t you, kid?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s better for you to go to the Center,” Frank said righteously. “I saw you talking to that stinker F
anny Kane. That kid’s got ideas that’re too old for her.”
The color crept into Alice’s face, and she didn’t look at her brother as she spoke. “I’m not friends with her. She just came over to talk to us.”
“Well, just see that you stay away from her. And another thing. When you get a kid to bring the ice up here don’t shut the front door.”
“I won’t.”
“All right then,” he said to her. “Get washed and then we’ll go out to eat.”
While Alice was washing he thought about Fanny Kane. Too bad she was only twelve, for her face was wise and her eyes were knowing. If she were a year older he might’ve given her a break. But for a twelve-year-old kid she had plenty and she looked like she was willing to pass it out. What the hell, sometime when he didn’t have anything to do and if he met her in the movies or some place he might get her to come down to the clubroom and then he’d see how far the kid would go. But he didn’t want Alice fooling around with a kid who was definitely jail bait and on the make. If that happened, then he’d have to start watching out for her because he didn’t want anyone talking about his sister. That bastard Crazy Sachs.
“Hurry up,” he called to her. “I haven’t got all night. And I want to wash.”
Alice opened the door. “I’m finished. Oh yes, Frank. Mr. Alberg asked for you.”
“Who’s he?”
“You remember him. He’s the gym teacher at the Center. He asked for you and told me to invite you to come down.”
Frank wasn’t interested. “Tell him I’ll come around someday.”
“He’s very nice.”
“I know. But come on. We’ve gotta eat, and it’ll be crowded as hell when we get to the delicatessen. Delicatessen all right with you?”
“I suppose so.”
At the delicatessen Frank looked quizzically at his sister. He wished that she didn’t make him feel like such a heel. It wasn’t his fault that their mother and father were working overtime, and she was too young to understand that it was the overtime that really counted. If his mother got sixty-five cents an hour for packing ammunition, it wasn’t a hell of a lot. But when she got into the overtime and started to get ninety-seven cents an hour or if she worked on Sunday and got a dollar and thirty cents an hour, that really was money. And all this moping around about not eating home and not being able to have the folks at home was damned inconsiderate of the kid. But then, he figured, she didn’t know any better. She had been too young to remember. He wished he could forget.
The Amboy Dukes Page 3
