Murder at the Foul Line

by Otto Penzler

  “This is quite a story, Grandpa,” I said.

  “You haven’t heard nothing yet.”

  “Is it true?”

  “What’re you talking about?” Sidney said, genuinely enraged this time. “What do you know? Of course it’s true! Sit and listen. I’m trying to tell you something!” His eyes started to glisten with tears of old grief. “I make a few calls, people I know, and I set up a meeting with Levchuck. I knew he’d see me. The kid who made good and the kid who made bad. So we meet on a bench by the Schuylkill River, where there can be no surprises. He’s got three or four of his guys stationed all around, just like in the movies. Touching their weapons through their clothes.

  “Let me tell you, I’m disgusted. I know the guy’s murdered Vera, but he’s blaming Itchy. Saying, ‘Sidney, I can’t control him. For ten bucks, he’d shoot himself!’ I can’t say anything to him, because I’ve got to protect Al. Got to protect my team. I got to get Al and the team out of this alive. So I plead with this goniff to call the whole thing off.

  “I say to him, I say, ‘Don’t you have bigger things to worry about?’ And he says to me, ‘Sidney, what could be bigger than having you come to me on your knees?’ See? That’s what it was all about for him, Ronnie! Making me come to him on my knees begging for Al Newberger’s life.

  “So he purses his lips and decides to change the terms. Doing me a big favor. Irving says the money on the street is swinging the Jersey Reds’ way now, saying we can’t beat ’em in the series. So Irving wants to put his money on us now, the underdogs.”

  “So Al Newberger’s gonna have to bet his life that the Planets take the Reds,” I said.

  “‘I’ll take your boys, Sidney,’ he tells me, pleased with himself. ‘All they’ve got to do is win. Everything’s kosher. You win, I’ll win, we’ll all win.’ What can I do, Ronnie? I’ve got to take the terms. At least Al’s not shaving points now, and he’s in charge of his own destiny. But the whole thing’s making me sick. That’s what I remember saying to Irving. ‘Guys like you make me sick.’

  “And he says, ‘There aren’t any guys like me, Sidney. There’s just me.’”

  “I think I’ve read about this guy Levchuck,” I said.

  “Of course you have! He was a big k’nacker! Listen to me! I take Al aside and tell him what the deal is now: we win the series and everything’s copacetic. But he’s out of control. Irving’s murdered his girlfriend and now he’s supposed to go out and win the championship? To save his own life? Being owned by Levchuck all because he beat up his scrawny schlammer, and now this? He’s out of control and he’s throwing things around the hotel room. I have no doubt he’d kill Irving if given half a chance.

  “I know what I’ve got to do. I ask him where the gun is, the gun he took off Itchy two or three weeks before. He says he’s stashed it up his chimney at his apartment. So I drive him over there and make him give it to me. He hands it over, but first he takes the bullets out. ‘Give me the goddamn bullets,’ I say, because, sure, I figure he’s thinking he’ll get another gun and use the bullets. But Al says, ‘Fogey, I’m just taking them out because I’m afraid you might hurt yourself.’ You can imagine me handling a gun, Ronnie, right? So he hands me the bullets separate and now I feel a little bit safer that Al’s not going to do something stupid. And I tell him that we’ll be all right, that all we’ve gotta do is beat the Reds in seven, which is what we were gonna do anyway.

  “Well,” Sidney said with a long sigh and a sip of water, “to make a long story short, the Reds beat us up and before we know it, we’re down two games to one. Now we’re shitting bricks. If we don’t win three of the next four, I don’t know how I’m gonna keep Al alive. The fourth game’s at the National, so I get every tough kid in the neighborhood to watch the doors and stand around the court, watching the stands, just in case. I tell ’em we’re expecting trouble. The place is all kocked up with people. Every Jew and half the Italians in Philadelphia are there, and none of them knows we’re playing for our lives. Just Al and me.

  “Well, we lose by three in front of our own fans. We’re down three games to one now, with two of the next three in Jersey City, and I’m thinking of asking the league on the q.t. to move the rest of the series to an undisclosed location. I’m thinking of how to get Al out of Philadelphia, maybe out of the country.

  “Then it happens, like manna from heaven. Sometime after midnight on the night of that fourth game, somebody pops Irving Levchuck in the alley behind the candy store where he likes to conduct his business. Ran his operation out of the storeroom in the back. Old Irving takes one right in the punim. Dead. It’s front page in all the papers the next day. No one can figure it out. There’s talk that the Matteo brothers sent someone to do it. That somebody in Atlantic City thought Irving was taking too big a piece of the heroin racket.

  “And, of course, there’s talk that Al Newberger might’ve had something to do with it, because it turns out that Al hasn’t kept his mouth completely shut about his predicament, especially after Irving slit Vera’s throat. After Irving gets popped, it’s not long before the cops know that Al’s got a reason to kill him. Also, thanks to Vera, who knew these guys, that Al probably knows about Irving’s comings and goings.”

  “Wait a second,” I say. I disappeared into my parents’ den, where it took me only a minute to find a Time-Life illustrated history of organized crime, one of those volumes they used to advertise on television; when you signed up, they’d send you one a month. I used to be fascinated by this particular volume and brought it back to the kitchen table, where I quickly found what I was looking for and turned the book around so Sidney could see it.

  It was a wire service photo of Irving Levchuck’s body in a South Philadelphia alley. He lay on his back, limbs akimbo, his hat sitting on its crown a few feet away. In the photo, a dark smudge on his cheek indicated where the bullet had entered. Blood, rendered black by the film, pooled behind his head on the alley’s gravel surface. The caption read: “On April 14, 1938, in a slaying that was never solved, Philadelphia mobster Irving Levchuck was gunned down in an alley near the candy store out of which he ran his various enterprises.”

  “While you were telling me the story, I kept thinking it sounded familiar,” I said.

  Sidney stared at the photo for a long time as he passed his hanky over his face and forehead. “That’s him, all right,” he said. “I haven’t seen that photo in a long time, Ronnie.” He looked up with that sad, hound-dog face in which the eyes still burned bright. “All right. So the cops were all over Al for a day or two, but Al had an alibi. He said he was drinking at the Two Deuces with some of the guys after the game and then they went to Horn and Hardart for eggs and bacon about three in the morning. The guys told the cops Al was never out of their sight until well after Irving had been shot. They had the time of death, you know, because a newsie at the end of the alley heard the shot and went immediately to tell a cop.

  “Now the cops back off finally because none of the guys on the team will break and, frankly, the cops are glad Levchuck’s been rubbed out, maybe even the ones whose pockets he’s been lining. Everyone figures that it was a gangland slaying and they leave it alone. Except that one fact doesn’t quite fit. Irving’s wallet’s gone, assuming he was carrying one, but he’s got a money clip with a couple hundred dollars in it still in his front pocket. That’s like walking around with a few grand today. Why would someone go to the trouble to take his wallet, but not his money?”

  “The killer wanted a souvenir,” I suggested.

  “Souvenirs are for tourists and children. At least the guy could’ve taken Irving’s walking-around dough. Anyway, so Irving’s suddenly out of the way, but who can predict what’s gonna happen to the deal now? Is it still in effect? We figured we could breathe a little easier, but Itchy Weintraub, that crazy bastard, might take the whole thing on himself. Who knows? So as the series goes on, Al doesn’t go nowhere without half a dozen boys from the neighborhood protecting him. But you know
what? Itchy disappears. Without Irving, he shrivels up and dies. Al’s a new man. As I know you know, the Planets win three straight to beat the Reds and take our third championship in four years. And Al scores six points in the last period in the seventh game to win it for us.” With that, Grandpa Sidney leaned back in his chair and took a long swallow of water.

  “Wow, Grandpa, that’s quite a story. You lived through some amazing times.”

  Sidney yawned. He consulted the old Benrus on his wrist. “It’s late.” But he made no move to get up and pad off to the guest room he’d occupied for a few years now.

  “So, Grandpa,” I said, “do you think Al did it?”

  “Naw.”

  “Then it was an incredible stroke of luck that Levchuck was murdered when he was.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  Sidney was rummaging around in one of his pants pockets. He pulled out something wrapped in a white cloth, like a piece of an old undershirt, and said, “I’m an old man, Ronnie. It all goes so fast.”

  “You’re good for ten more years,” I said.

  He pushed the undershirt-wrapped package across the table, keeping his hand on top of it for a moment before leaving it in front of me.

  “It’s for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Open it, Ronnie.”

  It finally occurred to me what it was, and when it did, tears filled my eyes. To this day, I can’t say whether they were tears of pride that he was my grandfather, tears of mourning because he was going to die soon, or tears of fear because of all I would have to do in my lifetime to feel worthy of him. Probably a combination of all three.

  “Go ahead, Ronnie. It won’t bite.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Don’t be a putz. Open it.”

  “No.”

  “You’re telling me you can’t even open it?”

  I opened it. I unfolded the cloth and there it was. A wallet, a brown rectangle of leather, remarkably well preserved.

  “Go ahead, Ronnie. Take a look.”

  Gingerly, I flipped the wallet open and took out the folded papers, one by one, soft with age. A Pennsylvania driver’s license describing Irving Levchuck as five foot ten, with brown eyes. A membership card to something called the Miracle Club. A Blue Cross card signed by Levchuck in faded blue fountain pen ink. A business card that read: “Detective Lieutenant John McGuire, Homicide, Philadelphia Police Department,” with a phone number. A folded piece of vellum on which Levchuck had written a series of initials in blue fountain pen ink followed by phone numbers. A hundred-dollar bill tightly folded into quarters. Four business cards that read: “Irving M. Levchuck, Accountant,” with a phone number.

  A killer’s wallet, given to me by the killer’s killer, who happened to be my grandfather. My father’s father, who loved my father and me, but who also loved his “boys,” the long stream of brilliant Jewish basketball players for whom he would do anything. And had.

  “So that someone should know,” he said.

  “Jesus, Grandpa.” I looked down at the wire photo of Levchuck lying in the South Philadelphia alley, then at the wallet that had been taken from his pocket, then at Sidney. “You?”

  He just looked at me.

  “The gun you took from Al?” I said.

  Sidney didn’t say anything.

  “What do you want me to do with this, Sidney?”

  “That’s your business, Ronnie. Whatever you want.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  Then he coughed lightly into his fist, took a sip of water, and said, “We won that series in seven, Ronnie. We won that last game with a cute little play we had, springing Al loose in the corner coming off a double pick by Gumbiner and Morris. Fine got Al the ball right where he liked it and he turned and let go one of his high-arcing sons-of-bitches and put that game away for us. You should’ve been there.”

  SHOTS

  S. J. Rozan

  I’d been following the Knicks all season, but I didn’t see Damon Rome’s last game. I was down at Shorty’s that December evening, with a beer and a bunch of guys who, like me, could have been drinking at home, where the liquor’s free and the TV tuned to whatever you want. But the liquor’s the excuse, not the reason. And at Shorty’s, the TV over the bar is on so the silent drinkers have something to keep their minds off whatever brought them here alone, and the ones who want to talk to each other have something to talk about.

  It was late in the football season, still plenty of time left for basketball, so the TV was tuned to the Giants and the talk was interceptions, rushing, bad knees and bowl chances. Close to halftime, waiting for a commercial to pass, someone ordered another Rolling Rock and brought up the Knicks, how hot they were, and other guys, working on their own beers, shook their heads over it. Who’d have thought? The Knicks unstoppable heading for the playoffs, a real shot this year at taking it all, in a season when Nathaniel Day played only ten games.

  It was that new kid, Rome, one guy said, nobody liked him but everybody knew it, damn punk, ball hog, head case, but shit, he could play. Knicks should have grabbed him up when he came into the league two years ago, they’d have their rings by now. Grabbed up an asshole like him, what are you, crazy? said someone else. What they’re paying him, they could have gotten three veterans, guys who want to play ball more than they want to see their name in the papers. A third guy said, Ah, Rome’s just the spark plug anyway, he just embarrassed them, they’ve been riding Nathaniel’s coattails for too long and now he’s hurt they’ve all got to step up, play the game for a change. Nathaniel, by him being so good he might actually be bad for the Knicks, anyone ever thought of that?

  But you can’t knock Nathaniel Day in a bar in New York without half a dozen guys telling you you’re full of shit. Day’s the franchise, one guy said, and another said he’ll be back next year and the Knicks can’t go anywhere without him, watch, they’ll fold in the playoffs. The anti-Nathaniel guy downed a handful of peanuts and said, Hell, they been folding in the playoffs for eight years with him, and come on, a guy who’s coached by his sister?

  But the sister thing didn’t fly. Everyone knew it was Nora Day, five years older than Nathaniel and barely three inches shorter, who’d gotten him through Christ the King as an All-American, through Seton Hall as the most draftable center in the college game, through his first, stunning season with the Knicks, when he was unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year. From then on, Nora had sat courtside, with a shrewd eye to what was missing from the Knicks’ game and how she could coach Nathaniel to provide it: rebounding, foul shooting, the fade-away jumper that made him as big a threat from the outside as the inside. She made him indispensable and she made him the franchise; the coaches organized the offense around him and he did the work, pre- and postgame practices, offseason conditioning, weight training, whatever it took, with his sister his personal coach. And, one of the pro-Nathaniel forces said, and you know he wouldn’t have without her pushing him all the time. Natural talent like that, but too nice a guy for his own good, you see it all the time. No killer instinct, that guy. I had that kind of skills, catch me helping other teams’ players back up, after I knocked ’em on their ass. You had any skills at all, another guy said, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now on your ass. Yeah, well, you watch, the guy without skills said, she’ll have him in rehab the minute the cast comes off, he’ll be better than ever next season.

  That was the way of it and everyone knew it: Nathaniel was who he was because Nora was who she was, and Nathaniel was the first to say so. Nathaniel could afford to be a nice guy, easygoing, because Nora was driven. Nora didn’t take vacations, Nora didn’t spend time in the country until the off-season—though Nathaniel had bought her a house, because she liked gardens—and as far as anyone knew, Nora didn’t date. Nora had a full-time, overtime, all-the-time job, and that was Nathaniel.

  The other thing everyone knew was that Nora Day would have been twice th
e player Nathaniel was if there’d been a woman’s pro game when she left college. But there wasn’t and hey, one of the beer drinkers said, that’s how it goes, too bad for her, but guess Nathaniel and the Knicks lucked out, huh?

  The anti-Nathaniel guy just shook his head and drank his beer. Still, someone said, be something if the Knicks finally got their rings in a season with Nathaniel on the bench. Yeah, well, you got that right, someone else said. It’s a damn shame, almost, and a worse shame we were gonna have to be grateful to a trash-talking, cornrowed, skirt-chasing asshole like Damon Rome. And another guy said, Yeah, but he’s our asshole now. Everyone laughed, and the commercial ended, and the Giants snapped the ball.

  I didn’t see the Knicks game and I didn’t hear who won, and I didn’t hear until I hit the diner for breakfast the next morning that after the game was over, after the fans had all filed out and the players had left and the Garden was deserted and silent, someone who was not grateful had stepped in front of Damon Rome on an empty New York street and put a bullet through Damon Rome’s heart.

  I read about it in the papers and talked about it with the other guys at the diner counter as I drank my coffee, with the waitress as I ordered eggs and, as I paid my check at the register, with the owner, a Greek who’d first learned English from baseball radio broadcasts forty years ago. I talked about it, but I didn’t get into it until, on the street on my way home, my cell phone rang.

  “Smith.” I stopped in the cold, clear light, moved closer to a building to get out of the way.

  “Tony Manelli, man. How you doing?”

  It had been maybe a year since I’d heard from Tony Manelli, longer since I’d seen him, but that didn’t mean anything. Young, sharply muscled, an ex-marine, Tony had worked for me years back. He was working investigation because he needed the state license, but his goal was protection; I’d worked both and gave him what help I could. In the years since, our paths sometimes crossed, more often didn’t, but the few times I’d needed someone to fill out a security detail I’d hired Tony and had no reason to complain.