Sam's Legacy

by Jay Neugeboren

  His hands in his jacket pockets, he walked along Nostrand Avenue. Two women at the corner were talking with Nate, one of the local runners, giving him their numbers. The guy stood there every day until two o’clock, not making believe he was doing anything but what he was doing—he never wrote any of the numbers down and Sam thought that he would have liked to have played cards with him sometime. It interested him—not the numbers themselves, because he figured you could get better odds just throwing darts at a board—but the organization behind it all. People didn’t know about these things—from the drops to the pick-up men to the controllers to the central pick-up locations to what was called the bank, with the bank supervisors and the lieutenants, and at the top, the big man, the bank owner. With all the security precautions, the alternate pick-ups, the signals when raids were coming, the payoffs to the cops, to the winners—it was, Sam thought, like its own government.

  Harry Gross had been paying over one million dollars a year in protection money when they’d caught him. That told you a lot. Now, with the bookies pretty much closed down on off-track betting, they’d thought of new angles: a night number from the Yonkers track, a bolito on the first or last two digits, a payoff on the weekly lottery from Puerto Rico for the Puerto Ricans, and on the treasury reports from Italy for the Italians. Sam laughed. They showed you something too, with the business cards their banks gave out—“Not Responsible for Arrested Work” printed on them, meaning there would be no payoffs on numbers seized in a raid. Still, the odds were six hundred to one against you in pure arithmetic—and that didn’t take into account that your chances didn’t improve from one day to the next just because your number hadn’t come in the day before. Sure. For a lark once in a while, maybe you took a chance and threw away a dollar—on your birthday or some other lucky time—but to stick with it, day after day, that took brains.

  He gave them credit, though: nobody could know how many streams they had feeding into their runners and banks and drops. That took control. At the corner of Church Avenue, on his side of the street, Sam entered the candy store. At the soda fountain all seats were taken. He nodded to Steve, the owner, behind the counter.

  “How’s tricks, Sam?”

  “Can’t complain,” Sam said.

  He heard two black girls talking about a test they were studying for, in trigonometry. He stepped around the paperback book racks and slid into a phone booth. He smiled, remembering Flo’s face—her reaction to the story about his grandfather. Maybe he should try to get Ben to tell some stories about the old guy before he left: what his life had been like in Europe, the ideas he’d had on things…. What he admired most—he had to swallow when he imagined the entire thing—was Flo’s courage in having had the kids anyway, knowing by then that her husband had what he had, and knowing what the chances of inheriting the disease were. He pictured her with a full belly, her husband—faceless, Flo kept no photos—hobbling beside her. He saw her in the hospital, when the nurse handed her the baby in a soft white blanket, and he saw tears running down Flo’s cheeks. The kid had been normal for the first two years, and then he’d begun having just a little bit of trouble, Flo said, when he tried to stand up. It was noticeable. The muscles in the calves were tight, she’d probably had a physical therapist come in and massage them, but when it started that young, there wasn’t much hope. Guys like her husband—if it came when they were already an adult—they had a fifty-fifty chance to live out their lives.

  And then—Sam wanted to drive his fist through the wall of the phone booth—she’d tried again: she’d had a girl the second time. Sam wondered—how could he ask?—if the girl had come before or after the son had died. Sam imagined Flo in the hospital again, the huge belly under a sheet. The choice of kings—he’d heard that somewhere: what they called it when you were lucky enough to have one boy and one girl, instead of two or three of the same. Sure. Flo had had the choice of kings. That, he thought, lifting the receiver from its hook, was really rich.

  A man’s voice answered. “Yes?”

  “This is Mr. Benjamin here,” Sam said, giving his code name.

  “Yes, Mr. Benjamin. This is Mr. Sabatini—what can I do for you today?”

  “You can pay somebody to throw a game for the Knicks so I can bet them again.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Sabatini said, chuckling. “I like that. We all have to keep up our sense of humor in times like these. It’s bad times, sweetheart.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Sam said.

  “What can I do for you?” Mr. Sabatini asked.

  “Look, I’ll take the Bucks tonight. The papers said six and a half points over the Hawks.”

  “No,” Mr. Sabatini said. “Here. I’m checking. I can only give you four and a half.”

  “I’ll take it anyway, for two singles.”

  “Good. A regular customer like you—with the drought on our own beloved Knickerbockers—I’d like to see—” Sam heard the man breathing, the slight wheeze he always recognized. Sam saw his grandfather’s face, saw him asleep in the corner of the old green sofa, on Linden Boulevard, his legs dangling above the carpet. “Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for a good customer like yourself—with the Knicks, I’d be willing to take something modest if, instead of points, you’ll take one-to-two odds. That’s the best we can do for you here at the Bank of Israel—”

  Sam almost spat into the phone. “One to two!” He exhaled, feeling warm, and snapped on the ventilator fan. “You got the wrong baby. You’re out of—”

  “Shh, shh. Don’t get upset, sweetheart. It was only a suggestion. You’re the one who—” He stopped suddenly, became businesslike. “We’re talking too long. We shouldn’t support the telephone company. So. The Bank of Israel bids you shalom.”

  Yeah, Sam thought, hanging up: guns for the Arabs, sneakers for the Jews. He shook his head to clear it, pulled the folding door toward him, checked the coin return box, but there was nothing there. The old schoolyard cry—whatever it had meant, Sam liked it: guns for the Arabs, sneakers for the Jews.

  He sat at the counter, in the middle. “I’ll take a toasted English,” he said to Steve, “and a glass of milk.”

  Steve nodded. Sam folded his hands on the counter, like a schoolboy, and wondered what he could do: Ben didn’t know it, but Sam’s reserve was slipping away fast, even with the small amount he needed to live on: rent, chipping in for food, carfare, a haircut once a month, a movie now and then, a snack here and there. He didn’t need much. If Ben didn’t move his ass out soon, though, he’d have to take off himself. Mooning around, trying to scrounge up a card game, waiting for Sabatini, betting on things he had no business going near… Sabatini had let him have credit the week before, sure, but Sam knew where that led. He’d seen what they did to guys who didn’t pay off, he knew how they’d try to suck you into working your debt off—running bets, trying to pick up some of your own clients, giving half of everything to the big man, plus interest. But this waiting around for Ben to leave, for Andy to die, for a game, for action on the Knicks—for something; he was leaving himself wide open this way, he knew—a sitting duck—and it was time to do something about it.

  Sure. You’re a sitting duck, Sam Berman Junior, he repeated, and again he took the words literally: he saw himself in the middle of a pond, flapping arms that were heavy with feathers, squawking in pain because his mouth and nose had been pressed together into a hard flat beak.

  “How do you like the way the Knicks are going?” Steve offered, bringing Sam his muffin.

  Sam spread grape jelly on one half. “Yeah,” he said. “They’ll go all the way this year—I said so before the season started.”

  “That’s right,” Steve said. “I remember.” He left, served some other customers. Sam looked straight ahead. Steve returned and Sam focused his eyes on Steve’s white apron. “Listen,” Steve said, leaning closer, “you must be sitting pretty, huh, Sam? I mean—”

  Sam wiped the moustache of milk from his upper lip. “Something’s up,
” he said. “The bank is closed. Sabatini won’t touch the Knicks with a ten-foot pole.”

  “Oh yeah?” Steve said, surprised. “I hadn’t heard.”

  “That’s the size of it,” Sam said. He wanted to relax. “How’s your old man doing?” he offered.

  “Pretty good,” Steve said. Steve’s father, Mr. Krichmar, who had had the store before Steve—when Sam had been growing up and he and Steve had been going to school together—had had his heart attack in the store, while (the way the story had been told) making an egg salad sandwich. “He likes it there—they got everything he needs, and the weather, it’s good for his heart.”

  “California, right?”

  “No, Florida—West Palm Beach—he bought into a cooperative—a condominium they call it. He and my old lady, they like it swell. He’ll live till a hundred.”

  Sam started on his second piece of toasted English. “Did I tell you? My old man, he’s thinking of leaving too—to one of those same places, only in California. A senior citizen city they call it.”

  “It makes sense,” Steve said, collecting some glasses and sloshing them up and down on the soapy brushes. Sam always liked to watch the way Steve worked. He was no genius, sure, but still—it took a certain kind of talent to keep track of all the things you had to keep track of in a store like this: the counter and ordering all the supplies in advance and remembering when the eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches were done; and the junk—the paperbacks and magazines and school supplies and greeting cards and toys and cigarettes and candy…“Me and Barbara, when the time comes—that’s what we plan to do.” He looked left and right. “Maybe get out before even, if you know what I mean—the way things are—well, changing…”

  “I been to Florida,” Sam said. “It’s nice there.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “For spring training, at Vero Beach—me and Dutch went—oh maybe twelve-thirteen years ago.” Sam drank the last of his milk. “Sure. They got a lot to offer you there. We knew some of the players too. When the Dodgers were still there, Labine—he used to leave passes for us at the box office during the week sometimes. Not weekends. But during the week.”

  “I remember,” Steve said. “Labine, he was terrific.”

  Sam gestured with his index finger. “He had a break here—in the first digit, you know? That’s what did the trick—it made all his stuff sink down and away, naturally.”

  “They always had good relief pitchers,” Steve said. “Hugh Casey, Clyde King, and then Joe Black, Larry Sherry, Eddie Roebuck…” Sam watched Steve spread pieces of roast beef on rye bread. He was, unlike his father, generous with the meat. “Hey listen, when you were there—in Florida—you play the horses?”

  “Oh sure,” Sam said, and smiled. “You know me.”

  “Be back in a minute.” Steve smiled, and the smile changed something in Sam, made him feel good again. What did it cost him, since he had the time, to come in like this, pass the time of day with an old—he couldn’t call him a real friend—but a guy he knew. It meant something, just seeing a guy regularly after so many years, even if you weren’t asshole buddies. Sam thought of Ben and Tidewater: he remembered when, before they’d moved into the apartment over the store, Sam had seen them meet for the first time after all those years—the looks of disbelief on their faces, the way they’d smiled, as if it was the happiest moment of their lives. They had embraced, on the sidewalk in front of the store, Tidewater lifting Ben up, and Sam had to laugh, remembering how Ben’s feet had dangled above the pavement. Sure, Sam thought, with the way things were, in Steve’s own words, changing, it must pick him up for me to come in here. All the years they’d known one another—they counted for something.

  The annoyance he’d felt after he’d told Flo the story was now gone. Miami Beach, the Keys, Hialeah, the dogs, jai alai, all the old Jews baking their asses under the sun—Pioneer Estates would be the same. California and Florida, Sam thought, if you switched them around one night when nobody was looking, who’d know the difference?

  To his right, somebody sat down. Steve’s father had been held up twice, conked on the head once, but Steve hadn’t had his initiation yet. Well. That would come too.

  “How’ve you been feeling, Sam?”

  Sam’s eyes shifted, took him in. The guy was smiling at him from bloodshot eyes. Sam felt something grip his heart, but he tried to show nothing. “I ain’t interested,” he said. Was that what it had been like with Stallworth, Sam wondered—only more severe? As if a great hand had reached down, inside his chest, and grabbed his heart in its fist.

  The guy rested his elbows on the counter. “Relax. I’m not selling that stuff anymore,” he said. His voice was tired. “You don’t have to worry.” He looked down the counter. “A cup of coffee here, Steve—”

  “Coming up.”

  “How’ve you been feeling, Sam?” the guy asked again. There was nothing oily or holy about him now, in the daylight; sure—just another deadbeat, Sam figured. Like the guys in his last poker game. “Listen, that night—you just forget about it, all right? I go through that kind of thing every now and then and you have to learn to ignore it.” The guy laughed. “Basically, I’m just a good backsliding country boy come to the big city….”

  “I’ll see you around,” Sam said to Steve, putting two quarters down on the counter, next to his plate, and standing up.

  The guy’s hand was on his sleeve. “How do you like our boy Stallworth?” he asked. His eyes started to shine again, Sam saw, even behind the bleariness, inside the dark circles. “I mean—you’re doing all right, aren’t you? You’re getting your share—right, brother?”

  Sam yanked his arm away with such force that his elbow, swinging back from the man’s grip, crashed into a rack behind him. Greeting cards floated to the floor. “I’ll get them,” he said in Steve’s direction, and felt himself blush. “I don’t know what your game is, and I don’t care,” Sam hissed, bending over. “But you stay out of my—my life.” He put the cards back on the rack, restrained his right hand from reaching into the pocket, from showing the knife.

  “Sure, whatever you say, Sam,” the man said softly, as Steve brought him his cup of coffee. “Everybody has his periods, right? I know how it is—I just saw you in here so I thought I’d—” He put his hand out, leaning from his stool, balancing himself by holding onto the counter with his left hand. “No hard feelings, okay? I won’t pull…” Sam walked away, not looking back. “No hard feelings,” the guy repeated.

  Sam turned, glared, and, unable to stop himself—how he hated his lack of control—he said, in a voice he hoped afterward had not, in the general chattering, been noticed by anybody else, “And lay off with that Christ bit, hear? For your information, I’m a Jew.”

  Sure, he thought outside, in the air: guns for the Arabs, sneakers for the Jews. He stalked across Nostrand Avenue, heading toward Flatbush, his head burning. The two of them, his Bible man and Tidewater, they should go live in the desert together. He saw the guy’s pasty face under an Arab headdress, and the headdress made him see his father, in the white and black talis…he wondered what they’d looked like as boys, one tall and thin, the other short and stocky. He walked faster, passing the Bel-Air supermarket, trying to think of the depressions his feet made in the sidewalk, trying to stop the chain of pictures that was starting to march across the screen inside his head. He heard the sound of money jingling. Shit, he thought to himself, it was too late to cross over. He should have remembered. In front of the Granada Theater, rolling himself into Sam’s path on a wooden dolly, was another one of the regulars—the new regulars, since the neighborhood had started changing. Sam tossed a dime into the guy’s cup without looking into his face. The dog yipped at Sam, its tail wagging furiously. He suspected that they’d pinned the guy’s legs up in some way, to his ass, the way they did to actors in the movies when they played one-legged soldiers returning home—but the dog was real enough, rocking back and forth on its belly like a seal, pulled forward on its own
small dolly by a rope attached to its owner’s set of wheels. The guy pushed off, shoving his hand—his knuckles—against the sidewalk, propelling himself back under the arcade. Had the dog been born that way? Or—anything was possible—in the hope that it was just what his act needed, had the guy… Christ! he thought. You are really heading for deep waters, thinking up that kind of picture.

  Still, he had the feeling things were happening on purpose somehow. Those were the words which occurred to him. Sure. If he’d crossed over, he bet to himself, the guy probably would have been waiting for him in another spot anyway. Sam knew something about the way streaks worked, after all, and it wasn’t luck—at least not in the way most guys used that word—which made the difference.

  4

  “Who’s there?” Sam asked.

  “Mason Tidewater.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Just a second. He placed the sheets of paper on which he’d been figuring things inside the Post, put the Post back in the rack. The ideal profession—that was really rich. His grandfather had, from the grave, become a joker too.

  Sam opened the door. Tidewater stood there, a mop in one hand, a manila envelope in the other, a bucket next to him on the floor. Muriel looked at the two of them from between two posts of the balcony which separated the landing from the stairwell. “Your father is downstairs at the moment, but I carry my—the tools of my trade, as it were—as a precaution.” He licked his narrow lips. His tongue was orange. “I’d like to have a word with you. I asked Ben to tell you—”