The Hoods

by Grey, Harry

  “With what book?” Cockeye chaffed, “Horatio Alger's From Rags to Riches or Diamond Dick?'

  I smiled. “That's for you, Cockeye. The Professor graduated me out of that class years ago.”

  I took a cab to my rooms at the Fortune Hotel. On the way I stopped at a newsstand and picked up all the late papers. I looked through them to see if there was anything in about the heist. There was nothing. Not even a line. I was disappointed. Vaguely I wondered about it. There should have been a story about it.

  I was tired. I took a shower and lay in bed thinking about John's wife. An unbelievable character if there ever was one. I wondered what made her that way? Why was she so abnormal sexually? Particularly under such circumstances. Boy oh boy, Peggy was a nymphomaniac, but this one—Jesus—she makes Peggy look like a cloistered nun. I wonder if it's something mental or something physical? Evidently, she gets into that state only when she sees somebody getting beaten, or when she herself gets smacked around. The normal person's reaction to an incident like that would be fear or pain. She registers a terrific sex desire. Yeh, I'll bet it's a short circuit, wires crossed somewhere in her nerve reaction set-up.

  I remembered I had a few books somewhere on sex. I looked through the closet where I had all sorts of books stacked away. After awhile I found them, four volumes, written by H. Ellis, and entitled Studies in the Psychology of Sex. I turned the pages of one volume. I couldn't concentrate too well on what I was reading. As clearly as I could make it out, she was a combination of two perversions: a Sadist, one who gets gratification by committing cruelty to her sex partner, and a Masochist, one who has satisfaction only when she is beaten. According to the book she was both of them. She was a sadomasochist. I had learned something new.

  Books—goddamn, they are marvelous—you can get any kind of knowledge out of a book on any subject, right at your finger tips. No matter what kind you read, even those purely for entertainment, you are bound to learn something. A book has been written on every subject, every phase of life. Yeh, I wonder if anybody will ever write an authentic book about this gangster era, this fabulous period? Something that actually happened, like an army general or a private who writes a first-hand story of the battles he fought in. Wouldn't it be something if a guy like the boss, Frank, kept his memoirs like some generals or big shots in other fields? If his exploits could be published, they would be so fantastic and sensational, they would be unbelievable. Or for that matter I wondered how the things we do would sound in print? Boy, am I lying here thinking like a shmuck, yeh a shmuck with ear laps yet. How can a guy write about the heist we did today without winding up in jail? Or who would believe it happened like that? Then again, people read about such things every day in their newspapers. They know such things take place. But how would it sound actually written by a participant? Yeh, maybe a guy like me, Noodles, creating a literary sensation. Yeh, why not? Plenty of romantic stories have been written about the old time men of violence, men like Jesse James, the Younger brothers, Quantrell and his guerrillas, yeh, and the buccaneers, Captain Kidd, Drake, Hawkins, Morgan and the others. Stories have been written about all of them, stories mellowed by time into swashbuckling, heroic adventures. Instead of the true stories of rape, of torture, of plunder, and of the skinning of victims alive, our exploits should appear as harmless peccadilloes by comparison. Besides, those old time stories were secondhand whereas I could give a first-hand account of what happened. Why not be mob historian? Why not?

  I laughed to myself. The idea seemed too ridiculous. How could I write about our illegal doings without implicating Max, Pat, Cockeye and everybody else in the Combination? Just the same, the idea intrigued me. I lay back thinking.

  Maybe when the whole story finally comes out in the papers, after a good many years have elapsed, twenty, thirty. I'd better forget it, it's too silly an idea. I'd have to jot things down as they took place. Wouldn't it be something if the cops or somebody got hold of them? Maybe if I put them down in a way that could be understood only by me? Maybe. But if I wrote it as we really acted, thought and spoke, it would be pretty shocking and vulgar to the ordinary guy. What the hell. I could tone it down so that it wouldn't grate the fastidious. But how could I? It wouldn't be and it wouldn't sound authentic. How would some of the gags and the pungent East Side gutter expressions we use sound? Pretty vulgar, I guess. But what the hell, after awhile millions of socialites use the same expressions in their every day speech. We originate them on the East Side, then they use them. I think I'll try it. After all, it would be fun anyway, me, Noodles the shiv from Delancey Street, writing a scholarly, lucid, literary piece. Let's see, what shall I call it? How about Boswell's Life of Noodles? Or like Pepys, I'll name it Noodles' Diary. Everybody writes books, why shouldn't I? Let's see, how shall I treat it? As a factual, biographical piece? Nah, no good. The actual facts would land me and everybody else in jail. I'll treat it as escapist stuff, omitting time and slightly camouflaging the place. That's it. I'll sort of blend factual happenings into fiction. After I write it, I guess I'd better keep it for twenty years or so. By that time probably the alert newspapers will finally get wind of this fantastic Combine, and I won't really be spilling the beans. After that many years would the statute of limitations apply? Or does it only pertain to civil matters? I'll get myself a law book at Brentano's and look it up.

  I lay back in bed thinking of the incidents that would be interesting enough to write about.

  Let's see, that incident with Capone and his Chi organization would be something to mention. They thought they were sufficiently powerful, and they stepped out of line. They had foolish ideas that they didn't have to take orders, but they learned differently fast enough. We taught them. Yeh, Capone discovered the only way he could save himself from being knocked off was to get himself arrested on a gun-carrying charge. Luckily for him his emissaries squared things with the Combination in time; even jail was not a safe sanctuary for that big scar-faced blubberhead. Then I could go into how we handled the booze racket. Prohibition? Some horseshit. Booze flowed in from all sides. The Combine chartered ships that were kept anchored outside the three-mile limit, and special speedboats were bought to run the booze in from the ships. Ocean-going liners were docked in isolated Long Island spots, and I could show how the Combine always works smoothly and in cahoots with local police departments all along the line. And about these old East Side docks, how the booze came down from Canada in the hollows of big rolls of paper used in the newspaper industry, and how the trucks rolled right on to the piers and loaded whiskey with the United States Custom Inspectors and New York police on guard. I guess nobody would believe how the trucks came across the border from Canada—brazen as hell—and dropped off their cargo at the distributing centers in Detroit and Plattsburg. From those points it was shipped to all parts of the country. I could go into detail on how we went along these truck routes, greasing the palms of the Feds and the Sheriffs, and I could tell about the hi-jacking by local, small-time hoodlums who were ignorant of whom they were bucking. We were sent on educational tours to teach these ignorant yokels lessons in deportment.

  I couldn't fall asleep. I kept on thinking of one incident after another to put into the book. I got off the bed, grabbed a pencil, and began jotting them down.

  First I'd tell about the early days of the Combination: how we kept busy picking up loose ends here and there in different parts of the country; how we traveled to independent mobs who operated their own rackets throughout the country. And what we did to them. If they grew big and their income was very large, we stepped in and declared them outlaws. They were made to toe the mark by kicking in most of their revenues, or we took them over completely. On rare occasions the independents, or outlaws, as we called them, defied the Combine, and we put them out of action in the usual way.

  I jotted down notes on the slot machine racket. How the machines were wide open in “speaks,” night-clubs, drug stores, candy stores. I put down that the number of machines operating in the New
York area ran well over five thousand. “Horse-book” was organized and put under a central head.

  I mentioned the luxurious gambling houses that were opened all over the country, and how we muscled in on the dog tracks.

  I made notes on how the Combination was acquiring immense riches and power, and how it controlled local governments by bribery of officials, through political clubs and stolen elections.

  I pictured all the romantic excitement of this era and how we were looked upon with ridiculous admiration, respect and fear. We were not like the old-time illiterates, the “dese, dose and dem guys,” the Monk Eastmans, Kid Twists, Kid Droppers, Spanish, Lefty Lou, Gyp the Blood, type of hood.

  I wrote about the speakeasies we took over and kept for ourselves, particularly the place we hang out in, the place we call “Fat Moe's.” How we brazenly flaunted all authority in its operation by keeping the front door always open to anybody who was anybody and could afford our steep prices. And how we had the best imported and domestic liquors in town.

  I pictured the people who patronized the front bar: business men, police officials, politicians, prohibition agents, all the creme de la creme of the East Side. I mentioned how the front bar was out of bounds for the petty thieves, wise guys and all women, regardless of their morals. I explained how our connection and our terrific pay-offs in whiskey and money made the place a real sanctuary. I described the sparseness of furnishings: how the large room was set up with a big heavy table and an accumulation of old comfortable leather armchairs. Its general appearance was of cold, businesslike grimness. I wrote how the back room led into a dark side alley, hemmed in by tenement buildings. In the hot summertime it kept the sun away, and made it dark and dampish cool. We consumed gallons of good cold beer to help us through the hot season. Against the freezing wintertime we had the pounding, hissing steam radiators and our double hookers of good whiskey to keep us comfortable.

  We used this back room as a combination office, castle and amusement center. I mentioned the heavy steel doors and the steel shuttered windows, and the three secret exits which we never had occasion to use. I wrote how we used the room as a gymnasium. At times we would strip to our shorts, take the padded mat out of the closet, spread it out on the floor and put gloves on as in the old days in the soup school gym. We would spar or wrestle, especially with holds and blows that were foul in the professional arena. I mentioned the heavy punching bag filled with sand, hanging in one corner which all of us pounded. Max seemed to enjoy practising with a contraption that he always had up his sleeve: a thin, twenty-two calibre revolver that he had attached to a long steel spring. It was tied to the upper part of his arm. He would remove the bullets, and, for hours, from all sorts of positions and angles, he would practise snapping his arm out. He would pull the trigger at the same time that the small gat would spring into the palm of his hand. He had the trick down pat, and was lightning fast. Cockeye, Patsy and I would all stand around him with our Roscoes in our holsters, bullets removed. He would shout, “Go.” Before we could put our hands to our guns for the draw, he had his twenty-two aimed at us, clicked three times, and he would laugh, “You're all dead.”

  I reminisced about the day I fooled him as he was practising with the three of us. I had my hands in my pants pocket. He said, “Go.” My hand whizzed out of my pocket with the closed knife. I held it to his body and said, “You're dead meat. You got ten inches of steel in your belly, Max.” A look of incredulity and respect came over his face. He slapped me on the back and said, “That's a good gimmick, Noodles. Keep practising it. You're getting fast as hell with the shiv.”

  I told about the days when we just lounged around while Cockeye softly played the harmonica and the rest of us dozed off on a couple of chairs. Other days we drank double hookers and played all sorts of card games.

  As the notes grew, it became obvious that we were contented together, attuned to each others' personalities from long years of association. Rarely was there any conflict among us.

  I put down on paper in chronological order how we took “Fat Moe's" away from a character called Benny the Bum. The trouble with Benny was that he was a bum without character. He cheated, and bought his whiskey and beer from illegitimate sources. I remember we warned him time and again to get his supplies from our dealers, but he persisted in buying from dealers of ill-repute. I remember how plenty of his dipsomania clientele went blind from his lousy wood alcohol, how here and there some dropped dead in the East Side gutters. And there was his wife, Fanny, the little fat Fanny who lived on the same floor as I did years ago. I laughed when I remembered the toilet incidents with her. And I described her wedding to Benny the Bum. I showed how she was too good for him. He broke her nose finally and deserted her for an eighteen-year-old chippy. We lost our patience with Benny and permanently “ostracized” him from society. Yeh, we sure ostracized him: we took him for a trip into the wilds of the “Borscht Country.”

  I gave a detailed description of the ride back from that hundred mile spot on Route 17. Patsy was driving, and Cockeye felt musical. He tapped his harmonica with the familiar gesture on his palm, and with a dreamy slowness began an unfamiliar tune. Maxie looked curiously at him for a moment and asked, “What are you playing, Cockeye?”

  Cockeye shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don't know. Just playing the way I feel. I guess it's some tune that's running through my mind.”

  Patsy said sarcastically, “A second Irving Berlin, maybe?”

  Cockeye ignored the remark and kept on playing. He made it sound like an organ playing a Bach Cantata. It sounded religious. He played on and on, mile after mile, and the sorrowful dirge seeped into us.

  I remembered what flashed through my mind. I looked at Maxie. I could sense that the same idea had entered our minds simultaneously.

  “Cockeye is putting the ride of Benny the Bum into music. That's something, hey, Max?” I said.

  Maxie bent over, half kidding, and whispered to me, “You're pretty good with the words, Noodles. See what you can do with it.”

  I took out a pencil and my little black account book. I felt saturated with the melancholy tune. Little by little I started putting down words I thought suited the melody. By the time I had finished, I could actually taste the music, it was that familiar. I handed the notebook to Maxie and kidded him by saying, “Try out my scholarly lyrics.”

  In a low voice, Maxie sang the words I had written to the tune of Cockeye's playing.

  “Oncet there was a bum named Benny,

  Scruples he did not have much of any,

  One beautiful fourth of July weekend,

  We decided justice we would him rend.

  In the car, we took him for an airing,

  Through the land of borscht and herring.

  'Stop. This is the spot.' 'What for?' asked Benny.

  'To pick flowers,' we answered, 'for here, there are many.'

  We did what we did, then homeward bound.

  We looked and looked; Benny the bum was nowheres around.

  'Does anybody know the fate that befell my poor Benny?'

  Asked his happy and laughing widow, Fenny.”

  I don't know why but the recollection of the song and the whole macabre episode started me off into spasms of giggling. I stopped writing and went to bed. I was tired but not sleepy.

  I tossed around in bed trying to forget the book. I began to think of John's wife. Thoughts of her kept me awake, aroused my excitement. What the hell is the matter with me? To keep thinking of that flat-chested piece? Boy, am I getting hot just thinking of her. Lately I get excited at the slightest stimulus. What the hell? Am I going to lie here and do six times six?

  I picked up the phone, and told the hotel operator I wanted to talk to Sweeny.

  “Yell, Sweeny, the house dick,” I repeated.

  He got on the wire.

  I said, “I am in the mood, Sweeny. You got something nice sitting around the lobby, something softie, not flat-chested?”

&nbs
p; He chuckled. “Yeh, plenty floating around. How many you want? Blonde or brunette?”

  I laughed. “I'll leave it to you. Anything that's clean and pretty suits me.

  Two minutes later she came in. I lay in bed watching her get undressed.

  She was a pretty little thing. Her undergarments were fresh and clean. She crept under the covers.

  She wriggled close to me and whispered in my ear, “I need my room rent.” She had a nice apologetic smile when she said it.

  “You a chorus girl out of work?” I asked.

  “Yes, how did you know, have you seen me in a show?” she asked.

  “No, but somehow I guessed it by your general appearance.”

  She smiled and sighed, “Gee, you're a smart man. It's tough to get a job these days.”

  I said, “Relax, honey, you'll get more than a month's rent. Besides being a smart feller I am the patron saint of all pretty, unemployed chorus girls.”

  “You're a cute one,” she said with a grin.

  “For that remark you get an extra five,” I said.

  She wriggled closer and whispered, “I love you, you great, big, handsome, cute, smart, wonderful patron saint of unemployed chorus girls.”

  We both laughed hilariously. We were like old friends. I put the light out. She was round, soft, full chested and hot.

  CHAPTER 13

  Next day there didn't seem to be anything on the agenda, so we started right in on our Greek rummy. We played for two hours.

  Moe came in and said, “Moishe the contractor is outside. Wants to see you guys. He seems to be in trouble. Boy, it looks like he got some going over.”

  “Moishe?” Max asked doubtfully. “Is he the guy that has a small shop on Thirtieth Street?”

  “Yeh, that's the guy,” I answered. I remembered him because he lived next house to ours on Delancey Street.

  Moishe came in. He certainly looked like he had gotten bounced around all right. He had a bandage around his head and a purple mouse hung on his right eye. His lips were so puffed, he could hardly talk.