The Hoods

by Grey, Harry

  “He's a big bastard, isn't he? The lousy pimp, he looks scared to death. Wait. I'll really scare him.”

  He motioned to me. I took his feet, Max took his arms and we threw him into a cheap pine coffin. We fastened the cover down.

  Max laughed. “First, let him come to in that box.”

  Max took his coat off, pulled a large, expensive, plush-padded coffin out. “Yep, I may as well relax a bit until the bum comes around.” He eased himself into it.

  Cockeye said, “You look nice, Maxie.”

  “Thanks,” Maxie said. “Help yourselves.”

  He waved to the coffins scattered around the room. “Let's scare the bastard good.”

  We each lay down in a coffin in a semi-circle around the pine coffin in which the guy was lying. The lights were dim and restful. It seemed to take a long time. I thought I heard Cockeye snore. I began thinking of the show we had at Peggy's. It was real solid entertainment, better than a Broadway show. I was thinking of one of the redheads in Peggy's joint, the one with the wondrous Elgin movement. I imagined she came floating closer and closer to me. I was beginning to feel drowsy in a sort of half sleep like when we kicked the gong around at the Chinaman's.

  Then I heard a muffled sound. I sat up. We all sat up in our coffins. Sounds were coming out of the covered coffin in the center of the room. We sat in the dim light, watching and listening to the sobs and moaning noises. He tried to push the cover off the coffin. We could hear him straining and pushing.

  Finally, the cover shot open with a bang. His head appeared. I have seen frightened people in my day, but he wasn't frightened, he was terrified. His eyes were almost out of their sockets in dread. He turned slowly, and looked at us sitting in our coffins. We stared back at him, deadpan.

  He whispered in fear, “Who are you? Where am I? Dead?”

  We just stared at him. He started to tremble. He stared a good five minutes at Maxie.

  He stuttered, “I recognize you—I heard about you,” and pointed at Max. “You're Big Maxie, the undertaker, who, they say, buries people alive.”

  His hand dropped limp, his mouth stayed open, but no sounds came out. He stared in horror. Boy, was he a crumb bum, I thought. Where the hell did he get that story?

  Maxie stood up slowly, walked closer, and in a menacing, slow, staccato said, “I bury people alive is right.”

  He stared into the guy's eyes. “I will nail down your coffin, then I will lower it down in the grave.”

  Maxie stopped. A heavy stillness took hold of the funeral parlor like a cemetery at midnight. It reminded me of some kind of a seance. I felt psychic. I swear I could sense the guy's thoughts and his extreme terror.

  Maxie continued in a spectral tone. “I will lower your coffin slowly. The box will reach bottom. We will shovel the dirt back in the hole with you at the bottom.”

  The guy was staring at Max in a trance.

  “Then you will be all covered. The worms will start creeping in. You will find it hard to breathe. You will suffocate,” Maxie hissed dramatically.

  I was just about to get out of my box and compliment Max on his dramatic ability when I saw the guy tremble violently. His head jerked. A rattling, gurgling sound came chokingly out of his mouth. You could see death in his staring eyes. His eyeballs turned up the way they do in a fit. A chalky pallor stole slowly over his face. He dropped back into the coffin with a thud.

  Maxie chuckled, “Hey, I'm some actor, ain't I? Okay. When the pimp comes to, give him a sawbuck and throw him out. He learned his lesson, I hope.”

  We waited a few minutes. Cockeye went over to the guy and shook turn. “Yup for your maht, you yellow bastard. Get up.”

  Cockeye turned around to us and remarked, “The bum looks like he's got thrombosis of the blowhole.”

  Maxie gestured to the fire pail. Cockeye dumped it on his face. Patsy leaned over and shook him.

  “Come on, get up,” he snarled.

  Cockeye kept shaking him. Maxie walked over to the coffin, felt his left side and said, “I think the bastard's dead. Look at him, will you, Noodles?”

  I bent down, raised his eyelids; I felt his pulse. I said, “The guy is dead.”

  “Goddamn,” Maxie said angrily.

  He was annoyed at the guy for dying on us.

  “Now we got to go to the trouble of burying him.”

  Cockeye said, “Hey, Max, you don't have to pack a rod any more. You can go around scaring people to death.”

  Maxie looked a little peeved at Cockeye's ribbing. “If I had that talent, maybe I'd try it on you some day. Go through the guy's pockets and see who he is. Just for the hell of it.”

  Cockeye went through the dead man's pockets. He found some keys, a pen knife, and a wallet. In the wallet there was about fifty bucks in small bills, a chauffeur's license with his picture on it. The name on the license was Andrew Moore. In the side pocket was a picture of a bride and groom, and the bride was the whore who had let him into Peggy's place.

  Maxie looked at the picture. “Not a bad looking guy. They were a queer married couple all right.”

  He took some papers out of an inner compartment of the wallet. A folded newspaper clipping fell to the floor. He let it lie there and began to scrutinize a small union book that had also been in the wallet.

  “What do you know? This guy was a sandhog. A union man, paid up in his dues. Too bad. I wonder how they fell into this kinda life together and what made this guy heist Peggy's so often?”

  Patsy replied, “They must have liked the whore house atmosphere.”

  Cockeye giggled.

  Maxie stooped and picked up the newspaper clipping. He read it. “Hey, Noodles, this explains why the guy scared so easy.”

  He read it aloud to us. It was about a tunnel cave-in six months before. One man was trapped for two days. He was given up for dead. The second day they finally dug him up, more dead than alive. The victim's name was Andrew Moore.

  Maxie addressed the dead guy in the coffin.

  “Too bad, kid, you got a tough break.”

  Maxie turned to me. “He must have developed a case of—what do you call it—?”

  He stopped in mid-sentence. He snapped his fingers, impatient at himself.

  “What do you mean, Max, a sickness of some kind?” I asked.

  “No, not a sickness like in the body, a sickness in the head. You know, like when you're scared of a closed room or something.”

  “Oh,” I said, “yeh, I know what you mean. It's a phobia—a claustrophobia. With this guy the fear was more than just mental. The real dread of being closed in killed the guy.”

  Maxie rubbed his chin and paced up and down.

  “Maybe the guy's got parents, brothers and sisters besides his whorehouse wife.”

  “So what of it?” Patsy asked.

  “It would be a lousy thing if we give him a funeral and bury him under somebody else's name, and his parents or somebody spend the rest of their lives looking for him.”

  “What else can we do, Max? We can't let him lie around here. People will be around in the morning. There's a couple of funerals scheduled,” I said.

  Max scratched his head. “Yep, you're right, Noodles. Well, I guess we plant him somewhere and let somebody find him, so's he can get buried under his own name.”

  “Where are you going to drop Mr. Moore off, Max?”

  We looked at each other for a moment. Max shrugged.

  I continued, “It won't really make much difference, especially to Mr. Moore. We can drop him off in a doorway some place.”

  “How about if somebody sees us dropping the guy off?” Cockeye asked.

  “Well, as far as the law is concerned—I dunno—I think, yeh, there must be a law about leaving dead bodies around.”

  “First degree manslaughter,” Cockeye grunted.

  “Not according to Mr. Moore. He'll testify that he died from natural causes.”

  Maxie smiled, “Yep, you're right, Noodles, even if we are seen dropping Mr.
Moore off, an autopsy will show he died naturally.”

  Maxie put the wallet back in Mr. Moore's pocket.

  “Okay, Cockeye, back the Caddy to the door.”

  Cockeye went outside. We took the body out of the coffin and wrapped the drapery around it.

  Cockeye stuck his head in the door. He motioned with his head. “The car's outside.”

  Max, without visible effort, slung the body over his left shoulder.

  I asked, “Don't you want a hand?”

  “Hah, what does he weigh? A lousy two hundred pounds? See if the coast is clear.”

  Cockeye looked out into the street. He held his hand up to wait. Maxie stood in the middle of the room. He was beginning to sweat.

  “What the hell's the matter? This guy's getting heavier by the minute.”

  “A couple of love birds were walking by. Okay, Max, now.”

  Cockeye waved for Max to come along.

  Max walked out fast, puffing and grunting. Mr. Moore almost slipped off his shoulder. I heard him grumble under his breath, “You lousy bastard.”

  We barely rounded the corner when a heavy downpour of rain hit the street. It came down as if somebody was shooting a gigantic hose over the city.

  Whimsically Maxie said, “What the hell, we can't leave Mr. Moore out in this weather. Yep, we may as well park him at Fat Moe's for the present.”

  We pulled around to the back door and carried Mr. Moore in.

  Max said, “Put him in the closet. Maybe later, I'll think of a good place, maybe where we could do him the most good.”

  Gently we put Mr. Moore in the closet and covered him with the mat.

  Cockeye went to the door leading to the front bar, stuck his head out and shouted to Moe, “We're here.”

  We sat down to a game of klabiash. Moe came in with a tray of doubles.

  Maxie asked Moe, “What's stirrin? Anything?”

  “Yeh. The main office called. They want you to call back, and the Himmelfarb brothers are outside. They been pestering me to let them in to see you again. They been waiting for hours. They say they got money to invest.”

  “Them cheap buttonhole manufacturers. Still looking to get into some kind of racket to make easy money,” Maxie said distastefully. “The hell with them, give them a mickey and chase them. No. Hold it, Moe. Maybe I'll teach them a lesson. Tell them to wait.”

  He went to the phone, called the office. Cockeye mimicked Maxie's “yep—yep—yep.”

  Maxie waved to Cockeye to cut it out, and continued his “yep—yep —yep.” A final “yep” and he hung up. He came back to the game, picked up his cards. We looked at him curiously.

  “You'll get all the details in the late papers,” Maxie said indifferently.

  “What's up?” Cockeye asked. “What will we get in the late papers?”

  Maxie smiled. “The kid, Vincent Coll, got the business.”

  “Who collected the Dutchman's fifty thousand dollar jackpot?” I asked.

  “Shorty.”

  Patsy said, “He won't live to enjoy it.”

  “A vicious circle, ain't it? How did Vincie get it, Max?” I asked.

  “Up on Twenty-third Street in a telephone booth.”

  “What did Shorty use for the job?” Patsy asked with professional interest.

  Maxie gave a short laugh. “You know Shorty. He wouldn't take a chance with that kid, Coll. He had it all set up. He just walked in with the lead sprayer and almost cut the kid in half. Shorty will be as popular as a cockroach in a plate of chop suey from now on.”

  “And he will be just as dead,” I commented.

  Cockeye said, “That Shorty is supposed to be pretty good with the Tommy, ain't he?”

  Maxie answered carelessly, “Yep, I guess anybody could be good. All you got to do is hold tight and press the trigger.”

  We kept playing klabiash. Moe came in every so often with a tray of hookers and a reminder, “The Himmelfarb brothers are still waiting.”

  Maxie gave Moe the same answer. “Let them wait. We're busy.”

  He turned to me. “I'm trying to think of something, something somehow to take them over. I'd like to teach them greedy chumps a good lesson.”

  “How about we sell them the Brooklyn Bridge,” Cockeye said.

  “We can give them a better investment than that,” I said.

  “What?” Max asked.

  “One of the Professor's money machines,” I said.

  “Yep, you got something there, Noodles,” Max said.

  After awhile Max threw the cards down on the table. “The hell with klabiash. Cockeye, play us a rune. Play 'We took Benny for a ride in the country.'”

  Cockeye tapped his harmonica in the palm of his hand and swung into the doleful strain. Max tilted his chair back and puffed on his big cigar. He had a faraway look in his eye. I thought, why the hell does Max bother? Why don't he just get rid of those goddamn Himmelfarb brothers? He can tell Moe he don't want them around. He can tell them sweatshop owners to scram. I remember the first time they came around to see us about a year ago. They had just come over from Germany with plenty of money. Immediately they went into all sorts of ventures. Luckily, their investments seemed to turn out all right. At present they operated a factory on lower Grand Street. They were always in the midst of labor troubles. They thought the American workmen were too independent, not like in Germany. I remembered their abrupt statement when the three of them were ushered in by Moe. Like a comedy team they seemed.

  “We got plenty money; we like to be in racket. Even in Germany we heard to make a lot of money in America you got to be a racketeer.”

  Since then they had been pestering us on the average of once a week. We were getting pretty annoyed. Why the hell don't Max bar them from the place? Well, I guess he knows what he's doing.

  Cockeye kept playing our morbid Benny number. Even Patsy started to fidget. He gestured to me toward the closet. I shrugged my shoulders.

  Finally Patsy said, “Hey, Max. How about Mr. Moore? Maybe it stopped raining.”

  Cockeye went outside to observe the state of the weather.

  “It's pissen down worse than before,” he reported.

  We waited for the rain to stop. The Himmelfarb brothers waited out at the bar to see us. We waited, and they waited. The rain didn't stop. And the Himmelfarbs didn't go home.

  Finally Max called Moe in. “Tell them three brothers I got a proposition for them, to see me tomorrow at ten-thirty in the morning.”

  We left Mr. Moore peacefully at rest in the closet, and left for our separate abodes.

  I took a cab to my hotel. Walking through the lobby towards the elevators I met Sweeney, the house dick.

  He said, “How was the piece last night?”

  “She was nice, a very nice kid.”

  I slipped Sweeney a double sawbuck.

  He said, “Thanks, kid, anytime you're in the mood for one of them little dears, let me know.”

  “Usually I do my own dear hunting. The thrill of the chase, you know.”

  He chuckled. The elevator door opened. I rode up to my suite.

  I jotted down some notes and conversations for the book. From the closet I dug out an old copy of Stephen Crane's Men, Women and Boats, and went to bed.

  CHAPTER 17

  I arrived at Fat Moe's the next morning a little late. A stud game was in progress. I opened the door to the closet. Mr. Moore was still there.

  “What did you think—he took a walk for himself?” Maxie asked smiling.

  “Nah, Noodles just wanted to say 'Good morning, Mr. Moore.'“ Patsy said.

  I sat down. Cockeye dealt me in.

  After awhile Moe came in and said, “Them Himmelfarbs are here again. They said they got an appointment. Should I give them Mickeys and throw them out?”

  “Nope, let them wait awhile. I'll tell you when to send them in.”

  We looked at Max curiously as he took his roll out and peeled off two thousand-dollar bills.

  He turned t
o Cockeye and said, “Run over to the Public National Bank and get me brand new crisp ten dollar bills for this. Now make sure they're crisp and brand new.”

  I knew Maxie so well I more or less could figure out his reasons for doing things. But this request to Cockeye had me puzzled. Then it struck me. Yeh, Max is going to promote the Professor's money machine as I suggested yesterday.

  Aloud I said, “You going to bait the trap for the Himmelfarbs with some green cheese?”

  Max nodded. Cockeye took the money with a raise of the eyebrows and walked out.

  Twenty minutes later, he came back with packages of crisp ten dollar bills.

  Maxie was chuckling to himself. He nonchalantly tore the wrappers from the packages and put them in his pocket. He spread the bills on the table until it was completely covered. Then he sprinkled bills on and under the table, and on the chairs, until the place looked lousy with new ten-dollar bills. Maxie chuckled, he was enjoying himself as he set the stage.

  “Noodles,” he said. “I will give you the first cue and you guys carry on from there. Okay?”

  We nodded.

  He said to Cockeye, “Tell Moe to send the Himmelfarb brothers in.”

  Moe ushered in the three brothers. They were all short, fat and ugly. They stepped in timidly, trying to avoid stepping on the money, bewilderment and respect in their manner.

  Maxie brusquely said, “Come in. Come in. The place is a little cluttered. We had a very busy day. What's on your mind?”

  The older one of the brothers opened his mouth to speak. Maxie put his hand up.

  “Just a minute, Himmelfarb.”

  Max picked a bill up and scrutinized it carefully as if he had just discovered it.

  He turned to me and said, “You know—this last batch from the Professor's machine ain't bad at all.”

  He handed it to me for inspection.

  “What do you think, Noodles?”

  I snapped it between my thumb and forefinger, looked it over and threw it on the floor, carelessly, saying, “Yeh, Maxie. It looks as good as if the government just manufactured it.”

  He smiled. “Yep. Let's ask the Himmelfarbs. They're manufacturers, too. They recognize a good product when they see it.”