The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  That was one of the lessons Willie had finally learned. You kept your mouth shut. You gathered all kinds of information, but you didn’t pass it on. You added it to the storehouse of facts and feelings collected through the years. You put it all away, because in the future anything might be of great value. Finally he had learned to take care of himself—by keeping his mouth shut, even when he was nervous. Keep it all to yourself, Willie boy. Because someday.

  The day came unexpectedly, without fanfare, three years after Willie Paycek had started working for the Rucci brothers. He had been told to come into the office; Mr. Joe wanted to see him about something.

  Mother Superior wants to see you about something.

  Father wants to see you about something.

  Somebody wants to see you about something.

  That always meant something terrible was going to happen to you, no matter what you had done or not done, said or not said. It was all the same. In a time of reckoning, everyone always had it in for Willie Paycek.

  He stood in front of the battered desk, leaning against the door of the cubicle Mr. Joe called his office. His heart pounded so hard it hurt his chest. His mouth was dry and he had an urge to swallow, but when he tried he choked and coughed and had to cover it up. He knew every single emotion he felt was right out there. He was terrified, though he knew—or thought he knew—that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Not recently. He didn’t think.

  Mr. Joe was a short man with a hulking torso who looked like a giant sitting behind his desk. His legs were disproportionately short, and he sat when he wanted to appear impressive.

  He put one large dirt-and blood-caked hand over the mouthpiece as he spoke on the phone. His butcher apron was filthy with dark blood and other stains.

  “Siddown, kid, siddown. Be witcha inna minute.”

  He listened intently, scowled, made a low growling noise deep in his throat as he searched through a messy collection of bills of lading, order forms, catalogs, government forms, and ledgers sprawled over the surface of the battered desk. He was very intent on his conversation and on what he was doing, snatching at scraps of paper, running a thick finger down a line of figures, shoving the paper aside, searching through ledgers, talking in his thick low voice, switching from English to Italian to some incomprehensible mutter.

  He caught Willie glancing at the clock over his head: a big round Coca-Cola sign with small bottles for numbers.

  “Be witcha inna minute, kid, siddown, g’wan, sit.”

  It didn’t seem to Willie that Mr. Joe was mad at him. He was a guy who blew up, exploded, his arms and legs and fists going, striking out. He had tantrums like a little kid, jumping up and down, battering his own face, howling, carried away. The first time Willie saw that routine, he almost wet his pants. Everyone else ignored it, just the way you would ignore a little kid until you just picked him up and smacked him. But no one ever smacked Mr. Joe, you just waited him out. When the tantrum was over, it was over, like a light being switched off. You acted as if it had never happened, and so did he. It was scary at first, but then became routine; Mr. Joe had a tantrum every couple of days.

  His real anger, though, was a different matter. He became very quiet, very focused, very intent. His dark, unruly brows gathered over his thickly fringed black eyes; his pitted face froze; his thick mouth pulled back, the way a dog’s lips pull back to show teeth. Mr. Joe’s teeth were yellow and square and his voice became a growl. Mr. Joe’s anger was a fearsome thing, and Willie had heard it was slow in coming and long in going and could be, literally, murderous.

  Finally he shrugged at the phone, muttered something, and slammed the receiver into place. He chomped on his wet, unlit cigar. Willie froze when Mr. Joe got up, walked behind him, and closed the door of the small room.

  “We gonna be private here, you and me, not disturbed by nobody, we gonna talk a little bit private, okay?”

  Oh, Christ, Willie thought. He’s gonna ask me how come the run over to Jersey with the black-market meat took so long. Did he know Willie had made a couple of stops, done a little business of his own, made a few bucks? Willie hated these runs; the guys at the other end scared the shit out of him. He was ready to confess, to throw himself on his knees, to beg forgiveness for his larceny, but he had learned to keep his mouth shut. And to wait.

  “So what’s this I hear, you love the movies, huh, kid?”

  Willie stared and tried to swallow, without success. What was this, small talk, leading up to … what?

  “Well, yeah. You know.”

  “What you wanna do with the movie pictures, huh? Ya wanna be the big movie star, like Clark Gable, huh?”

  Mr. Joe laughed uproariously. Willie shrugged and smiled. They both knew this was ridiculous. So what the hell was this all about? Some kind of warm-up? To what?

  Mr. Joe leaned forward on his thick arms and spoke seriously, his eyes studying Willie. “So you tell me, kid, what you wanna do with the movies?”

  Willie hesitated. He had learned not to share his dreams. He had stopped giving things away, pieces of himself for someone to use to torment and ridicule him. He squinted to focus on the man behind the desk. He wasn’t smiling; he wasn’t teasing. He was flat-out serious.

  “Why you askin’ me this, Mr. Joe?”

  “Good. You smart boy. You got smart workin’ for me, kid. Yeah, I got the reason. I just gotta know first, how serious you are. You ever think about maybe going out there, to Hollywood, you know?”

  He caught the sudden gleam of hope in the boy’s eyes, the tightening along the jawline, the alertness. This was one hungry sonofabitch. Not a bad kid—he had something behind him, behind that scrawny body and thin face and those crossed eyes. The kid was a real mess, but he had something going on.

  “Ya watch alla the movies, over and over. So watchawanna do, Willie, ya wanna own a movie theater one day, ya wanna be a projectionist? They got a tough union, ya know, but it can be cracked enough for a kid, maybe. What? What you want with the movie business?”

  When the kid didn’t answer, Mr. Joe leaned forward. “Ah, ya want more than that, huh? Ya got a look to ya, kid, and that’s good. It’s good to have a dream, but ya gotta go out and do somethin’ about it, right? A dream don’t mean nothin’, ya don’t follow through.”

  “I got follow-through, Mr. Joe. You know I work hard. So maybe one day …”

  Mr. Joe smiled. “One day, one day. Ya gotta be in Hollywood, right, out there where they make the pictures. Ya wanna do that, kid, make pictures, huh? That what ya wanna do?”

  “Yeah. But I gotta learn so much that I don’t know …”

  “So ya watch alla movies at the Paradise, all the other places, that’s a good start. But there’s lotsa ushers and they don’t go nowhere, maybe become managers. That ain’t for you. So tell me, Willie, ya wanna go out there? To Hollywood? To where they make the movies? There’s all kindsa jobs out there, all kindsa things for a guy to do around a studio, but ya gotta start somewhere, see? But a guy at least is in the business and he can maybe do something, being right there, being on any kinda job, right there, ain’t that right, kid?”

  Willie went rigid, waiting for the big put-on. He struggled to keep his face blank; he didn’t want to be caught out. He was too easy. All his life he’d been too easy. He was everyone’s fall guy, the perfect sucker for a practical joke. The jerk who’d do anything, just to be liked, and no one liked him anyway. What he couldn’t figure was, why the hell would Mr. Joe wanna play him for a sucker?

  Joe Rucci knew how to read people. The boy was desperate. He had dangled a dream in the kid’s face and he was too terrified to react. By his very stillness, he gave Joe his answer. He leaned back in his chair, locked his heavy hands across his thick stomach, and smiled.

  “So how bad ya wanna go out to Hollywood, kid? With a job all set for ya? In a big studio? How bad?”

  He wants me to kill somebody. That’s it. He wants me to get rid of a body. To drive out to Jersey, to dump some stiff … />
  “What you thinkin’, kid?”

  Softly, Willie Paycek said, “If you want me to hit somebody, I’ll hit somebody.”

  Joe let his head fall back and he laughed, a loud hoarse sound starting in his chest and roaring out through his mouth.

  “Oh, Christ, kid, you the last guy I ask.” He gasped, coughed. “You a little flyweight. I got guys got hands bigger’n you are. Ah, relax, Willie, relax. Nothin’ like that, kid, but I like your style. You really want what you want. That’s good. That’s good.” He leaned forward, his large hairy hands, fingers splayed over the various scraps and slips of paper on his battered desk.

  Everything about the moment registered with Willie, was noted as though in a photograph and stored away to be looked at at a later time.

  “Kid, you gonna get married.”

  Joe Rucci watched the girl as his brother’s kid, Sonny, led her through the reeking plant. She glanced, without interest, at the slabs of meat hanging from hooks, at the bloody-aproned butchers hacking away, at the mounds of yellowish fat overflowing the large battered garbage pans arranged near the long, slippery cutting blocks.

  Nothing. There was nothing there that could possibly attract a man. The thought had flashed through his mind before he saw her—what the hell, a quick one. Now he could only shake his head. That goddamn fuckup of a nephew. Ah, but what the hell. The kid was a man, and a man did what he did and that was that.

  “Unca Joey,” Sonny said, and jerked his head at the girl, then backed off, closing the door to Joe’s cubicle.

  “Yeah. C’mon in. Sit down.”

  The large, shapeless body overflowed the armless chair in front of his desk. Joe sat on the edge of his desk and studied the girl.

  A large, pale, placid face—shit, a dumb pig face with small beady eyes, almost gray, a wide mouth smeared with bright pinkish lipstick, two round spots of color from dabbed-on rouge. Polack face, he thought. The girl worked in the five and dime. What the hell, she used all the latest stuff there. The strong, harsh dime-store perfume almost made his eyes water. It had to be really strong stuff, to cut through the stink of the surroundings.

  “You Maryanne, right, from Webster Avenue?”

  She moved about in the chair and turned her head to the side, looking at him with a smile.

  Holy Christ. This big tub thought she was here for business.

  Joe walked behind his desk, pulled out his chair, and slammed his fist on the desk. The girl jerked slightly. The smile disappeared.

  “They call you Maryanne the Cunt, right? From the time you was in fifth grade, right? You pull down your bloomers for anybody asks you, that right?”

  The girl tensed. He could see the small eyes calculating, trying to figure it all out. What he did not yet see was fear. It was time.

  Joe walked over to the door, opened it, looked out, then slammed it with a force hard enough to rattle the ashtrays.

  He came behind the chair and let his hands rest on her heavy, meaty shoulders. Fat—shit, layers and layers of it; he could hardly feel bone beneath flesh. He squeezed, hard, probing.

  “You a hunka cow, that’s what you are.”

  Under the pressure of his hands, finally, she spoke. Her voice was oddly thin for so large a girl. She turned, trying to look into his face.

  “So whadda ya want?”

  “Ya still sellin’ it, cunt?”

  The girl shook her head. He looked down on the dirty, thin, permanented, bleached hair. Joe dealt all day in slime and stink; he expected women to be clean and shiny. He removed his hands and wiped them down the sides of his heavy work pants.

  “No. Ya made a mistake, Mr. Rucci. I don’t do that no more. I got me a good job. At the Woolworth’s on Fordham Road.”

  “Got yourself a boyfriend, have ya?”

  The heavy shoulders rose and fell. She gripped her elbows with her heavy hands, hugging herself. She looked up coyly and smiled.

  “Sorta.”

  It was enough. It was all Joe could take. He shook her by the heavy shoulders. Fuck it, for this piece of filth, that stupid kid. He heard her breath come in a gasp, a sob. He twisted her face around, his strong fingers pinching her cheek hard.

  “You gonna get married, pig. You gonna get married and you gonna get the fuck outta New York. You gonna go all the way to California. Won’t that be nice? Where the movie stars live. That’s what’s gonna happen to you.”

  Her first readable reaction was terror, then, as the words sank in, she began to smile. The smile broadened so that all her dirty, broken teeth showed. As the possibilities filled her, she reached up, her hand touching him, not trying to loosen his terrible grasp, just touching him.

  “You mean it, Mr. Rucci? You mean it?”

  Joe shoved her face away, pulled back from her touch. “Yeah.” He studied her, curious at the way she processed the information. Or what she thought was the information. Her large body swelled, she took deep breaths, she leaned forward in her chair, almost fell off. Put her hand over her mouth, smearing the pink lipstick, the sweat now staining her dress, running down the front and sides of her body.

  “Who you think you gonna marry?” Joe asked her softly.

  “Him. Dante. I’ll be real good to him. I’m changed because a’ him. I never touched no nother man for six months, more, to get ready for him. Oh, Mr. Rucci, could I have the wedding in St. Simon before we go to live in California?”

  Joseph Rucci smiled tightly and shook his head. He couldn’t even maintain his anger. The girl was so fucking stupid.

  “Ya can have the wedding before ya go to California. But not in St. Simon. We got a nice little church down here, all the guys go to mass in the morning, go to confession, a nice Italian priest, he does the whole thing. And then, Hollywood.”

  “Well …” She thought about it. She turned it over in her mind. She caught nothing from him. She picked up only the signals she wanted to catch. Everything was as she wanted it to be. “But can I get married in white, d’ya think? Ya know, every girl, alla her life, she thinks about her wedding day, ya know.”

  He had had enough. His voice went very low, the tone he used to hold someone’s attention. At first she didn’t even seem aware that he was talking. She was listening to herself, but she glanced at him, blinked, focused, and listened. As he spoke, Maryanne went even paler. Her damp skin gleamed with grayness. The rouged spots ran down her heavy cheeks. Her tongue licked at the smudged lips. Her eyes blinked frantically.

  “Ya gonna marry a nice boy named Willie Paycek, and then ya gonna take a nice bus ride alla way out to California and you two’ll get a nice little house out there and Willie will have a good union job and ya’ll make a nice life for yourselves. Better than anything ya could ever hope for inna Bronx.”

  At first she shook her head. Her face tightened. She raised her chin, thought about it, what she had to bargain with. Dante.

  “I’m not sure what Dante would say about …”

  He crossed to her side of the desk so quickly she didn’t have time to brace herself. He slammed his fist so hard into her jaw that she fell backwards, hit the floor. He kicked at her viciously, feeling the softness of her body. He leaned down, holding her by the hair, and told her the way it was.

  “You gimme any trouble, you ever mention Dante’s name again in your whole life, first you gonna get both legs busted, in three places, and then your arms, and then a couple other bones, and we gonna let ya lay around long enough to feel it. I got guys know how to break bones, and then they know how to strip off fat. Ya listenin’ to me?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “And then they’ll just leave you in some garbage dump onna river and let you die, however long it takes. You gimme just one small reason. You get no second chances.”

  He stood back and watched her pull herself up, pat down her clothes, move her heavy arms, swipe at her face. She shrugged as though they had just had a slight misunderstanding.

  “What the hell,” she said in her small voice. “C
alifornia should be fun, right?”

  “You got it, girlie.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AFTER HE WAS MUSTERED OUT OF THE Army with the rank of captain, Ben spent a few months taking special legal courses at Columbia. He had been approached by representatives of a Jewish relief organization and asked to participate in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals to be held at Nuremberg.

  To his family and friends, Ben seemed a ghost of the hearty young man who had gone off to war. He had no time for anyone or anything but his studies and his preparations. He could not speak to anyone—certainly not to his family—about what he had seen and learned from the camps.

  He spent a lot of time at meetings with people who were connected with Zionist organizations, people preparing for the creation of the state of Israel. He also spent a great deal of time in the privacy of the public library, writing down long drafts of information he had gathered as an interrogator. He passed this information on to undercover agents who wanted to keep track of those Nazis who had been allowed, by his own government, to escape with their deeds unpunished. He knew which of them had been relocated in various countries, which had actually been sent to the United States and were involved in scientific projects on behalf of the American government. He made use of the massive catalog of information he had prepared and brought home with him. Through his endeavors, some of these criminals would be found, if not now, at some later time; and they would be dealt with, if not officially, then unofficially.

  It was with a sense of relief, of getting back to unfinished business, that Ben left the United States as a special employee of the government.

  The Bronx had felt unreal to him, untouched as it was by the devastation of the war. There were small gold stars on flags in apartment windows; some of the neighborhood boys wouldn’t be coming home. Others had returned with injuries that would either heal and allow them to get on with their lives, or remain and send their lives in new directions.