Button Man

by Andrew Gross

  But Louis saw it. He saw it come together like a fucking Michelangelo being painted right in front of his eyes.

  “Still, you’re right on one thing.…” Anastasia lifted his jacket off a hanger and put his arm through. “Little Augie would never stand for it. Not for a minute. That’s a problem that would need to be solved.” He put his hat on and adjusted his tie. “But you did say you were looking for something, didn’t you, how did you put it, a bit more ‘day-to-day’…?”

  “Yeah.” Louis nodded. The idea was already taking shape in his mind.

  “Well, this is pretty fucking ‘day-to-day,’ my friend.” The crime boss laughed and nudged his shoulder.

  If Louis had learned one thing, it was that in this business you had to take the opportunities when they presented themselves. Otherwise, someone else would gobble you up. Little Augie might be small in height but he was no little fish in stature. Arnold Rothstein was his friend. And he was never very far away from that Jack Diamond, who was no one to fuck with, himself.

  Still, Albert Anastasia had just given him the okay.

  “So, see, you can tell a lot about a man…” Anastasia patted Louis on the shoulder, “from his shave. And besides,” he rubbed his cheeks and winked, “it makes the babes go fucking wild.”

  But Louis was no longer thinking about shaves as he followed Anastasia out.

  Or babes.

  His mind was a million miles away.

  He was thinking of putting his hands in the sausage.

  Chapter Twelve

  Morris did take Ruthie out again—the following week. To the Crimson Room at Delmonico’s for a steak. Where they sat across from movie producer Samuel Goldwyn, who Morris knew from the neighborhood.

  Then he took her to Yankee Stadium and sat in field-level boxes and they saw the Babe belt two homers, and to the Zigfeld to see Al Jolson perform along with a comedian named Jack Benny.

  Each time Ruthie seemed to laugh and have a good enough time, but she always implied when he took her home that this might be the last time they would see each other.

  He would ask, “You have anyone else?”

  And she would simply shrug and shake her head that, “No, that’s not it.” Politely enough not to say what she truly felt. He knew they were from completely different backgrounds. Her fancy Ivy League friends probably laughed and made fun of her that she would even give an unsophisticated rube like him the time of day.

  But instead of backing down, he just kept asking her out. He didn’t take no for an answer.

  And after their fourth date, with a little champagne in her, she even let him kiss her goodnight. “Just don’t get your hopes up, Morris Raab,” she insisted again. “It’s just a little kiss. We’re not boyfriend and girlfriend. Let me make that clear.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “We’re from different worlds.”

  “Markedly so,” she said. He dropped her off in a cab at her family’s apartment on 102nd and Riverside.

  “Maybe we’ll go dancing Saturday?” he called after her.

  The doorman opened the door as she slipped through, and turned back. “Come if you like. I might be down. But I don’t know.”

  “Eight o’clock,” he said.

  When he went home he asked Sol what “markedly” meant.

  The next day he took off at lunchtime and grabbed a cab to a bookstore called Brentano’s on Fifth.

  He’d never stepped foot inside a real bookstore before. And this one was huge, bustling with customers browsing through the wooden shelves. There were more titles stacked in tall bookcases, it seemed, than there were shells on Coney Island beach. Morris had no idea where to even begin. He started looking through the racks at random, whatever was in front of him, too embarrassed to give away that this was all so new to him. He’d never seen so many books, on subjects he’d never even known people wrote about. No one named Dickens, however. His heart began to pick up, and he thought maybe he should just give up on this. Who was he kidding anyway? It was a foolish idea. He’d never read a real book in his life.

  Finally a salesman saw him foundering and came up to him. “You look lost, sir. May I be of help?”

  “Yeah. I’m looking for this book called Great Expectations?” He took out the napkin Ruthie had scribbled it down on. “I can’t find it anywhere. It’s by some guy from England. Named Dickens.”

  “Charles Dickens. Of course we carry Great Expectations.” The salesman smiled. “It’s quite a well-known title. But that would be in our Fiction department, sir. Over there.” He pointed across the store. “I’m afraid this is History.”

  * * *

  On their sixth date, they went to the RKO Orpheum to see Valentino in The Son of the Sheik. Morris loved the way she latched onto his arm when the hero was captured and held for ransom by the bandits. It made him feel like they were indeed a couple. Afterward, they went across the street to the Horn & Hardart for a cup of coffee. They sat near the window. Ruthie seemed distracted, even a little bored, until she finally confronted him. “What do you intend to do with your life?”

  “What do you mean, what do I intend to do? I intend to build up my company,” Morris said.

  “And then?”

  “And then…?” Truth was, he’d never thought about anything else. He’d only had one goal his whole life. “Take care of my family, I suppose. Maybe buy a place out of the city.”

  “See, I would never let a man take care of me,” Ruthie said resolutely. Almost attacking him.

  “You wouldn’t, huh?”

  “Not at all. Julia Richman says independence and education is all that gives a woman strength today. I would never be tied down to that kind of life. It’s a new world now. And there lies the difference between us.”

  “What kind of life?” Morris asked. He only knew one kind of life.

  “A life where the woman is merely the child-bearer. A woman is able to work in the same fields as a man, and with the same capacity.”

  “I didn’t say she couldn’t. Anyway, who is this Julia Richman you’re talking about?”

  “She’s an educator. And suffragette. She has a school on the Lower East Side. You must know of her.”

  “I guess I don’t know much of anything.” Morris shrugged, starting to get a little peeved.

  She looked at him. “See?”

  He sipped at his coffee in silence and picked at his pastry until he couldn’t hold back anymore. “I guess for me, I only see one kind of woman. Women who work on factory floors. Seamstresses. Who don’t have nothing to their names. I don’t see the kind of women you’re talking about, who go to fancy schools. And have choices. Who can decide what kind of path they want their life to go down, the way your kind of women do.”

  “But maybe they will, if you pay them a fair wage. Or then their children will. That’s where I want my life to be. In education. Not just teaching. Lifting the lower classes. I want to open schools. For those who have less possibilities. In the Bronx. Or Harlem. Who knows, maybe even the Lower East Side.”

  “I do pay a fair wage. I pay them more than a fair wage.”

  “See, I told you there are unbridgeable differences between us, Morris. And it’s not just our backgrounds. It’s so many things. This won’t work.”

  “Well, you keep saying that,” Morris said, unable to hold back what he’d wanted to say for a long time, “and yet you keep going out with me. And I know you feel safe with me and have fun. I know I’m not the most polished or educated guy in the world. So if you really think there’s no chance for us, don’t go out with me next time.”

  Ruthie nursed her coffee for a while, quietly, then shrugged. “I don’t know, Morris, maybe I won’t, then.”

  Morris put down his cup. He was steaming even more than the coffee. “You know, it’s like that book you told me to read.”

  “Which book?”

  “By that English guy you talked about. Dickens.”

  “Great Expectations?” She stared widely at him with
surprise.

  “So was there another one you asked me to read…?” He glared. “Truth is, you got me wrong. I don’t think I’m much like that guy Pip at all. I mean, I guess I kind of see what you mean. How he started with nothing and then rose up to become a gentleman. But things happened for him. I mean, it was all made-up, right? So it’s not real. Me, I never had any Miss Havershamer, or whatever her name was. Or any of those, what were they called … factors of some kind…?”

  “Benefactors.” Now she smiled as she corrected him.

  “Yeah. But all that’s for some made-up story, not real life. At least, not for me. Me, I had to go to work. And if I didn’t, we would have been out on the street and who knows where I’d be now, delivering papers, or pushing some broom around somewhere. Certainly not here with you.”

  “You actually read the book?” she said, her surprise now bordering on delight.

  “Yeah. But maybe I was wrong.” He picked up his fork and pushed through whatever was left on his plate. “While I was reading I had the thought, this is all made-up, but maybe one thing was true. Maybe I did find my Estella. Like Pip in the book. But like I say, I guess I was wrong.”

  They sat for a while in silence, the feel of a heavy weight hanging over them.

  “You read the book,” Ruthie finally said, visibly pleased.

  “You asked me to,” he said.

  “All the way through?”

  “Yeah. All the way. What is this, a test? I even went back and bought another one by him.”

  “Another Dickens?” Her eyes stapled wide with astonishment.

  “Yeah. About these French guys. And an English guy who falls in love. During a war. And he gets, you know, his head chopped off. What’s it called, gillertin, or something?”

  “Guillotined. Why, Morris Raab.…” Her eyes shone brightly and she smiled. “I honestly do believe there is hope for you yet, Morris Raab.”

  “Maybe. But I have a story too. You want to hear mine? You can tell me if it belongs in some book.”

  He’d never shared much about his life growing up. He was always too embarrassed, sure it would only bring up the differences between them she always spoke about and she would never want to see him again. Maybe he was trying to keep up some pretense too.

  But this time he told her. About his time in the army, the humiliation he was forced to feel so keenly in that ditch, covered in piss and shit. Then having no choice but to fight his entire unit, one at a time. It felt so real to him, he could still see their faces today.

  “Oh, Morris.” Ruthie’s eyes shimmered with emotion and grew wide.

  “And something else,” he said. “I lied to you about something that night.”

  “What night?”

  “When we met. At the club. I wasn’t fifteen when I left school to go to work. By fifteen I already had someone else’s job. I was twelve.”

  “Twelve?” Ruthie stared back at him.

  “Yeah. Twelve. And I’m sorry I lied to you. But let me ask, would you have even taken a second look at me if you knew that?”

  Ruthie’s eyes dimmed as she saw the shame on his face, and she wrapped her hand over his. “Morris, I’m so sorry.”

  “And, trust me, I don’t need to read some book to know what it feels like to be the brunt of snobs and phonies in this world, like all those uppity friends of yours, in their fancy schools, waiting for their parents to introduce them to some equally rich guy and take them away. We never had those choices. I learned from the time I was six and couldn’t walk across my own neighborhood without hearing some mick call me a kike or get into a fight exactly who my benefactor was. It was me.”

  “Morris, please.…”

  “And Estella, in that book, she’s what in the end…? Not some fancy socialite. She’s just a housemaid’s daughter. So all those airs people put on, they mean nothing when it comes to who you really are. It’s what’s in here.…” Morris tapped his chest. “That’s what I read in the book. It’s about when people have to show who they are, like when you’re fifteen and you have to climb out of some ditch, and do what you have to do next. Just to survive. That’s what it’s all about. You know what I’m sayin’ to you, Ruthie?”

  She nodded, wordless and hurting for him.

  “So you’re right.” He pushed away his plate. “We do come from different worlds. And I’m tired of hearing that. But maybe for the first time, I’m thinking, I’m not so embarrassed by that anymore. I’m okay with my world. It gave me the strength to understand what’s right, even when it was hard. What’s right in here, Ruthie.” He tapped his chest again. “Inside.

  “So I know I’m not exactly what you always had in mind for yourself, for who you’d end up with in life, but you keep saying I’m going places, and no one’s fool, and if that’s not enough for you, enough to come along, to trust me, on the journey, well, I don’t know then.…”

  He took out a five and put it under his saucer. “Let’s go.”

  “Morris, I don’t know what to say.…”

  “Just tell me, if I hadn’t lied, would you have taken a second look at me?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Would you?”

  They finished up and left, and on the street, Ruthie turned and looked up to him and said, “Look, Morris, I don’t know, maybe you’re right about us. Maybe I’m just not the one to—”

  He pulled her close to him and kissed her right there. On Eighty-sixth Street, the lights from the RKO theater flashing behind them. A real kiss, this time. Filled with promise, the present and future, the road ahead he was offering. Where life might take them together. She was taken by surprise; her arm dangled loosely by his side. But she didn’t pull away.

  And when it was over she just looked at him, breathless. “I think you should read more books, Morris.”

  The following week, she asked him to come upstairs when he came to pick her up.

  “Bernstein,” he announced to the doorman, who replied, “14C,” and they whisked him into a wood-paneled elevator.

  He met her father, a big-shot lawyer who worked for some important firm and wrote contracts, as best as Morris could figure out. Her mother was nice too; the place went on forever and they had a maid and a view of the Hudson. They both seemed to be walking on eggshells to be nice to Morris and not say what was likely in their minds. That their daughter was still in school and when she finished up she had things to accomplish, and that it wasn’t so easy anyway, this German–Eastern Europe thing, even though they were all Jews.

  “So we hear you’re in garments, Morris,” her father said as they sat down in the spacious living room.

  “That’s right. I am. And I’m going to marry your daughter,” Morris replied.

  “Morris.” Ruthie cut him off, her cheeks blushing. “We’re a long ways off from even thinking about anything like that. I’m still in school. We’re barely dating. I—”

  He looked at her father. “I was just letting you know.”

  Six months later, he asked her again.

  This time she said, “Absolutely.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  On October 17th, morning readers of the Journal-News on the streets of New York were greeted by a half-page photo of a crumpled, bloody corpse under the following headline:

  STREETS OF FIRE:

  Famous Mobster Gunned Down on Lower East Side

  Labor Racketeer Jacob Orgen, known in the underworld as “Little Augie” for his stout but diminutive frame, came to a bloody end in a hail of bullets from a passing car on Norfolk Street on the New York’s Lower East Side late last night.

  Orgen, 36, a protégé of Arnold Rothstein, was a feared bootlegger who exerted a stranglehold over various unions in the garment field.

  There were no immediate suspects, though sources indicate the list of people who could have wanted him dead ranged from crime boss Meyer Lansky to up-and-coming crime figures like Albert Anastasia and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, all making a play to expand their influence o
ver the unions.

  His bodyguard, the flamboyant mob figure Jack Diamond, hit with three bullets himself, managed to survive.

  PART THREE

  RAAB BROTHERS

  Chapter Fourteen

  So I’ll tell you how I became a success.

  Sol and I had been in business three years. We were making a go of it in women’s coats—I handled all the production and he did the books and handled the sales, mostly to places like S. Klein and Abraham and Strauss in Brooklyn. Whatever we did, though, we couldn’t seem to break into the big national buying offices.

  Every season we tried to get our goods in front of important buyers, like at Interstate Department Stores or Certified stores. They had accounts all over the country and the leeway to write orders directly when they found something good.

  But every season Sol would come back with his suitcase full of the same samples he went out with that morning and simply shrug. “They keep saying there’s nothing special.” Frustrated, I’d reply, “Maybe I should go out and sell them then?” And he’d go, “You think you can do a better job, go right ahead. Be my guest.” But he knew I would never do it. I didn’t have the nerve back then. I always felt like I had marbles in my mouth. We were doing enough business to scratch by. We just weren’t growing.

  That year, the world was saying that women’s fur collars were going to be big. I had a friend in the fur business, and as it turned out, he got stuck with a large shipment of squirrel skins. Squirrel was big because it was cheap, and perfect for collars and cuffs. I bought the entire lot at a big discount.

  So we put together our samples, knocking off styles I had seen in all the store windows the previous year. And that March, Sol went out to Ben F. Levis. They had hundreds of stores across the country. The buyer was this woman everyone knew. She had the biggest pencil on the street. Everyone was afraid of her. Muriel Mossman was her name. So Sol goes up and I know this time we have a good line at the right price. This time I was sure it would be different. I knew she liked chocolates, so we brought her this expensive box of Swiss candies from this fancy chocolate store on Broadway. But at five o’clock Sol comes back to the office and throws his hands in the air.