Button Man

by Andrew Gross

  “Yeah. In that language you guys speak.”

  “He just said he’d be seeing me is all, Vito. In shul.”

  “Shul?”

  The siren grew closer. The lights of a police car could be seen now weaving through traffic, maybe two blocks behind. Vito looked toward it. “Should we wait, Mr. Raab?”

  I glanced at the stink bomb on the pavement. The last thing I wanted to do was to lodge a complaint. “What say we just close it back up now and get the hell out of here? I think we’ve lost enough time.”

  “My thoughts exactly, Mr. Raab.”

  I climbed back onto the truck and he shut the outside door and affixed the lock again. Then he jumped back in the cab and started the engine. This time, the truck went forward, feeding in with the traffic heading into the tunnel, as the cop car finally pulled up to where the commotion had been and two policemen hopped out.

  The only sign that something had happened was the stink bomb lying on the sidewalk.

  “But I think you’re ribbing me, Mr. Raab?” Vito called back when we were safely in the tunnel. “What that guy said back there. I don’t think he mentioned shul at all?”

  “I guess he didn’t,” I agreed.

  A mentsh on glik is a toyter mentsh, was what Workman had said.

  An unlucky man is a dead man.

  This isn’t over, he was saying.

  And I knew exactly what he meant.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ruthie was furious at Morris when she heard what he’d done that night.

  “Are you just trying to get yourself killed?” She looked at him accusingly, preparing herself for bed. “I know how you are, Morris, but if you don’t value your own life, at least give some thought to ours. Sam and the one inside here.” She put a hand on her belly. “And me. We don’t work for you. We’re your family.”

  “I am thinking about you.” Morris sat down on the bed and pulled his tie off. “I’m thinking about protecting what we’ve worked for for the next twenty years.”

  “No. You’re thinking about this tough-guy image you feel you have to live up to. You’re the same as your friend Buchalter, Morris. You just don’t shoot anyone. You easily could have been killed tonight. If either of those guys had started shooting…”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “Not this time.” She turned at the makeup mirror. “But for how long.”

  “So what do you want us to do, Ruthie? Tell me. I’ll do it. You want us to just give in? I give in, I basically work for them. We have to raise our rates, I have to buy from who they tell me I have to. I have to pay them protection. We do that, Ruthie, we might as well close the doors. You know better than anyone, it’s not who I am.”

  She turned around and sat on her stool. “Tell me, are Sammy and I at risk?”

  “No.” Morris shook his head. “It don’t work that way.”

  “So how does it work? You keep acting like a cowboy until one day I get a call that you’re dead?”

  Morris unbuttoned his shirt and sat there on the bed. His voice almost cracked. “This isn’t just what I do, Ruthie, this is my business. Sol’s and my business. We’re not just going to give it up. I don’t see what else there is I can do.”

  Ruthie came over and sat next to him on the bed. “You go to the police then.”

  “The police. That’s a joke, right? The police are in their hip pocket. The police will only laugh and tell me to work out a deal with them.”

  “What about your friend then? Irv. You mentioned he was working for that special prosecutor now. Dewey?”

  “And tell him what, Ruthie? Someone named Workman tried to hijack my truck. We bring in the Feds, that’s when we do get ourselves in trouble.”

  “Then make a deal with them, Morris. What else is there?”

  “I told you, we work out a deal with them, we might as well close our doors.”

  “But you’ll be alive. And your kids will have a father, Morris. Not some martyr, who never found a fight he would back down from. What are you afraid of, not living up to this image we all have of you? You’re smart, Morris, but you’re too damn stubborn to see what’s right in front of you. I married you because I felt I could trust where you would take me. You said it yourself. And I have trusted you.” She put her head on his shoulder and squeezed his arm. “I love you. I don’t want to go down that road alone.”

  Morris put his arm around her, his eyes slung straight ahead, Ruthie leaning on him. “You won’t have to. I won’t let that happen.”

  “I know you won’t. But please. You could have been killed tonight. For the first time, I’m starting to get scared.”

  Morris thought about what Charles Workman had said at the end. An unlucky man is a dead man. He was lucky tonight. But Workman wasn’t a good enemy to make. Any more than Buchalter was.

  “We’re not the same, you know. Buchalter and me.”

  Ruthie nodded on his shoulder. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “And trust me, he’s not my friend.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  After talking to Sol the next day, Morris placed a call he’d never thought he would ever make.

  To Cy Haddad.

  As much as it left a taste of guilt and shame in his mouth, maybe Ruthie was right on this one. There was no choice anymore. It was just he and Sol and Harry in a battle they couldn’t win. If it continued, the next time might leave her without a husband and Sammy without a father. Even Sol said this was the first time Morris had made any real sense since he first came back with those orders from Muriel Mossman.

  “I’m happy you’ve come around,” the union organizer, who appeared not at all surprised to hear from them, said. “I’ll pay you a visit, tomorrow. Say around five thirty. Does that work for you? Or six. It’s best if the people up there don’t see me around. And I may bring another person with me.”

  “Tell Buchalter I only negotiate with him,” Morris said. “Otherwise, no deal.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not how it works, Mr. Raab. Mr. Buchalter doesn’t have anything to do with the day-to-day activities of the union. How about I come up and give you the rough edges of how it works. I assure you, your new willingness to come to an understanding will definitely be communicated to him.”

  The next day, Haddad and a short, pasty-faced guy in a suit, named Goldman, an attorney on the union’s payroll, came up at six thirty, after Morris’s staff had left. They sat in the glass-lined showroom where the conversation had gone so poorly only weeks before, the cutting room and the piece goods department just outside.

  After the predictable song and dance about how great this would be for their workforce, Morris said, “I give you my workers here; the factory up in Kingston is off-limits.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, Mr. Raab,” Cy Haddad said.

  “Why not?” questioned Sol. “It’s out of anyone’s view. No one will even know whether they’re in or out.”

  “It’s in our view,” Cy Haddad said. “And it falls under the heading of accretion. It’s part of your company. Unless you’d like to challenge that in court.”

  “It’s not part of our company,” Morris said. “Any more than it’s in your jurisdiction.”

  “Then stop putting your work up there,” the union man said. “And take yourself off the lease as guarantor. And see how long the place stays open. Anyway, soon we’ll be opening a charter in Ulster County,” said the lawyer. “So we have every right to organize up there.”

  Morris asked himself how such a person had traded away his soul. How they could do the bidding of an outright crime syndicate.

  “Fuck accretion.” He scoffed at Sol. “They only want it because that’s where the real dues are.” He shrugged. “So how about, you give us two years up there, as is, and then we’ll agree?”

  “We can probably do one year,” Cy Haddad said.

  “Two.”

  “Sorry. That’s all the leverage I’ve been given. One is all we can do,” the
union man restated. “We can’t be seen to be weak.”

  Morris looked at Sol. If they signed, they were helpless. He knew he was just trading away his business.

  “But you buy through the union’s preferred vendor list,” Haddad added.

  “We can’t buy through the vendor list. They just give kickbacks back to you. The whole reason we’re even in business is because of our price.”

  “Everyone buys through the preferred vendor list. No exceptions,” the union man said. “Especially to you.”

  It was Buchalter squeezing him. That was plain and clear. Morris felt an ache in his gut. An ache of helplessness and the evaporation of control. “Tell me, how much do you get from your vendors?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Goldman, the union lawyer, responded.

  “Two percent. Three? How about we buy where we want to buy and we cut you back the difference?”

  “Everyone buys from the list,” Cy Haddad insisted. “That’s not negotiable. Just ask your friend Manny Gutman. I think he’d vouch for that.”

  Morris gave Haddad a spiteful glare. Somewhere the union man had had his hand in what had happened to Manny. It was likely he who had informed on Manny, that he was buying pelts from outside their agreement. Morris suppressed the urge to leap across the table and take Haddad by the throat.

  “Our people in the production room and the warehouse. They’ve been with us from the start. How much do they have to contribute?”

  “Four percent dues. Deducted straight out of their paychecks. Our accounting office will be in touch with you. You know we get to monitor the payroll.”

  Sol said, “So explain to my brother and me just how they’re better off?”

  “You’re so concerned about them being better off, pay them the four percent yourself. We’re offering you peace, and that’s gotta be worth something to them too. And once they sign they have no way to appeal on wages other than through the collective bargaining agreement, so you’re removed from it, is the way I would look at it.”

  “And what about protection?”

  “Protection?” The lawyer raised his brow. “I thought we established there was no such thing.”

  “You know very well what I’m talking about. Protection money. From Sol and me. It’s no big secret. Everyone pays it.”

  “There is a three percent company fee payable monthly on all union payroll, that goes to the workers’ fund for unforeseen contingencies.”

  “Unforeseen contingencies…?” Sol asked.

  Haddad shrugged. “Such as making sure your work doesn’t get interrupted in an unforeseen stoppage. Or in the case of an unforeseen emergency in your warehouse, say a flood you didn’t expect, or a fire, there’ll be money to compensate your workers in the time they’re down.…”

  “Protection money.” Morris stared at them. “From yourselves.”

  “Call it what you will.” Cy Haddad sighed. “Just make your peace with it. And because of your long-standing relations with parties close to the Amalgamated Needle Trade Workers and Fur Dressers Protective, that fee has been graciously cut back to two percent. For the next two years. To give you an easy adjustment.”

  Morris gave him a derisive smile. “Tell Mr. Buchalter thanks.”

  Cy Haddad and the union lawyer closed their files. “These are the broad terms. The rest, for your protection, it would be good to discuss it with your own attorney. Do we have an agreement?”

  Sol said, “The four percent we’re forced to ante up between our current workforce’s dues and the two or three percent you’re looking for from us is about the margin we make at the end of the day.”

  “These are the terms, I’m afraid,” Cy Haddad said. “Others seem to manage. Should you not want in, however, I’m afraid I can’t vouch for how things might go.”

  Morris said, “My brother and me, if we agree to your terms, we’ll essentially be staying in business to pay you. The union.”

  “It’s not so bad,” the union organizer said, with the calculated indifference of a man who knew he had all the cards at the table. “You charge a little more. You cut back here and there. People manage to get through. And on the plus side, you take the worry of your own labor negotiations off your shoulders. And look at it that we don’t hassle you anymore. From now on, we’re all just friends. Working for the same cause.”

  Morris looked at Sol and then at the lawyer. “Draft a letter. We’ll see.”

  “Of course, you understand that the failure to pay at any time would be looked at very discouragingly,” Haddad folded his fingers, “and we’d have to encourage your work staff to respond accordingly.”

  “You mean, strike.”

  “Nasty word, but just so you know. Or not abiding by the terms of the agreement … That would be very bad as well. I like to say this up front. That’s a situation you do not want, trust me.” He closed his notebook and looked at the lawyer. “Are we set?”

  Morris felt like a gristmill was grinding his intestines. They were trading in their workforce for the security of remaining in business. And for how long was anyone’s guess. They were being squeezed, bled of whatever profit they were making. They couldn’t work any thinner. What was the point of even being in business?

  “If so, I should have the paperwork for you to sign in the next day.” The lawyer stood up.

  Morris thought of Ruthie. And Sam. He was doing this for them. He glanced at Sol. His brother had a similar look.

  They were trading away their business.

  “It’s been a true pleasure reaching an understanding with you, gentlemen.” Cy Haddad nodded firmly. “And welcome to the Amalgamated Needle Trade Workers and Fur Dressers Protective.” He put out his hand.

  “Just send us up the paperwork, Mr. Haddad,” Sol said.

  The union man stood up and smiled. “Cy.”

  Morris looked at him. “You speak Yiddish, Cy?”

  “Of course. I’m from Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn,” he said.

  “Gey tren zich,” he said. Go fuck yourself. “Have a good day.”

  They waited for the union man to leave, then Morris said to Sol, who was still sitting across the table, “Charles Workman was right.”

  “About what?”

  “We just signed our own death warrant.”

  * * *

  Morris walked and walked before he went home that night. The traffic was heavy on Broadway as he made his way through the bright lights and crowds all the way up to Fifty-ninth Street and the park.

  If there was any one rule he lived by, he had always been truthful to himself. He had never been afraid to stand up. Since he was fifteen and in the army, he had never backed down.

  He paid a visit to Manny Gutman. He was at home now, a large, three-bedroom apartment with a balcony on Park Avenue. The Isidor Gutman Fur Company had been closed since the incident. Helen took him in to Manny, who was in the den, reading.

  His hair was white and distinguished-looking, but his face still bore the bright red blotches of the union’s acid attack.

  “What’s the occasion, Morris?”

  “Whatsamatter, can’t I just come up and see an old friend?”

  “I know you a long time, Morris,” Manny said, “and your face doesn’t seem to be saying this is a personal call.”

  Morris told him about their talks with Haddad.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Manny said, “but I always knew it would come to this. Ruthie is right, you know. You have to make a choice.”

  Morris said, “I sign that piece of paper, I might as well close up shop.”

  “And you might as well close up shop if you don’t. Look at me.” He pointed to his face. “You want this for yourself, Morris? You want this to be your life?”

  Helen brought them coffee and they watched the fish in his aquarium for a while.

  “I spent the summer on the Jersey Shore in Deal. This winter, we’re planning a trip to Havana. Life ain’t all bad.”

  “I’m thirt
y-one years old, Manny. Not seventy-two.”

  “You’re smart. You could do a million things. You’ve got some money put away, right?”

  Morris shrugged. “Some.”

  “You’re up here, right? You want my advice? Sign the contract. Milk it for as long as you can, then walk away. Walk away in one piece. One day, the Feds will come down hard on these people. This business is part of your blood, you can always come back then. In the meantime, go out West. Maybe make pictures. Isn’t that Goldwyn guy a friend of yours?”

  “This is all I know how to do, Manny.”

  “You think that, Morris. But you better decide just how much it means to you. You want to be riding around in that truck with a gun in your lap for the rest of your life? You got a gal who loves you, and a beautiful son. You may think you can outlast them, Morris, but look at me. One time, someone’s gonna pull that trigger. You won’t be so lucky.

  “You see that big red scaly one there, swimming around.” He pointed to a fish. “Scorpionfish, they call it. Rare as can be. From the Caribbean. Pretty as they come, right? But in there he’s the boss. Watch him. It’s dinnertime now. You don’t want to get in his way when it comes time for a meal.”

  “You trying to tell me something, Manny?”

  “Me? Nah, I got no good wisdom anymore.” He put the fish food down. “Just be sure what you want, Morris. Because you’re gonna have to live it. What you do next, it’s gonna be the most important step of your life. And I don’t want to have to come all the way back from fucking Cuba for your funeral.”

  “Trust me, I don’t want you to either, Manny.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The next morning, a messenger dropped off the letter mapping out the terms of their agreement. It was longer than Morris had expected, with pages and pages of legal warranties and representations that they’d have to show to their lawyer. But legalese aside, Sol confirmed it was what they had said.

  Both knew if they signed it, they were pretty much signing away their lives.

  They slept on it one last night. Morris went home and while Ruthie prepared some dinner, he played with little Sammy on the couch. The boy was wearing his New York Yankee pajamas, number three on the back, belonging to the Babe. Nothing made Morris feel happier than to hear his son giggle happily, than to feel that this red-cheeked innocent thing had sprung from his rough seed. “Shake the hand of the man who shook the hand of the man who shook the hand of the Big Bambino,” Morris rang out merrily, tossing his boy in the air. And every time Sammy would put his hand out, Morris would playfully pull it away.