Israel (60 page)

“I know that.”

“She'll get over it,” Stefano continued. “She's got a lot of spunk.”

“Maybe I'll tell Dolores what's happened,” Benny said, beginning to panic. “Let her make the decision—”

“Shut up and listen to me,” Stefano said, his voice suddenly like steel. “This marriage is going to take place. Don't give me no crap about honor and worthiness and love. None of that has anything to do with it. You know it and I know it. Even Meyer Lansky knows it. The only ones who don't are my wife and my daughter. You made a business deal, Benny. You got to keep it. Meyer can't help you now. He wouldn't try, and even if he did, I'd go to the syndicate and they'd vote Meyer down. A deal's a deal. That's the only way we can operate. Nobody has the right to go back on his word. Do you understand?”

Benny stared at him. “You can't force me to—”

“You ever kill anybody?” Tony Bucci interrupted, his glasses flashing fire from the sunlight streaming in the window. “What I'm wondering is, you got any idea at all what you're talking about when you use the word ‘force'?”

“Lansky can't protect you anymore,” Stefano repeated. “When he blessed this marriage he was giving you to me.”

“What if I ran?”

Stefano shrugged. “Go ahead. I don't care. If that's what you gotta do, then do it. Just make sure it's far enough away so I don't see you around no more. I'll make up some kinda story to Dolores and to save face around
town, and the syndicate will give me your trucks and routes to make it up to me. Lansky won't like it, but he'll go along to keep the peace. Like I said, kid, a deal's a deal.”

“You want to take some time to think about it, maybe?” Tony Bucci asked, licking his lips. “Personally, I ain't got much use for you, but we could use them trucks.”

“Yeah, think about it,” Stefano agreed. “But frankly, I don't see a guy like you slinging hash in Chicago or somewhere.” He shrugged. “Say good-bye to them fancy suits and Cadillacs, right?”

Benny slumped in his chair, knowing he was trapped. His choice was to marry Dolores or end up penniless somewhere far away. Stefano wouldn't put out a contract on him, but he'd be as good as dead nevertheless. He'd have no money, no business, no home. Everything his father had built up would be lost.

“Don't take it so hard,” Stefano said soothingly. “You like Abe's daughter? No problem. I'll confess something to you, father-in-law to son-in-law. I got me a little apartment on the East Side with a chippie in it. Yeah, me, Stefano de Fazio.” He laughed. “She calls me Poppie.” He traced an hourglass figure in the air and smacked his lips. “She's a blonde. She knows how to make a man feel good. You know what I'm saying?” He pondered it. “I'm talking about doing things a nice girl wouldn't dream of. Personally, I don't see Becky being that kind, but who's to say? After all, she's got a drunkard for a father.”

Tony Bucci glanced at his watch. “They'll be back soon, Stefano.”

“Yeah. You take off now, Benny. Call me in a couple of days and let me know how you want to play it.”

Tony stood up to escort Benny downstairs and out to his car. “A word to the wise,” he whispered to Benny as the latter started up the Cadillac. “Meyer don't know
about any of this and I wouldn't tell him if I were you. You wanna stay on his good side, don't mention how you're thinking of letting him down.”

Tony Bucci watched Benny drive off and returned to the house, where he found Stefano downstairs in the kitchen, washing the glassware that had been used for their drinks.

“That wife of mine would want to know who'd been here with us if she saw three glasses,” Stefano muttered good-naturedly. “Dewey ain't got snoops as good as Maria.”

“Want me to do that?” Tony asked.

“Nah, my hands are already wet.”

Tony nodded but stood by uneasily; it didn't seem right that his boss should be washing dishes. “I hope that Yid does cut and run,” he offered experimentally, not sure where Stefano really stood on the matter.

“I don't,” Stefano replied as he sponged out the pitcher. “The trucks are worth plenty, but not as much as Benny.”

“I don't get it,” Tony scowled. “You're talking like you want a Yid for a son-in-law.”

Stefano shrugged. “All my other daughters married Italians, so I can take it if Dolores has her heart set on that guy.”

“It galls me that he's coming in as a full partner.”

Stefano continued to rinse the glasses. “Hey, my sons are in as partners, too, but so are you. You got nothing to fear from Benny. He's a baby. You heard it yourself. Lansky has always taken care of him. He's been in a couple of fist fights and that's it. He's never made his bones and he never will. He can't kill nobody.”

“But a Jew—”

“Jews and Italians have worked together since Rothstein.”

“This ain't just work, this is marriage. What about your grandchildren?”

“They'll be raised in the church.”

“Does Benny know that?”

Stefano shrugged. “He'll know when I tell him. Don't worry, Benny will be a help to us. He works hard. That business didn't thrive all by itself. Benny built up what Lansky and Siegel threw Mendy Talkin's way. And then there's politics to be considered.”

Bucci scratched at his slick scalp, totally confounded.

“You ever read Shakespeare?” Stefano finished rinsing the last glass and wiped his hands on his worn corduroys. “I know you haven't. You only read accounting books, God love you.”

“Get to the part where you explain why we need a Yid in the family,” Tony implored.

“A lot of them Shakespeare plays have got to do with a bunch of royalty running around to see who's gonna be top dog while the king's away. That's like the situation now with Luciano in jail. Meyer Lansky is definitely a duke. What he says goes because Luciano backs him. I'm only one of the earls or whatever. My word doesn't cut it unless Meyer backs me. Now, the way I'm seeing it, Lansky and me are like two houses of royalty about to be joined together through marriage. What Lansky has to gain from this escapes me, but we do very good. Through Benny we get links to both Lansky and Bugsy Siegel out west. We also get closer to Luciano by being closer to Lansky.”

“And the trucks,” Gemstones chortled. “Don't forget them. There's a war coming, Stefano. Don't forget how good we did with our warehouses during the last war.”

Stefano, nodding agreement, crossed the kitchen to open the refrigerator. “Maria's got some roast chicken in here from last night. How about a snack?”

That same Saturday Becky told her father that Malden's was closed half a day for inventory and the cashiers did not have to report to work until two-thirty that afternoon. She left Cherry Street at two o'clock with a shopping bag under her arm.

She'd told her father a white lie. She did not did not have to go to work at all that day. Instead she took the subway to the Upper West Side and emerged at Sherman Square.

In the shopping bag was Benny Talkin's jacket. She'd come uptown to return it to him. His apartment in the Dorilton was just steps away at Seventy-first and Broadway. Becky headed that way but then faltered. Returning the jacket with a note pinned to the lapel suggesting to Benny that they be friends had seemed like a good idea, but now that the moment had come, Becky lost her nerve.

She reversed her direction and wandered uptown along Broadway. As she walked she let the excitement of this part of the city wash over her, momentarily banishing her turmoil over Benny.

Becky had always enjoyed wandering the Upper West Side. Her favorite tour took her past the Astor, the Evelyn and finally the Apthorp, at which point she left Broadway to head east toward Central Park. Becky would pass Mount Neboh synagogue, its Byzantine dome and roughened exterior suggesting that it had been standing there far longer than twelve years.

Becky considered its newness something to crow about. A magnificent synagogue in a well-to-do section of the city the Jews claimed for themselves. How wonderful to leave Hester and Orchard and Cherry streets far behind and wander here, along the majestic wide avenues.

She continued all the way to Central Park West. Becky was wearing her smartest day dress and drawing nods and smiles from passersby as she turned their heads with her bright eyes and shiny dark shoulder-length tresses swinging in the soft breeze. On such a day her dreams swelled to fill the flawlessly blue sky.

She would become a buyer in a major department store like Macy's or Gimbels or Pickman's in Herald Square. Oh, what a marvelous job being a buyer was. There was travel, even to places like Paris, and an expense account and the opportunity to meet marvelous gentlemen who would invite her to intimate candlelit dinners in the dining cars of streamlined trains.

There would be a good salary, of course, enough for fine clothes, car and an apartment in one of those marvelous buildings identified by glamorous name, not nondescript street number. Perhaps her rooms would have a window high above Central Park. She would gaze out at the majestic landscape and the fire escapes and rank alleyways of the Lower East Side would be memory of days long past.

Often had Becky strolled this area, pretending her dream had come true, that before her at last was the delicious task of choosing the building in which she wished
to live. It was during such a stroll that a lost soul came up to her and asked for directions—actually asked her, confident that she would know because she looked like just the sort of woman who belonged here.

Someday, Becky vowed, I will get here someday.

Suddenly she realized she was once again close to Benny's address. The jacket in the crumpled Malden's shopping bag was a weight dragging her down to dismal reality. She had not so much as a salesgirl's job at a real department store. She was just a cashier at a five-and-dime, and a part-time cashier at that.

Becky felt trapped. She desperately wanted the offered supervisor's job, but it seemed that there was no way to turn her dreams into reality without disobeying her father, and how could she do that? She loved her father; besides, she knew full well that in his old eyes she was a partner in the store.

Becky was her father's only real happiness in life. Their time together in the store was a sorry imitation of what Abe had at one time believed he would enjoy, but it was all he had, and he wholeheartedly tried to make the most of it. How could Becky make her father give up the store? He couldn't run it alone and wouldn't run it with Danny. The dilapidated building on Cherry Street was her father's entire world. Giving it up would break his heart, even if selling did give him enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life.

Becky's dreams would turn bitter if she realized them by destroying her father—and that meant her dreams might never come true.

A clock in the window of a dry-cleaning establishment on the corner of Seventy-second and Central Park West told her it was close to five. She'd procrastinated enough. Drop off the jacket and be done with it, she scolded herself. The note pinned to it had been written days ago, and while the thought of making this gesture
was humiliating, Becky loved him so much she had to give him this last chance before his wedding to ask her forgiveness and propose.

“If you want something, go after it,” Benny used to tell her. Well, she wanted him, and while she was appalled at his duplicity, she simply refused to believe he didn't love her.

Love can win out, Becky told herself. She walked south one block along Broadway, took a deep breath and entered the Dorilton's marble lobby.

The desk man informed her that he didn't think Mr. Talken was at home but that he could ring up to check if she wished. That wasn't necessary, Becky replied, greatly relieved. She had no intention of seeing Benny. All she wanted was to drop off the jacket—with her note—affording Benny an opening to contact her.

She was willing to meet the man she loved halfway, but she'd never crawl to anyone.

She had the empty shopping bag folded up under her arm and was on her way out when she ran smack into Benny coming in. He looked so handsome in his dark green suit and so surprised and happy to see her that Becky's heart melted. She forgot her earlier resolve, and after stammering out her reason for being here, she heard herself agree to come upstairs for a drink.

Benny retrieved his jacket from the front desk and took Becky's arm to lead her to the elevator. He was quiet, reading and pondering her note as they rode up to his floor. Becky had ample time to imagine Benny apologizing and proposing marriage to her right now and to listen to her own pounding heart.

Benny waited for the elevator attendant to let them off and shut the car doors, and then he swept Becky into his arms and kissed her. Becky was aware that such behavior in the public hallways was scandalous, but she didn't care, not when Benny held and kissed her this way.

“I missed you so much,” he whispered.

Becky, shivering at his touch, nuzzled his cheek. “I want you to miss me. I'm glad you did.”

In the foyer of his apartment he took her coat. The foyer was done in dark blue and white and had a pair of tall mirrors lit from their pedestals.

The rest of the apartment was also blue. The living room was large and painted a lighter shade than the foyer. The wall-to-wall robin's egg carpet was thick and lush. Flanking the fireplace were two high-set bull's-eye windows. Beneath each was a burl-veneer walnut chest upon which rested a porcelain lamp with rectangular ivory shade.

Facing the fireplace were a sofa and armchair in walnut and blue leather separated by a low table set on a mirrored base. An open archway at one end of the room led to a small dining room and more walnut furniture. There was a small highly polished square table accompanied by smart modernist Italian Empire chairs with blue leather seats. One door, slightly ajar, led to the kitchen, while another closed one had to take one to the bedroom.