Kockroach (8 page)

“I only owes you two-fifty.”

“There’s a late fee of fifty and I get a cut out of the Roscoe deal. I get a cut out of everything goes down in my territory, just like I got to give a cut myself, you understand?”

“I don’t got the money no more, Johnny.”

“You know, Mite, I was hoping you would say that. I haven’t kicked the crap out of nobody in almost two whole days and I miss it.”

“Not in the restaurant, Johnny. You can’t do it in the restaurant.”

“The hell I can’t,” says Big Johnny.

“What about the
Nonos
? The
Nonos
.”

“Well he ain’t here now to tell me no, is he?” says Big Johnny. “Stavros, get the band to playing a little louder, and the rest of you boys gather round. No one need see what I do to this loser.”

There it was, missy, my defining moment. Not just here, in the bar of the Acropolis, but through all the stages of my pathetic life. Whatever strides I made, whatever precautions I took, it all still ended right there, with me on my back and some bully boy about to turn my face into mincemeat. Look closely and you can see the scars, under my eye, across the bridge of my nose, the white line what runs through my lower lip. My face is a road map of violent despair.

Big Johnny grabbed my lapel, jerked me off the floor, cocked his fat fist and gave it a twirl. It was like poetry, the rightness of it, the beating of my life what was coming as surely as I deserved it. That I thought I could ever put one past the bully boys, manage a situation so over my head, stiff a stiff like Big Johnny and get away with it, all of it was proof that I had goodly earned every last stitch they was going to need to sew up my head. Off to the side Hubert was laughing at my foolish hopes. And I gave him a look of surrender, I
did. The morose Greek music it grew louder, as if it was my own funeral dirge, and I didn’t squirm and wiggle like I would have in the past. I lost myself in the music, relaxed, closed my eyes, opened my heart to the righteous propriety of what was coming. All right, Big Johnny, do your worst, because I deserve every lick of it. All right, Hubert, hope is dead, come and fill me with your sweet wisdom.

I felt a jerk forward and then a lurch and then I fell back hard on the floor. And the blow must have been worse than anything I had been dished before because I didn’t feel it, didn’t feel it, it must have numbed every nerve in my face because I didn’t feel it.

I slowly opened my eyes and I saw why I didn’t feel it.

Big Johnny Callas was high in the air, his legs kicking, his arms twirling, held high in the air by my own palsy Jerry Blatta. He held him there, did Blatta, in the air, held him there as if it were an actual comic book hero doing the holding. And then Big Johnny wasn’t held aloft no more, he was flying in the air, over the ducking barkeep, against the three rows of bottles up against the wall, smashing the bottles even as his own head smashed against the mural of the la-di-daing maidens, afore his carcass fell with a thud to the floor, alcohol gushing down upon him.

The music stopped. The deep murmur of the restaurant died.

“My God,” says Nemo.

“Take care of my friend Mite,” says Blatta.

The two mokes who had come in with Big Johnny made their move and in a flash Jerry Blatta had each by his necktie. As
the shouts started flying, Blatta lurched forward and lifted both men in the air. Theys hung there, arms and legs swinging wildly, clutching at theys throats and fighting to find theys breaths.

Stavros pulls his big black gun and points it at Blatta’s chest.

I jumps to my feet and stands between the gun and Blatta, the two mokes in the air kicking me as they struggle. “Nemo,” I says. “Don’t let him. Don’t.”

But afore Nemo could answer, the door to the kitchen, it opens and a skinny old man, bent like a question mark, leaning on a cane, hobbles hisself forward. Smoldering in his teeth is a short cigar, thick as a thumb. The crowd silences and parts for the man as if it were the Red Sea and the old man was Moses.

“What happen here?” the old man croaks in a thick Greek accent. “Who stop music?”

He looks at Blatta without an ounce of shock, or even admiration, in his eyes, as if it was an everyday sight to see a man hang two of his gunsels in the air by their ties.

“And who the hell you?” he says to Blatta.

“There’s been complaints about a smell,” says Jerry Blatta. “Can you flush the toilet or something, Jesus?”

The old man looks at the two men held in the air and then at the mess on the far side of the bar. He casually leans over the rail to see a dazed and doused Johnny Callas struggle to pull hisself to his feet. The old man stares down his long nose at Big Johnny.

“Yonni, you
skata
. I should a known you was in middle this. He’s right. I should a flush you long ago.”

“But
Nonos,
sir,” says Johnny, “I didn’t—”

The old man raises a hand, the middle two digits missing at the knuckles, raises his three-fingered hand, and Johnny shuts his trap.

“Put down,” the old man says to Blatta.

Blatta immediately drops the two gorillas, who fall into gasping heaps on either side of him.

“You come back with me,” says the old man, eyes still focused on Blatta. “We need talk.”

“He’s with me, Mr. Abagados,” I says quickly. “We’re partners. My name’s Pimelia. Mickey Pimelia. But they call me Mite, as in Mighty Mite, on account of my size. You might have heard of me? I certainly heard of you, yes I have. I’m very pleased to meet you sir. It’s an honor. Really. If there’s anything I can do to help you, sir, just let me—”

“Nemo,” says Abagados.

Nemo raises an eyebrow. “Shut up, Mite.”

Abagados shakes his head wearily. “Both then. And Nemo, my music.”

Nemo looks at Stavros, who holsters his gun and yells, “Play, you fools.”

The music started up again, gayer than before, and after a moment, the crowd it began again its loud murmur. The old man leaned on his cane, shrugged his shoulders like he had seen everything and was surprised by nothing, turned, and hobbled his way into the kitchen.

And with Big Johnny Callas and Hubert now both routed, Jerry Blatta and me, side by side, we followed the old man, the
Nonos,
followed the old man into our futures.

Celia Singer
stared down at the thick slab of beef bleeding on her plate.

There were times, when first she came to New York City, still living in the women’s residence hotel, watching her meager savings thin, that the mere thought of a steak so thick could have sent her swooning. In those days, and even in the later days when she lived with Gregory and earned barely enough for her nightly dinners at the Automat, the desperately hoped-for New York success consisted, for her, of a myriad of nights at the popular spots, treated to steaks by one after the other of her imagined beaus—not Gregory, who saw meat as the purest manifestation of capitalists as carnivores, devouring their cows before they devoured their proletariat—but others, the faceless others, linking their arms with hers to drink champagne and laugh at the witty conversation that swirled about them like the smoke of their fashionable cigarettes. She hadn’t wanted much, she thought, just everything.

And now, against all odds, here she was, in the barroom of the “21” Club, with a steak the size of a small dog on her plate and almost everything she had ever hoped for having come true…well, almost everything. Like the steak, for instance.
The steak she had always imagined would be discreetly well grilled, fully cooked without a hint of blood. But strangely, now, she found the cut of meat on the plate before her, raw enough to still twitch, more to her liking.

“So what happened to him?” she said.

“He was taken care of is all,” said Mite. “I was just trying to tell you the way some people are, how they’ll try anything to make a fool of you. I mean, the one thing you can be sure is that anyone what claims to be CIA ain’t CIA.”

“Did Blatta do something to him?”

Mite tried to shush her quiet.

“The things I’ve heard.” Her eyes widened, she smiled slyly. “Did Blatta bite off his ear? Did Blatta break his leg?”

“Look, don’t use his name, especially in a joint like this. He don’t like that, all right?”

“The things I’ve heard.”

“No one’s supposed to use his name, even me. Dig in, why don’t you?”

“Don’t you trust me, Mite?” There was a flirtatious whine in her own voice that she found disturbing, it was the voice of one of those women who talked to their husbands like they talked to their dogs.
Don’t you twust me, my sweet wittle wovey-dovey
.

“I trust you, course I does, Celia. It’s just not important to the point of the thing. The point was about how careful you gots to be, how everyone’s out for his own self and you can’t trust a one of them. What, is something wrong with your steak? You want I tell the chef to stick it back in the frypan a few minutes?”

“No, Mite, thank you. It’s perfect.”

“It looks a little raw to me. I knows you like it done better than that. Let me talk to Peter.”

“Please,” she said, “don’t,” but even as she said it he lifted his arm into the air and snapped his fingers.

She shrugged her shoulders, looked away and scanned the crowd. Gray suits and black wingtips, women in pearls, mink stoles, highballs and high-handed greetings, a swirl of meat eaters and greeters three deep at the long wooden bar or floating table to table, as if at a big party celebrating their own glorious selves. Actors and writers, internists to the stars, theater producers and publicity agents and columnists with phones at their tables, moguls and their second wives, politicians and their girlfriends and their aides playing the beard. Not to mention the gangsters and their molls, smiling fiercely, which she supposed included the two of them, though Mite was an unlikely gangster with his small stature and his loud green suits and Celia an even more unlikely moll. Still, they came once a week, Mite and Celia, sitting side by side at the same fine table beneath the shelves of athletic trophies, facing out at the room so that Mite could sit with his back to the wall. “Gots to keep an eye out for trouble,” he explained to her.

From their red leather banquette they spied the famous and the faux famous. Was that Richard Rodgers there, in the corner, sitting next to Ed Sullivan, or just two dour lawyers talking shop? Was that Jackie Gleason with a cigar and a girl singer that looked like she was seventeen, or just some fat man from Toledo and the hooker he picked up off the street? Was that, my God, Ernest Hemingway, throwing
his head back in great gales of masculine laughter, his big hand gripped around his Papa
Doble
, or just some Madison Avenue stiff with a beard and a loud voice trying very hard to look like Ernest Hemingway, or maybe, strangest possibility of all, Ernest Hemingway trying very hard to look like Ernest Hemingway?

The glamorous crowd in the barroom of “21” was not at all like the ragtag assortment at the Automat, where never there was a complaint of a Salisbury steak being underdone. Occasionally, at the end of a night out, Celia would stop back in at the Automat and have a look around, the scene remarkably unchanged: the never-ending argument at the politicians’ table; the college boys discussing Céline; the prostitutes with their weary expressions; the showbiz types with their forced gaiety. Even Tab, the boy hustler, was still around, though no longer looking so young or so innocent. She liked to visit the old place, see the old crowd that had once been like a family to her, she liked to take it all in and feel the bitter gratitude at having escaped its clutches. No longer did she hoard her nickels to have enough for a piece of pie, no longer would she sit dreamily by the window and watch the world stream by beyond the plate glass.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Pimelia?”

“Yeah, Peter, look at this thing.” Mite stuck his fork in Celia’s steak and lifted it off the plate, blood dripping down. “It’s like you herded the cow through the kitchen and the chef sliced it right onto the plate.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Pimelia. I’ll have a new sirloin cooked to order. Medium well, madam?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Excellent,” he said as he scooped up the plate and handed it off to one of the waiters.

“Did you hear that there, Celia?” said Mite. “You’re now a madam.”

“To think,” said Celia, “finally promoted to management.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, Mite.”

“Anything else you need, let me know.”

He winked at her, winked as if this kid who had made good could do any sort of magic with a simple gesture, a snap of his fingers, a twitch of his lid. And maybe he could. He had started as a raggedly dressed waif with thrift-shop clothes, but like a hero out of Horatio Alger he had risen. Now his shoes were from Regal, his suits from Bonds, his shirts from Arrow, his watch from State Jewelers, his ties from King of Slims. He was a man of the Square, absolutely, linked so closely and inextricably to the mysterious Jerry Blatta that full-grown men shivered when he came close.

It was strange the way things had shifted and her own reaction to it. Celia liked being seen now with a big man on the Square, no matter his size, liked being given the best tables, the complimentary bottles of wine. She caught herself showing inflated exhibitions of interest in Mite’s conversations, tilting her head and lowering her eyes at opportune moments, letting the light catch her teeth as she laughed at his jokes. When she got right to it, Mite was the most important person she knew, and because of that some Darwinian instinct had clutched at her good sense. He is important, it told her, he has power; these acts of flirtation were geneti
cally compelled and, in the presence of his power, she was powerless to halt them.

She placed her elbows on the table, leaned her shoulder toward his, tilted her head just so. “Is that Jimmy Durante?”

“Where?”

“Over there, at the table by the bar.”

“Sure it is. You want he should come over, say hello?”

“You can’t do that.”

“Sures I can. I’ll ask Peter next time he comes around.”

“How do you know Jimmy Durante?”

Mite shrugged. “He lives at the Astor. We did him a favor once. I’ll ask. By the way, how’s the day shift working out for you?”

“Fine, thank you. It’s nice to wake up with the rest of the world for a change.”

“Yeah good. That Barney guy is all right. He was more than willing to do a favor once I tuned him in. He’s treating you all right?”

“Like a queen,” she said gaily.

The promotion to the day shift had come well ahead of those with far more seniority at the phone company. She had mentioned it once, an offhand comment that she was tired of sleeping all day and working all night, and suddenly her boss, Mr. Rifkin, had put his arm on her shoulder and squeezed and told her she had been doing such a wonderful job that she was being promoted. He did this in front of everyone and the other girls eyed her suspiciously, which secretly thrilled her, better suspicion in their eyes than pity. She wondered at what Mite had done to convince Barney Rifkin to do him the favor,
or if maybe he had sent Blatta to make the request. And she also wondered how offhand her own comment had truly been. They were right to be suspicious, the girls stuck on the night shift, struggling still to sleep through the morning with the honk of trucks outside their windows and light streaming through their shades.

She lifted her empty wineglass and a waiter quickly filled it. Another waiter deftly placed a new steak before her, its surface dark and sizzling.

“So tell me, Mite,” she said, “how do you break someone’s legs?”

“What?”

“I mean, do you just crack them like twigs—” she snapped a piece of celery with her fingers—“or do you use tools? I know they call your friend Jerry a leg-breaker, so I was wondering.”

“It’s just an expression,” said Mite. “It don’t mean nothing. You know what I been thinking? I been thinking I oughts to go see an opera.”

“Why on earth would you want to do that?”

“You know, culture. You think I’d like opera?”

“No, I don’t. So he’s never broken anyone’s leg?”

“I don’t know, maybe. A couple arms I know for sure. He just twists them behind the mope’s back like a chicken wing and that’s it.”

“What’s it like to watch him do it? Do you hear the crack?”

“You don’t want to know,” he said, but he was wrong, she did, every detail, every scent and sound. She was fascinated by his work, even the dark parts, especially the dark parts, the
Jerry Blatta parts. That the strange man in brown, seeming to be totally lost in the world when first she spied him, could end up being the source of all power in the Square amazed her. She hadn’t seen him since that night in the Automat, but she constantly sensed his presence through Mite, and, somehow, it felt as if he were coming ever closer. The thought of ending up face to face with Jerry Blatta again secretly thrilled her.

This thing with Mite, this peculiar relationship, was now the richest part of her life. She first went out with him as a favor, reluctantly agreeing because he seemed so anxious to impress her, but now she looked forward to their dinners with a breathless anticipation. Mite was her lone connection to a more dangerous, more awe-inspiring world, and she wouldn’t give this connection up, or the gifts Mite tossed to her as if they were nothing more than trifles. The dark blue dress she was wearing tonight, and the pearls, were from him. But she figured it was a square deal. In exchange for the weekly dinners and the gifts, Mite bought a companion, someone he could sit and talk to without the pressure of having to pretend to be other than he was, a kid who had latched onto something and was riding it high, someone to laugh with as Times Square opened up to him like an oyster. And it wasn’t like she didn’t pay a price for all he lavished on her: thrilling and dangerous this new world might be, but also distressingly barren. Everyone assumed there was something between her and Mite and no one anymore ever wanted to be on the wrong side of Mite. So she was like a vestal virgin without the virgin part, lavished with gifts and yet remaining untouched, as if being prepared for some great destiny.

For a while, she had wondered when Mite would make his move, the inevitable pass, and what she would do about it. At one point, she had decided that she would let him, she would close her eyes and let him, and that way she wouldn’t feel like she was a cheat as she swilled his wine at dinner. At another point, she had decided that she wouldn’t, that Mite would have to take only what she was willing to offer, her time, her friendship, her smile, and be satisfied or go on his way. But then she realized that Mite wouldn’t ever make that pass. She would have been insulted except she could sense it simply wasn’t in him, boiling away like it was in the other men she had known.

“Why wouldn’t I like opera?” he asked. “The swells all seem to lap it up.”

“If you’re having trouble sleeping, Mite, buy a pillow.”

“What about that guy with the name what writes them plays. I hear he’s pretty good.”

“With the name?”

“Like a state.”

“Tennessee Williams? Yes, he’s wonderful. He has something opening up in the Morosco soon, something about a cat stuck up in a tree or something.”

“A show about cats? It’ll never go over.”

“Maybe, but I’d still love to go.”

“Okay, I’ll get us ducats, then. Front row good?”

“He’s a fruit, you know.”

“Is he? Well maybe we’ll see something else. There’s plenty else, isn’t there?”

“So why is he not called an arm-breaker, if that’s what he does. I just want to get the lingo down.”

“Why are you so interested in the Boss all of a sudden?”

“I’m just curious, Mite. Just curious.”

“It’s an expression, is all. Look, it’s just beeswax. We make deals, we expect them kept. We don’t go looking for trouble, but when someone starts talking about the CIA being the reason he can’t pay what he owes, we can’t go to no police, we gots to take care of it ourselves, that’s all.”

“Do you hear the crack?”

“All you hear are the pleading and the shake in the voice and then the scream, that’s all you hear. A lot of screaming.”

“It’s the same in opera, too.” She leaned toward him. “How does it make you feel, all the screaming?”

“Like my suit’s too tight.”