Legs (12 page)

"Fuck 'em," Jack said. "I don't want
anything to do with this goddamn boat again once I get off it. It's a
jinx."

"A jinx? You don't really believe in jinxes."

"I'd be fucking well dead if I didn't. Are you
game? Yes or no. "

"No."

He walked to the railing and I trailed him, expecting
the next ploy in the act. A final appeal to my greed.

"You wanna watch?"
he said, and so I moved alongside him in time to see him tip the box
and see, yes, jewels falling, a few, and disappearing in shadow long
before they hit the water. He tipped the box further and a few more
plummeted toward the deep, then he shook it empty, looked at me, and,
while looking, let the box flutter toward the water. It flipped a few
times, made a silent plop we could see because it was white, and was
then glommed by the blackness.

* * *

Jack was in shirtsleeves, sitting alone at the card
table where Classy Willie fleeced the suckers, when I came up for
brunch one day. I ate and then watched Jack playing solitaire and
losing. I sat across from him and said, "I was planning to get
off this tub and go home, but I think I'll stay on for the full
treatment. "

"Good. What changed your mind?"

"I don't know. Maybe the jewels. But I think I
decided to trust you. Is that a mistake'?"

"Trust me with anything but women and money."

"I also want a straight answer on Charlie
Northrup. Is that asking too much?"

Jack mused, then with high seriousness said, "I
think he's dead. But I'm not sure. If he's dead, it wasn't murder.
That I am sure of."

"That's straight?"

"That's as straight as I can say it."

"Then I guess I have to believe it. Deal the
cards."

He picked them up and shuffled. "Blackjack,"
he said and, after burying a card, dealt us both a hand. I had
eighteen. He had twenty, which he showed me before I could bet. I
looked blank and he said only, "Watch," and then dealt six
hands, face up. I got between thirteen and seventeen in all six. He
got twenty four times and two blackjacks.

"Impressive. Are you always that lucky?"

"They're marked," he said. "Never play
cards with a thief." He tossed the deck on the table, leaned
back, and looked at me.

"You think I killed Northrup.”'

"You say you didn't. I told you I accept that,"

"You don't convince me."

"Maybe it's the other way around."

He put his coat on and stood up. "Let's go out
on deck. I'll tell you a couple of stories." I followed and we
found our way back to the desolate spot where he'd dumped the jewels.
The old lady was there, and it was still as private as any place on
deck.

"How are you today?" Jack said to the old
dame, who took the remark first as an intrusion, then looked at Jack
as if he were invisible. He shrugged and we walked to the rail and
looked down at the waves and at our foamy wake.

"I dumped a guy in the water once over marked
cards."

I nodded, waited. He stared out at the ocean and went
on: "A card game in a hotel. It was the first time I ever met
Rothstein. I was working as a strikebreaker with Little Augie,
breakin' heads, just out of jail. A bum. I was a bum. Augie says to
me, 'You wanna work strongarm at a card game?' And I said all right
and he sent me to this hotel room and there's Rothstein, the
cocksucker, and he says to me, 'What happened to your head?' 'Nothin'
happened to it,' I said. "That haircut,' he said. 'You look like
a skinned rabbit, skinned by somebody who don't know how to skin. Get
a haircut for pity's sake.' Can you imagine that son of a bitch? He's
got seventy-six grand in his pocket, he told me so, and he tells me
get a haircut. Arrogant bastard. He was right about the haircut. A
barber-school job. Awful. I tell you I was a bum on the street and I
looked like one. But he made me feel like a zero.

"So the game went on
and there's this high roller—let me call him Wilson—who's
challenging Rothstein. There's other players, but he wants to beat A.
R., who's the king. And he's doing it. Wins eleven thousand one hand,
eight the next, in five thousand-dollar freezeout. Rothstein has two
men in the bathroom looking over the decks Wilson brought, and they
find the marks, little tits on the design in the corner. First-rate
work by the designer. Rothstein hears the news and calls a break but
doesn't let on, and then tells me to brain Wilson if he gets out of
hand, and I say all right because he's paying me. He bottom-deals
Wilson a six and Wilson calls him on it. Then A. R. says never mind
about bottom dealing, what about a man who brings paper into a
legitimate game? And when Wilson stood up, I brained him. Didn't kill
him. Just coldcocked him and he went down. When he came to, they told
me to take him someplace he wouldn't be a bother. They didn't say
kill him. I took him to the river with a driver and walked him to the
edge of a dock. He offered me four grand, all he had left from the
game, and I took it. Then I shot him three times and dumped him in.
It turned out he had three kids. He was a cheater, but he was
complicated. He looked at me and said, 'Why? I give you the four
grand.' His life had to be complicated with three kids and I killed
him. I wanted the four grand bad and I knew he had it. But I never
killed anybody before and I tell you I blame Rothstein. Maybe I
wouldn't have killed him if he didn't say that about the haircut,
make me feel I was such a bum. I knew I was a bum, but I didn't think
it showed so much. With the four grand I wasn't a bum anymore. I
bought a new suit and got a haircut at the Waldorf-Astoria."

* * *

The money inspired Jack. He and his brother Eddie met
one Ace O'Hagan, who drove for Big Bill Dwyer, the king of Rum Row.
Dwyer had the Coast Guard, Jersey City, and part of Long Island on
his payroll, and Jack gave Ace fifty to connect him to Dwyer for a
job. Ace called Dwyer from the bar where he and the Diamond boys were
drinking and found Dwyer was partying and wouldn't be back. Then, in
the back of Jack's car, with Eddie driving, Jack had another idea and
stuck a pistol in O'Hagan's ear and asked for the location of Dwyer's
most vulnerable drop.

"He wouldn't tell me," Jack said, "so
I smashed his nose with the pistol and he flooded himself. Bled all
the way to the Bronx where I knew we could get a truck. I told him
I'd burn his toes to cinders if he didn't tell me, and he told and we
packed his nose with toilet paper and headed for Dwyer's smallest
drop in White Plains. I cooked up a story that we were sent to load
up the truck for a millionaire named Riley,a fellow Dwyer was doing
business with, and Ace was the convincer. He talked the two guys
guarding the drop into loading the truck with Scotch and champagne,
and on the way back to the city, he says to me, 'Dwyer'll kill you.'
And I said, 'Bill's a nice guy from what I hear. He wouldn't hurt a
fellow with a little ambition. '

'"
Then we took Ace to
the hospital and I paid to get his nose fixed up. We kept him at our
rooms till I figured out what to do next, and during the night he
says to Eddie, 'He's going to kill me, isn't he'?' And Ed told him,
'No, I don't think so. If he was going to kill you, why would he pay
for your nose?"

* * *

Jack then went to Rothstein with a proposition.

"Listen, I have quite a lot of booze. I mean
quite a lot."

"What are you asking?" Rothstein said,
surprised Jack had anything of value besides his pistol.

"The going rate. "

"The rate varies. Quality talks."

"Taste it yourself. "

"I drink very little. Only at bar mitzvahs and
weddings. But I have a friend who drinks nicely and understands what
he drinks."

Jack led Rothstein and friend to the West Side garage
where the booze truck was parked. The genuine article, said the
taster.

"I take it you imported these goods yourself,"
A. R. said.

"Since when does Arnold Rothstein worry about
such details?"

"In some ways, I'm particular about whose
pockets my friends pick. "

"I'll tell you straight. It's Dwyer's stock."

Rothstein laughed and laughed and laughed.

"That's quite a daring thing, to do this to Big
Bill. And I'm laughing also because Bill owes me for several loads of
whiskey for which he borrowed a certain sum, and so it's just
possible you're trying to sell me goods with a personal interest to
me. "

"Dwyer doesn't have to know you bought the
stuff."

Rothstein laughed again at this devious fellow.

"If I had two more trucks, I could get you this
much twice over," Jack said. "That's also part of my
proposition. Fit me out with two fast trucks and I'll keep you
hip-deep in booze."

"You're moving very fast," said A. R.

"Just a young fellow trying to get ahead,"
said Jack.

Rothstein came to an end of business dealing with
Dwyer as a result of Jack Diamond, the underworld
arriviste
,
who, the day after Rothstein bought him two trucks, went back to the
White Plains drop and, with his new assistants, and their new
shotguns, newly sawed off, cleaned the place out down to the last
bottle.

Jack was notorious as a hijacker by 1925, Rothstein's
crazy—his own man, however—nabob at his Theatrical Club by then,
and making enemies like rabbits make
rabbits.

"I felt the pellets
hit me before I heard the noise, and I saw the cut barrel sticking
out of the window as the car passed before I felt the pain. I
scrunched sideways below the bottom level of the window so they
couldn't fire another one except through the metal door, and while I
was down heard their wheels scream, and I knew I had to come up to
steer when I felt the bullet hit my right heel. I didn't run into
anything because there was nothing to hit, just traffic way off and
no intersection or parked cars. I was around a Hundred and Sixth
Street when I looked up and saw them going away. I knew I had to
stop. Make them think I was out of it. I veered off to the curb and
put my head back on the seat, like a collapse. Wet with blood, and
then the pain came. Bloody heel. A woman looked in at me, scared, and
ran off. I saw the car away up the block, turning off Fifth, probably
coming back to inspect their work. My car was stalled by this time. I
started it and saw my hat on the floor, a new straw sailor, the brim
half shot off. I lifted my foot, trying not to let the heel touch the
floor, put the car in gear, clutch, gas. Goddamn but that pain was
heavy. People were out there hiding behind parked cars. I had to get
away, sol turned off Fifth then, touched my head. The blood was
everywhere and the fucking pain was incredible. I headed for Mount
Sinai, the only hospital I knew, a few blocks back on Fifth. 'Don't
let the toes go dead or I'm through driving. Don't think about the
blood. Move the toes.' You know what else I thought? I wondered could
you buy an artificial heel. They weren't following me. Probably
pissed now that they knew they didn't kill me. My vision was going on
me, the pain getting to where it counted. 'Don't black out now, tough
monkey. Here we go.' Then, Jesus, a red light. I was afraid if I ran
it I'd get hit, and then I'd be dead for sure. Bleed to death. So I
waited for the light, if you can believe that, a goddamn lake of
blood on the floor and another lake I'm sitting in. My ass floating
in blood, ruining the suit, the hat already ruined. I didn't see the
face behind the muzzle of the shotgun, but I saw the driver. Ace
O'Hagan. He'd be smiling, remembering the night his own blood flowed
all over the seat. Ace would pay. And Ace would tell me who the
shooter was because Ace couldn't take the pain. I promised I'd make
him pick me out a new suit and hat before I did the son of a bitch.
Then I was almost to the hospital, and I remembered my pistol and
threw it out the window. Didn't want to get caught with that goddamn
thing. I opened the car door and I remember thinking to myself, is my
underwear clean? Imagine that? I moved the bum leg then, limped
toward the door, and I started to spin. I spun through the doorway
and began to topple and just inside, mother, here comes the floor.

* * *

"It was a guinea mob
from the Bronx did it. I'd lifted some of their dope. But I got the
bum who led them. He floated up the East River wearing a stolen
watch. The boys dressed like cops the day they went to his house to
get him. O'Hagan, that prick, I got him good, too. The fish ate his
fingers. And he named the shooter like I knew he would. A greaseball
from St. Louis. I got him in a whorehouse."

* * *

It wasn't until after Jack died that I heard the
whorehouse story. Flossie told it to me one night at Packy Delaney's
Parody Club in Albany, one of Jack's latter-day hangouts. The Floss
worked at Packy's as a singer and free-lance source of joy. She and I
had no secrets, physical or professional, from each other.

"He was a handsome boy," she began, "with
hair like Valentino, shiny and straight and with a blue tint to it
because it was so black. Maybe that's why they called him Billy Blue.
And they always said from St. Loo whenever they said his name. Billy
Blue from St. Loo. I don't think his real name was Blue because he
was Italian, like Valentino. He talked and laughed at the bar just
like a regular fella, but you know they just ain't no regular fellas
anymore, not since I was a kid in school. They all got their
specialties. I never would've figured him for what he was. I never
even figured him for carryin' a gun. He looked too pretty.