The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats (23 page)

Likewise the file cabinets, which were so scrupulously organized and detailed it was difficult to believe Shushan’s business affairs were illegal. From the point of view of the IRS, apparently they weren’t: going back ten years, federal and New York State tax forms all listed Shushan’s business as “security consultancy.” Strictly speaking, this was not debatable. That Shushan provided security for illegal activities—protection would be the word the newspapers preferred—was not in itself illegal. True, bookies were involved in the illegal betting industry, but taking a fee from them to keep gangsters from knocking them over was totally legitimate. It came to me that this is at least one reason Shushan did not even wish to look at his client’s books. Auditing their financial records in order to calculate his cut of their revenues would have involved Shushan in their business and thus complicity in an illegal activity. By taking a flat fee Shushan removed himself from intimacy with or even knowledge of what his clients did. Of course, when it came to the Fulton Fish Market, aside from the regular selling of cheap frozen pollock as expensive fresh swordfish, the market was as much on the up-and-up as any commercial institution. But even here charging his clients a flat fee kept him at arm’s length from the business itself. No one could argue that he was shaking down his clients for a percentage and thus aggressively intruding in their businesses. He was simply paid a flat fee for services rendered, and all his contracts—carbon copies of the contracts were appended to each year’s tax filings, as innocent as could be—could be ended by either party (on sixty days’ notice) at any time. Naturally the market’s wholesalers would be foolish to break off their deal with Shushan, because they’d immediately fall prey to the Tintis, to whose greedy clutches they hardly wished to return. The only variable in these simple agreements was that Shushan’s fees were tied to the Consumer Price Index (“as published in the edition of the
Wall Street Journal
closest to the day scheduled for price adjustment”), a common business practice: the fish wholesalers and bookies were also charging their clients more as the cost of living rose. No less interesting was what happened to all this money.

Since it had never been earned illegally it did not have to be laundered, and so was invested in what were then considered blue-chip equities, tax-free municipal bonds and, in the main, real estate, this last such a Hebraic compulsion that “Jewish landlord” was not only an American cliché but redundant. From the Jewish point of view, less than two decades after Europe’s Jews lost their property as a precursor to losing their lives, ownership of something immoveable was almost a tactile pleasure. Perhaps Jews went into medicine, law and accounting because no matter where they were driven they could set up anew, but real estate allowed these same professionals to not even think about being driven anywhere. They were not only proud citizens of the United States, but owned a piece of same. Maybe similar desires motivated Shushan.

For all I knew he chose real estate because Justo Ocero favored it for certain tax advantages, or because Shushan loved tall buildings in Manhattan and resorts in Arizona and warehouses in the Bronx and beachfront hotels in Havana. Maybe he was some sort of architect-manqué, a frustrated master-builder who had grown up too poor to get a formal education and now was too rich to need one. As well this would explain the library and the French and Spanish learned out of a half-dozen books and a set of Berlitz teach-yourself long-playing records that I’d found in his library.

Whatever his motivation, Shushan as reader was drawn to authority. Most every section had its guidebooks. In economics were titles like
Twelve Great Economic Thinkers
and
Wampum, Gold and Greenbacks
, each a general introduction to the field that—like the university survey courses that are prerequisites for advanced study—opened the door to Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thorstein Veblen and the dense and groundbreaking work of Fernand Braudel. In history was the same pattern, and in political science, philosophy and art as well. Literature seemed to follow no such broad outline, perhaps because the classics of fiction are themselves always on display in bookstores. No matter what today’s bestseller—in 1963 the literary sensation was Philip Roth’s
Goodbye, Columbus
—names like Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Shakespeare, Twain, Conrad, Hemingway, Lawrence are virtually imprinted on our unconscious and hardly need to appear on a list of great writers. And they were all here, even such academic standbys as
The Canterbury Tales
and
Beowulf
. In poetry the selection was weak, or maybe just idiosyncratic: several collections, the best of which was John Ciardi’s
How Does A Poem Mean
, a shelf of anthologies, plus collections of Yeats, Frost, and a passel of the kind of reader-friendly poets that most English majors had been excited by in high school: ee cummings, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane. On the other hand there was everything in print by WH Auden and Allen Ginsberg, and a few bilingual editions of Rubén Dario and Pablo Neruda. These were heavily marked in pencil, as though Shushan had decided to teach himself Spanish through its greatest practitioners. The library was fascinating, but I was continually drawn back to the file cabinets.

Not least because my father’s name kept appearing.

In the meticulous folders were employment and payroll records, starting as early as 1954, one year after Shushan had completed his Marine service. A record for Newhouse began showing up in 1957, two years before my father had been cashiered from the NYPD, first as Meyer, then as Mike, which was what he was generally called. At first the sums were small, signifying I guessed part-time work, or maybe small bribes, but regular. Once a month, there it was. Then, after my father was compelled to leave the force, the payments grew. They pretty much matched what dad had been making as a detective. These were entered as salary, with deductions for income tax and social security, and went on until a month after he died, at which time a lump sum appeared: $15,000, marked
funeral expenses
.

My father’s funeral had not cost him anything, but not because Shushan Cats had paid the bill. As a dues-paying member of the Bhotke Society, dad’s burial, his plot and its perpetual care were taken care of. The fifteen thou I recognized right away. The sum had appeared in my father’s account at the East New York Savings Bank. I hadn’t thought much about it, except to think it might be some sort of error that I should not question, lest the funds disappear as abruptly as they had come to be. All I knew was that it was there. I was a grade-skipping high-school senior, sixteen years old. I had no other family. I would have to be living on my own. The money supported me for three years. In fact, as I read the entry there was still a couple of hundred bucks left.

If Shushan Cats had been to my father’s funeral I had not noticed. Certainly he had not visited while I sat for the week of mourning. Was it to spare me embarrassment that a notorious gangster knew my father, employed him? I didn’t know. And I didn’t care. All I knew is that Shushan Cats was turning out to be some sort of iceberg in my life. I saw the glinting tip of him now, but apparently he had been a large submarinal presence all along. I considered asking Justo, but concealing what I knew would probably serve me better than revealing that I knew it. As Shushan said, “Don’t ever let the Itals know you speak dago, unless there’s a good reason.” If caution made sense there, it made sense here.

My problem now was I really had to speak to the Itals. In whatever language. Maybe Fritzi the mob-mouthpiece could protect me from the district attorney, but that was not the threat that I had to keep in focus. The threat was from the people who were already moving in on Shushan’s clients. They wouldn’t stop with a theatrical bookie in a champagne wig, big black-framed rose-colored glasses, an oatmeal suit and a lisp. They would be coming after me. If I didn’t get to the Itals, I would be a prisoner in a hotel suite with ten thousand books until the money ran out. In the midst of all this I realized I had four term papers due.

Gene del Vecchio took about an hour to arrive. He looked like he had just come from the Brooklyn College campus, all tweeds, a white shirt checked in blue and red tattersall and the kind of foulard bow tie that screamed college professor. It was a cold day in November, and he wore a coat so long it practically swept the floor. His red scarf was almost as generous. When Ira let him in he hugged me to him and said, “How’s the incipient gangster?”

“More incipient than gangster,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

“From what I understand coming here is the only way to see you.” He tossed a copy of the
Daily Mirror
on the coffee table. With relief I noted that the editors had been forced to look further afield than the life of Russell Newhouse for a front page.

DOGS SET ON

MARCHERS

HUNDREDS ARRESTED

IN ALABAMA PROTEST

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw it on TV. “

“I’m going down tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Birmingham,” he said. “Fucking redneck cocksuckers.”

I nearly asked if these were the only cocksuckers he did not approve of, but it would have been unfair.

“You think Kennedy is going to do something about it?”

“This is a guy who didn’t vote for the Civil Rights Act when he was in the Senate,” he said. “I’d invite you to join us—three busloads from Brooklyn College, more from Hunter and CCNY and Queens—but I hear you’re tied up.” He opened the paper to page three.

It appeared the
Mirror
’s editors had not totally abandoned me. There I was, in a photo they’d used before, but this time had flipped so I faced right. Opposite was another profile, facing left.

MOB BRAWL LOOMS

OVER CATS LEGACY

The man facing me was identified as Richard “Big Dickie” Tinti. He appeared to be about forty, his hair thinning a bit in a deep widow’s peak, a cigar stuck in his teeth. As though this was some prizefight in the Eastern Parkway Arena between two relative unknowns, I had a nickname too: Russell “Schoolboy” Newhouse. According to the
Mirror
, I was a “kid genius” in the “special honors program” at Brooklyn College. It seems I could have gone to Harvard or West Point or MIT except that I preferred to stay close to my “hoodlum associates.” According to the
Mirror
, “Officials at Brooklyn College confided that Newhouse may be thrown out of the city school on ‘character issues.’” According to the
Mirror
, Tinti and I had been enemies for years.

“I never met the man,” I said.

“Don’t lose sleep over it,” Del said. “And nobody is going to be throwing you out of school. That’s more bullshit. But we are going to have four incompletes if you don’t get me some term papers.”

By this time Ira had come in from the kitchen with a bottle of Terri’s single malt and two large glasses. He poured a couple of doubles. I watched Del knock his back in one long gulp.

“You got anything to eat?” he said. “Russ, I have been working non-stop on the Birmingham thing. I starve.”

Without a word from me Ira went back to the kitchen. In a moment he came out with a plate of cold cuts, mustard, mayonnaise, stacked slices of rye bread, half-sour dill pickles. I must have become sensitized to smell from being cooped up in the same place for so long—how long was it? Only three days, but it seemed like forever. I inhaled it all, including the poppy seeds in the bread. Del dug in.

“I’m not going to be able to give you those papers,” I said.

“We’ll work something out,” Del said, his mouth stuffed. “I’ve got some
mfxshehsd
.”

“Some what?”

He made an effort to get the food down. “You guys get the best deli,” he said.

“Us guys.”

“You know.”

“No.”

He motioned quickly back and forth with his right hand, his index finger extended. “Connected.”

“Professor del Vecchio—”

“Russ, please. Del.”

“Del, I’m not connected. I’m not anything but fucking locked up in this fucking hotel suite with fucking hot and cold running corned beef and anything else I want to order in, and you think I’m some kind of bona fide gangster? I mean, you know who and what I am. Is this a joke or what?”

I watched him put down what was left of his sandwich and pour himself another double, maybe a triple. A week before, this man was my hero. Now he was beginning to look like just another putz, a self-indulgent alcoholic who believed what he read in the papers. Worse, I was beginning to look at myself differently as well. My eyes were the same, but the mind that peered out through them seemed to have become more critical, shrewder, cooler if not simply cold. “I didn’t get what you said earlier. ‘We’ll work something out.’ You’ve got some what?”

“I’ve got some old papers. We’ll just put your name on them
et voilà
!”

“
Et voilà quoi
?”

“You’re in a tough situation with the college poobahs, Russell. You’re an A student. An A+ student. I’m not worried about you knowing the work. But enough juice from the press, given an opportunity they’ll toss you out.”

“I thought you said the work was in doing the papers the best I could.”

“Consider it a favor,” he said. The scotch in his tumbler was gone. “Maybe one day I’ll need a favor back.”

At that moment any thought I’d had of showing him the secret library on the floor above evaporated like the aroma that was all that was left of his scotch. I hadn’t touched mine. I realized I wouldn’t, at least not until he was gone. Maybe not at all. I needed a clear head. No booze. Probably no grass. And, I realized with both a sinking feeling and a sense of relief, no sex. I could not afford distraction, not even that much.

“Thanks for coming, professor,” I said. “I appreciate the favor and I’ll remember it.” This was the man I was hoping to call on for help, for advice, for a lifeline to a vessel of sanity that was before my eyes drifting away, out of range, useless. “You see Sheriff Bull Connor in Birmingham, give him my best.”