The Predators (8 page)

“He’s okay,” she answered. “The draft board gave him four-F because his right leg is crooked and shorter than his other.”

Harry looked at me. “What’s the status with you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll graduate at the end of the next month, and I know I’ll have to report to the draft board as soon as I graduate. I figure I’ll be one-A for sure.”

“I remember once that your father told me when you were a kid you had asthma,” he said. “Maybe that will keep you out.”

“I’m not sure of that,” I answered. “I never heard anything about it.”

“Maybe we can talk to your draft board.” He looked at me. “A little chicken schmaltz might grease the wheels a little.”

I laughed. “Uncle Harry, they don’t even know chicken schmaltz in my draft board. The district is all goyim.”

Harry looked at me. “Money is money. It talks in any language.”

I shrugged.

“Can you handle the counter with José and yourself?” Harry asked. “I have to run over to the Puerto Rican employment agency and get us some new help.”

“We can manage for now,” I said. “But I don’t know if we can handle the six o’clock rush hour when all the factories are out.”

Fat Rita called down from the cash register. “You get in trouble, I can help out.”

“I won’t be too long,” Harry said. I watched him go up to his office. I didn’t see him after that. He always left by the back door that was downstairs from his office.

Things quieted down after Harry left. I looked over at Fat Rita. “Has it been busy all day?” I asked.

She nodded. “Everyone is talking about the war. Everyone was shocked by the news.”

“Same for me,” I said. “That’s all we talked about at school.”

She paused for a moment. “Has Harry ever said anything about letting me go?” she asked.

“I’ve never heard anything,” I said. “Why should he? He just gave you a raise.”

She looked at me. “He’s been talking to your girlfriend,” she said. “I know that she is graduating with a CPA certificate this month. I thought he might have said something about her taking over the books that I do. After all, I’m not a CPA.”

“She’s never mentioned anything to me about it,” I said. “And I’m sure she would have said something. Besides, he wouldn’t be willing to pay CPA prices.”

“I was just curious,” she said. “She’s been up to his office every morning this week. She always comes in about eleven o’clock.”

I knew that Kitty had said that she could do Uncle Harry’s taxes. But she hadn’t told me that she was talking with Uncle Harry about it. I thought for a moment as I took care of the customers at the counter. I turned back to Fat Rita. “I’m sure that you don’t have anything to worry about. You know everything about his business.” Then I heard Buddy call back from the end of the counter.

“Gimme a Pepsi and a pack of Luckys,” he called.

I brought them over to him. “When did you come in? What’s going on with you?”

He opened the pack of cigarettes, took one out, and lit up. He took a deep drag and a swig of Pepsi. “I’ve been fucked!”

I stared at him. He looked down. I had never seen him upset like this. “What happened?”

“The boss at the navy yard told me since the war had already begun he could not put any new people on.”

“That seems crazy. With the war on wouldn’t they need more people than ever?” I said.

“Right,” he said. “But they don’t want niggers.”

“You check that out with your friends?” I asked.

“That’s the first thing I did,” he answered. “But they had an answer. The wops control all of Brooklyn’s shipping yards, including the navy yards.”

“Now what are you going to do?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll blow town. I’ve got no family keeping me here.”

“They’ll track you down because of your draft card,” I said.

“Not if I go to another town and change my name.” He smiled.

“You’ll still need a draft card, won’t you?” I said.

“Yeah, but that’s easy,” he said. “I can get any card anytime I want. Another draft card, even another driver’s license.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s always some way that they can catch up with you.”

“Yeah,” Buddy said as he nervously tapped his fingers on the counter. “I guess I’ll just have to figure out another angle.”

It was four-thirty now and the taxi drivers were starting on the new shift. There were two taxi garages down the block from us and we always got busy selling cigarettes and candy bars. A number of them asked for Harry, but I told them he would be out for a while; they said that they would come back later to see him.

Fifteen minutes later the counter was empty. “Boy,” I said. “Things really died down.”

“Word travels fast if Harry’s not here to take bets from the cabbies,” Buddy said.

“It’s not like Harry to miss this time of the day. These are his big bettors.”

The six o’clock rush hour started and Harry had not returned. Buddy and Fat Rita and José all helped me when we got busy.

Fat Rita looked at her watch. “It’s almost seven,” she said. “This is my quitting time. I don’t know what to do. If I don’t go now I’ll miss my ride. And I’ll be too late to get dinner for the family.”

“It’s your time,” I said. “Go on home.”

“What should I do with the cash in the register?” she asked. “Harry always takes part of it to the night deposit at the bank.”

“I’ll keep everything here,” I said. “It’ll still be here when he gets back.”

I watched her waddle over to the subway entrance and go down the stairs. I turned to Buddy. “Where do you think he’s gone?”

Buddy laughed. “He hates Hitler. Maybe he enlisted.”

I laughed. “Not Harry. He may be Jewish but he ain’t that crazy.” I went to the register and opened it. “A hundred and forty bucks,” I said.

“There has to be more than that,” Buddy insisted. “Press the lever on the side of the cash drawer. It’ll slip out.”

I did what he told me. He was right. The cash drawer came out. There was nothing but bills there. Quickly, I figured how much. Over a thousand dollars. I slid the cash drawer back into the register. “He’s crazy to keep all that cash here.”

“He’s a bookie,” Buddy said. “He uses that money to pay off bets.”

It was almost nine o’clock and a light snow was just beginning. I started closing the glass shutters. Buddy and José were helping me. I was still trying to decide whether I should take the money with me when we closed up. I saw Aunt Lila pull up in their car in front of the store.

She got out and came over to me. “Where’s Harry?”

I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “He went to the agency to get some new Puerto Rican help, because nobody but José showed up for work today. He’s not back yet,” I said.

A taxi pulled up behind their car at that moment. “Here I am,” Harry called out hurriedly as he got out of the cab.

17

Now that the war was on, everything was changing. More than ever women were taking over jobs that men used to do. Here, at the counter, Uncle Harry hired young Puerto Rican girls instead of the boys he used to hire. Buddy said that Harry got the better of the bargain. Not only did he pay the girls less than the boys, he was always able to talk one or two of them into giving him a fuck. They didn’t complain. They needed the job. The only other opportunity they would have was to work as cleaning women. That paid even less than Harry paid, and they could only work a day or two a week. At least this was steady work.

Graduation day for me was on the twentieth of January. When I woke up that morning, Aunt Lila had a big special breakfast prepared for me. I had made a 3.0 grade average. It wasn’t great, but it was better than flunking out.

Aunt Lila and Kitty were coming to the school for the graduation exercises. Harry had to keep the store open; as he said, without him “nothing would work.”

Aunt Lila gave me a nice Arrow shirt and Kitty gave me a bulky sweater. She said that would keep me warm, since it was cold at the counter at night now when the windows were open.

After I got my diploma, Aunt Lila dropped Kitty and me back at the apartment house. She told us that she was going to go by and pick Harry up a little early and surprise him. She said she had gotten Harry an Arrow shirt, too, and she wanted to give it to him.

I looked at Kitty and she looked at me. We both had the same thought. I ran into the apartment and called the counter. Fat Rita answered at the register.

“Where’s Harry?” I asked.

“Upstairs,” she said. I could hear her gum clicking against her teeth. “He’s got one of the spick girls with him.”

“Get upstairs and tell him that Aunt Lila’s on her way down there,” I said.

“I can’t do that,” she said fearfully. “He’d kill me if I went up there.”

“It’ll be worse if you don’t call him,” I said. “There goes your job.”

“I don’t care,” she said, starting to cry. “I’m afraid. You know his temper.”

“You call him,” I said firmly. “He won’t be angry. He’ll thank you for it. Believe me.”

She hesitated a moment. “Stay on the phone,” she said. “Don’t hang up. I’ll go up and knock on the door.”

I held on for almost two minutes. She came back on the phone. “Everything’s okay,” she said.

“Thanks, Rita,” I said, and hung up the phone.

I turned to Kitty. “She got him.”

“Good,” she said, and pulled an envelope out of her purse and held it in her hand. “This came for you this morning in the mail just before I went to your graduation.”

I looked down at it. An official draft board envelope. I opened it and took out the note. They didn’t lose any time. I was ordered to take the draft card and go directly to Grand Central and take my physical.

I handed the letter to Kitty. She glanced at it quickly and then looked up at me. “You were expecting it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But not so soon. I haven’t even had enough time to decide what I want to do.”

“If you’re one-A,” she said, “you have no choice, anyway. They just send you to the army or navy. But if you’re lucky and get four-F, then you stay here and get yourself a real job, not a crummy one like at Harry’s.”

“What kind of job?” I asked. “They don’t train you for anything at high school.”

“There’s a lot of jobs,” she said. “Just read the classifieds in the newspaper. All the good jobs are for the men that are left here. Maybe you don’t realize it, but men are a real property—in demand.”

“Maybe I can get a job fucking some rich society dame,” I said kiddingly.

“You can’t even handle what you’ve got,” she said laughing, going along with the fun. She reached for my fly. “You have just enough to keep me satisfied.”

We got out of our clothes and rolled onto the bed. I really liked Kitty; she made everything fun. I hoped I made her happy, too. Now that I had graduated we’d have a lot of time to do things together. That’s what I thought, but we never had a chance. By the middle of March I was in the army.

BOOK TWO

PART ONE

ONE FRANC A LITER

1

France—1914

Jean Pierre heard his father and grandfather screaming at each other from behind the heavy, ornate library doors. He pressed his ear closer to the door, but then Armand, the heavy butler, pulled him abruptly away from the door by the collar and dragged him upstairs to his bedroom. He pushed him inside the room and slapped him twice on the face. “You never eavesdrop when your eiders are speaking!” he snapped.

“But they were talking about a war!” Jean Pierre said. “I love wars.”

“You’re still young. You don’t know anything about wars,” Armand said. “Now you wait up here until you are called downstairs.”

Jean Pierre watched as the butler closed the door behind him. He muttered at the butler under his breath. “Son of a bitch! I know why he has a job in this house. He sucks my grandfather’s cock and lets my father fuck him in the ass.” Still muttering under his breath, he walked to the window that overlooked the beautiful flower garden in the front of the villa. He continued wondering what they were talking about.

*   *   *

“Papa!” Jacques said. “Why are you so afraid? If we do have a war it will be over quickly. A matter of months.”

Maurice looked at his son sadly. “Jacques, you’re stupid. There is never a war that is over in just a few months. I remember when the French were fighting the Prussians when I was only twelve years old. Your grandfather took me and ten men with four wagons in the middle of the night to bring water into Paris because the Prussians had cut off the water supply. The French are never prepared, even then, as well as now.”

“So what?” Jacques replied. “That’s how we became rich and started a whole new business.”

“You don’t understand, Jacques,” his father said. “Those were different days. Now Briand, our premier, is an egoist. I have to believe that he had Jaurès, the pacifist, murdered so that he could get us into the war. Don’t deceive yourself, Jacques, the Prussians will beat the whole of Europe. We can’t beat shit. Even our football teams can’t win a game.”

“But Briand is not in charge of the government; Poincaré is the president,” Jacques answered.

“You must learn, Jacques, to read between the lines. He will become president within two years. Then all Europe will have to beg America to save us,” Maurice stated.

Jacques looked at his father. “Perhaps we should ask his mother to let him live with her in Switzerland until this is over.”

“You know the agreement we have made with her. Besides, I do not want my grandson in the company of that whore.” He shook his head. “No, she would never agree to Jean Pierre living with her. She only agreed to bear the child, not to raise the child.”

“The Rothschilds still have family in England. Maybe we should ask them to take Jean Pierre,” Jacques suggested.

Maurice shook his head. “The only thing the Rothschilds are interested in is money.”

“We have money, too,” Jacques answered arrogantly. “Don’t forget we own all the bottling plants for our water. That’s more valuable than all of the Rothschilds’ assets!”

“And don’t forget that the Rothschilds are Jews,” his father said.