City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (22 page)

“Ain’t you the Hebe bastahd who wouldn’t gimme a shift for the missus last Christmas?” he demanded, hands on his hips, the thick wattle in his neck quivering back and forth. “Isn’t you the same louser?”

“Excuse me, it could not have been me,” the dress man said, gesturing nervously toward his wagon. “Take what you want—only the finest goods! For your wife an’ daughter—no charge!”

“Sure, an’ how does that help me last Christmas?”

There were a few guffaws from the watching vendors. Like them, Gyp knew the cop was making his case as dramatic as possible. More likely the dress peddler had once refused to pay the twenty-five-cent weekly shakedown Buckley imposed.

“Get on wit’chas!” The cop frowned at the watching men and women. “Get back to yer own thievin’!”

Seeing his witnesses leaving, the dress seller gestured wildly toward Gyp.

“He’s
the
momzer!”
he cried. “The yellow-faced murderer—tryink to poison my horse right out on the street!”

Buckley looked fully at Gyp for the first time, and Gyp met his gaze. The cop lowered his eyes deferentially.

“Here! He’p yourself. Like Christmas twice over!”

The dress peddler was loading dresses over the officer’s arm.

“Just give me justice—”

Buckley stared stonily back at the dress man—though he made no move to remove the lawn from his arm.

“That’s a mighty bold accusation yer makin’ against the gentleman.”

“Gentleman,”
the dress seller repeated, looking stunned.

“You want me to run you in for libel, do ya?”

“Libel,” the peddler repeated again, his voice now bewildered and sick with anticipation.

“Yer callin’ the gentleman here a horse poisoner, when all he’s doon is to feed yer poor animal a cookie, am I right?”

The fat cop turned to look at Gyp, and gave him a knowing smirk. Gyp did not deign to respond, and Buckley turned back to his prey.

“That’s right,” he answered himself. “Just feedin’ him a cookie. Do ya see that now?”

The dress seller looked fearfully back and forth between the two of them, still hoping he could salvage something.

“I—yes. Maybe that was.”

He looked away, as if he were afraid of what more he might say. But the cop wasn’t finished.

“I take it, then, you wit’draw the accusation?”

“Yes.”

“So you agree—he was just feedin’ the horse a cookie—” Buckley drew the bag obsequiously out of Gyp’s hand.

“Yes.”

“—like I’m doin’ now.”

The cop pushed the bag of poison-laced cookies up to the horse’s mouth himself, and the dress peddler looked stricken.

“Take anudder dress! Take three! Anythink you like!”

Yet the horse still did not eat from the bag. It snuffled inquisitively at the cookies again—then took another, reluctant step back. Buckley stood holding the sack for a moment, contemplating the animal.

“Or maybe yer gonna feed the t’ing yerseif.”

He thrust the cookies at the dress seller, who stepped back much faster than his horse, waving the bag away.

“That’s all right, she’s
fed!
She had enough—”

Buckley held the sack up in the man’s face now.

“What’re you implyin’? There’s somethin’ the matter with these? What’re ya sayin’ about the gentleman here?”

“No! No, nothink like that!”

“Take ’em,
then. Or I run you in right now.”

To suffer such a fate, the peddler had to know, would be to forfeit all his stock—and the horse as well. By the time he was released, after a day or two in jail, the fine bay would be nothing more than a few hair rings around children’s fingers, and all his dresses would have disappeared into the street.

Slowly—as reluctantly as if he were being forced to eat them himself—the dress seller reached out and took the sack of oatmeal cookies. He hesitated still, looking at the cop and at Gyp, saying half-imploringly, half-defiantly:

“I am a person among people—”

“Feed it!”
Buckley bellowed at him.

The peddler slowly swung the bag of poisoned cookies back under his own horse’s nose, his face suffused with grief and bitterness. This time, the magnificent bay stuck its head right in, crunching contentedly through the cookies.

“There’s a good girl—”

Buckley’s pudgy, short-fingered cop’s hand stroked the doomed horse’s chestnut nose.

“Eat up now.”

So that’s how it was,
Gyp realized. The dress seller had taught the bay to eat only from his own hand—a wise precaution on these streets. That was one he was going to have to remember.

“There you go.”

The bay finished the last cookie, thick horse tongue avidly licking up the last crumbs from the bottom of the sack. The dress peddler kept it there in front of her, letting the horse have all of its last meal, staring hatefully at the cop.

“It is a crime,” he said. “It is a dirty crime.”

“What crime?” Buckley asked drolly, walking away with the dresses still on his arm. “You fed the t’ing yerself. Maybe next time you’ll do better in observin’ the spirit of Christmas.”

For a long moment the cookies seemed to have had no effect: the horse stood as tall as ever in the crowded street, licking its lips. Then the big, proud bay dropped suddenly to one knee. The cart listed behind her, the mountain of dresses and ladies’ underwear spilling into the street. There was a low exclamation up and down the block, but no one moved. The horse trembled all over for a few more moments, trying to support herself on three legs. Then she dropped to her other front knee, then fell all the way over to the ground.

“Gottenyu!”
the dress seller cried out in his grief, bending over the dying animal.

The horse’s head shivered behind her blinders, but she never made a sound. A burst of black bile spewed suddenly out of her mouth and down the beautiful, brown breast. Then she lay still on her side.

Gyp the Blood stepped gingerly over the dead animal, and stood next to the peddler.

“Next time—remember. You can’t
be
careful enough.”

The dress man looked up at him, tears running down his face. He obviously wanted to say something, but he held back. Gyp smiled down at him, inches from his face, and started to walk away.

“You were a thief already in your mother’s belly!” the man called after him, unable to contain himself any longer. He stood in the street, arms shaking with rage, and the endless streams of vendors and shoppers pushed slowly past him, their eyes averted.

“You’re a
shande!”
he cried. “A
shande
for the goyim!”

Gyp chuckled, and turned to show him his teeth.

“The goyim!”

He pointed at Buckley the cop, waddling before him down the Street with his boodle.

“The goy is my hand servant!”

He walked away, leaving the dress peddler standing by his horse and his piles of finery. Little hands crept in, snatching at the dresses and petticoats that lay in the street. The peddler only watched—unable, now, to summon the wherewithal to stop them.

Gyp strolled back down the
Hazzer Mark,
stopping to buy some
bubkes
from an old lady selling them out of a pot on the sidewalk. She measured them out in a paper sheaf, and he walked contentedly on, popping handfuls of the warm black-eyed peas into his mouth.

Buckley was waiting for him at the end of the block, down at the corner of Mott Street, the fine, gold-and-purple dresses still hanging off his arm.

“How ’bout that, a trained horse? I knew it, I seen that once before—” he prattled on triumphantly, offering the clothes up to Gyp.

“Do me a favor, will ya, an’ take these around to the missus? Won’t do for me to be seen walkin’ around with the spoils, will it?”

He laughed as he said it, but Gyp only stared icily at him.

“So now I’m your valet?
A goy bleibt a goy.
You did what you get paid for, that’s all.”

Gyp finished his
bubkes,
crumpling up the paper sheaf in a ball and tossing it away, then licking up the grease from his fingers.

“All right, Gyp, if that’s yer feelin’,” the fat cop said good-naturedly. “Yer a cute one, all right. God help ya if Big Tim ever puts the mark a Cain on yer back.”

“Bite the feather bed,” Gyp told him absently, gingerly taking off his bowler and attending to his damaged head as best he could with his fingers, making sure the large, ugly, white bandage was still in place.

“Jesus, but that’s a piece a work,” Buckley said with professional approval. “How’d ja get that?”

“None of your goddamned business!”

“All right, be like that.”

Buckley started to walk away, giving him a sarcastic little salute with his thumb and forefinger, but then he stopped.

“Say, there was a
bhoy
by earlier, wanted me to pass on a message to you. Says you oughta get movin’ on that matter they talked about.”

“Uh-huh.”

Gyp smoothed his hair around the bandage, carefully replacing his hat.

“What’s it about?” Buckley leaned in, porcine eyes glittering avidly in his pink, puffy face. “He was from uptown, too. You can tell me—”

Gyp shot out his right arm, catching Buckley by the shoulder and spinning him around before he knew what had happened.

“I
said,
it’s none of your business. But tell that person for me, I’ll take care of his job soon as I settle a little debt of my own. You got that?”

“Sure, Gyp, sure,” the cop said, wincing under his grip. “But I dunno, they’re serious about this, whatever it is.”

“Tell ’em.
Tell ’em exactly what I said. Soon as I settle this, I’ll take care of it.”

He fished a few coins out of his pocket and placed them in Buckley’s hand, grinning mirthlessly as he watched the cop’s face light up.

“ ‘Preciate it.”

“ ‘Show a
treyfe
cop a kosher coin and he will shiver with the ague,’ ” Gyp quoted to the man’s face, and let him go. Buckley strolled off cheerfully, the fancy dresses trailing from his arm like so many pennants, shaking his head back at Gyp:

“You think you’re quite the boy now, but you better listen, it won’t last forever!”

Sadie was waiting for him at the corner, and he walked her back up to her stand under the Bowery elevated.

“You know I hate jobs like that,” she told him in a trembling voice, sneaking him reproachful little glances.

“Uh-huh.”

“How can you
do
something like that?”

“I dunno—how
can
you do something like that?”

He considered slapping her for her insolence, but he was too disgusted by how she looked to do even that much. Now that he saw her up close he could tell that her makeup was on crooked and her hair wasn’t even combed. It lay graying and tangled under her shapeless black hat. She was really letting herself go.

“Gevalt,
how do you expect to get a fare like that? Use a mirror sometime, why don’cha.”

To his surprise, her eyes filled instantly with tears. Somehow, she could still be shocked and hurt by him, he realized—to his further disgust, and a certain arousal. There was something infinitely punishable about her, and it made him want to hurt her worse than he ever had before.

“You said you wanted me down here on time—”

He snapped his fingers in her face.

“Shut it. What’re you, a child who can’t comb her own hair? You think I wanted you out there lookin’ like any
kurveh?
You’re workin’ for me, you gotta look right. Got it?”

She nodded, and he pushed her aggressively back against the pillar of the elevated train where she stood all day, looking for trade. She bounced off it, and he gave her another sharp push back.

“You got it?”

“Yes, I got it.”

“All right.”

He stood before her with his hands in his pockets, balancing back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“You make any money last night?”

She nodded submissively.

“How, I don’ know. Give it. And yesterday? The day before?”

He made her hand over every cent, and when she had he still poked and prodded at her. He pushed his hands up roughly through the flimsy, red-and-black layers of her dresses, to where he knew she hid her secret purse, and she cried out but she let him do it, let him pull it off her garter. He nosed through it—pleased to find that it was completely empty.

“Here, take care a yourself,” he said, magnanimously counting out five dollars of his own money and handing it back to her. He pushed up against her, still running his hands over her, his voice stern and paternal now.

“You all right? Everything all right?”

She nodded, eyes lowered.

“Yes, Lazar.”

“You feel sick? Coughin’ or nothin’?”

“No, Lazar.”

“No rash or nothin’?”

Her face reddened—
How ridiculously modest she still is, afier all these years on the street

“No.”

“Mmm, you still feel so good, I could do you right here.”

He rubbed his groin up into her, in the midday darkness under the el. He nuzzled into her neck, whispering in her ear.

“My fat little pigeon!”

He stopped abruptly and yanked her chin around with his hand, her eyes still submissively shut.

“Anyone been
hokking
your
chainik?
Anyone falling in love?”

“No, Lazar.”

“You sure? You sure you don’t got a fancy boyfriend, some
shaygets
uptown?”

“No, Lazar.”

“You sure? It’s all right if there is, you know, you just gotta tell me. All I want is f’you to be honest.”

“There’s nobody.”

“Really? ’Cause I heard from McGlory there was, you know.”

“He’s lying!”

She looked up at him.

“No-body—is—in—love—with—me,” she said firmly, looking into his eyes.

Nervously, she fingered the red ribbon she wore around her neck for protection against the evil eye, but he could see she was telling him the truth. It was not in her to hold anything back from him.