Funny Boys (34 page)

“I’m gonna bust yaw balls.” It was Pep’s voice, coming closer.

Then he smelled smoke and somebody yelled, “Fire!” Mickey felt the crowd surge around him, pushing toward the exit.

“Mickey!”

He heard her voice over the melee and rushed towards it. As the dining room emptied, he was able to follow the sound. Then she was clinging to him.

“He’s going to kill you, Mickey,” she cried.

“I know. And I don’t want to be around when it happens.”

He grabbed her hand and tugged her in the opposite direction of the surging crowd. The smoke grew thicker. He tried to find his way to the kitchen entrance.

Suddenly he felt a sharp tap on his back. It hurt but he didn’t cry out.

“Grabahold schmuck,” Irish said.

“You kidding me?” Mickey cried, brushing him aside.

“Do it, Mickey,” Mutzie said. “I’ll explain later.”

The smoke was getting thicker.

“Listen to her, tumler,” Irish said, grabbing Mickey by the upper arm and pulling him into the kitchen, which had emptied out. He led them through the door used for kitchen deliveries.

When they were outside, they breathed in the fresh night air. Irish started to run, then stopped and looked back.

“Ya comin or ya wanna be fitted faw a coffin?”

“Come on, Mickey, please,” Mutzie coaxed grabbing his hand and pulling him forward.

Confusion raged everywhere. People were screaming. Mothers clutched their children, who wore pajamas, and ran from the burning building. In the distance Mickey heard the sound of fire engine sirens. A burgeoning crowd gathered at a safe distance watching the flames and smoke rise from one side of the building.

Irish was jogging in front of them into the parking lot. Behind them Mickey could sense people running. They reached the car in which they had ridden the night before. Irish jumped ino the driver’s seat.

“Get da fuck in,” Irish shouted.

Mickey opened the rear door and Mutzie jumped in. Still not fully comphrending what was happening Mickey paused briefly and looked back. One end of the building was completely engulfed in flames lighting up the sky. People filled the area outside and watched the burning building as if it were a fireworks display.

Mutzie tugged at his arm and he jumped into the backseat just as Irish gunned the motor and sped out of the lot. He did not turn on the car lights and instead of heading for the main road drove the car in another direction through a bumpy swath into the woods. Then he turned on the car lights and, driving cautiously to avoid hitting trees, eventually turned onto a one-lane secondary road.

“You trust this shemegegy?” Mickey whispered.

“I hoid,” Irish said gaining speed as they hit an asphalt road.

“Not now,” Mutzie said, drawing Mickey’s hand to her breast where he could feel the envelope.

After a half hour of driving, they reached a small town. Irish stopped the car in front of a bus stop beside which was a man in a ticket booth.

“Now get outa here,” Irish said, reaching behind him and opening the door. “Go.”

Mickey and Mutzie exchanged glances.

“Are we supposed to thank him?” Mickey asked.

“Memba what ya promised,” Irish said.

“I remember, Irish,” Mutzie said.

Mickey noted a long unexpected pause pass between them.

“I ain’t gonna wish ya good luck,” Irish snapped, turning his head toward the windshield. “Ya got it aready.”

He gunned the motor, made a U-turn and headed back in the direction from which they had come.

Mickey turned toward the ticket seller.

“Where to?” the man asked.

Mickey turned to Mutzie and smiled.

“Hollywood.”

“Ya trying to be funny?” the man said.

“You got it, buster. I’m a tumler,” Mickey said. He squeezed Mutzie’s hand and winked.

M
ANY OF THE GANGSTER CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY
are based on real people who populated the brutal crime scene in New York in the thirties. Dubbed by the press as “Murder Inc.,” their reign of terror in the New York underworld is well documented. Pittsburgh Phil Strauss, known as “Pep,” got the electric chair, along with Bugsy Goldstein, on June 12, 1941. “Lepke” Buchalter got the chair on March 4, 1944. Abie “Kid Twist” Reles, who snitched on his pals, fell from a high floor of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island while being guarded by six law enforcement officers just as he was about to testify against his fellow gangsters. Albert Anastasia was shot while getting a haircut in the Park Sheraton barbershop on October 25, 1957, and Frank Costello died of a heart attack in a New York hospital on February 18, 1973 at 81.

As for the Catskills, the era dominated by those famous hotels such as Grossinger’s, the Concord, the Nevele and numerous others and were collectively known as “the Borscht Belt,” have passed into history along with the famous “tumlers” who arguably invented contemporary American humor.

The mountains, of course, are still there.