Piece of the Action (7 page)

She didn’t want him to leave like that. Didn’t want him to walk out carrying the same argument they’d been having for months. This
was
1958. He was right about that. She should be able to do as she pleased, guided by her own conscience and
not
her father’s.

“I’ll try,” she said. “I’m not promising, but I’ll try.”

“Good,” Moodrow grunted, “because as soon as I get you inside, I’m gonna lock the door, rip off your clothes and force you to do ten or fifteen obscene acts I learned from all the prostitutes I was forced to arrest in the course of doing my duty.”

“Stanley, you’re impossible.” She was grinning up at him, happy again. He had a way of making things better, of easing their arguments. As if
he
knew it would be all right, even if she didn’t.

“Not impossible, Katie. Just very, very unlikely.”

J
AKE LEIBOWITZ WAS SITTING
at the far end of his mother’s kitchen table, the end closest to the living room. He had two reasons for doing this. First, it was as far as he could get from his mother, Sarah, who was cooking breakfast, and, second, he could see the open closet by the door leading out of the apartment. The closet held his “reward for a job well done.” Jake
always
treated himself to a reward when a job came off successfully.

Of course, there were
some
people, like his mother, who thought it was stupid to spend two hundred on a reward when you only took in three hundred, but Jake had to disagree. He wasn’t throwing his money away. Nor was he trying to play the big shot in front of his associates. He was conditioning himself for success.

Jake, as far as he could remember, had never liked to read. He tended to see letters upside down and words in reverse order. Not that he
couldn’t
read. It was just that extracting the information locked up in those letters was closer to an all-out siege than a leisurely pastime. Still, there were lots of empty hours in prison, hours when time seemed to reach out to the edge of a very flat earth. Jake, like the majority of his prison peers, spent most of those hours lost in common, if complex, sexual daydreams. But he couldn’t spend
all
the hours dreaming—there were just too many—so, somewhere in his fifth year of incarceration, he began to read
Life
magazine. He chose
Life
for two reasons. First, because it was on the warden’s list of approved periodicals and, second, because it only came once a week. Jake needed a week to get through an issue. A week was an absolute necessity when you had to work on the words a letter at a time.

Jake was in his ninth year at Leavenworth when he came on the article in
Life
that changed
his
life. It was the missing link in Jake Leibowitz’s formula for success. The article was on a Soviet psychology experiment which was called “conditioning.” It was mostly about a man named Pavlov who did an experiment with his dog. He rang a bell each time he fed his dog and after a while the dog started drooling every time he heard a bell, even if there wasn’t any food. At first, Jake thought this was pretty funny. He imagined Pavlov walking his dog down the street. Whenever the dog hears a fire bell or a church bell, it starts dribbling away. Like on some old broad’s hightop shoes.

But the article stuck to Jake, despite its clownish aspects. The way he understood it, the commies were saying that you could make something happen by getting someone to
expect
it to happen. Maybe that was why he kept screwing up in life. He was always kicking himself when he made a bad move, always putting himself down. What he
should
be doing, he figured, is rewarding himself when he did something right. That way he’d get used to being successful. He’d get
conditioned.

“Eat your eggs.” Sarah Leibowitz banged the plate down so hard, the salami omelet bounced several inches into the air, then settled back on the plate with an audible plop.

“You still pissed off, ma?” Jake knew the answer to the question. He was sorry he’d asked it before the words were out of his mouth.

“He asks am I angry?” Sarah hugged her enormous belly with both arms and rocked from side to side.

“Don’t do a speech, ma,” Jake begged. “For cryin’ out loud. Give it a rest.”

“He asks am I angry,” she repeated, ignoring him altogether. “Here is a boy goes out and buys
himself
a two-hundred-dollar overcoat when his mother is wearing a rag. A rag, mind you, that’s not even
wool.
It’s a cotton rag without a lining. Here is a boy who puts lambswool on his back …”

“
Cashmere,
ma. It’s called cashmere.”

“Lambswool on his back when his own mother is wearing a twenty-four dollars and ninety-five cents winter coat she got off the sales rack at Klein’s. So why should I be angry that my son thinks he’s gotta be Prince Jake, but it’s okay his mother should freeze her
tuchis
off whenever she steps out of the house to go shopping for
his
dinner? Why, I’m asking?”

Jake wolfed the eggs down as fast as he could. He had work to do and he didn’t want to distract himself by fighting with his mother. She never lost a fight, anyway, because she mostly ignored whatever he said.

“You’re going where today?” Ma Leibowitz asked.

“
Mamaleh, mamaleh.
” Jake gave his mother a hug. She accepted his arms, but he knew what was coming next, so what he did was take three quick steps back after letting go. Ma Leibowitz’s right hand just missed his face.

“Hugs are for cheapskates,” she shouted. “Fur coats are for
mamalehs.
”

Jake paused at the apartment door long enough to throw his new black overcoat a wistful glance, then took his navy peacoat off the hook and put it on. The peacoat was the cheapest coat in his closet, but it was warm and completely inconspicuous. There were thousands of them walking around the streets of New York. All on the backs of ordinary workingmen. Jake had nothing but contempt for wage slaves, but when he pulled the black watchcap down over his head and checked himself out in the mirror, he had to admit his mug would look perfectly normal behind the wheel of a truck.

The effect was exactly what he was looking for and he remembered to reward himself before he walked out the door. “You done all right, kid,” he said, nodding the way his father would’ve nodded. If he’d had a father.

Jake felt good enough to take the four flights two stairs at a time, but when he opened the outer lobby door, the cold hit him like a hammer. It was twenty-four degrees in New York and the wind was blowing out of the northwest at twenty miles an hour.

“Damn!” Jake’s eyes began to tear before the door closed behind him. He blinked rapidly for a moment, then opened them to find Abe Weinberg lounging against the side of the Packard as if he was basking in the July sun. Abe was wearing his favorite black leather jacket which he hadn’t even bothered to zip up, because he wanted everyone to see the white T-shirt he was wearing underneath it. Abe, or so he’d told Jake, had seen
The Wild Ones
eighteen times.

“Whatta you, a fuckin’ snowman?” Jake asked.

“You shouldn’t talk that way in front of my new girlfriend,” Abe said defensively. “It ain’t right.”

“Your new
what
?” Jake noticed the girl for the first time. She was also wearing a black leather jacket and black motorcycle boots. And she couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old.

“This is Maria Roccantelli. She lives on MacDougal Street.”

“Pleased to meetch’ya,” Maria said, extending her hand.

“Likewise.” Jake allowed his fingertips just to graze hers. He was familiar with the term jailbait and he was pretty sure it didn’t apply to touching alone, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “Don’t you gotta be in school or something?”

Maria giggled. “I just come by ’cause Abe said I should meet ya.”

Jake looked at Abe, who was leaning against the car again. “Wake up, Abe. It ain’t Rock-Around-the-Clock time. Say goodbye to ya girlfriend and let’s get outta here.”

“See ya later, alligator,” Maria said jauntily.

“Take off,” Abe hissed out of the side of his mouth.

The reason Jake held it in as long as he did—five endless minutes—was that it didn’t matter much anyway. Maybe it made things harder, but it wasn’t going to change the spots. He told himself that what’s done is done, but what he said was, “How can you be so stupid as to bring your girlfriend along when we’re goin’ out on business?”

Abe, who was working on his pompadour with a long black comb, looked over in surprise. “We’re only goin’ out to check
locations,
right? It’s not like we was doin’ somethin’ wrong.”

“I don’t give a shit. There’s times when you’re workin’ and there’s time when you’re social. I been tryin’ ta tell you that for the last six months. What I don’t understand is how a guy who’s been in the joint could be so goddamned casual. And that broad ain’t
even
a broad. That broad is a
kid.
She can’t be no more than sixteen and she looks like twelve. Here we are killin’ ourselves to get in with the wops and you wanna pump some guinea’s sixteen-year-old daughter. You gotta be stupid and I don’t need stupid.”

Abe Weinberg slouched down in the seat and drew his lips up into a sulky pout. It was the same pout Elvis had used in
Jailhouse Rock,
but it had no apparent effect on Jake Leibowitz.

“C’mon, Jake, smile. Ya gotta smile.” Abe torched a Lucky Strike and blew a thin stream of smoke at the windshield. “Maria’s
seventeen,
Jake. She graduates in
June.
Her parents
like
me.”

“Do they know you’re thirty years old? Do they know you’re a
gangster
?”

Abe didn’t answer and Jake didn’t bother to pursue it, because it didn’t matter anyway. Abe Weinberg was the kind of problem that could give Jake and all his efforts a bad name. It wasn’t about putting on a show. It was about low profile. It was about doing what you had to do without the whole city knowing your business. Guys who got too much attention—who got their names and faces in the goddamned
newspapers
—ended up in a Jersey swamp. Which was exactly where they were going.

“You up for this?” Jake asked.

They were passing through the toll on the far end of the Lincoln Tunnel. Abe was practicing the art of curling one corner of his mouth into a sneer and the question caught him by surprise.

“Whatta ya mean?”

“I’m talkin’ about what we’re gonna do.” Jake shook his head in disgust. If he didn’t
know
Abe Weinberg was a Jew, he wouldn’t believe it. “You’re probably adopted, right? Tell me you’re adopted. Your real parents were Okies who made a wrong turn and ended up in New York instead of California.”

“C’mon, Jake. I just wasn’t expectin’ the question.” Abe cracked the vent window and lit another cigarette. He liked the way he looked with a cigarette dangling from his lip, but the smoke was hurting his eyes. “The answer is, yeah, I’m ready. Like I already told ya when you first brought it up.”

“You’re ready to pull the trigger?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure you could do it?”

“If the money’s right, I’ll machine-gun Madison Square Garden on fight night. That answer your question?” This time he got himself so far down in the seat that his knees were up against the dash. “Didn’t I do the fuckin’ spic?”

“That was in a
panic,
Abe. That was
stupid.
I’m talkin’ about doin’ it cold.”

Jake paused, waiting for a reply, but Abe stared out the window and began to hum the melody from Chuck Berry’s tune,
Rock and Roll Music.

“This is an honor the wops are givin’ us here,” Jake continued. “We do this right and we’re on our way.”

“Well, we’re not doin’ it today, right or wrong,” Abe finally said. “All we’re lookin’ for is a place to dump a stiff that ain’t even a stiff yet. So what I can’t figure out is why you’re makin’ such a big deal outta nothin’.”

This time it was Jake who didn’t bother to answer. They were driving through a huge swamp west of Secaucus. It should have been beautiful, at least from inside the car. The cold winter winds had driven away most of the pollution and the sun was shining in the brown and gold tips of the cattails and reeds lining the roadway. It also shone brightly on mounds of garbage left by illegal dumpers, many of them commercial haulers.

Jake turned on an unmarked side road and began to criss-cross the swamp. He made lefts and rights at random, but he never got close to being lost. Abe, on the other hand, stared at the unfamiliar landscape as if he’d been transported to the moon on a Russian
sputnik.

“You got a map, Jake?” he asked. “So we could find our way outta here.” Though he didn’t say it, the idea of being in the swamps late at night scared him a lot more than bumpin’ off some guinea.

“In my head is where I got my map, Abe. I never get lost.”

“The world’s first
Jewish
Indian.”

“Yeah,” Jake laughed, “call me Tonto. Tonto Leibowitz.”

A much-relieved Abe Weinberg joined in his pal’s laughter. “Yeah, yeah.
Pathfinder
Leibowitz.”

“Wait, this looks like a good spot.” Jake stopped the car. “In fact, it looks perfect.”

The road was so narrow, one car would have had to put two wheels on the shoulder to let another car pass. The reeds were higher than the car and the piles of garbage were higher than the reeds. A track leading into the swamp disappeared fifteen feet from the edge of the road.

“All right,” Jake announced, “you wanna be an actor? You wanna be Marlon Brando? You wanna be Elvis Presley? Now’s your big chance. We’re gonna do this exactly like next week. I’m gonna be you and you’re gonna be this guy who’s gettin’ what he’s got comin’ to him.”

“Ya don’t think we could reverse the parts, do ya? I kinda like bein’ the hero.”

“You tryin’ ta tell me Elvis wouldn’t end up in a swamp at the end of one of his movies? That’s too bad, ’cause the way he sings, it’d be a
mitzvah.
”

They were both laughing, now.

“Hey, remember Marlon Brando at the end of
Viva Zapata
?” Abe asked. “When they dump him in the street? The people couldn’t even
recognize
him. That’s how many times he got shot. If Marlon could do it, I could do it. An actor’s gotta have range.”