The Amboy Dukes (3 page)

The boys did not speak to each other until they stood at the station waiting for the New Lots train.

“She wasn’t bad,” Moishe said.

Frank laughed. “You sure gave it to her good. She didn’t know what to do.”

“That’s a good way to start the morning,” Moishe agreed. “And I’ve picked up a couple that way.”

“Should we do it some more?” Benny asked him.

“No,” Moishe said. “We’ll talk.”

As the train rocked through the tunnels toward Manhattan they stood in the vestibule of the subway car and spoke in low voices about Lenny Assante and the counterfeit gasoline coupons some of the boys were selling for him. It was an easy way to pick up some money.

“Hell,” Moishe said, “he sells you A coupons that are so good that even the OPA can’t tell them, and all he asks is twenty-five bucks for a hundred. Then you can sell them easy, for fifty or sixty cents apiece, and you make twenty-five. People’ll rather buy the coupons than pay sixty cents a gallon without a coupon. I’ve been selling some down at the yard and they’re going fast.”

Benny looked at Frank. “How about it?”

Frank shrugged his shoulders. “Where can we sell them?”

“How about the poolroom?”

“No good,” Frank said. “Then some of the guys’ll want to get cut in on it.”

“Let’s think it over,” Benny said to Moishe. “We’ve got to figure the angles. If we can get rid of them we’ll buy some. How about selling me some for my brother’s car? He doesn’t mind my using his car, but he doesn’t want me to use his gas. This way, if I give him some coupons, he won’t bitch so much.”

Moishe told them to hold his lunch and extracted a little booklet from a pocket of his denim shirt. He passed three coupons into Black Benny’s hand. “I’m giving you these at a bargain price. One buck.”

Benny gave him a dollar. “You’re a white guy, Moishe. Thanks.”

“That’s all right.”

“We’ll let you know,” Frank called after Moishe as he left the train at the Atlantic Avenue station.

Moishe waved to them.

Nevins Street was the next station, and Benny and Frank went up to the street and into Bickford’s for a second breakfast. They had almost thirty minutes before the theater opened, and they sat at the white marble-topped table sipping their coffee and looking out of the large plate-glass windows of the restaurant. Flatbush Extension and Fulton Street were full of people and traffic, and Frank decided that this was a hell of a lot more fun than sitting over the drawing board at Vocational and making three perspective drawings of cones. School was a lot of crap, Benny agreed, but what the hell could you do when your old man and your old lady insisted that you get an education? Frank winked at some trim-looking kids who passed the restaurant, and two of them turned around and motioned for Frank and Benny to come along with them.

“Let them alone,” Benny said as Frank started to stand up. “We can pick them up easy in the show. This way we’ve got to pay for their tickets.”

“But they were nice-looking.”

“The hell with that.” Benny pulled a paper napkin from the container on the table and wiped his lips and hands. “You can’t see them in the dark.”

“Give me the checks,” Frank said. “I’ll treat.”

Benny nodded. “Anything you say, sport.”

For three and a half hours they sat in the Paramount balcony with the two high school babes who were also on the hook. First Frank necked with one of the girls, then he swapped with Benny. He liked Benny’s babe better. She didn’t kiss as wet and she smelled cleaner than the one he’d first had.

“Suppose I call you up,” Frank asked her. “Will you meet me?”

“Sure,” she said. “We can go dancing.”

“That sounds pretty good.” Frank’s hand slipped Into the neck of her blouse, but she moved away from him.

“Only on the outside,” she whispered into his ear. “I don’t like to get mussed up in the movies.”

“And after we go dancing, then what?” he asked her.

“We can go to the movies.” She giggled.

“Hell no.” He shook his head “I can see the movies alone. I don’t need any help.”

She pressed his hand down on a breast. “I’m only kidding you. We can go anyplace you say.”

“Down my club?”

“All right with me.” She nodded.

“Look, babe,” Frank said to her. “I’m a square guy. If you go out with me you’ve got to come across. I’m one guy that don’t like passion cramps.”

“I won’t give you any, honey,” she whispered to him. “Now be a nice guy and sit still and let me watch the show.”

“Last kiss.” Frank bent forward again. “I like you swell, babe.”

The girl slid low in her seat and placed her head on Frank’s shoulder. “I like you too.” She placed his hand on her breast again and held it. “Now let’s see the show.”

It was half-past one when they walked out of the lobby into the street, and the bright warm sun made them blink. They stood in front of the theater, and now that Frank could see the girl he’d been necking he was glad he had swapped with Benny. She was about sixteen and wore high-heeled shoes with Betty Jane straps that came across her ankles, and the hem of her gray flannel skirt was above her knees. She had nice legs and she knew it. She wore a red blouse open at the collar, and Frank could feel himself getting warm when he imagined what it would have been like if she’d let him give her a real feel. The gray flannel jacket was so long that it almost reached the hem of her skirt. When she laughed her teeth showed white and even, and her lipstick was put on in a heavy carmine smear. She was a smooth-looking kid, fast, certain, sure of herself.

“Come over here.” He pulled her to one side. “I want to write your phone number in my book.”

“I’ll give it to you when we get a soda.”

“Sure,” Frank said. “Hey, Benny, let’s take the girls in for some sodas.”

“Sure,” Benny agreed. “Let’s go.”

Frank was glad they had someone to kid around with so that the time would pass more rapidly. The only thing he didn’t like about going on the hook was that after he came out of the show he didn’t know what to do or where to go. It wasn’t any fun going to the poolroom in the afternoon because there wasn’t anyone around. Frank could remember when he was a kid they would hardly ever let him into the poolroom, that the tables were always crowded. Any time he would peek through the doors of the poolroom on Sutler and Hopkinson, there would be guys shooting a game and sitting around gabbing. And over at Beecher’s Gym on Rockaway Avenue there was always a crowd to watch Bummy Davis work out. But now the poolrooms were crowded only at night. Everyone was out working or hustling, so it wasn’t any fun to go to Katzie’s in the afternoon. But sitting in Childs’ with the two babes and kidding around and telling dirty jokes made the time pass so fast that it was almost four o’clock when they left the babes, after promising to call them up that night so they could make a date to see them the next day.

“Boy”—Frank rubbed his hands—“we’re sure going to have a time with them tomorrow.”

“I shouldn’t have swapped with you,” Benny said. “You got the better-looking babe. Aw, what the hell, Frank, you always get the better-looking women.”

“Cut it out.” Frank was embarrassed.

“Honest,” Benny said, “I’m not sore. They’re both all right. I’m going to ask my brother for the car tomorrow night, and we’ll take them for a ride and then we’ll take them over my house and we’ll have a party.”

“What about your folks?”

“They’re on the swing shift this month. My brother Sam’ll get home about midnight, but he’s regular. If we get in we’ll fix him up too.”

“Must we?” Frank asked.

“Sure,” Benny said. “Aw, what the hell, Frank, I’ll fix him up with my babe. So stop looking as if I stepped on your feet.”

“You’re one swell guy, Benny,” Frank said appreciatively. “One swell guy.”

“So”—Benny tweaked Frank’s cheek—“maybe you wanta kiss me to show your appreciation?”

Frank pulled away from him. “Stop clowning and let’s get on the train.”

They walked from the station on Saratoga Avenue and stopped to look into Davidson’s Restaurant. None of the guys were there yet.

“I want to go home and drop off these books,” Frank said. “Then I’ll meet you on the corner at six. No, wait. I wanta eat with my kid sister. She gets sorta lonesome and she’s upset today.”

“What’s the matter?” Benny wanted to know.

“Nothing. Something that happened this morning. You know how kids are.”

“Then I’ll see you down the club?”

“Sure. About eight-thirty.”

As soon as Frank turned the corner from Pitkin into Amboy he stopped whistling. There it was. That dirty, stinking block. The ugly gray and red tenements, tombstones of disease, unrest, and the smoldering violence which has its birth in misery, were crowded close together and rose straight up on both sides of the street to shut off all but a narrow expanse of sky. It was as if nothing bright would ever shine on Amboy Street. Each tenement had before it a rusting iron fence against which leaned the twisted and dented garbage cans, and paper bags of refuse were piled against the cans. Women and children flanked the entrances to the tenements, and when Frank saw Alice talking to some girls on the stoop he motioned for her to follow him upstairs.

“You’re waiting long, kid?” he asked her as he looked into the icebox and saw that Alice had got the ice.

“I stayed in school for a little while and then I went over to the weaving class at the Center.”

“What’re you making?”

“Baskets.”

Frank laughed. “You like to do that?”

“I guess so.”

“You’re sort of lonesome, aren’t you, kid?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s better for you to go to the Center,” Frank said righteously. “I saw you talking to that stinker Fanny Kane. That kid’s got ideas that’re too old for her.”

The color crept into Alice’s face, and she didn’t look at her brother as she spoke. “I’m not friends with her. She just came over to talk to us.”

“Well, just see that you stay away from her. And another thing. When you get a kid to bring the ice up here don’t shut the front door.”

“I won’t.”

“All right then,” he said to her. “Get washed and then we’ll go out to eat.”

While Alice was washing he thought about Fanny Kane. Too bad she was only twelve, for her face was wise and her eyes were knowing. If she were a year older he might’ve given her a break. But for a twelve-year-old kid she had plenty and she looked like she was willing to pass it out. What the hell, sometime when he didn’t have anything to do and if he met her in the movies or some place he might get her to come down to the clubroom and then he’d see how far the kid would go. But he didn’t want Alice fooling around with a kid who was definitely jail bait and on the make. If that happened, then he’d have to start watching out for her because he didn’t want anyone talking about his sister. That bastard Crazy Sachs.

“Hurry up,” he called to her. “I haven’t got all night. And I want to wash.”

Alice opened the door. “I’m finished. Oh yes, Frank. Mr. Alberg asked for you.”

“Who’s he?”

“You remember him. He’s the gym teacher at the Center. He asked for you and told me to invite you to come down.”

Frank wasn’t interested. “Tell him I’ll come around someday.”

“He’s very nice.”

“I know. But come on. We’ve gotta eat, and it’ll be crowded as hell when we get to the delicatessen. Delicatessen all right with you?”

“I suppose so.”

At the delicatessen Frank looked quizzically at his sister. He wished that she didn’t make him feel like such a heel. It wasn’t his fault that their mother and father were working overtime, and she was too young to understand that it was the overtime that really counted. If his mother got sixty-five cents an hour for packing ammunition, it wasn’t a hell of a lot. But when she got into the overtime and started to get ninety-seven cents an hour or if she worked on Sunday and got a dollar and thirty cents an hour, that really was money. And all this moping around about not eating home and not being able to have the folks at home was damned inconsiderate of the kid. But then, he figured, she didn’t know any better. She had been too young to remember. He wished he could forget.

“You’ve got to stop potting around, Alice,” he told her. “I know it’s tough on you and even on me, being alone so much. But if Mom and Pop don’t make the dough now, who knows”—he shrugged his shoulders—“after the war’s over there might be another depression and then things might be tough again. So this way they’re making money and we’ll have some left if times get tough. Gee”—he shook his head—“you’re too young to remember what things were really like.”

“I remember,” Alice said slowly. “I remember when we were on relief.”

“You can’t remember, and I don’t want to talk about it,” Frank cut her short. “Finish your pie and I’ll walk you home. Do your homework and go to sleep.”

“Did you do your homework?” she asked him.

“I didn’t have any.” Frank thought that was funny and he had to smile. “I didn’t get any homework today.”

Fanny Kane was still hanging around their stoop when Frank said good night to Alice, and he could tell by the way she looked at him that she would give anything if he’d invite her to the Amboy Dukes. As he walked toward Pit-kin Avenue he felt her eyes upon him, and consciously he swaggered a little, for he was a Duke, and the Dukes were tops.

The Amboy Dukes had clubrooms on East Ninety-third Street in East Flatbush. Above the entrance a small electric yellow-and-gold sign winked Amboy Dukes. To the right of the entrance door was a little room in which were located the meters of the house and which the Dukes used as a checkroom. The main room had a hardwood floor and was furnished with old secondhand nondescript sofas and easy chairs, a radio-victrola, some end tables loaded with ash trays, and floor lamps in which the dark red and blue bulbs made the dimness in the room a guarantee of privacy. At the far end of the room was another door which led into the small kitchen and toilet, and a closet in which the Dukes kept two folding cots. The club was similar to the dozens of other clubs in East Flatbush, and its purpose was certain and precise.

On any night there would be some of the boys in the clubroom, and one or two of them would be standing out front on the sidewalk to pick up the girls who regularly walked through the streets of the neighborhood looking for a place where they could meet some guys and dance. The Amboy Dukes were lucky, for they had a reputation as a sharp bunch of guys, and a string of steady girls came around in the evening for the dancing and necking. The Dukes had three rules which their members had to observe: they had to pay their dues promptly, be ready to fight for one another at any time, and stay out of the club-room if they were stag. Stags could hang around the kitchen or sit on the bench in front of the basement steps which led to the clubroom until they picked up a date. Then they could enter, dance if they wanted to, or they could sit in the large chairs or sofas and neck. Each of the Dukes was an expert at minding his own business, and no one muscled in on another guy’s date. The Dukes was a good club to belong to, and all the members knew it.