Coney Page 3

  “Hey,” Menter said, “wasn’t that Jamie, the ambidextrous cop?”

  “Yeah,” Woody answered, “still takin’ money with both hands. Jamie can figure a shakedown from his grandmother. I wonder how much he’ll get from that driver?”

  “Pennies compared to the old days,” Menter replied, blowing smoke toward the roof of the car and tilting his head to watch it curl upward.

  “Yeah,” he continued, “those were the days when Coney was the place. All that wide-open beach and all those speedboats grabbing mother lodes of real booze from mother ships.”

  Menter laughed.

  “Once Jamie forgot to check out the Coast Guard on a hot weekend. Speedboats so low in the water with hootch that the booze is makin’ mixed drinks with the ocean. They’re just about to land at Norton’s Point when they spot this Coast Guard cutter. They turn ass and head back to open sea, flying right along the beach. The people on the beach think it’s some kind of race until the Coast Guard opens fire. Then it begins to dawn what’s happening.

  “Jamie, who was on the Steeplechase pier, knows exactly what’s happening. So quick, he figures a way to cover his ass. He runs to the end of the pier, pulls his gun and fires at the speedboats which are maybe a hundred yards out of his range. He was even yelling: Halt, police! By now the crowd is rooting for the runners. A million people screaming. Then the motor of the Coast Guard ship conks out and it drifts while the runners disappear. Later, Jamie tells the Feds he’s sure he hit something and they ask to see the Big Bertha he was lugging with him.”

  “I heard about that,” Woody said.

  “Yeah, that was when Frankie Yale was Mr. Coney Island. Frankie gave me my start. He was related to me on my mother’s side. When I got the paralysis he said not to worry. Told me to work with my brain. He was right.”

  “I seen his funeral. Wasn’t it the biggest ever in Coney?”

  “Yeah. People came from all over. Frankie was a travelin’ man. Frankie goes to Chicago and Big Jim Colosimo dies. Frankie shakes hands with Dean O’Banion and Dean gets a great funeral. Al Capone used to work as a bartender in one of Frankie’s Coney joints. Frankie never trusted him. He was right. Frankie got shot to pieces on Al’s orders.”

  In Menter’s penthouse apartment atop the Half-Moon Hotel, Woody mixed two glasses of rye and Coke.

  “Who can we get for torches?” Menter said as much to himself as to Woody. “Good outside pros will cut the profit. Any local talent?”

  “There ain’t nothing here but dumb working stiffs and horny freaks,” Woody snapped.

  “Freaks? In winter?”

  “Yeah, Vic, there’s a whole house of ’em livin’ here now. The ones who work the sideshows in the summer. Fifi, she’s French, a Frog fat lady, bought a house on West Eighth and rents out to her freak buddies. Makes a good buck, too.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “Let’s see. There’s Olga, the World’s Ugliest Woman; Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy; Albert-Alberta, the Half-Man Half-Woman; the Blue Man; the boy with two mouths; Otto, the Strongman and, oh yeah, Lohu and Mohu, the Japanese Siamese Twins, and maybe some more.”

  “They’re the torches,” Menter said, grinning.

  “Are you kiddin’? Those geeks couldn’t light a cigarette.”

  “I can teach ’em.”

  “What makes you think they’ll do it?”

  Menter squared himself against the back of his wheelchair.

  “In Coney, they do anything Victor Menter tells ’em to do. They’re nothing but a bunch of prick suckers, thieves and fags. And them that ain’t, my cops will say they are. Freaks don’t talk back to Victor Menter. They do as told.”

  “But after, Vic, they could squeal.”

  Menter smiled.

  “We’ll make sure they can’t.”

  “Huh?”

  Menter clapped his hands loudly.

  “I hate freaks! Almost as much as kike doctors!”

  IN THE CHERRY TREE: FEBRUARY 1, 1936

  Aba: Ivan Pavlov has died.

  Harry: Who was he?

  Aba: He was a Russian who tortured dogs.

  Harry: Was he punished?

  Aba: On the contrary, he was greatly honored all over the world.

  Harry: By people who hate dogs?

  Aba: Probably most deeply by those, but everyone declared him a genius for proving that a human being can fool a dog into thinking that it is about to be fed, not by showing it food, but by ringing a bell.

  Harry: All dogs?

  Aba: Up till now, only the dogs he tortured. But there is no reason to believe that any dog could stand up to Comrade Pavlov’s methods.

  Harry: What about cats?

  Aba: What about human beings?

  Harry: They are different from dogs.

  Aba: How so?

  Harry: Well … they speak. They would tell each other: Don’t let Pavlov fool you, there is no food.

  Aba: And what if they were so hungry that they wanted to believe there was food, even if they knew there was not?

  Harry: I would never believe it.

  Aba: And what about God?

  Harry: Ha. I know that one. A boy in school told me. Dog is God spelled backward.

  Aba: That is not what I meant, wonderful American boy. Now listen carefully: On Sunday bells ring all over the world and when goyim hear them they believe there is a God. Correct?

  Harry: Yes.

  Aba: And on Saturday, Jews believe there is a God. Correct?

  Harry: Yes.

  Aba: So who is the right God: the Sunday God or the Saturday God?

  Harry: The Saturday God. The God of the Jews.

  Aba: Heshele, did you hear a bell ring?

  Harry: No.

  Aba: You must listen more carefully.

  CHAPTER

  4

  A DISTANT PHONE RANG, INSISTENT AND ANGRY, LIKE A BABY’S hunger wail. The governor was calling to commute Harry’s death sentence for an unspecified crime Harry had not committed. Harry strained against the straps that lashed him into the electric chair. Only he could answer the phone and save himself. He tried to call for help, but his lips would not part.

  He awoke screaming but heard no sound. Wet, fuzzy cotton coated his pillow-buried lips. The ringing went on. He stumbled toward the phone in the living room.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Allo, Meester Kaatz.”

  “The name is Catzker.”

  “No. No. Ze name is Kaatz. Believe me.”

  “OK. But this is not he. I’m his son.”

  “Is ze fadder by home?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Vell, I’m sure you could help me. You see I’m a loyal reader of ze fadder, Meester Kaatz. And all yesterday, Shabbes, I vas terrible vorried about vat vass to befall Soorkaleh. Of course I couldn’t call on Shabbos.”

  “Of course.”

  “So tell me, does Soorkaleh find out dat dat fine young man vat loves her and vants to marry her did not perish in a pogrom in Russia and right now is by steerage in a shiff on his vay to America?”

  “I really don’t …”

  “And vill she call off dat terrible match dat lousy shadchan made for her with dat kosher butcher vat is old enough to be her fadder and alvays has bloody hands, yet?”

  “My father doesn’t tell anyone what the next installment is, not even my mother.”

  “You a good son. But, if you’ll please, in my case to make a exceptional. You see it’s not only Soorkaleh vat vorries me. Vat about Chaim? Vorking eighteen hours a day for dat rotten sveat-shop owner to bring over his beloved Miriam and zere two beautiful daughters, Rachel and Esther. How can he save enough money? And even if he does, vill ze goyim at Ellis Island discover Esther’s sickness—vouldn’t even mention it for somevone to hear—and send her back to Poland?”

  “I’m sure everything will turn out OK.”

  “Tank you. I knew you knew.”

  “No. I just said …”

  “So vat is
goink to happen to dat nogoodnik, Soorkaleh’s brother, Schmelik? He’s goink to abandon his vife and children for dat kurveh, you should pardon ze expression, Malka, vat now calls herself Margery yet?”

  “I’m sure by Monday or Tuesday everything will be all right.”

  “So tell me how?”

  “I don’t know. Only my father knows.”

  “You not a nice boy.”

  “Sorry.”

  “In fact, rotten.”

  Click.

  Harry replaced the receiver. The phone rang.

  “Allo, Mr. Kaatzen.”

  “Wrong number.”

  He laid the disconnected receiver beside the phone. Harry was not supposed to do that. It was his responsibility to speak to readers who were following his father’s novel, which was serialized on weekdays in the Yiddish newspaper The Morning Journal. The paper catered to Orthodox Jews, whose religion barred the use of phones on Saturday. By Sunday, many could no longer bear the worry over the perils afflicting the characters.

  Today’s first call had been relatively short. Often readers invented intricate solutions, demanding that he confirm or deny. Harry enjoyed telling his father the more imaginative scenarios. If his father nodded, it was not because the reader had hit upon the truth. There was no truth until his father wrote that day’s installment during the one-hour subway ride from Stillwell Avenue to the Canal Street office of the Morning Journal. However, the nods often signaled that the reader had become a coauthor.

  Harry returned to his room and laid a record on the turntable of a box-shaped portable phonograph. He watched the disc move in perfect circles, stretching the golden letters until they lost meaning and snaked, as if poured, onto the black label. Harry bent over the record, trying to circle his head to match the seventy-eight-revolutions-per-minute and determine whether a perfect synchronization would unscramble the letters. It was an experiment in relativity. Harry was interested in relativity because his grandfather resembled greatly Albert Einstein.

  Harry grooved the needle on the smooth outer rim of the record. Billie Holiday’s freakish voice rose from the shiny surface.

  “Must you play that junk?”

  Harry’s mother, palms dug into her hips, stood in the doorway. The light cast through the windows by the low January sun dabbed a blush of orange on her ivory facial skin that clung tightly to the cheekbones and a long, thin, dipping nose. Her large, oval-shaped eyes, lightly rinsed by a translucent blue, blinked often as if accepting endless curtain calls. Thick yellow hair, the color of a Van Gogh haystack, was bunched into a tight bun at the back while loose strands fell at random angles onto her forehead. She was considered strikingly beautiful. Harry did not agree, even though he owed most of his features to her.

  “It’s Billie Holiday,” he replied reverentially, a calculated irritant.

  “It’s a sick cat. And why is the phone off the hook?”

  “I already had two or three calls. What’s so bad if they get a busy signal?”

  “What’s so bad if …” she mimicked his singsong speech, “your father’s son … so bad is that we need the two pennies he makes from that paper, that’s so bad.”

  “Oh, Mom, how will they know we’re not talking to someone?”

  “Those Jews”—she distorted her face by puffing her cheeks and spreading her nostrils—“those Jews! Don’t worry, they’ll know.”

  She thrust her face toward him.

  “Pliss, Miss Op-er-at-or, if you’ll be so kind, you could check dis number to see anyone is talking. It’s ah terrible emergency. Off ze hook. Dank you so very much … Allo, Mr. Editor, what kind of person is it you have to write by your paper what vouldn’t talk to readers? Such an insult!”

  Harry walked past her and replaced the receiver.Immediately, the phone rang.

  The caller had discovered blanket salvation: the Irish Sweepstakes. At his sixth sweepstakes winner, Harry’s father plunged through the front door, rushed past him, grabbed a book from the crammed bookshelf and flopped onto the couch. He turned the pages ferociously until his small brown eyes alit on wisdom.

  As he read, the broad Slavic face, dominated by a wide, flat nose and a massive forehead lined with furrows resembling the Palmer Method exercises for good penmanship, expressed puzzlement, then tentative agreement and finally epiphany.

  Harry was not sure of the book’s title, but he knew its author: Sigmund Freud. Dr. Freud was being consulted for psychological insight into whatever mishap had befallen Moshe Catzker during this morning’s battle with a l934 Model T Ford.

  The Ford was a present given to his father a year ago by a reader, who had bought a new car, and rewarded the writer for years of happy endings.

  At the time of the gift, Moses Catzker was thirty-six and had never driven a car. His relationship with things mechanical was adversarial. A single victory, the use of a can opener, was a talent he preferred not to test often.

  Immediately, the car had inspired him to consult with John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson and Theodore Dreiser in planning trips across America. He, Aba, and other friends would circle the parked vehicle like unhorsed Indians, first touching, then entering. All eyes swept the road for danger, cheering as his father wrenched the steering wheel of the stationary vehicle.

  The Negro delivery boy from a local grocery, hired to teach him to drive, quit after the first lesson, actually ten minutes into it. His successor, an off-duty cop, lasted a bit longer by insisting that lessons begin at five AM, with the understanding that the appearance of another moving vehicle automatically ended the session. Eventually, the cop suggested a driving school, which was expensive but guaranteed a license.

  Two weeks later Moses Catzker had been licensed by the State of New York to operate a motor vehicle. He told Harry that he had passed the test with flying colors, quoting the inspector: “I’ve seen enough. Wow! But a deal is a deal. You pass, buddy.”

  America beckoned, but leaving Brooklyn presented a formidable obstacle. On the first attempt to make Manhattan, his passengers, the same three who had cheered his stationary heroics, convinced him to turn back and try again on a cloudy day so as to avoid the sun’s glare that was distorting his vision. Thereafter, they declined to accompany him, citing the joys of “soloing” à la James Cagney and Pat O’Brien.

  After much pleading, he had agreed to take Harry, but only for a drive limited to around the block. As the ignition sparked the engine, Harry lost the father he knew. The usual hunched, slack shoulders turned as square as Frankenstein’s monster. White knuckles strangled the steering wheel. He eyed the empty street for five minutes before bucking away from the curb. At the first intersection, a pedestrian, glancing through the windshield, had been moved to say: Mister, mister, take it easy.

  Soon dents of unexplained origin began to appear. Upon examination, Harry concluded that most were the results of contact with pushcarts, trees, fences and fire hydrants.

  Eventually, the car was becalmed except for his father’s dawn drives which always provoked consultation with Dr. Freud.

  Freud was his father’s family physician, seemingly a phone call away. The same familiarity extended to other residents of the book-shelves. A discussion between his father and Aba drew no distinction between Mani Leib, a Yiddish poet living in California, and Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Proust. All were spoken of as if they were friends who happened to be out of town for the moment.

  His father closed the book with a triumphant clap, winking as he walked past Harry, who offered the receiver to share a torrent of Yiddish. His father circled the air with his index finger, poked the side of his head, whispered “meshugah” and disappeared into the kitchen.

  The caller was saying: “So after Muttel wins the sweepstakes he has enough money for Leah’s operation, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” Harry said. “I sure hope it all turns out the way you say.”

  “Trust me, boychik, it will. I am a man what knows life. Give your father a greeting from me and tell him David M
ersky prays for him.”

  In the kitchen, his parents sat at a table protected by a covering of blue oilcloth. His father dunked toast into a cup of coffee, bent his head to the rim and slurped the soaked dough. His mother strained her coffee through an oblong of white sugar clamped between her front teeth. Both dragged on cigarettes, swallowing smoke with liquid.

  “Ah, Heshele,” his father said, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his tweed jacket, “there is something I must tell you.” His father’s English was cemented under the dual coat of Yiddish and Russian. A year ago, when his mother became convinced that money could be made speaking in English on Yiddish culture to synagogue men’s clubs and assimilated fraternal groups, his father, at her insistence, had enrolled in a diction school which guaranteed to denude all foreign elements. After three weeks he had quit, saying: “I did it for my teacher. He was starting to sound like me.”

  His father laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder, and with the other beckoned his wife to pay close attention. She moved her chair farther away.

  “Listen to what happened this morning. I was driving on the Belt Parkway when all of a sudden I see a crazy man who stands in the middle of the road and is waving for me to go off the road and onto the grass. Since I have had much trouble staying off the grass and trained myself very well not to, I cannot follow this crazy man’s instructions, even though the car in front of me does so. When I get closer I see that this man is a policeman who is looking at me like I am crazy, while I am looking at him like he is crazy for asking me to do such an illegal thing. All the time we are getting closer and I am thinking about my driver’s manual and what it says about right-of-way so I forget about the policeman until I see him dive headfirst onto the grass as I go by and hit a large metal garbage can that is blocking the road.

  “I stop to see what damage there is and the policeman runs up to me and shouts, ‘What’s wrong with you buddy? If you would have killed me, I would have beat the hell out of you.’”

  Harry and his father laughed, rolling their eyes at each other to visually Ping-Pong the punch line and keep the moment going.