“Where’d you get that?” Al asked his boy.
“From Kefauver. Remember, Pop?”
Al, grumpily attempting to keep control of the conversation, replied quickly. “Arnold Schuster had nothing to do with Murder Inc., which was before you were born, Loo-Loo. What you say we change the subject?”
“Murder Incorporated were the ones who threw Abe Reles out the window,” Loo-Loo now informed his goggle-eyed sister.
“Where’d you hear that?” Al barked.
“I dunno,” said Loo-Loo. Not wishing to be forbidden access to tabs, he lied, “The schoolyard.”
“Ah-hah! Schoolyard University,” Al said with disgust.
“They said this guy Abe Reles gave names of gangsters to the G-men,” continued Loo-Loo in a rush, “and the detectives were supposed to be guarding him, but then he fell out of the window at the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island and it’s a big mystery because they don’t know if he was pushed out of the window of room 623 or if he was trying to escape.”
Al eyed his son despairingly. “You know the room number, I see?”
The boy was on a roll. “They called Abe Reles ‘the canary who sang but couldn’t fly.’”
Al pushed away his plate. “Who’s feeding you this trash?”
“I’m interested in crime. Just like you, Pop.”
I’d prefer you to be interested in long division,” Al said, after which he grumped into the living room where he could read the
Post
and maybe the
Brooklyn Eagle
—and certainly the
Journal-American
and the
World
and the
Daily Mirror
, these three being the reading mainstays of the bathroom—after which he would probably doze off, having begun his day at the bakery at the usual starting time of 5 o’clock in the a.m.
Gangsters were just the half of it. Spies also fascinated Loo-Loo, especially the Rosenbergs.
Convicted of being in league with the Reds a couple of years back, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sent up the river. Loo-Loo hadn’t thought much about it at the time; he was only eight, after all. But he knew Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg were parents, like his own, and that they had two sons about Loo-Loo’s own age. This made the case seem closer to home than the business about the racket guys Senator Kefauver talked about, guys like Joe Adonis and Frank Erickson.
But the thing that kept the spy case hot for Loo-Loo was Al Scharfsky’s supper-table lament that it was an awful shame that Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg were Jewish.
Weren’t they guilty?
Al summarized the case. “Guilty? They’re Jewish. We got enough troubles.”
One warm night in that June of ’53, Loo-Loo went out to Utica Avenue after supper for an ice-cream cone. Then he strolled to Chudow’s radio repair store, across the street from the Creamflake, to watch television. Very few people owned TV sets, and a small crowd had gathered, as usual, to watch a flickering black-and-white DuMont screen in the store window. This was evening recreation in Crown Heights.
The news was on. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing at sundown.
Loo-Loo worked his way through the onlookers, his cone dripping. There was no sound from the TV set, just the ghostly screen, with mugshots of the recently departed spies. A man in an Adam Hat and a business suit stood watching.
“What’s goin’ on?” Loo-Loo asked the man.
“They stole atomic bomb secrets, Sonny. Gave ’em to the Russians.”
Loo-Loo was silent. He already knew that.
“Yep. Espionage. They fried ’em both for espionage.”
“Jeez,” was all Loo-Loo could say, wondering what espionage was.
“Yeah, and they said that Julius went just like
that
after the juice was turned on,” said the man, snapping his fingers. “But they had trouble with the missus. Electrodes weren’t working right. A witness said he saw smoke coming out of her head.”
“Thanks, mister,” Loo-Loo said to the man in the Adam Hat.
Then his knees went soft, and Loo-Loo felt as if he’d be reviewing his supper in about a minute. Still, he managed to finish the cone. When he got home, he consulted his dictionary:
es•pi•o•nage
/n [F espionage.] the act of obtaining information
clandestinely. Applies to act of collecting military
and industrial data about one nation or business for
the benefit of another.
Loo-Loo also looked up
clandestinely
. Which made his heart thump even faster.
The phone rang. Stunned out of Crown Heights, Larry Sloan
picked up. It was the producer demanding to know: “How many
pages?”
“I haven’t counted. Leave me alone, Roger. I’m trying to
work.”
“Well, work fast. We’ve got another project coming up. You
could be right for it, Larry. No promises.”
“Want to tell me now?” Larry asked.
“We’ll talk about it,” Roger said, dangling the invisible carrot
with which Larry was so familiar.
“Goodbye,” Larry said.
“Don’t go anywhere. Pages, okay? Later.”
* * *
Even before school let out for the summer, some June days of 1953 could be stifling at P.S. 189, this being the era before everything in the city was routinely air-conditioned.
On such blazing days, school ended early, releasing to the damp heat Loo-Loo and a couple of his inner-circle pals, Teddy Newman and Lester Dank. They hightailed it across Lincoln Terrace Park to the Creamflake, in the cause of a guaranteed gratis charlotte russe for each.
The coveted charlotte russe consisted of a slab of sponge cake set in a little white cardboard cup, topped with whipped cream and a ceremonious glazed cherry—a particular favorite of the chunkier Lester. As the boys entered, Al Scharfsky sized up the troop and ordered Manya, the Czech refugee beauty with the visible gold tooth who worked behind the counter, to give the boys what they wanted. Manya did.
Manya always wore a tight sweater, making it hard for Loo-Loo and his friends to keep their eyes off the cushiony outlines. Whenever Manya saw the boys staring, she smiled, and her gold incisor would catch the light in Slavic appreciation.
As instructed, she now gave Loo-Loo and Lester and Teddy a charlotte russe. Then Al asked his son’s two pals to take a hike because he needed to talk to Loo-Loo privately. This was unusual, but the boys left, their faces smeared with whipped cream as they stole a last look at Manya’s majestic sweater.
“What’d I do, Pop?”
“Nothing. Come in the back, we got a job for you.”
“We” meant Pop and Mr. Horn, who never talked much. The two men moved to the end of a long butcher-block worktable, motioning for Loo-Loo to come close. Back by the ovens, the Russians turned to watch.
Al Scharfsky lit up a Chesterfield and took a deep drag. He spoke in a muted tone, with exhaled smoke punctuating his words. “You know the Union Bakery?”
“Yeah.”
Al reached into the secret petty cash drawer under the butcher block and extracted a five-dollar bill. Loo-Loo knew about the drawer because it was where his father and Mr. Horn kept a gun in case of a robbery.
“Take this and go to the Union Bakery,” said Al, handing over the fiver to Loo-Loo. “Buy a chocolate layer cake. Don’t tell them who you are or where you’re from. Just give them the money and bring back a chocolate layer cake.”
“The Union is our competitor, right? Can I go in there?”
“Sure you can. Just don’t say nothing.”
“But why, Pop?”
Mr. Horn—in charge of cakes, after all—chimed in. “Because we need to know what they’re putting into the layer cakes,” said the man who didn’t say much. “Understand? It’s business.”
“But what if they find out that you sent me?”
Al placed a fatherly hand on his boy’s shoulder. “They’re not gonna find out, bright boy, because you’re not gonna say nothing. Just buy the cake. Is that so hard?”
“No,” said Loo-Loo. He liked being called
bright boy
. “I thought you said the Union is owned by the mob.”
“I didn’t say. I only heard.”
“They’re gonna know where I’m from.”
“No. They don’t know who the hell you are,” said Al. “You’re some kid buying a layer cake. Now hurry, before they sell out.”
All eyes were on Loo-Loo. Al, Mr. Horn, and the Russians were studying him, assessing his bravery. Especially the Russians, immigrants being naturally curious about matters of risk.
Al said, “You can keep the change, Loo-Loo. After you do it, that is.”
Mr. Horn inquired, “You ain’t a sissy, are you?”
With the fiver deep in his pants pocket, Loo-Loo proceeded up Utica toward Eastern Parkway—past Chudow’s radio repair shop, past the chicken store, past the fruit market.
At Union Street, a hotness crawled across his chest. It felt like the prickly heat rash he sometimes got in August, but this was only June.
Espionage! They were asking him to commit espionage. Loo-Loo, a bright boy, was about to procure secrets from the competitor and deliver said intelligence to the Creamflake.
Wasn’t this kind of thing against the law? Wasn’t it punishable by J. Edgar Hoover and his federal authorities, who had sent Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg to the electric chair? And what about that higher court in the sky that Al and Dotty had talked about when Loo-Loo was little?
At that moment, he caught sight of McEntee, the huge cop of the neighborhood. He was ambling down Utica with a bunch of grapes in one hand and a peach in the other. He was always eating something he got from the storekeepers for free. Loo-Loo jaywalked to the other side, trying not to look suspicious.
What if McEntee asked him where he was going? Would Loo-Loo confess? Kids could go to jail. The city was getting tough on juvenile delinquents. Loo-Loo had seen plenty of reform schools in the movies. Full of delinquents, mostly Irish kids who would beat the crap out of you if you looked at them funny. Especially if your name was something like Loo-Loo.
Loo-Loo passed Union Street now, and found himself in the repeat line of little shops. Then the big sign over the street like a movie marquee:
Union Bakery
. Loo-Loo dragged his heels over the pavement, shuffling forward. He didn’t want to move, but he was somehow moving anyhow.
What if it was true that gangsters had taken over the Union? Gangsters would know the minute Loo-Loo walked in that he was up to no good, that he was a spy for the Creamflake.
They’d grab him right there, take him in the back of the bakery, and tie him up, make him talk.
So you won’t talk, huh?
Hey, Tony, get a hot coal out of the oven and let’s burn a hole in his
freakin’ head
. Or else they’d stick the spout of the doughnut machine in his ear and press the lever, filling his skull with strawberry jelly. They did things like that, these gangsters. Loo-Loo had heard the stories, he’d watched the Kefauver hearings. And didn’t he faithfully study the crime blotter in the
Daily Mirror
, just the same as Al himself did during his long stays in the can?
But even if the Union guys weren’t gangsters, Loo-Loo reasoned, he was still doing something really wrong in buying their cake—
clandestinely
!
So when J. Edgar Hoover sat Loo-Loo Scharfsky down on Old Sparky, would the electrodes function properly? Or would smoke come billowing out of his head? Say—how about if Loo-Loo managed to escape to Coney Island and hide out in room 623 at the Half Moon Hotel? Would somebody toss him out the window, making it look like he did the old brain-dive?
Funny how the Union Bakery smelled just like the Creamflake. This was comforting for about five seconds. Things even looked alike.
Tall glass showcases displayed cakes and cookies, breads and rolls. Loo-Loo had never gone into this shop, of course—ever. It was off limits. Yet the merchandise looked so familiar, and the girls behind the counter looked so much like Manya.
A few customers were ahead of him, so Loo-Loo lingered at the counter, waiting his turn.
What’s that? You say you can
hear my heart beating, mister? That’s not my heart, it’s coming
from the subway tracks. Get outta my way. I got business.
“What would you like, dear?” asked a cushiony Manya look-alike.
“A chocolate layer cake, please.”
“What size, honey?”
“Size?”
“Seven-inch or nine-inch?” The woman gave a nod of her head toward the showcase with the fancy cakes.
This was a monkey-wrench question, thought Loo-Loo, who felt as if he was suddenly coming down with a fever. If he hesitated, the woman would suspect. She’d send some kind of signal, and a couple of thugs would come bursting out from the back of the shop.
Loo-Loo studied the cakes.
Don’t try anything, sister. My
father owns a gun.
“Well, dear?”
“The nine-inch,” said Loo-Loo, figuring Mr. Horn would want as much as he could get.
Sister took the chocolate cake out from the showcase, slid it into a half-opened cake box, closed the sides, and deftly tied and bowed it with a curly red-and-white string that spooled down from the ceiling—just like the spool at the Creamflake.
“Two dollars,” she said. Loo-Loo dug in for the bill, passed it up to her, took the change, and ran like hell.
He shouldn’t have bolted out of the Union like that. He should have left slowly. But he couldn’t take it. They could probably hear his heart pounding in Brownsville, clear across the park.
Obviously, the woman suspected something fishy was going on. She’d be in the back by now, telling the hard guys. And then they’d come tearing out of the store after him.
If not the hard guys, then somebody. Cops maybe, or the FBI. Or even the dreaded “element.” It could be anybody, but one thing was for sure:
Somebody
was going to get Loo-Loo today.
It didn’t matter who. Loo-Loo was in too deep. He’d crossed the mob. He’d committed a federal crime. He was tangled in a clandestine web of lies. At least that’s how they talked when he listened to
The Shadow
on the radio.
A web of lies.
But this was the real thing, not some stupid mystery show. Loo-Loo ran for his life, and the faster he ran, the faster the tears washed down his face.
You big sissy! What are you crying
about, you moron?
The tears burned, and blurred.