Frank heard his father’s chair scrape as he stood up and walked toward his bedroom.
“Come in, Frank,” his father said patiently. “We got something to talk about.”
“What the hell did I do now?” he began to shout.
“Ssh.” His father motioned toward the kitchen. “The windows are open. Come in and say hello to Mr. Alberg.”
“I’m coming. I just want to put away my hat.”
Frank’s mother was busy boiling water as he entered the kitchen. Anger had flushed her face and clamped her mouth into a tight twisted line. Alice stood near her mother, nervously tapping with one foot as she waited for the outburst that was sure to come.
“So,” Frank addressed them, “what’ve I done now? Let’s get it over with.”
“Bum,
momser!”
his mother shouted. “Do you know what’s happened to Fanny Kane?”
Frank turned to Stan. “You squealer!” he sneered. “You and your goddamned sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” Frank spoke rapidly. “Who asked you to butt in?”
“Bum!” his mother screamed at him. “Do you know what that
meshugener
did? Sure you knew, because it happened by that bunch of bums that you go with!” His mother strode toward him and Frank retreated. “Must I never know peace? Or rest? Must I spend my days in working and my nights in worrying about you? Do you know, you
zulick,
what they done last night? They ruined the girl!”
Shrieking, Mrs. Goldfarb cornered Frank against a wall and began to strike violently at him with both hands, but Frank covered his face with his hands and managed to catch most of the blows on his arms.
“Let me alone,” he began to shout. “I didn’t do it! I was trying to take care of her! Ask him.” He pointed to Stan, and as he lowered his guard his mother smashed him across the cheek and the nose. Involuntarily he drew back his fist to strike her, but he stopped, and at that moment Mr. Goldfarb dragged his wife to a chair and Frank ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.
No one spoke, and the only sounds were the boiling of the water and the heavy, raspy breathing of Mrs. Goldfarb. Alice stood rooted near the sink, writhing with shame, sick that Mr. Alberg had been a witness to her mother’s fury.
“More troubles than anyone.” Mrs. Goldfarb held her hands to her head and rocked in the chair. “Working and slaving for my children,” she singsonged, “working and slaving for my children, and no rest and no peace. Today I have to have Mrs. Kane come to my shop like a crazy woman and start to pull my hair. Without a badge she got in,” she said to Stan. “Rushed by the guards and finds out where I’m working and comes in and begins to pull my hair and to curse me. Curse me”—her voice broke and she tugged at her straggly hair—“me who’s been her friend for more than ten years. Cursed me and pulled my hair because of him.” She pointed to the bathroom, and her voice became hoarse and scratchy. “He had to give her a ticket and now she’s ruined! Made dirty by a bum! Ruined, ruined for life.” Mrs. Goldfarb began to cry slowly, as if it would take many hours for her grief to spend itself, and they watched her, unable to speak, to say anything that would comfort her.
With a screech the whistle in the spout of the teapot began to shrill, and Mrs. Goldfarb was galvanized into action. She wiped her eyes with her apron, poked futilely at her hair, and motioned for Alice to turn off the gas burner.
“You see, Mr. Alberg”—Frank’s father turned to him—“a woman can be so excited she don’t know what she’s doing, but once the water for the tea is boiled, she forgets all her troubles.” Mr. Goldfarb shook his head after he asked Stan to sit at the table. “These are bad times,” he said. “The war.”
Alice gave Stan a napkin and he thanked her. “I know,” Stan agreed, “plenty of work and nothing else.”
“What shall I do?” Mrs. Goldfarb appealed to him as she extended her hands in a gesture of futility. “I don’t have to be ashamed in front of you; you lived in Brownsville, hah? So,” she went on as Stan nodded affirmatively, “you know what we had here. The dirt and the relief and the gangsters for so long, so long. Now we work, but we had bad times for a long time.” Mrs. Goldfarb struggled to express herself. “So did our neighbors all around us. Now we’re working, but our children seem to be getting the wrong things out of our working.”
“Where are we making our mistake?” Mr. Goldfarb asked Stan.
Stan dipped the spoon into the sugar bowl. “I don’t know. I don’t know where to begin. I seem to be getting nowhere. People are expecting too much from us and from teachers in general. Everyone yells juvenile delinquency and expects us to find the remedy for all the evils, but we have to have more than yelling.”
“Stop your goddamn preachin’.” Frank opened the bathroom door and re-entered the kitchen. “We don’t need it around here.”
“Shut up, you bum!” his mother shouted.
“That’s all right,” Stan said. “Let him talk.”
Frank closed the open kitchen window. “The neighbors already heard plenty. We sure give them an earful,” he said to Stan.
“Please, Frank,” Alice pleaded with him, “don’t make Momma angry.”
“Once,” Mr. Goldfarb apologized, “I could better understand what you said. Years ago I took an interest in politics and things that were supposed to better the world, but that was before the bad times.”
“You could’ve always worked”—his wife pointed at him with a stubby finger—“only you were for unions. Now you got your union,” she continued, “and you’re working, and him”—she pointed to Frank—“is doing God knows what and is disgracing us. Everyone knows that he gave Fanny the ticket to go to his dance and—”
“Mrs. Goldfarb,” Stan interrupted her, “that wasn’t Frank’s fault. If the Sachs boy was after her he would’ve—” He stopped as he saw Alice listening with too much interest. “Well, it would’ve happened sometime.”
Mrs. Goldfarb noticed Stan’s halt. “Alice,” she said to her daughter, “go downstairs.”
“I can stay,” Alice protested. “I know what you’re talking about.”
Mrs. Goldfarb clutched her head and began to rock again. “What am I going to do? I was sixteen, believe me, Mr. Alberg, sixteen, before I knew that boys were different from girls. And now look, my daughter, a baby, sits here and tells me that she knows what we’re talking about. How do you know?” She grasped Alice’s wrist and twisted. “How do you know such things? Tell me! How do you know?”
Mr. Goldfarb rapped on the table with his spoon. “Stop it and let her alone and stop being such a fool. Sixteen,” he snorted. “Maybe you were brought up in a convent?”
“I was brought up in a home where there was always enough to eat,” she flung at him. “You hear me? Enough to eat! My father,
olav hashelem,
took care of his family so that they were dressed and fed and had a decent roof over their heads. Maybe he wasn’t so smart as you,” she spat scornfully at her husband, “but all his children were decent. Decent! Even my brother Hershell that you talk so much about, he’s decent! His children are decent! Not like him”—she pointed to Frank—“who is now a God knows what!”
“Aw, for chrissake,” Frank interrupted her tirade. “Shut up! What happened?” he asked Stan. “My old lady keeps on yellin’ and I don’t know what the hell she wants from me. What happened?”
Stan shrugged his shoulders. “Not much to tell. You know most of it. After you didn’t show up last night I took Fanny home. The girls brought her a dress and some new stockings and we cleaned her up as best we could. But her face was bruised and we couldn’t do anything about that, and of course you know what happened. So I took her home, and when I got there her mother and father were waiting for her on the stoop, and her father wanted to clout me because he thought I’d kept her out.” Stan smiled. “Being the good Samaritan can be dangerous. I told them Fanny had been in a little trouble and we all went upstairs, and when they saw her in the light, her mother blew a fuse. That started Fanny off again, and she told them what Crazy had done to her. Mr. Kane grabbed a bread knife and was going across the street and kill Crazy.”
“I don’t like to say this,” Mr. Goldfarb interjected, “but he deserves it.”
“I got the knife away from him,” Stan continued, “and I stayed there until morning.”
“They call the cops?” Frank asked cautiously.
“No. They’re ashamed.”
“But Mr. Kane went over to Mr. Sachs this morning,” Mr. Goldfarb went on, “and Mr. Sachs beat Crazy with a razor strop until he fainted.”
“He should’ve killed him, the outcast.” Mrs. Goldfarb’s cheeks were wet. “Some friends you have.” She turned again to Frank. “Some friends! Spoilers of small girls. You bum!” She suddenly lunged again at Frank. “God-forsaken bum!” She struck at him again.
Frank backed away from her. “Let me alone,” he panted. “Stop shovin’ me around or you’ll be sorry.”
“Bum!” his mother shrieked. “God-forsaken bum! Threatening your mother!”
“I’m getting outa here!” Frank shouted. “You can’t shove me around like nothin’. I’m gonna beat it.”
“Go!” His mother pointed to the door, and her face was a fury. “Go! Bum! Like the Shapiro boys and Abe Reles and the Kaplan boy who killed the policeman, you’ll be like them!”
“Rashke,” her husband pleaded.
“Bum!” Her shriek was a continuous torment. “Gangster!”
Frank opened the front door. “The hell with you!”
Suddenly his mother threw a glass at him and it shattered against the jamb of the door. “Bum! Now a bum! Later a gangster. Then a murderer! What else can you become?”
Frank paled as Stan caught his eye. In Frank’s face there was graved a new terror, a fear that was new to him and which turned his blood to ice, made his legs tremble with a sudden chill as his mother cursed him.
“Become a murderer!” His mother tore at her hair as Alice futilely attempted to restrain her. “My children old before their time because you”—she turned to her husband—“couldn’t provide for them!”
“Rashke,” her husband pleaded, “please, please! Not before him.” He pointed to Stan.
“Before the world, before everyone!” his wife shrieked as if she were demented. “No hope, no future, no nothing, with my son growing up with bums and becoming a bum, a gangster, a murderer!”
Each of his mother’s words was like the blow of a whip across Frank’s back, but as she continued to shriek “murderer” at him in ever-mounting spirals of hysteria it was as if the lashes were tipped with lead. He could feel nausea gorging him and he clenched his hands, bit his lips, as he attempted to blot out the shrill screaming of his mother’s voice.
Stan watched Frank retreat before the violence of his mother’s anger and curses, but he did not intervene. It was too late to help Frank, for Frank was beyond the help that he could offer and give.
Now there was nothing left but to wait, wait until the weary drama stumbled to its end, and Frank would either escape or be trapped, and Stan no longer had confidence in Frank’s ability to escape. At one time, yes, but now he saw fully and clearly that Frank was not smart or wise or strong enough to avoid situations that tended to enmesh and corrupt him, and suddenly Stan was tired, tired as he knew that he no longer could, would, or cared to help Frank, even though he believed that Frank was neither good nor bad, nor a sensitive complicated mechanism of mental contradictions. Frank was only a boy who had the normal urges of youth, but these urges had been perverted until he had become delinquent. Now Stan was certain that Frank would die young, for his death by violence was certain and inescapable.
“I’m not to blame because I gave her the ticket!” Frank slammed the door shut and faced his mother. “Why blame me if that stinker got in a jam? It was her fault.”
“That’s not true,” Stan said.
Frank’s face was bloodless. “Keep outa this,” he warned Stan.
“Bum!” his mother screamed again.
“I’m going!” Frank shouted. “Go to hell!”
“Gangster!”
“Go to hell!”
“Murderer!”
Frank wrenched open the door and hurled himself down the steps.
In the kitchen the steam rose lazily from the teakettle and Mr. Goldfarb stared at Stan, who could say nothing, and the only discernible sounds were the harsh breathing of Mrs. Goldfarb and the childish weeping of Alice, who sat huddled in her chair at the kitchen table, sobbing and wanting to die.
Detective Lieutenant Macon spat at the headline of the
Daily News,
tore the offending paper in two, and threw the halves into his wastebasket. He just couldn’t seem to get a decent break in this damn Bannon case. He looked at Gallagher and Wilner, whose faces were fat pictures of gloom.
“We never get a break,” Macon said. “Not one single break. How the hell did this get into the paper?” He pointed to the wastebasket.
Wilner shrugged his shoulders. “How do I know? We kept it quiet. After all, it was only a hunch.”
“But a good hunch,” Gallagher said to him. “You called your shot, Bert.”
“That’s right,” Macon agreed. “You suggested that we try dragging those Rockaway channels because maybe Benny and Frank got rid of the gun there.”
Wilner nodded sadly. “So I was right.”
“And how,” Macon continued. “The second try with the dredge at the Flatbush Avenue Bridge and up comes this plaster-of-paris block with some gun parts. They sure are slick kids.”
“So I still don’t know how the
News
got it,” Gallagher cursed. “They’re slick kids and there aren’t any fingerprints on the block or the gun parts, and now I’ll bet a hundred to one that we got the right kids. But they’ll see it in the paper, and when we pick them up now they’ll have another good alibi. Damn it!” Gallagher removed his hat and crushed it. “It burns me up.”
“It would’ve been a beauty,” Macon said, “if we could’ve sprung the gun parts on them. Well,” he sighed, “I better send out a call to pick them up.”
Frank shivered as he sat in the Winthrop and read and reread the scream headline in the
News.
They had found the gun parts. Now they had the weapon, at least part of it, and how certain could he be that there weren’t any of Benny’s fingerprints or, for that matter, his on the plaster block or the gun barrel? He could no longer be certain of anything, for who would have dreamed that the cops would find the gun after so many weeks? It was Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of June. Two more days and the term would have come to its official end. Now the cops had the gun, had fished it out of the channel underneath the Flatbush Avenue Bridge.