by Colin Deerwood

I’m not a big believer in coincidence but Becky’s description of the shooting in Soloman’s flat was going to win me over. She kept it to herself as we made our way through the traffic and gathering crowds drawn by the police action and blocking the once deserted upscale neighborhood street, me still struggling to maintain my stooped over squat pose—there’s no doubt my knees took a beating that night. I finally got to stand tall a couple of blocks later once I was stepping down the tiled stairs to the turnstile and through to the subway platform. Becky kept her grip under my arm, propping me up,  even though she didn’t have to at this point.

“Ok,” I said, “tell it to me from the beginning” at the same time realizing that the pain in my head was like a spike being driven through my eye socket and that I had a thirst that would drain a lake.

The platform was empty and silent, no air stirring tunnel roar signaling the approach, trains less frequent in the graveyard hours. From the vantage of the dim lit far end I could keep an eye on the entrance to the platform while staying in the shadows. Becky too kept a focused vigilance. Unless anyone looked close, our disguises held true.

Despite being manhandled by Soloman’s thugs, the adrenaline was keeping me cocked, and my brain clocking a thousand miles an hour though there was no telling how much longer until I sprung a spring. I had to think that I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time or it had something to do with me. Kovic had picked up my trail and that led him to Rabbi Joe and his minions. But if they were after me, why go to all the trouble of shooting up the place. Becky’s description of the gunmen made me think that they might be a gang of professional robbers. There’d been a rash of penthouse robberies in the ritzy neighborhoods around the first of the year. The Anti-Claus Gang, one rag dubbed them as they were after expensive holiday purchases of jewels, gold, and art. Their masked getup was in favor of that conclusion. They might have started up again. And in the report of the previous strong armed heists, there had never been any shootings, just very effective threats. But the one thing that Becky said had me leaning to not a coincidence at all.

Men in suits suddenly appeared on the platform with the frantic looks of having just missed the train. From the window I watched them scamper to the brink of the tracks as it accelerated out of the station. The car was empty except for a blind man slumped forward, propped up by his white cane, at the other end by the door leading to the next car. I sat facing Becky on the seat across from me, keeping an eye on the door leading into the rest of the train. It was the downtown local because that was the direction of the one room apartment I hadn’t been back to for over a week. It seemed like the obvious place to head. Except. What if Kovic’s goons or the goons in blue had my place staked out? The Y happened to be downtown, too, and the thought crossed my mind that for two bits a night I could hole up there for a while. But then Rebecca’s old man had his used clothing store practically across the street.

She must have read my mind. “Lack, we can hide in my father’s shop, no one will think to look for us there. Today is the Sabbath and he will not. . . Oh!” She caught her breath.

“Was your father’s at Soloman’s when. . . ?

She nodded. “I know he was there but he was not with the others. He has a room behind the kitchen where he can stay when he does not stay at the shop. It is next to my room.” She made a face. “Maybe I should call it a cell where I live and work with the women. But my father is not one of them, the top echelon, Professor Soloman’s council. He has high intelligence but for our cause he is better used analyze strategy to defeat the enemy he told me. But I have never seen him with gun. And guns I saw and guns I heard.” She put her hands to her cheeks in horror. “I could only think, they are ruining the furniture!”

The train pulled into another stations. No one entered the car and the blind man bobbed with the jolt of the train lurching back up to speed.

“Ok,” I said, “tell it to me from the beginning” at the same time realizing that the pain in my head was like a spike being driven through my eye socket and that I had a thirst that would drain a lake.

“It is all so what you say swiftly passing by my eyes, flashing, so fast. One of the maids was look for me and call my name. I should be in my room but she call up the stairwell because she know I have to get away sometime to myself. When I come down, she say I have package, but who would deliver package at that time at night, and before she say any more, loud noise come from front door near where we are stand and men with guns in long coats and hats pulled down over eyes, red kerchiefs over faces, some with racing goggles, rush in

“There were three, maybe five, into parlor when from Herr Doktor’s library’s Isaac the door open to step out with his gun shooting. Then all they started shooting. Isaac fall in the doorway and I see Golie and Herr Doktor and some of other men come with guns shooting. Guns fire from everywhere. The maid, Anya, who had come get me, hit on cheek by splinter of doorway explode from bullet. From my room for my coat I go by back stairs. I was in panic not to go down where there might be others to do me harm. Up is only other way.”

What she described had all the makings of a heist I was convinced. I had a question but a shadow filling the door at the far end of the car distracted me.

She was saying, “But Lack, there is something else I must tell you,” when the door opened and in walked trouble.

One of them was dressed like a typical college kid, tweed suit coat, vee neck sweater, bowtie, and a crushed fedora on the back of a mop of black hair. The other two looked like they were still waiting for the right haberdasher. The tall skinny loose limbed one wore a shirt whose sleeves only reached to his elbows, a pair of baggy pants held up by a belt knotted at the waist, and a baseball cap with the bill tipped up. He was a blinker and about as bright as a dead bulb. The short guy in a beanie with a smudge of moustache looked like he might be the ring leader. They were loud and maybe a little drunk. The blind man drew their immediate attention as the object of their rambunctious baiting, laughing and pointing, waving their hands in front of his eyes giving him the how many fingers test.

The one with the bowtie must have caught sight of me, and of Rebecca who had turned to glance over her shoulder at the ruckus, and now he was poking beanie in the arm with his elbow and nodding in our direction and saying something under his breath that made beanie’s eyes get that special sparkle.

With barely a hint of nonchalance they sauntered down the aisle to where we were sitting. Beanie, flanked by string bean and bowtie, took the toothpick out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “Well if it ain’t grandma and little red riding hood. You’ll never guess who we are.”

“Yeah,” the string bean drawled, “we’re the big bad wolves.” There was no mistaking the waterfront twang of their accent. Bowtie gave a crocodile grin leering at Rebecca.

None of them were being subtle and there was no reason why I should be. With as much soprano as I could manage, I piped, “You look more like the three little pigs.”

Beanie’s eyes darted to me. “What a really big yap you got, grandma.” Bowtie was giving me a suspicious scowl as string bean leaned over beanie’s shoulder to look down on me to say “Yeah, and what really big feet you got, too, grandma.” Everyone stared down at my Thom MaCans.

My forehead smacked beanie between the eyes after I’d grabbed him by the shirt front. His eyes rolled back like he couldn’t believe it and he folded like a pair of trousers around his ankles. I had more headache to pass around and went for string bean but his hands were high above his head and gawking at Rebecca. She had a little pistol pointed at him. Bowtie scrambled stumbling back down the aisle toward the next car tripping as he ran past the blind man, sprawling head first into the edge of a seat.

Was I dragging the kid along, too, or was she part of the deal? She was cool, smart, and she had a gun. That was in her favor.

I stood my full height and stepped on beanie’s hand. The train was slowing on the approach to the next station. I could tell by the squeal of the brakes and that of beanie’ pain.

“You messed with the wrong grandma.” I grabbed bean stalk by the arm and twisted it. I pulled beanie to his feet by his collar and dragged them both to the doors as the train entered the station. “You don’t want to miss your stop.”

Bowtie was holding his head sitting up. He immediately got what the motion of Becky’s pistol meant and as soon as the doors parted he dashed out onto the platform with his pals.

I looked around. There was no one else in the place but me, Rebecca, and the blind man. He held up his hand. “I didn’t see anything.”

The tailor shop was a solid brick block from the subway exit. I had shed the scarf and stood at the curb looking up at the building. All the windows were dark. In the distance the silhouettes of the midtown skyscrapers were lightening around the edges. Soon people would be heading off to work or looking for work.

Rebecca didn’t have a key. She was going to have to wake up the super. She had me wait in a dark doorway of a shop further down where had anyone seen me in my overcoat and bare legs would have called the cops to report a flasher. When the light inside the shop blink on and off I would know to come to the door and she would let me in.

I was dying for a smoke but I knew better than to light up. The headache was a dull throb now and had moved to behind my right ear. My tongue felt like sandpaper. I could feel another prune forming above my left eyebrow. I was in the middle of something that was spinning out of control, sucking me in. Was I dragging the kid along, too, or was she part of the deal? She was cool, smart, and she had a gun. That was in her favor.

I knew I had to get the stink that was Kovic off me. He tried to have me iced after I rescued his hophead daughter from the sour mash South. He put a couple of slugs in Ralphie, my lawyer, an old pal from the neighborhood who had steered me to the blood hound job in the first place. Times were tough and any cabbie or street corner mug mighta made me. Dropping a dime was not gonna be any sweat of their noses.

Running into the tailor and his daughter was pure luck. Whether it was good luck or bad luck was another matter I still couldn’t figure. Who had been chasing me when I chanced onto them? I didn’t feature that it was any of Kovic’s mob. Someone was tailing me, that was for sure. The mess in my room had been tossed by someone who claimed to be my sister, according to Curtis, the super’s pervert son. His description made me think Al’s sister. I had something that belonged to her, the pink postal package slip I’d lifted from her mailbox. A fair exchange for setting me up. Was she just the tip of the iceberg and was I a titanic dope for not seeing it coming? She had to have some reach. As soon as I come up with her ex-boyfriend’s whereabouts, he ends up dead. Now there were more bodies. The robbers used the package delivery ruse, but at that time of night what express service would be delivering? Unless someone was expecting a delivery. But Rebecca had said that the package was for her.

It was like I had come in to the middle of a movie and wasn’t making heads or tails of the plot. Her beautiful face close up filled the entire screen of my vision. For a kid she was quite a dame.

As if I didn’t have enough worries, I had pricey rock floating around in my gut with no idea on how I was going to work that out. I’d asked the kid to tell me again the part about when the gangsters busted in, what were they yelling? “Where are the diamonds?” she’d repeated and then something she couldn’t make out. “It sound like name, Worsey. Wharzee? I do not know.” I repeated the name to myself again in the darkened doorway. Worsey, Wharzee, Wharz-ee, Where-zee. Where is he?

A light blinked or it coulda been me dropping off, asleep on my feet.

There was a cot behind the curtain separating the display room from the back workshop of sewing machines, ironing boards, and a narrow cutting table. I stumbled toward it as if I was being drawn by an irresistible urge to fall face first on it. I was beat, not to mention bounced around, kicked, and hammered. Too long without anything to eat, too much to drink, or no time for sleep made me want to throw in the towel, wake me when it’s over. I drank water from a glass in big gulps. My head was swimming. I held it in my hands sitting on the edge of the cot knowing I’d drift off as soon as I was horizontal.

Rebecca fussed unpacking the bags and taking my pants to the large tub sink against the back wall.

“Lack, there is something you should know.” Now she was looking at me with those pale blue eyes and it seemed like that was all I needed to know. She sat on the cot next to me and looked down at her hands. “Those men, Doktor Soloman and the others, they cheat you out of the diamonds of your agreement. Your address book was not destroy. I hear them talking.

“When I was brought back, Herr Doktor tell me go to my room and stay until he call. When I go through kitchen before my room, the cook is shaking head because she is not understanding why she must boil a book of empty paper for Isaac who she does not like but because zayde say so.”

It was like I had come in to the middle of a movie and wasn’t making heads or tails of the plot. Her beautiful face close up filled the entire screen of my vision. For a kid she was quite a dame.

“They discover your notebook in water closet. Drop in commode when one of the men went to use. He give it to Herr Doktor who has an idea to keep your valuable information, and diamonds, too. I hear them talking before they bring you up back stairs. They are laugh. They think they are very clever about how they cheat you.”

She was looking at me now and I felt her soft breath soothe my battered cheek. I leaned toward her blinking to keep my eyes open. My lips brushed hers. I didn’t blame her for putting her hand on my chest and pushing me away. It didn’t take much. I’m a pushover for dames like her. And I kept falling, onto the rumpled blanket that smelled of cabbage and old sweat, hearing her say, “There is something else you should know,” and me replying, “You say the nicest things,” before her lips pressed hard against mine and I realized that some part of me was still very much awake.

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Next Time: Diamond In The Rough