do for him. He bought rundown restaurants and bars. Hymie was his name. He would remodel
these places, then stage a big, gala reopening, with banners and a spotlight outside. The jampacked,
busy place with the big "Under New Management" sign in the window would attract
speculators, usually other Jews who were around looking for something to invest money in.
Sometimes even in the week of the new opening, Hymie would re-sell, at a good profit.
Hymie really liked me, and I liked him. He loved to talk. I loved to listen. Halfhis talk was about
Jews and Negroes. Jews who had anglicized their names were Hymie's favorite hate. Spitting
and curling his mouth in scorn, he would reel off names of people he said had done this. Some of
them were famous names whom most people never thought of as Jews.
"Red, I'm a Jew and you're black," he would say. "These Gentiles don't like either one of us. If the
Jew wasn't smarter than the Gentile, he'd get treated worse than your people."
Hymie paid me good money while I was with him, sometimes two hundred and three hundred
dollars a week. I would have done anything for Hymie. I did do all kinds of things. But my main job
was transporting bootleg liquor that Hymie supplied, usually to those spruced-up bars which he
had sold to someone.
Another fellow and I would drive out to Long Island where a big bootleg whisky outfit operated.
We'd take with us cartons of empty bonded whisky bottles that were saved illegally by bars we
supplied. We would buy five-gallon containers of bootleg, funnel it into the bottles, then deliver,
according to Hymie's instructions, this or that many crates back to the bars.
Many people claiming they drank only such-and-such a brand couldn't tell their only brand from
pure week-old Long Island bootleg. Most ordinary whisky drinkers are "brand" chumps like this.
On the side, with Hymie's approval, I was myself at that time supplying some lesser quantities of
bootleg to reputable Harlem bars, as well as to some of the few speakeasies still in Harlem.
But one weekend on Long Island, something happened involving the State Liquor Authority. One
of New York State's biggest recent scandals has been the exposure of wholesale S.L.A. graft and
corruption. In the bootleg racket Iwas involved in, someone high up must have been taken for a
real pile. A rumor about some "inside" tipster spread among Hymie and the others. One day
Hymie didn't show up where he had told me to meet him. I never heard from him again... but I
did hear that he was put in the ocean and I knew he couldn't swim.
Up in the Bronx, a Negro held up some Italian racketeers in a floating crap game. I heard about it
on the wire. Whoever did it, aside from being a fool, was said to be a "tall, light-skinned" Negro,
masked with a woman's stocking. It has always made me wonder if that bar stickup had really
been solved, or if the wrong man had confessed under beatings. But, anyway, the past suspicion
of me helped to revive suspicion of me again.
Up in Fat Man's Bar on the hill overlooking the Polo Grounds, I had just gone into a telephone
booth. Everyone in the bar-all over Harlem, in fact-was drinking up, excited about the news that
Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers' owner, had just signed Jackie Robinson to play in major
league baseball, with the Dodgers' farm team in Montreal-which would place the time in the fall of
1945.
Earlier in the afternoon, I had collected from West Indian Archie for a fifty-cent combination bet;
he had paid me three hundred dollars right out of his pocket. I was telephoning Jean Parks. Jean
was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived in Harlem. She once sang with Sarah
Vaughan in the Bluebonnets, a quartet that sang with Earl Hines. For a long time, Jean and I had
enjoyed a standing, friendly deal that we'd go out and celebrate when either of us hit the
numbers. Since my last hit, Jean had treated me twice, and we laughed on the phone, glad that
now I'd treat her to a night out. We arranged to go to a 52nd Street nightclub to hear Billie
Holiday, who had been on the road and was just back in New York.
As I hung up, I spotted the two lean, tough-looking paisanos gazing in at me cooped up in the
booth.
I didn't need any intuition. And I had no gun. A cigarette case was the only thing in my pocket. I
started easing my hand down into my pocket, to try bluffing... and one of them snatched open
the door. They were dark olive, swarthy-featured Italians. I had my hand down into my pocket.
"Come on outside, we'll hold court," one said.
darsice
(darsice)
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