The Hoods (8 page)

I found myself walking under the thundering elevated. I was on the Bowery. There were drunks lying on or staggering along the street. I thought of Pipy, smooth fast-fingered Pipy, rolling a lush. Yeh, that's a good idea. I'll roll me a lush. And if he makes trouble, I got my knife.

I looked carefully up and down the street, and darted into a doorway. I rolled an unconscious, evil smelling drunk over and went through his pockets. They were empty. Even his shoes had been stolen. Then I remembered Pipy's expert observation: “The stiffs lying in the doorways are clean and dry. They never have a penny on them. Get the bums that are still on their feet.”

Like a jackal I stalked a big, staggering drunk down the side street. I was thrilled; this was exciting. Maybe he has a big bundle of dough? He flopped in the doorway. From nowhere a rough-looking old man swooped down on him. I was too startled to do anything. I watched in amazement. Hurriedly and skillfully, he went through him. He found something and put it in his pocket. Swiftly he unlaced his shoes and darted away to sell them on Bayard Street in the outdoor thieves market. I felt cheated. I was disgusted and disappointed with myself. That drunk should have been mine. I saw him first. That's the way people are. Grab, grab things right from under your nose. I vowed next time it wouldn't happen. I was angry with myself.

“You shmuck,” I said to myself, “you got to grab and grab quick, or the other guy will beat you to it. To hell with people, grab, grab for yourself.”

The morbid, abused feeling came back to me. The whole world stinks. Everything and everybody is against me. Suddenly a club hit me sharply over the backside. An excruciating pain shot up and down my spine. I lost control. I wet my pants.

The cop growled, “What the hell ya doing out so late? Beat it, you little tramp, before I whack you again.”

Like a whipped, unwanted, filthy mongrel, I slunk through the deserted streets, homeward bound.

Wilson was elected President. As usual, we celebrated the election with the largest bonfire on the East Side. For a short period longer, I remained in “soup school.” Then I went to O'Brien and demanded my working papers, which he reluctantly okayed.

For weeks I tramped the streets looking for a job. Finally I got one as a helper on a wet wash laundry wagon for $4.50 a week.

The first week was a back-breaking ordeal. Work started at six in the morning. The driver and I loaded the wagon to capacity with wet, heavy bundles. All day long we made our stops, laboriously climbing flights of stairs, carrying up the wet bundles and carrying down the dirty bundles. It was crippling drudgery. My back, my legs, all the muscles in my body, ached. In spite of the rain and sleet and snow and the cold of that severe winter, I was in a continual sweat from my strenuous work.

The driver worked on a commission basis. He was greedy, and he had a prodigious capacity for work. We took ten minutes for a sandwich. That was our lunch hour. Then we began again and labored far into the night. After a meager supper, I would crawl numbly into a cold bed, completely drained of any ambition ever to move again. I had peculiar dreams of walking with a bundle of wet wash tied to each leg and another balanced on my head. When I awoke in the cold dawn, stiff, hungry and aching, miserably contemplating my lot in life, a fierce resentment surged through every part of me. I gave vent to my feelings by cursing. I started with the driver, went on to the boss of the wet wash laundry, then to everybody in general. The $4.50 I brought to Momma when I crawled home from work ten o'clock every Saturday night was barely enough for the little food we had.

The old man was spending more and more time in schul. His face and beard grew whiter and whiter. His coughing spells lasted longer and longer. As the months rolled by, we fell further and further behind in our rent. Life was bitter for mama and us. But it wasn't black enough.

The dread “dispossess” came. Then the cold matter-of-fact marshall and his men came. We were out in the biting cold—all our miserable, broken-down belongings piled in a heap on the sidewalk for the callous world to gaze at. All around our piled-up belongings, the restless life of the East Side seemed to pursue its indifferent, hurried course.

It seemed as if the old man's schul-going, his praying, the rabbi— nothing, nobody seemed to want to help. The old man was taken away to Bellevue Hospital in an ambulance the same day.

Finally, my friend, big Maxie, arrived. He brought his uncle over to talk to my crying Momma. Then Maxie's uncle went and spoke to the Tammany district leader. The Tammany leader came to our rescue. He had us moved into a flat farther down on Delancey Street. He paid two months' advance rent for us. He sent five bushels of coal and a new pot-bellied stove. He sent potatoes and groceries—a two weeks supply. But the old man never came home again. He died in Bellevue the next day, from pneumonia.

Maxie's uncle buried my father without charge.

Numb with the hopelessness of it all, I went back to carrying more wet wash bundles.

One day a delegate from the Teamsters' Local arrived outside the wet wash laundry. He questioned some of the drivers and their helpers about working conditions.

My driver said, “Everything is all right. Things aren't bad.”

A few others told the truth. They insisted that conditions were bad. I told the delegate that we were being exploited; we were working more than eighty hours a week. My driver told me to shut my fresh mouth. I talked too much. I looked at him scornfully. The delegate signed those who wanted to join the union. My driver and a few others refused. The delegate drew up a fifty-four hour work week contract with a ten percent increase in pay and submitted it to the boss. The boss told him to drop dead, and go to hell. The delegate called the union men out on strike.

I walked a picket line. My driver and most of the others scabbed. We were jeered at and called lousy agitators and socialists. For days we trudged wearily back and forth. Everybody crossed the picket line. It was disheartening. I did strike duty fourteen hours a day.

One day the cops on strike duty purposely disappeared. A car pulled up with four men in it. They flashed badges. They were from a private detective agency. They told us to keep away from the laundry. They said the strike was over.

The other picket and I refused to go away. They took away our picket signs and beat us both up.

The cops with smirks on their faces came back and asked, “What happened?” They smiled with malice. “Ain't it too bad, wise guys? All right, beat it.”

They chased us away. The driver and his new helper stood laughing at my black eye and bleeding head.

I said, “What the hell you laughing at?”

“Go ahead, punk, beat it before I give you a workout,” he answered me.

I looked at him. I was on the verge of taking him on. Something inside me kept repeating, “Use your noodle, use your noodle, this guy is too big for you.” I walked away thinking: so this is what you have to contend with to make a lousy miserable living? This ain't for me. I had my belly full. What the hell am I going to be, a helper on a laundry wagon?

That night I met Maxie, Pat, Dominick and Cockeye.

We waylaid my driver and his helper on the third floor of a house on Henry Street.

I slashed out at fate by cutting my driver's cheek with my spring-knife. I took his collection money away. We beat them both into insensibility. We drove away with their horse and wagon to an open East Side pier. We unharnessed the horse and pushed the wagon and bundles into the East River. The horse vigorously nodded his head, as if he thought it a good thing. He kicked his heels and ran away.

That night we ate good at Katz's delicatessen.

Fat Moe came looking for me. He said, “The bulls were around. They asked questions about you. Better not go home.”

Luckily I found the Professor in his basement. I explained the pickle I was in. He went for a blanket. It was the first night I had ever been away from home.

I couldn't sleep too well. I wasn't scared, just nervous. I spent most of the night reading
Don Quixote
in the toilet.

In the morning the Professor brought me a container of coffee and hot cross buns. He gave me a key to the store and said, “Make this your hideaway until things cool off.”

He slipped me two bucks. He was a swell guy.

I heard that the union delegate was looking for me. I got in touch with him.

He said, “Good work, Noodles. One more job like the one you did on your driver, and the strike will be over. The scab drivers are afraid to go to work.”

That slash on the driver's face gave me the reputation of being a good man with a shiv. I was referred to as Noodles, the shiv, from Delancey Street. I was proud of the title.

We waylaid one more scab driver and helper. I cut them up and put them both in the hospital. It did something to me. I felt wonderfully exhilarated and happy. I found I had enjoyed the experiences immensely. When I clicked the knife open, people jumped. They showed me a new respect.

The other drivers were afraid to go out on their routes. The boss called the union. Grudgingly, he signed a fifty-four hour work week contract with an overall ten percent increase.

The delegate met us in the Professor's basement. He had a proposition. “Do you boys want to work for me and the union as sort of union organizers? Ten dollars a week, apiece?”

That was our first steady racket payroll.

We organized many of the workers in that laundry teamsters local thereafter. In our experience as organizers, we saw all the cruelty, greed and irresponsibility employers unrestrained by the union were capable of. It justified our hatred for all authority. Their standards were, in our eyes, society's standards.

Most of the time the cops were looking for me, so I kept away from home, but I sent money every week to Momma, by messenger.

President Wilson declared war on Germany. An aura of adventure enveloped everything. Glory and brutality went together. They were the order of the day. The five of us tried to get into the swing of authorized violence by joining the Army. We were laughed at; we were too young. The exciting tempo of the country was exhilarating, like the speeding up of an immense carousel. We jumped on our own private little carousel, and took firm grips on the rails. We operated the speeds faster and faster.

With our union ten dollar a week payroll as a beginning we sought and found other means of increasing our incomes in the toughest and most competitive field of all, general hoodlumism. We entered the field pretty well equipped, for we had already taken our elementary course in the hardest soup school in the city.

Now we were entering the sophomore phase of our education. Our classrooms were the backyards, the cellars, the roofs, the market places, the river and the gutters of the East Side. We roamed the maze of streets, like jungle hunters seeking big game. We were curious about everything. We soaked in all sorts of information, experienced bizarre adventures. We carried black jacks of our own manufacture, made from the lead solder melted off the covers of milk cans. We waylaid prosperous-looking pedestrians on dark narrow streets.

We took a postgraduate course in sex, from a skilled and experienced teacher, Peggy the Bumehke.

After our bi-weekly delivery of “junk” from the Professor to the address on Mott Street, we would explore the streets of Chinatown, interested and entranced by the strange sights and smells. There we observed the habits and distinctive antics of the addicts to various narcotics.

Under the Professor's expert tutelage we learned the secrets and skills of many illegal professions. He initiated us into the soothing, dreamy pleasure of opium smoking. He supplied us with an assortment of guns and other lethal weapons necessary in the skilled art of committing mayhem.

We became more callous and hardened, and truly adept at acts of violence.

Cockeye Hymie had been practising driving on his brother's taxi-cab. He developed a skill in handling an automobile that was sheer wizardry. On many occasions we utilized this skill and his brother's hack, with the license plates removed, for a small heist. We developed a style all our own in the heist profession. We took our victim's pants off before we made our getaway. The newspapers headlined us as the young pants burglars. We were proud of our originality and the publicity. We became cocky and conceited. That was our undoing.

On a small-time drugstore heist which netted us $22.50, the proprietor immodestly ran out of his store into the street without his pants, and gave the alarm. In the getaway in Cockeye Hymie's brother's cab, with the police after us, we ran out of gas on Delancey Street. We leapt out of both doors and ran in all directions. We were too fast for the cop and sergeant who were pursuing us. Silently, I thanked Maxie for the vigorous physical training he had insisted on. It stood us in good stead. I heard shots. I thought we had all made a safe getaway.

Later, in the back of Gelly's candy store I got the sad news. Dominick was dead. He couldn't keep up with us. Little pudgy Dommie got a bullet in the back of his head. The police sergeant shot him. The precinct detectives rounded us all up. Maxie's uncle's influence with the Tammany district leader came in handy. We were allowed under custody, to attend poor Dommie's funeral. At the funeral parlor where Dommie was lying at rest, his parents and relatives gave us harsh and sullen looks. They muttered and cast imprecations upon us in Italian. In an undertone Patsy interpreted them for us. We attended the funeral mass at the church. The quiet, sorrowful moaning of poor Dommie's parents was heart-rending. When the priest walked all around poor Dommie with incense and blessed him, I felt a heavy cramp in my heart, as if it was tearing apart. My insides were numb with pain.