Devil in a Blue Dress

Chapter 20

When we got to my car I drove down Central to Seventy-sixth Place. I was nervous being so close to the police station but I had to find Frank Green.

Jackson took Zeppo and me down to Abe’s liquor store. I was glad that Zeppo had come along with us because people who didn’t know Zeppo kept their eyes and attention on him. I was banking on that to hide any questions I asked about Frank.

On the way down to the liquor store Jackson told me the story of the men that owned it.

Abe and Johnny were brothers-in-law. They came from Poland, most recently from the town of Auschwitz; Jews who survived the Nazi camps. They were barbers in Poland and they were barbers in Auschwitz, too.

Abe was part of the underground in the camp and he saved Johnny from the gas chamber when Johnny was so sick that the Nazi guard had selected him to die. Abe dug a hole in the wall next to his bed and he put Johnny there, telling the guard that Johnny had died and was picked up, by the evening patrol, for cremation. Abe collected food from his friends in the resistance and fed his ailing brother-in-law through a hole in the wall. That went on for three months before the camp was liberated by the Russians.

Abe’s wife and sister, Johnny’s wife, were dead. Their parents and cousins and everyone else they had ever known or had ever been related to had died in the Nazi camps. Abe took Johnny on a stretcher and dragged him to the GI station where they applied to emigrate.

Jackson wanted to tell me more stories he’d heard about the camps but I didn’t need to hear them. I remembered the Jews. Nothing more than skeletons, bleeding from their rectums and begging for food. I remembered them waving their weak hands in front of themselves, trying to keep modest; then dropping dead right there before my eyes.

Sergeant Vincent LeRoy found a twelve-year-old boy who was bald and weighed forty-six pounds. The boy ran to Vincent and hugged his leg, like the little Mexican boy clung to Matthew Teran. Vincent was a hard man, a gunner, but he melted for that little boy. He called him Tree Rat because of the way the boy crawled up on him and wouldn’t let go.

The first day Vincent carried Tree Rat on his back while we evacuated the concentration camp survivors. That night he made Tree Rat go with the nurses to the evacuation center, but the little boy got away from them and made it back to our bivouac.

Vincent decided to keep him after that. Not the way Matthew Teran kept the Mexican boy, but like any man whose heart goes out to children.

Little Tree, as I called him, rode on Vincent’s back all the next day. He ate a giant chocolate bar that Vincent had in his pack and other sweets the men gave him.

That night we were awakened by Tree’s moaning. His little stomach had distended even more and he couldn’t even hear us trying to soothe him.

The camp doctor said that he died from the richness of the food he’d been eating.

Vincent cried for a whole day after Tree Rat died. He blamed himself, and I suppose he had a share of the blame. But I’ll never forget thinking how those Germans had hurt that poor boy so terribly that he couldn’t even take in anything good. That was why so many Jews back then understood the American Negro; in Europe the Jew had been a Negro for more than a thousand years.

Abe and Johnny came to America and had a liquor store in less than two years. They worked hard for what they got but there was just one thing wrong: Johnny was wild.

Jackson said, “I don’t know if he got like that in that hole in the wall or he was always like that. He said that he went crazy for a night, once, because him an’ Abe had to cut the hair from they own wives’ heads fo’ they went to the gas chambers. Imagine that? Cuttin’ yo’ own wive’s hair an’ then sendin’ her ta die?… Anyway, maybe he went crazy for the night an’ now that’s why he’s so wild.”

“What you mean, wild?” I asked him.

“Just wild, Easy. One night I goes down there with this high school girl, Donna Frank, an’ I’m lookin’ to impress her wit’ some liquor and Abe is already gone. So Johnny acts like I’m not even there an’ he start tellin’ her how pretty she is an’ how he’d like t’give her sumpin’.”

“Yeah?”

“He give her five dollars an’ had me stand at the register while he fuckin’ her right there behind the counter!”

“You lyin’!”

“Naw, Easy, that boy gotta screw loose, couple of’em.”

“So you go inta business then?”

“Shit no, that dude scared me. But I told Frank about it and he made the connection. You see, Frank had gone to Abe one time but Abe didn’t want nuthin’ t’do wit’ no hijack. But Johnny love it, all he sells is hijack after Abe go home at night.”

“Frank delivers here regular?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Just like a delivery truck, huh?” I laughed. “He drive up on Wednesday afternoon an’ unload.”

“Us’ly it’s Thursday,” Jackson said, but then he frowned.

It was just a hole-in-the-wall liquor store. They had one rack for cakes, potato chips, and bagged pork rinds in the middle of the floor. There was a long candy counter and behind that were the shelves of liquor and the cash register. At the back wall was a glass-door refrigerator where they had mixers and soda pop.

Johnny was a tall man with sandy hair and glassy brown eyes. There was a look on his face halfway between a smile and wonderment. He looked like a young boy who had already gone bad.

“Hiya, Johnny,” Jackson said. “This here’s my friends Easy an’ Zeppo.”

Zeppo came twisting in behind us. Johnny’s smile hardened a little when he saw Zeppo. Some people are afraid of palsy, maybe they’re afraid they’ll catch it.

“Good day, sirs,” he said to us.

“You gonna have to start givin’ me a percent, Johnny, much business as I bring you. Easy gettin’ ready fo’a party an’ Zeppo need his milk ev’ry day.”

Johnny laughed, keeping his eyes on Zeppo. He asked, “What do you need, Easy?”

“I need a case’a Jim Beam an’ Jackson say you could get it a little cheaper than normal.”

“I can give it discount if you buy by the box.” His accent was heavy but he understood English well enough.

“What can you do for two cases?”

“Three dollars the bottle, anywhere else you pay four.”

“Yeah, that’s good, but just a touch over my budget. You know I lost my job last week.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Johnny said, and turned to me. “Here it is your birthday and they throw you out.”

“Just a party. How ’bout two-seventy-five?”

He brought up his right hand, rubbing the fingers. “I’d be giving it to you for that, my friend. But I tell you what,” he said. “Two cases at three dollars is fifty-four. I let you have them for fifty.”

I should have haggled for more but I was impatient to get out of there. I could tell Albright that Frank would be there Friday and on Thursday Frank and I would make a deal.

“Deal,” I said. “Can I pick it up tomorrow?”

“Why can’t we do business now?” he asked suspiciously.

“I ain’t got no fifty dollars on me, man. I could get it by tomorrow.”

“I can’t do it until Friday. I have another delivery Friday.”

“Why not tomorrow?” I asked just to throw him off.

“I can’t sell all my whiskey to one man, Easy. Tomorrow I will get two cases but what if a customer comes in and wants Jim Beam? If I don’t have it he goes to another store. Not good for business.”

We settled the deal with a ten-dollar deposit. I bought Zeppo a half-pint of Harpers and I gave Jackson a five.

“Whas happenin’, Easy?” Jackson said to me after Zeppo had gone off.

“Nuthin’. What you talkin’ ’bout?”

“I mean you ain’t givin’ no party. An’ you ain’t usually gettin’ no haircut on’a Wednesday neither. Sumpin’s up.”

“You dreamin’, man. Party gonna be Saturday night an’ you welcome t’come.”

“Uh-huh.” He eyed me warily. “Whas all this got to do with Frank?”

My stomach filled with ice water but I didn’t let it show. “This ain’t got nuthin’ to’do with Frank Green, man. I just want some liquor.”

“Alright. Sounds good. You know I be around if they’s a party t’be had.”

“See ya then,” I said. I was hoping that I’d still be alive.

All I had to do was live for twenty-four hours, until Frank made his weekly rounds.