January 4
Jake Leibowitz was sitting at the far end of his mother’s kitchen table, the end closest to the living room. He had two reasons for doing this. First, it was as far as he could get from his mother, Sarah, who was cooking breakfast, and, second, he could see the open closet by the door leading out of the apartment. The closet held his “reward for a job well done.” Jake always treated himself to a reward when a job came off successfully.
Of course, there were some people, like his mother, who thought it was stupid to spend two hundred on a reward when you only took in three hundred, but Jake had to disagree. He wasn’t throwing his money away. Nor was he trying to play the big shot in front of his associates. He was conditioning himself for success.
Jake, as far as he could remember, had never liked to read. He tended to see letters upside down and words in reverse order. Not that he couldn’t read. It was just that extracting the information locked up in those letters was closer to an all-out siege than a leisurely pastime. Still, there were lots of empty hours in prison, hours when time seemed to reach out to the edge of a very flat earth. Jake, like the majority of his prison peers, spent most of those hours lost in common, if complex, sexual daydreams. But he couldn’t spend all the hours dreaming-there were just too many-so, somewhere in his fifth year of incarceration, he began to read Life magazine. He chose Life for two reasons. First, because it was on the warden’s list of approved periodicals and, second, because it only came once a week. Jake needed a week to get through an issue. A week was an absolute necessity when you had to work on the words a letter at a time.
Jake was in his ninth year at Leavenworth when he came on the article in Life that changed his life. It was the missing link in Jake Leibowitz’s formula for success. The article was on a Soviet psychology experiment which was called “conditioning.” It was mostly about a man named Pavlov who did an experiment with his dog. He rang a bell each time he fed his dog and after a while the dog started drooling every time he heard a bell, even if there wasn’t any food. At first, Jake thought this was pretty funny. He imagined Pavlov walking his dog down the street. Whenever the dog hears a fire bell or a church bell, it starts dribbling away. Like on some old broad’s hightop shoes.
But the article stuck to Jake, despite its clownish aspects. The way he understood it, the commies were saying that you could make something happen by getting someone to expect it to happen. Maybe that was why he kept screwing up in life. He was always kicking himself when he made a bad move, always putting himself down. What he should be doing, he figured, is rewarding himself when he did something right. That way he’d get used to being successful. He’d get conditioned.
“Eat your eggs.” Sarah Leibowitz banged the plate down so hard, the salami omelet bounced several inches into the air, then settled back on the plate with an audible plop.
“You still pissed off, ma?” Jake knew the answer to the question. He was sorry he’d asked it before the words were out of his mouth.
“He asks am I angry?” Sarah hugged her enormous belly with both arms and rocked from side to side.
“Don’t do a speech, ma,” Jake begged. “For cryin’ out loud. Give it a rest.”
“He asks am I angry,” she repeated, ignoring him altogether. “Here is a boy goes out and buys himself a two-hundred-dollar overcoat when his mother is wearing a rag. A rag, mind you, that’s not even wool. It’s a cotton rag without a lining. Here is a boy who puts lambswool on his back …”
“Cashmere, ma. It’s called cashmere.”
“Lambswool on his back when his own mother is wearing a twenty-four dollars and ninety-five cents winter coat she got off the sales rack at Klein’s. So why should I be angry that my son thinks he’s gotta be Prince Jake, but it’s okay his mother should freeze her tuchis off whenever she steps out of the house to go shopping for his dinner? Why, I’m asking?”
Jake wolfed the eggs down as fast as he could. He had work to do and he didn’t want to distract himself by fighting with his mother. She never lost a fight, anyway, because she mostly ignored whatever he said.
“You’re going where today?” Ma Leibowitz asked.
“Mamaleh, mamaleh.” Jake gave his mother a hug. She accepted his arms, but he knew what was coming next, so what he did was take three quick steps back after letting go. Ma Leibowitz’s right hand just missed his face.
“Hugs are for cheapskates,” she shouted. “Fur coats are for mamalehs.”
Jake paused at the apartment door long enough to throw his new black overcoat a wistful glance, then took his navy peacoat off the hook and put it on. The peacoat was the cheapest coat in his closet, but it was warm and completely inconspicuous. There were thousands of them walking around the streets of New York. All on the backs of ordinary workingmen. Jake had nothing but contempt for wage slaves, but when he pulled the black watchcap down over his head and checked himself out in the mirror, he had to admit his mug would look perfectly normal behind the wheel of a truck.
The effect was exactly what he was looking for and he remembered to reward himself before he walked out the door. “You done all right, kid,” he said, nodding the way his father would’ve nodded. If he’d had a father.
Jake felt good enough to take the four flights two stairs at a time, but when he opened the outer lobby door, the cold hit him like a hammer. It was twenty-four degrees in New York and the wind was blowing out of the northwest at twenty miles an hour.
“Damn!” Jake’s eyes began to tear before the door closed behind him. He blinked rapidly for a moment, then opened them to find Abe Weinberg lounging against the side of the Packard as if he was basking in the July sun. Abe was wearing his favorite black leather jacket which he hadn’t even bothered to zip up, because he wanted everyone to see the white T-shirt he was wearing underneath it. Abe, or so he’d told Jake, had seen The Wild Ones eighteen times.
“Whatta you, a fuckin’ snowman?” Jake asked.
“You shouldn’t talk that way in front of my new girlfriend,” Abe said defensively. “It ain’t right.”
“Your new what?” Jake noticed the girl for the first time. She was also wearing a black leather jacket and black motorcycle boots. And she couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old.
“This is Maria Roccantelli. She lives on MacDougal Street.”
“Pleased to meetch’ya,” Maria said, extending her hand.
“Likewise.” Jake allowed his fingertips just to graze hers. He was familiar with the term jailbait and he was pretty sure it didn’t apply to touching alone, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “Don’t you gotta be in school or something?”
Maria giggled. “I just come by ’cause Abe said I should meet ya.”
Jake looked at Abe, who was leaning against the car again. “Wake up, Abe. It ain’t Rock-Around-the-Clock time. Say goodbye to ya girlfriend and let’s get outta here.”
“See ya later, alligator,” Maria said jauntily.
“Take off,” Abe hissed out of the side of his mouth.
The reason Jake held it in as long as he did-five endless minutes-was that it didn’t matter much anyway. Maybe it made things harder, but it wasn’t going to change the spots. He told himself that what’s done is done, but what he said was, “How can you be so stupid as to bring your girlfriend along when we’re goin’ out on business?”
Abe, who was working on his pompadour with a long black comb, looked over in surprise. “We’re only goin’ out to check locations, right? It’s not like we was doin’ somethin’ wrong.”
“I don’t give a shit. There’s times when you’re workin’ and there’s time when you’re social. I been tryin’ ta tell you that for the last six months. What I don’t understand is how a guy who’s been in the joint could be so goddamned casual. And that broad ain’t even a broad. That broad is a kid. She can’t be no more than sixteen and she looks like twelve. Here we are killin’ ourselves to get in with the wops and you wanna pump some guinea’s sixteen-year-old daughter. You gotta be stupid and I don’t need stupid.”
Abe Weinberg slouched down in the seat and drew his lips up into a sulky pout. It was the same pout Elvis had used in Jailhouse Rock, but it had no apparent effect on Jake Leibowitz.
“C’mon, Jake, smile. Ya gotta smile.” Abe torched a Lucky Strike and blew a thin stream of smoke at the windshield. “Maria’s seventeen, Jake. She graduates in June. Her parents like me.”
“Do they know you’re thirty years old? Do they know you’re a gangster?”
Abe didn’t answer and Jake didn’t bother to pursue it, because it didn’t matter anyway. Abe Weinberg was the kind of problem that could give Jake and all his efforts a bad name. It wasn’t about putting on a show. It was about low profile. It was about doing what you had to do without the whole city knowing your business. Guys who got too much attention-who got their names and faces in the goddamned newspapers-ended up in a Jersey swamp. Which was exactly where they were going.
“You up for this?” Jake asked.
They were passing through the toll on the far end of the Lincoln Tunnel. Abe was practicing the art of curling one corner of his mouth into a sneer and the question caught him by surprise.
“Whatta ya mean?”
“I’m talkin’ about what we’re gonna do.” Jake shook his head in disgust. If he didn’t know Abe Weinberg was a Jew, he wouldn’t believe it. “You’re probably adopted, right? Tell me you’re adopted. Your real parents were Okies who made a wrong turn and ended up in New York instead of California.”
“C’mon, Jake. I just wasn’t expectin’ the question.” Abe cracked the vent window and lit another cigarette. He liked the way he looked with a cigarette dangling from his lip, but the smoke was hurting his eyes. “The answer is, yeah, I’m ready. Like I already told ya when you first brought it up.”
“You’re ready to pull the trigger?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure you could do it?”
“If the money’s right, I’ll machine-gun Madison Square Garden on fight night. That answer your question?” This time he got himself so far down in the seat that his knees were up against the dash. “Didn’t I do the fuckin’ spic?”
“That was in a panic, Abe. That was stupid. I’m talkin’ about doin’ it cold.”
Jake paused, waiting for a reply, but Abe stared out the window and began to hum the melody from Chuck Berry’s tune, Rock and Roll Music.
“This is an honor the wops are givin’ us here,” Jake continued. “We do this right and we’re on our way.”
“Well, we’re not doin’ it today, right or wrong,” Abe finally said. “All we’re lookin’ for is a place to dump a stiff that ain’t even a stiff yet. So what I can’t figure out is why you’re makin’ such a big deal outta nothin’.”
This time it was Jake who didn’t bother to answer. They were driving through a huge swamp west of Secaucus. It should have been beautiful, at least from inside the car. The cold winter winds had driven away most of the pollution and the sun was shining in the brown and gold tips of the cattails and reeds lining the roadway. It also shone brightly on mounds of garbage left by illegal dumpers, many of them commercial haulers.
Jake turned on an unmarked side road and began to criss-cross the swamp. He made lefts and rights at random, but he never got close to being lost. Abe, on the other hand, stared at the unfamiliar landscape as if he’d been transported to the moon on a Russian sputnik.
“You got a map, Jake?” he asked. “So we could find our way outta here.” Though he didn’t say it, the idea of being in the swamps late at night scared him a lot more than bumpin’ off some guinea.
“In my head is where I got my map, Abe. I never get lost.”
“The world’s first Jewish Indian.”
“Yeah,” Jake laughed, “call me Tonto. Tonto Leibowitz.”
A much-relieved Abe Weinberg joined in his pal’s laughter. “Yeah, yeah. Pathfinder Leibowitz.”
“Wait, this looks like a good spot.” Jake stopped the car. “In fact, it looks perfect.”
The road was so narrow, one car would have had to put two wheels on the shoulder to let another car pass. The reeds were higher than the car and the piles of garbage were higher than the reeds. A track leading into the swamp disappeared fifteen feet from the edge of the road.
“All right,” Jake announced, “you wanna be an actor? You wanna be Marlon Brando? You wanna be Elvis Presley? Now’s your big chance. We’re gonna do this exactly like next week. I’m gonna be you and you’re gonna be this guy who’s gettin’ what he’s got comin’ to him.”
“Ya don’t think we could reverse the parts, do ya? I kinda like bein’ the hero.”
“You tryin’ ta tell me Elvis wouldn’t end up in a swamp at the end of one of his movies? That’s too bad, ’cause the way he sings, it’d be a mitzvah.”
They were both laughing, now.
“Hey, remember Marlon Brando at the end of Viva Zapata?” Abe asked. “When they dump him in the street? The people couldn’t even recognize him. That’s how many times he got shot. If Marlon could do it, I could do it. An actor’s gotta have range.”
“Great.” Jake opened the door and stepped out of the car. Abe followed a moment later. “I’m gonna talk it through while we’re goin’. First, this is the gun we’re gonna use.” Jake held up a.22 caliber revolver. “We don’t need no forty-five goin’ off like a howitzer. From up close, a twenty-two is just as deadly and you’re gonna be right on top of him. But remember, we wanna do this guy in the swamp. That means you can’t shoot him before we get here unless you absolutely gotta. So, what you’re gonna do is keep your finger off the trigger. Like this.”
Jake held the.22 up again. He took his index finger off the trigger and laid it underneath the cylinder.
“What if he tries to run?”
“How’s he gonna run when he’s handcuffed inside a locked car? Ya getting me pissed off again, Abe.”
“Ya can’t learn if ya don’t ask questions.”
“Ya can’t learn if ya don’t ask questions,” Jake mimicked. “What do I got here, a goddamned schoolteacher? What ya should be thinkin’ is that ya can’t learn if ya don’t shut ya mouth and listen.” He waited for the message to sink in before he continued. “When we get here, I jump out of the car first. I come around to your side and cover this guy in case he decides to run. Then you unlock the door and get him movin’. Now, we’re both gonna go up the path here, but you’re gonna be the one who’s right behind him. Don’t get too close. If ya get too close, he could turn and kick the rod outta ya hand. But, also, don’t get too far away. If he jumps into them bushes, we’ll never find him. Remember, it’s gonna be dark. I don’t wanna use a flashlight unless it’s so black we’re gonna fall over each other. What you gotta do is stay arm’s length plus two steps away. Let’s try it.”
Jake walked over to Abe with his left arm outstretched. He stopped when his fingers were touching Abe’s chest. “Now, take two steps back. Perfect. Memorize this distance. Ya don’t let him get no closer and ya don’t let him get no further away. Ya got that?”
“Yeah, but one thing. When we’re marchin’ him up the path, do I still keep my finger off the trigger?”
Jake looked up at the clean, blue sky. “How come it’s always me, Lord?”
“What’d I say, now?”
“Abe, this is where we’re gonna do it. Ya don’t think he’s gonna know that? Ya don’t think he’s gonna know this is his last chance? Once he gets outta the car, you gotta be ready. Don’t be a schmuck.”
“All right, all right. I get the point.”
“Good, now let’s walk in there and see what it looks like.”
What it looked like was perfect. The narrow track wound among the cattails for a hundred yards, then ended abruptly in a small clearing. There was a pond on one side of the clearing (which would have been a great place to dump a stiff except that it was frozen like a rock) and a solid wall of reeds on the other. All you had to do was dump the body ten or fifteen yards off the clearing and by the time the rats got through with it, it’d be nothing but bones.
“Okay,” Jake said, “we’re here. Whatta ya do next?”
“I make him kneel with his head away from me so he can’t see it comin’.”
“Do it.”
“C’mon, Jake. I’ll ruin my pants.”
“I’ll buy you another pair.”
Abe knelt down and stared into the reeds. “Is that all right? Do I pass, teacher?”
“I gotta give it to ya,” Jake admitted, firing three shots into the back of his buddy’s head. “You ain’t as stupid as ya look.”