Onion Street

CHAPTER THIRTY

Bobby Friedman was naked and screaming in agony, his hair wet with sweat and caked with blood. His face was more bloodied and swollen than Mindy’s had been that first day I visited her in the hospital. Bobby’s eyes were slits and it was hard to tell if he even saw me when I stepped into the basement. If Bobby wasn’t exactly handsome before this beating, he was going to be less so now. That was probably a moot issue. I was pretty sure the chances of either one of us getting to see the light of morning were fairly slim — very slim. Bobby’s wrists were tied behind him with a rope that was looped over a notched metal beam in the basement’s ceiling. A big guy with the body of a linebacker and the face of a choirboy was pulling on the other end of the rope, lifting Bobby off the ground. It was easy to see why Bobby was in such pain. His shoulders were being pulled out of their sockets by his own body weight.

“Enough for now,” Susan ordered.

Choirboy let go of the rope, and Bobby crashed to the floor.

“Anything?” asked Susan. “Has he confessed? Do we know if we have been infiltrated by anyone else?”

Jimmy said, “No. And he ain’t gonna say nothin’ neither. We jus’ wastin’ time. Let’s do what we shoulda done when we snatched the rat. Let’s waste him and his little buddy over here. I’ll do ’em both.” At least Jimmy was consistent. “Besides, ya’ll, we don’t have much time before — ”

“Shut up, you big-mouth moron,” a voice came out of the shadows. It was a voice I recognized, Hyman Bergman’s voice. Then he followed his voice into the light.

What the hell was the old man doing mixed up in this?

“I don’t have to take no shit from some old — ”

“You’ll shut your mouth and, for once, do as you’re told,” said Susan, her voice like a scalpel. Then she turned to her grandfather. “It doesn’t matter if this one knows too, Papa. No one can stop it.”

Papa, huh. Could it be that Susan Kasten had warm blood in her veins after all, and more human emotion than a sharp stick?

The old man shook his head with disdain. “Foolishness, Susan. Bodies are trouble. More bodies, more trouble. Just ask Eichmann.”

“It’s too late now, Papa,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. She looked at Choirboy and pointed at Bobby. “Ask him again.”

With that, Choirboy tugged violently on the rope. Bobby’s arms shot up behind him and he was lifted off the floor. He screamed as he struggled in vain to ease his weight off his shoulders.

Susan Kasten walked right up to him. “Why did you sell us out to the pigs?”

“It wasn’t me,” he said through gritted teeth.

Bobby was stalling because he knew that to admit any relationship with the police was to sign his own bill of execution. There’d be no plea of guilty with an explanation. I had to do something, and fast. If I didn’t, I was going to watch my best friend get killed, and odds were good I’d shortly be following him into the great beyond. Problem was, I didn’t have a clue about what to do. And then, like that, I knew.

I screamed, “Wait a second, wait a second, for chrissakes! Put him down, put him down. He doesn’t know. Put him down.”

Jimmy wasn’t having it. “Nah, man, this Moe guy here, he don’t know shit. He’s jus’ desperate to save his friend and his own self is all.”

“Maybe,” Susan said. “Maybe, but he found his way here on his own and though he got some stuff wrong, he actually worked a lot of things out for himself. I want to hear what he has to say.” She waved her left index finger at Choirboy for him to release the rope. Bobby went crashing to the floor once again. Susan refocused on me, and she also took dead aim with the gun right at my belly. “Okay, Moe, what is it? And if I think you’re just stalling …”

“You wanna know who your rat is? That’s easy. Whoever ratted out Bobby to you is your Judas. Whoever had the convenient evidence to prove Bobby had sold you out to the cops is who you’re looking for. Who was it, Susan? Was it one of those two clowns who chased me into the rail yard? Him?” I nodded at Choirboy. “Jimmy?”

She didn’t need to answer. When I saw the look on Jimmy’s face, I knew who had fingered Bobby. And all the heads in the room — Susan’s, the old man’s, the big guy’s, mine, even Bobby’s — turned to Jimmy.

“Could be possible, what this boy says,” offered the old man. “In the camps, the SS would put in the barracks with us spies. They worried we weren’t all sheep and trouble for them we could make, so they had people to listen to our plans. To throw away suspicion from themselves, the spies would say this one was stealing bread or that one was making deals with the guards. But this trick we learned.”

“Sure, it’s Jimmy,” I said.

“Shut your lyin’ mouth, mothafucka.” He came for me, grabbing at my collar.

It wasn’t a big adjustment for Susan to aim the gun away from me and at Jimmy. “Get away from him, Jimmy.”

He let go of my collar and stepped back. “Oh, don’t go believin’ his bullshit.”

“It isn’t bullshit,” I said, “and you all know it. Who’s got the biggest mouth here? Who always wants to kill everybody? Jimmy, right? Why? Because if we’re dead, we can’t prove him wrong.”

I didn’t know if there was an ounce of truth in what I was saying, but it didn’t matter. Jimmy looked so guilty and defeated, he might just as well have betrayed the cause.

Susan had come to a decision. “We’ll see about all this later. For now, we’ll just wait it out. Moe, sit over there. Jimmy, over there.” She looked at Choirboy. “How long now?”

He checked his watch. “Two minutes.”

Hyman Bergman seemed suddenly very twitchy. “And you are sure in the building there will be no one?”

She ignored the question. “It will all be over soon and then they won’t be able to ignore us.”

Now I understood. “Holy shit! The night you torched your grandfather’s building … those were boxes of explosives you were moving.”

Susan was impressed. “Forget what I said about you before, Moe. I misjudged you. You are nothing like those other dumb jocks on campus. Given a little more time, you probably would have been able to stop us.”

“Forgive me if I don’t say thanks. Obviously, you guys are gonna blow something up.”

“Not just something, Moe. The 61st Precinct house on Avenue U. We have been planning this for almost a year. Sorry, Papa, but for the sake of the revolution, I had to lie to you. I knew you wouldn’t have built the bomb for us if — ”

The old man couldn’t believe it. “The clock tower on the campus is not what you are destroying?”

“No, Papa.”

“A precinct house! There will be many dead police, no?”

I said, “I think that’s the idea, Mr. Bergman.”

Choirboy called out, “One minute.”

“Stop this, Susan!” Bergman shouted at his granddaughter. “I want no part from this murdering.”

“Too late, Papa.”

Then it hit me. “You twisted old cocksucker. You built the bomb that killed Sam and Marty!”

“That was not my work,” he said. “Susan, you tell him.”

But it was too late. I’d gotten to my feet without even realizing it. “You lying piece of shit! I’m gonna — ”

Susan swung the gun around to me. “You’re not going to do anything, Moe, except shut your fucking mouth. Everyone keep your mouths shut. If it’s quiet enough, we should be able to hear the explosion even at this distance. Right, Papa?”

Bergman didn’t answer.

Choirboy started the countdown, “Ten seconds to go.”

Jimmy moved onto his knees.

Nine.

“Don’t be an idiot, Jimmy. I see what you’re doing.” Susan pointed the gun right at him.

Eight.

Bobby moaned.

Seven.

Susan closed her eyes in rapturous anticipation.

Six.

Jimmy knew he was a dead man once the bomb went off. He leapt at Susan.

Five.

Susan opened her eyes, stepped back, fired.

Four.

The gunshot was deafening in that confined space. Jimmy probably didn’t much care. He was beyond caring.

Three.

The hunched old man backhanded his granddaughter across the side of her head. Stunned, she tumbled over, banging her gun hand against the concrete foundation wall.

Two.

Bergman scooped up the gun, turned, shot Choirboy through the heart.

One.

Choirboy went down like a huge sack of flour.

Zero.

Silence.

The only explosion was the one echoing in our ears. There was nothing from the distance. Susan, her lips dripping blood, scrambled on hands and knees over to Choirboy’s body. She grabbed at his wrist, not to check his pulse, but to check his watch.

“Something’s wrong, Papa. There was no explosion.”

He ignored her, turning to me instead. “Take your friend and get the hell out from here.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. When I grabbed Bobby’s arms he shrieked in pain, but the knot around his wrists was so tight and I had nothing to cut the rope with. Once I got him up, I bent down and folded him over my shoulder. We were about halfway up the stairs when I heard a third gunshot. I didn’t go back to look.