The Big Gold Dream

5

For years, Third Avenue crossed the Harlem River a few blocks north of 125th Street on the tracks of the Third Avenue Elevated and continued northward through the Bronx to Fordham Road. Now, with the old El gone out of existence, Third Avenue simply leaps from shore to shore. On one shore the address is Third Avenue, Manhattan; on the other it is Third Avenue, Bronx. In both Manhattan and the Bronx, its character is the same. It is a street of the second-hand and the down-and-out; of pawnshops, of grimy bars, of poverty and bums-a truly democratic street.

In the block between 166th and 167th Street in the Bronx there is a grimy bar owned by a Greek with a colored bartender serving a clientele of all races; an Army-Navy surplus store; a kosher meat market; a second-hand clothing store run by the United Protestant Missions; a pork store; a store front with a name protected by a heavy iron grille strong enough to serve as the gates for Alcatraz; a big wooden gate that had once been painted yellow; and a big weather-blackened brick building housing a brewery owned by the descendants of a German immigrant.

It was ten o'clock at night. Save for an intermittent bus, scattered automobiles and a few forlorn pedestrians straggling by, the street was deserted. Only the lighted window in the brewery and the fly-specked window of the bar at the opposite end showed signs of life.

Two brass locks securing the iron grille of the nameless store gleamed dully in the feeble light from the distant street lamp. Vaguely visible in the display window behind, broken furniture was stacked to the ceiling as though to form a secondary barrier. The windows of the three floors above the store were boarded shut.

The wooden gate to one side enclosed a short brick-paved driveway leading to a wooden shed with a tin roof. Protruding from the shed was the back end of a moving van.

There was a small doorway in the back of the shed that opened onto a small concrete courtyard extending across the rear of the store. Two windows, boarded up and barred, flanked a center door that was protected by a grille similar to the one in front. But light was coming from a small basement window at ground level on the far side.

Through dirt-spattered panes a basement room was visible. One corner of the basement had been partitioned off and equipped for a cabinetmaker's workshop. Workbenches were built along three walls, above which were tool racks containing all types of woodworking tools. Near the inner wall stood a band saw, a wood lathe, a planing mill and an electric drill.

What was left of Alberta's moth-eaten overstuffed parlor suite was scattered about the center of the floor in the spill of bright white light from a green-shaded drop lamp.

The Jew was kneeling beside the sofa, which was still intact. The skeletons of the two overstuffed armchairs had been pushed to one side like the bones of a carcass. The covers and overstufling were piled in a heap between them.

He felt the sofa as though he were assaying a prime beef, poked it here and there and then caressed it with soft loving strokes.

"Marvelous," he muttered to himself. "Marvelous. More than a hundred years old. Made in New Orleans. Been through the Civil War. Extraordinary! What treasures these black cooks collect."

Suddenly he picked up his tools and began stripping the sofa like a past master. All the while he talked to himself.

"That Rufus, what a fool. Trying to outwit Abie-ha ha."

First he pried loose all the hidden tacks.

"The mattress-colored people's strongbox, ha ha."

Then with a razor blade he ripped the seams of the outer fabric and skinned it back as though skinning an animal. Save for the sound of ripping threads arid his labored breathing, it was silent as a tomb. The silence oppressed him. He talked to relieve the silence, not because the words expressed his thoughts.

"Little fortunes… little fortunes… from little fortunes big fortunes grow…"

Beneath the covering was a layer of horsehair, and beneath that a layer of yellowed cotton. With immaculate care, the Jew removed each layer. His nimble fingers probed and explored every inch of padding before he laid it aside.

"He was searching for somcthing. He thinks Abie doesn't know. He thinks he had fooled Abie. The fool-ha ha…"

He thought be heard a sound.

"What's that!" he exclaimed.

His eyes flew to the basement window. Quick as a cat he moved toward a hidden switch beneath the projecting edge of a bench and turned off the light. The small rectangular window was outlined by the almost imperceptible light of a city night. No telltale silhouette was visible. He had been holding his breath. He breathed once and listened. Only the heavy muted sounds penetrating the thick wall of the brewery disturbed the silence.

"No one in miles," he muttered.

But he did not switch the light back on yet. He felt an inexplicable nervousness-not a premonition, more a building up of tension. He walked through the darkness to the door leading to the stairs. Something brushed against his leg. Shock went through him like cold fire. He jumped to one side, feeling his hair rise from an ice-cold scalp. His hands clawed desperately along the tool rack for a weapon.

Then a cat mewed and moved forward to rub against his other leg. He looked down and saw twin ellipsoids of green light shining in the dark.

He sucked in his breath with a watery sound.

"Sheba!" he gasped. "Sheba, little pussy."

He reached down to stroke the purring black cat.

"Sheba! Little queen. You will make a corpse of old Abie yet."

He crossed the room, turned on the light and went back to work. The kitten played around his feet.

He worked absorbedly. When the padding was removed he sounded the burlap-covered wooden frame with a small wooden mallet. His ear was cocked, listening to the sound of the wood. He worked along the back of the frame down the back legs, then around to the front legs and up the sides. The arms of the frame were seemingly solid cylinders of a light white wood. The mallet made small light sounds as it tapped against the solid wood.

"Impregnable," the Jew muttered.

Disappointment showed in the creases of his face. The cat rubbed against his leg again, and he shoved it aside with a gesture of frustration.

He began tapping the other arm. Suddenly he bent his head to listen. There was a slight hollow sound beneath the mallet blows. His face lit slowly with an expression of uncontainable avarice.

The cat had withdrawn to a distance and sat washing her face with offended dignity.

The Jew knelt and examined the end of the cylinder in the bright light. It was identical with its mate, the grains of the wood unbroken as though cut from a solid beam. He exchanged his mallet for a small iron hammer and tapped the end gently, listening. Then he took a small wood chisel from the bench and began cutting a small circle. A few minutes later the plug sank in.

"Ingenious," he muttered admiringly.

He speared the plug with a gimlet and worked it out from the arm. Behind was a cylindrical opening of an inch in diameter. He probed with his finger. His expression changed to astonishment. With a pair of pincers he fished a cylindrical packet, which fitted exactly, from the opening. The outer cover was yellow oiled silk in a state of perfect preservation. He sniffed it; it smelled slightly perfumed.

He went over to the workbench, switched on another light and smoothed the packet flat. It took the shape of a plain silk pouch, closed with a flap but unsealed. He opened the pouch and extracted a neat sheaf of bright green bank notes held by a paper band. He sucked in his breath. His face was a study in emotions.

"Fantastic!" he muttered. "Brand-new."

The notes were of one-hundred-dollar bills.

Slowly his tongue came out and slid from side to side on his bottom lip.

As he counted the notes, his eyes widened. There were 1,000 hundred-dollar bills.

Suddenly he bent double, laughing as though he had suddenly gone stark raving crazy. He was laughing so hard he did not hear the slight sound made by a shoe sole scuffling against the pavement outside the basement window.

But the cat heard. The cat stopped washing its face and stared unblinkingly at the silhouette of a man peering through the dirty panes.

The silhouette withdrew, and the cat went back to washing its face.

The Jew finally got himself under control. He straightened up and stared at the money. Saliva trickled from the corners of his mouth. He wrung his hands as though washing them. The cat stopped washing its face again and watched him silently. He patted the money. He turned it over and looked at the other side, then held one of the notes against the light.

"Incredible," he muttered.

The next instant his body went rigid. He froze in a listening attitude, his ear cocked. The unmistakable sound of an automobile starter reached his ear. Before his face could form an expression the motor caught and the loud hard roar of a big truck motor racing at top speed shattered the silence. There could be no mistake. Someone had started the motor of his moving van in the shed. No one but himself had keys to the gate. Someone had broken in.

The motor raced, then was cut to idle and left running.

He stacked the money, slipped it back into the pouch, and pulled open a drawer in the workbench, moving with incredible speed. He put the pouch into the drawer and withdrew a. 38 caliber Colt revolver, loaded with tracer bullets, and a large black three-cell flashlight with an oversized lamp. He switched out the light over the bench and moved quickly toward the master switch beneath the other bench. His body, once put into motion, seemed to gather speed. The black-clad figure capped with yellow-gray hair armed with revolver and flashlight gave the impression of incalculable danger.

The switch clicked faintly, and the room was plunged into darkness. But the Jew moved through the darkness as though he could see. He ran lightly on tiptoes through the open door and up the stairs. One of the stairs creaked beneath his weight, and he swore silently in Yiddish.

The staircase turned at a landing and entered the back hall of the first floor, directly beside the back door. The Jew halted for a moment to peer through the grimy panes into the back courtyard. But, coming from the bright light of his workroom, his eyes had not adjusted to the darkness. He put his ear to the pane but could hear only the sound of the idling motor.

With infinite caution he unlocked the inner door. The slight sound made by the clicking of the bolt was barely perceptible above the sound of the idling motor. The door opened soundlessly.

He waited with his face pressed to the iron grille, looking and listening. There was still only the sound of the idling motor. The Jew figured it was a trap. But he didn't know whether it was a legitimate burglar or some teenage hoodlums. He had a telephone in the ground floor cubbyhole office. He could have phoned for the police, but he didn't want the police meddling into his business, poking about and asking questions.

He decided to set a trap of his own. He unlocked the grille and pushed it back on its hinges until it formed a right angle, guarding the entrance from any attack from the left. Then he backed into the shadows and waited.

Five minutes passed. The cat came up the stairs, looked outside, sniffed and walked in a dignified manner across the courtyard with its tail straight up, looking neither to the right nor the left. The Jew knew that was no indication; Sheba would simply ignore anyone she didn't know.

Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. The Jew began growing impatient. He wanted to get back to his money. It could have been some pranksters. No one in their right senses would want to steal his moving van. And had anyone wanted to get into the store, they would have made a move by now. He would wait another five minutes.

He was guessing at the time; but the clock of his mind was fairly accurate. When the five minutes had ticked off in his brain, he put the revolver beneath his coat and cocked it to muffle the sound. Then, holding the heavy black flashlight extended in his left hand, thumb on the switch, and holding the heavy revolver extended in his right hand, finger on the trigger, he emerged slowly from the dark square of the doorway.

To the right of the doorway, a man plastered to the brick wall stepped out. He had outwaited the Jew.

The Jew saw the hammer descending and moved instinctively a fraction of an instant before it struck him on the bone point of his right shoulder. His gun arm went numb with the brackish taste of bone ache. The gun went off before it fell, clattering, to the pavement. Out of the roar the bullet drew a white line through the dark against the brick wall of the brewery and ricocheted upward in a series of arabesques.

The man kicked at the gun with his left foot at the same time that he swung the hammer again with his right hand. The Jew had pressed the switch, and the light came on the instant the hammer smashed the reflector. It was as though a bolt of lightning had struck once, almost at the moment of the thunder, making the darkness blacker. The flashlight sailed from the Jew's hand and rolled across the yard. His hand and forearm were filled with pins and needles up to his elbow.

The Jew was blinded. Both arms were useless. But he kicked out viciously and caught his assailant on the shin. Grunting with pain, the assailant doubled over. The hammer blow aimed at the Jew's head struck him in the ribs. The sound of a breaking rib came like a drum beat from under water. The Jew tried to scream but didn't have the breath. His assailant swung backhanded from a one-footed stance. The blow caught the Jew over the right ear with the sound of a butcher cleaving a marrow bone. The Jew's tightly stretched mouth went instantly slack; his taut muscles went limp. He fell in a flabby heap.

The assailant bent over and rained blows on the prostrate figure. For a time there was only the rising and the falling of the hammer, the soft meaty sounds as it landed on the Jew's face and head.

Then suddenly it stopped.

The assailant dropped the hammer to the pavement, sat down and put his face in his hands. Inhuman sounds spewed from his mouth. He sounded as though he were crying with uncontrollable terror.

Suddenly the crying stopped.

The assailant rose to a squatting position and snapped on a cigarette lighter. In the flickering light the Jew appeared to be a bundle of bloody rags. The light snapped off quickly.

Quickly, in the dark, the assailant searched the Jew's body. He found nothing, no money, no wallet, no papers.

He had to go inside. His body shaking with terror, he couldn't find the switch. By aid of his cigarette lighter, he descended the stairs. Suddenly a stair squeaked beneath his weight. The cigarette lighter fell from nerveless fingers, and he had to grope for it in the darkness. His breath made a wheezing sound. Finally he found the lighter. It didn't work immediately. He groped his way to the bottom of the stairs and tried the lighter again. It burned, but the flame was more feeble than before.

Time was running out.

For a moment he stood in the door and looked over the room. Objects were barely discernible in the dim flickering light, but he made out the workbench where the Jew had last been seen standing. He crossed to it, put the lighter down and began snatching open drawers. He found it where the Jew had put it.

He held the oiled silk pouch in his hand as though it were as fragile as hope of heaven. His body was bent forward. His eyes were focused. His face held an expression of savage greed.

One hundred grand, he thought.

Suddenly he heard the loose stair creak.

His head was gripped in a vise of ice. It was the dead Jew coming for his money. Instinctively he whirled about, snatching up a wood chisel for a weapon. Only his stifled breathing was audible, but he could sense a presence on the stairs.

He put the pouch into his hip pocket and buttoned the flap, then snapped on his lighter, held it in one hand and the chisel in the other and tiptoed cautiously toward the door.

As he reached the door, he heard feet clatter down the stairs. His body collided with another. In the black dark neither could see. He stabbed out with his chisel and heard a sharp cry of pain. At the same time he felt the cool, quick, almost painless slash of a knife across his cheek. Theirs was a brief but furious struggle. He stabbed out crazily, pumping the chisel with an insensate fury. He could feel the difference when it chopped into the wall and when he made contact with cloth and flesh. He couldn't see the knife, but he knew it stabbed the air about him. He felt it enter his flesh countless times. He felt no pain, but he was crazed with terror.

On both sides there were unintelligible grunts-no more. No words were spoken. No curses uttered. Two bodies weaved and ducked and stabbed blindly in the utter darkness. Then the first one broke free and ran.

He thought he was running toward the stairs until he banged into a solid object in the dark. He bounced off, tripped over something else and fell full length onto something that felt like bed springs. He could hear the other in furious pursuit, banging into furniture and grunting like an animal.

The springs seemed to have wrapped themselves about his legs. He fought them off as though they had hands, kicking and stomping. Other objects rose from the dark and struck him in all conceivable places. Something hooked into his ear and tore the lobe. Something else chopped him squarely in the mouth. Objects clutched his ankles. It was as though the broken and dilapidated furniture had taken on life to torture him like a mob of lynchers. His pursuer was undergoing the same torture but that was no consolation.

By the time he had made a tour of the basement storeroom, he had been battered unmercifully. His breath came in sobs. He still clung to the chisel, but he scarcely had the strength to use it. Finally he encountered the stairs. He dragged himself up. He could hear his unseen assailant furiously fighting the treacherous furniture and grunting unintelligible curses in the dark.

He came out in the dark courtyard sucking for breath. His mouth ballooned with vomit, and his teeth bit together. He found the body of the dead Jew where he had left it. He felt a crazy impulse to scream at the top of his voice. He knew he was bleeding from many stab wounds, but he couldn't feel them.

The sudden silence below alerted him again. He heard the loose stair squeak loudly as a foot leaped upon it. He ran toward the shed.

The motor of the moving van was still running as he had left it. Without a loss of motion he leaped into the driver's seat. He put the big old van into reverse, raced the motor and released the clutch. It backed into the gate like a battering ram. The gate broke from its hinges and sailed across the sidewalk into the middle of Third Avenue. The truck followed.

He pulled the emergency brake from force of habit and was running before he hit the ground.