Little Brothers Read online

  The crowd carried him out with them onto Eighth Avenue where he could not get his sense of direction, first going downtown when he thought he was going uptown; changing his mind, he kept bumping into people. He tripped over a leash between a man and his dog and both of them snapped at him. I didn’t, I didn’t, he kept saying to himself. But then, why did it happen? It had to have something to do with Ric, the way he showed up at the restaurant and how he looked. It was Ric Angie wanted dead, not Mr. Grossman, really.

  At the corner of Forty-second Street he bought a paper. He’d never bought one before and the man had to tell him how much it cost. Angie went a few storefronts along and then tried to find the story. His hands shook so much he could hardly turn the pages. A guy with a scraggle of beard was watching him in the store window. Their eyes met. Angie closed the paper and fled. The street was wild, even at noon. Kids roamed in gangs, high on drugs or something. Then there were men lolling in doorways, making dirty remarks, and women talking to themselves. Boys minced in high-heeled boots, some wore earrings, some even make-up like girls, and all of them kept looking after him and whistling. The cops walked in pairs, their radios crackling. On half the movie marquees the word Naked was in the title. Angie chose one where the lobby lights were the brightest. He could read the paper after he calmed down, then in the darkened theater he could close his eyes and think what he ought to do.

  He pushed two dollars through the slot to the cashier. She was about to take the money when she changed her mind and shook her head. Behind Angie, a cop had come up from nowhere. Angie’s tongue felt like a ball of wool.

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Sixteen,” he managed.

  “Got anything on you to prove it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Does your mother know where you are?”

  Again he shook his head.

  “Then get the hell home out of here. This is no place for a kid like you.”

  Angie started away.

  “Hey!”

  He froze.

  “Don’t let me catch you sneaking into some other dive.”

  Angie bobbed his head that he understood and went on. God, God, God. What made him look so different today that a cop could pick him out. The coat? And he’d thought all the time it made him look older. Or did he look guilty, scared? He’d been on Forty-second Street lots of times before and nobody’d paid any attention to him.

  He trudged on, the midday sun on his head and his back and more heat coming up at him from the pavement. In a sporting goods shop he caught sight of a knife just like his. He hadn’t looked for it, it was like it was there waiting for him to pass. He had to find a place where he could read the paper.

  He came then to Bryant Park in back of the Public Library. People were eating their lunches, pigeons swarming around them. Fat old ladies seemed to spread themselves out to keep other people from sitting on the benches. Angie found himself a place in the shade on the steps. He opened the paper. The birds waddled up. “Please, go away,” he said. At last he found the story. He read:

  Benjamin Grossman, a man considered mysterious and hostile by his neighbors, was found stabbed to death this morning in the hallway of the building where he owned a religious articles shop at 1144 Hester Street. The body was discovered by Alberto Ruggio, the third-floor tenant, as he was leaving for work. Grossman lived alone, except for his cat, on the second floor of the building. A macabre aspect to the case is that the cat also had been knifed to death. Lieutenant David Marks of the Homicide Division speculated that Grossman’s assailant might have waited on the second floor until the shopkeeper closed around midnight, and then surprised him at the top of the stairs.

  Grossman, who bore the numerals of the Nazi concentration camp on his arm, was a familiar if solitary figure in the neighborhood. Some of the older residents remember him working as a custodian and watchman in the warehouses that scatter the district. In the early 1960’s he opened the shop which deals in religious articles. He is supposed at one time, to have been a violinist. It is also rumored that he died a rich man. However, robbery does not seem to have been the motive for the crime.

  Angie read the article twice, losing track both times after the sentence about the cat.

  The pigeons would not let him alone, stalking back and forth in front of him. One pecked at his sneaker. He kicked out at it. It skittered away and then waddled back. He folded the paper open to the story and set it on the steps while he took off the jacket. The air on his sweat-soaked shirt set him to shivering again.

  “You shouldn’t kick any living thing,” a woman’s voice said.

  He looked around and saw first her shoes, sneakers in worse condition than his own, and wrinkled stockings twisted into garters at her knees. She came down slowly, putting both feet on one step before taking the next. Her dress was a pattern of faded butterflies, and she carried a dirty shopping bag which she set down next to Angie before she settled herself on the newspaper.

  “You shouldn’t,” she repeated.

  “I know.”

  The birds now came in swarms, sparrows and starlings as well as the pigeons. She was old and her skin was shriveled and rough with two high spots of rouge on her cheeks. Her eyes were pale blue and red-rimmed from tearing. She imitated the bird sounds, and reached into the bag from which she took a handful of seeds. Instead of scattering them, she held her hand out to Angie.

  “You feed them.”

  Angie cupped his hands and tried to hold them steady. The seeds trickled into them. She made him wait for another of her handsful. He tossed the seeds out as he might a basketball, in one motion. The birds flew off in all directions.

  “Not that way!” the old woman said, and with a flick of her wrist each time, she demonstrated with empty fingers a gentler motion which somehow suggested that the birds would share and share alike. “They’ll come back.” She folded her hands and waited, glancing at Angie sideways.

  “Are you Jewish?”

  “Italian.”

  “Mmmmmmm,” she said without enthusiasm. Then with sudden brightness: “Do you sing?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I dance,” Angie said. It was all so crazy.

  “I used to dance.” She braced herself on her elbows, leaning on the step behind her and stuck her feet out straight and off the ground. “You wouldn’t believe it, but inside those somewhat disreputable shoes is a pair of exquisite feet.”

  “I believe it,” Angie said. He was afraid she would take off her shoes to show him. People were looking at them.

  “The entrechat six: do you know what that is?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of. What kind of an answer is that?” She crossed her ankles and let her feet rest in front of her. She looked at him sharply. “Are you ill?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t feel very good,” he said. His teeth were beginning to chatter. He ground them together.

  “You look consumptive. Are you poor?”

  “Sort of,” he said again.

  “You are either poor or you’re not poor. I am rich but unconventional. I live in a mansion on Tenth Avenue and Twenty-first Street. Remember that if ever you are destitute. It is not a fit condition for any living thing.”

  Angie put on the coat again. He thought of trying to run, but that would look funny. Besides, he wanted the newspaper and she was sitting on it.

  “What lovely material,” she said, and put out her scruffy hand to stroke the sleeve. It reminded him of Ric in Alice’s restaurant.

  Angie groaned and then without warning that it was going to happen, he found himself sobbing. He buried his face in his hands and wept, unable to control himself.

  “Dear, dear, dear …” The woman patted at him. Then she pulled at his shoulder. She pushed the bag from between them and sidled along the step. “There, there, young man. Look at the birds! Greedy things.”

  The bag had spilled and the birds came swa
rming.

  “Please, please go away and leave me,” Angie pleaded. He could not stop crying.

  “In a state like this? I certainly will not. Listen to me. Do you hear?”

  He nodded without raising his head.

  “Do you have any money?”

  He patted his pocket where the money was.

  “Then you can take me to lunch and we’ll get you some nice hot soup. There’s a Chockful o’ Nuts across the street. They’re very rude to me, but they won’t be when I’m with you. I’m very hungry, but I spent all the money I had with me for the children. And you kicked one of them.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Angie said. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and squeezed them tight to keep the tears from starting again.

  “We never mean to, but we always do,” she said severely.

  “Just shut up a minute,” he said. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to say that, only …” He let the words go and worked a bill from among the others in his pocket. Without looking, even as happened with Alice, he gave the woman the money.

  Her hand gobbled it faster than the birds the seed and in the one motion vanished it in her bosom. “Do come and see me,” she said. She got to her feet a lot faster than she’d been able to sit down. Angie just closed his eyes. He did not want to see her anymore.

  “Mag …” The warning male voice of authority told Angie it was a policeman. He opened his eyes and saw the black officer, his night stick dangling from his hand. “I promised you a summons for feeding the pigeons, Mag.”

  “But I didn’t, officer. The young man fed them, but he didn’t know …”

  “Take off, Mag, before I open my book.”

  The cop turned his attention to Angie. “On your feet, kid. Put your hands at the back of your head.”

  Angie obeyed him. He was cured of his tears. The old woman scuttled away. But people were moving in on all sides around him and the cop.

  “How much did you give her?”

  He did not know. He said, “A dollar.”

  “What’s the matter with you? What’s giving you the shakes?” The cop turned him around gingerly and ran his hand over him for weapons.

  “I got a chill, that’s all,” Angie said. “I’m just getting over the flu.”

  “Is that a fact? Turn out your pockets.”

  A white cop came toward them, pushing through the people.

  Angie turned out the coat pockets. There was only the key. It did not fall out, but he was afraid the cop might find it anyway so he fished it out himself. “My locker key.”

  “The pants pockets,” the black cop ordered.

  Angie tried to put the money in his coat pocket when he took it out. The cop stayed his arm with the stick. “How much?”

  “What did I do? I just gave the old beggar a dollar.” It was his first feeble attempt at self-defense.

  “How much?” the cop repeated.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I haven’t counted it lately. That’s all.”

  “Count it.”

  Angie’s fingers trembled so much the bills slipped back on one another. He got to thirty and had to start over.

  “Where’d it come from?”

  “Forty-two dollars … It’s my graduation money.” Graduation in August.

  “Say ‘sir’ to me,” the cop said.

  The white cop stood by, his legs apart, his arms folded.

  The black cop examined Angie’s arms up to the shoulders. Then Angie knew what it was all about. Drugs. The cop was examining him for needle scars. Who wouldn’t think it, the money, the shakes? Except if he needed a fix, would he be giving away the money to the old woman?

  The policeman lectured him about taking care of himself and not showing off his money. Then they let him go. They scattered the people the way the people scattered the birds. Angie made his way around the library to Fifth Avenue. What he didn’t know about uptown was more than he did know about downtown. A longing to go home came over him, then another wave of fear. And he had lost the newspaper. A violinist. Mr. Grossman? That was harder to believe than anything. Maybe it was another Grossman … That fantasy fell apart before he could add a thing to it: Hester Street, the cat, religious articles. What did the Little Brothers think when they heard? Or did they already know?

  Hail Mary, full of grace … Angie found himself going back the way he and Alice had come that morning: he felt it was a good sign, somebody giving directions. He wasn’t just wandering anymore. The first thing he ought to do, in case he decided to go home later, was get rid of the coat. He could put it in the locker with the suitcase and then get the locker key to the man. He would figure out how later.

  When he reached the bus terminal and heard the departures announced—one bus was connecting with two different flights to Los Angeles—he wished again that he had the plane ticket. He wished his brother, Pietro, who was in the marines, was still at San Diego. He had written Angie from there. He had seen their father who told him he could come and work in the orange groves after he got out of service. Angie could work in the orange groves if Pietro could. But first he had to get there.

  He wished the suitcase was full of money, that it belonged to a bank robber. Then he thought of the girl and took the wish back. He opened the locker and pulled the suitcase out. It was so light the coat would fit inside. He tried the clasp and it sprang open. He took out the suitcase and set it on the floor while he took off the coat and folded it. Then he opened the suitcase. A couple of changes of underwear and white shirts … without collars, then tucked in at the side, two stiff collars; underneath, Angie rummaging now to make sure, a black bib, a black suit, and a breviary. The man was a priest.

  Angie spread the coat and tucked it in, trying to cover what he had not ought to have seen. He wanted to laugh and cry at once, and he heard the funny little sounds coming out of himself while he took out the money which he had by then put in his wallet and stuffed it under the coat.

  He was at the escalator before he realized he had put his own eight dollars in as well. He was left with only the change in his pocket. But he did not go back.

  7

  MARKS SPENT THE EARLY afternoon going over some new evidence in an old case. It had been a homicidal summer in New York. By two-thirty a trickle of information on the Grossman case had begun to come in, a measurement of the knife, the fact that it had a hilt similar to those of hunting knives although the blade was narrower than usual; shreds of dark blue wool in the cat’s claws … Grossman had been wearing a sweater vest, the wool in which matched that found in the cat’s claws. No time discrepancy in Ruggio’s story could be proven conclusively from the blood stains on his shoes. A heel print in a blood splotch on the floor, however, did suggest that Ruggio might have been on the scene at separate times. It gave Marks something with which to confront the man.

  Marks arrived back at the precinct house to be handed the necessary papers admitting him to Grossman’s safety deposit box in the Essex Street Bank. He decided to walk the few blocks distance, for it was a walk Grossman might have taken himself. On the East side of the Bowery he would have been a Jew among Jews. And Puerto Ricans, Marks soon realized. The neighborhood was changing fast. Most of the merchants were Jewish, but their chief custom no longer was. Once Marks had loved to come down here with his grandfather. In those days he would have preferred to be a ghetto boy. He had liked the gusto and the anger, the quick passion and the grumbling loyalty of the streets, pushcart politics, the quivering beards of the men who argued outside the office of the Daily Forward. If Grossman had turned his back on the ghetto of his own people, why? As long as he was going into a ghetto. Anger because America had spared its Jews his ordeal? But he had come through. At what price? That was the question. Sour and hostile, warming only occasionally to the likes of a Julie Borghese. Why among Italians, and “in” religious articles? Tomasino was trying to coax the source of the violinist story out of the Post reporter. The inspector woul
d say that Marks was starting too far back in the man’s life, that it was sheer romanticism. And it probably was. Otherwise, he would have stepped out as fast as he stepped into the case.

  In the bank, one of the last of those basilica-like structures with a domed ceiling and marble pillars, Marks followed a mini-skirted clerk to the desk of the vault custodian. Mr. Krakauer was a slightly stooped man, near the age for retirement, and Marks had the feeling that when he went he would take his desk plaque with him. He settled the detective in a private, air-conditioned room whose one decoration was a picture of Theodore Roosevelt. When Krakauer brought the small narrow box, Marks asked him if he remembered Grossman.

  “Oh, yes. I remember him. I was kept at attention every time until he took inventory.”

  “I’m going to ask you to do the same thing,” Marks said.

  “You, I can understand, a witness.”

  Marks noted three bankbooks showing consecutive deposits, in the Essex, no withdrawals, the ownership papers to the building on Hester Street, tax receipts, and a document of United States citizenship. “Would you say there is anything missing from what you have seen in the past?” Marks asked as he gave the pen to Krakauer.

  “I wouldn’t know about one or two of those tax receipts, if they were missing. But I’d say you’ve got the works, lieutenant.”

  Marks sat without looking at anything for a minute after the custodian left him. The fact that the bankbooks were here, not at home in the desk or upstairs, or in the safe, was a story in itself. Grossman’s private life, such as there was of it in America, was spread on the table in front of the detective. The shop was a sham, the safe somebody else’s, and the second-floor apartment a hole in which he hid himself every night. Possibly from himself.