Wherever There Is Light (44 page)

Mayella slid back the glass patio door. “Mr. Lerner, the missus be on the phone.”

“I gotta take this,” Martin said, and hustled inside.

Julian sat on a bamboo ottoman. “That's quite a shiner. Who hit you?”

Stevie tossed the Baggie onto a chair. “I'm in trouble with my dad.”

“I can't help you with that unless you talk to me.”

“Karl Fuchs. He's a cretin.”

“Did Karl do something to Bobby?”

“At lunch. Karl asks Bobby if he's going to be on our homeroom football team. For the intramural league. Bobby says he doesn't know how to play, and Karl says whoever heard of a nigger can't play football.”

“What'd Bobby do?”

“He looks at me. Like I should take care of Karl. How am I supposed to do that? He's like the biggest kid in school. Bobby runs out of the cafeteria, and Karl's laughing. So I dump my tray on him. Karl's got spaghetti and tomato sauce in his hair, and he punches me. A teacher grabs us, and now I'm screwed.”

Stevie stared at the slate deck as his father came out. Eddie intercepted Martin, slinging an arm over him. Martin froze, and Eddie said, “Lemme explain things to you.”

“Stevie,” Julian said, “where's Bobby?”

Stevie shook his head.

“You don't know or you won't say?”

Stevie's face contorted as though he were about to cry, and Julian's panic ratcheted up a notch. “Bobby's not in trouble with me. But he could be in trouble.”

“Newark. A bar. Speedo's. Bobby says he goes to be around colored people. So he doesn't feel weird.”

Julian, recalling his romance with the seedy nightlife of Berlin, disliked the taste of his own medicine.

Stevie said, “I asked to go with him lots of times—it's not safe there, and I'm his friend, I should go with him—but he won't let me.”

Julian patted Stevie's knee. “Bobby's lucky you're his friend.” Then he called out, “Eddie, we gotta take off.”

As they got into the Caddy, Julian asked, “You ever hear of Speedo's?”

“In the armpit of the old Third Ward. Near Mercer and Broome. The Abruzzis used to run a book outta there till the bookie got shot.”

Eddie pressed the button of the glove compartment. Inside were the tools of his trade: a Colt .45 auto pistol and studded brass knuckles. “You can't go there naked.”

D
oo-wop blared from the open windows of Speedo's, and the Friday revelers were on parade, the women in slinky dresses and high-heel pumps, the men in wide-brimmed hats, silk suits, and alligator shoes. To Bobby, who sat on the stoop of the boarded-up tenement next to the bar, the crowd appeared to bounce to the music as they streamed under the neon sign with a purple silhouette of a busty woman shimmying out of a glowing, green cocktail shaker.

Two young men were above Bobby on the steps, and his favorite, nicknamed Payback, lean and light-skinned and wearing a skimpy leather jacket and orange high-water pants, said, “Little brother, an ofay call you a nigger, you gotta bust that white motherfucker in his mouth.”

“He's bigger than me.”

“That don't mean nothin'. Educate him, Colwyn.”

Colwyn was the other man on the stoop. He had the huge chest and biceps common to alumni of Rahway State Prison, and he stood scoping out the traffic with heavy-lidded eyes.

Colwyn said, “Bobby, we gots a customer.”

A Negro man with a goatee was sticking two fingers out a window of a beat-up Lincoln. Payback handed Bobby two glassine packets of white powder, and Bobby went to the car and exchanged the packets for a ten-dollar bill.

Bobby knew that the powder was heroin, and he'd seen men and women, as scary as space creatures with their desperate faces bathed in neon, begging Payback for a handout, only to be chased away by Colwyn. Bobby had read in
Life
that heroin was illegal, but the police, riding by Speedo's, didn't bother the two men on the stoop. Bobby asked Payback about that, and Payback chuckled. “ 'Cause a them envelopes you take to Sally's Diner.” That was a job Payback had given him, delivering an envelope to a white detective with sweat stains in the armpits of his Windbreaker who was at the counter eating a chicken-salad sandwich.

Bobby had met Payback last spring when he got off the bus on Springfield Avenue. Anyone who knew about Newark would've been scared, but to Bobby the area appeared no worse than the Pigalle neighborhood of Paris. Payback had seen Bobby from the stoop and asked him if he were lost. Bobby said no, and Payback offered him a soda, and they began to talk. Bobby mentioned that his parents were gone and he lived with a guardian, but mostly he spoke about the white kids in South Orange who, except for Stevie, avoided him like he was radioactive. From then on, almost every week, Bobby returned to the stoop. He felt grown-up when Payback assigned him things to do and paid him a couple of bucks for doing them. But best of all Bobby enjoyed sitting in this raucous niche of the city, where nearly everyone's skin was a close approximation of his own, and no one ever gawked at him.

Bobby was handing a wad of bills to Payback when Colwyn said, “Man, check out that ride.”

As Bobby turned toward the midnight-blue Cadillac with the Batmobile tail fins, Julian emerged from the passenger seat and Eddie from the driver's side.

“Get in the car,” Julian said.

Bobby, shaking his head, sat on the lowest step. Julian got ahold of Bobby's shirt and yanked him up as if retrieving a puppy from a litter.

Payback stood. “Boy don't wanna split, he ain't gotta split. Colwyn, talk to this ofay.”

Colwyn hadn't treated Bobby as a kid brother, but he wasn't fond of humanity in general, and Caucasian humanity he didn't like at all. Sneering at Julian, he came down the stoop. Julian shoved Bobby toward the Caddy, and when Colwyn had one foot on the bottom step and the other on the pavement, Julian kicked him in the shin of his lower leg. Colwyn buckled forward, and Julian, crouched low, sprang up with the brass knuckles on his right hand and threw a haymaker at Colwyn's jaw. The punch connected with a sharp crack, and Colwyn toppled backward, hitting his head on the stoop and lying there as if he were making an angel in the snow.

Payback was going for the .22 revolver in his waistband, but he was too late. Eddie was leveling the .45 at him. “That galoot ain't dead but you could be.”

Payback raised his hands. Eddie dug under Payback's jacket and pocketed his Saturday-night special. Patrons from Speedo's had stepped out for a breath of fresh air, and one of them commented, “The nerve a you motherfuckers shakin' down these brothers.”

Payback said to Julian, “Bobby could use hisself some contact with his own kind.”

“Like you?” The hypocrisy of Julian's contempt for Payback didn't escape him.

“I gots to get outta heah someways.”

That was Julian's—and Abe's—reasoning when Jews occupied these same cold-water flats. Julian didn't appreciate hearing it now. Backing up to the Cadillac with Eddie, he said, “You see your coworker? I find Bobby here again, that's gonna look like fun.”

Bobby was in the passenger seat when Eddie pulled up to Julian's. He touched Eddie's leg and whispered, “Don't leave.”

The fear in his voice bothered Eddie, and as Julian herded Bobby to the front door, Eddie went after them.

“You forget something?” Julian said.

“My hat. It's in your dishwasher.”

Bobby opened the door and bolted upstairs, planning to lock himself in his room. Julian, with his long arms, clutched his shirt collar, then hemmed him in against the wall. With barely controlled fury, he said, “You wanna be a gangster?”

Bobby blinked against the light from the hanging bubble lamps.

“I was a gangster. Ask me if it was fun.”

Bobby didn't speak.

“Ask me!”

Bobby looked at the floor.

“Ask me why?”

Bobby mumbled, “Why?”

“I didn't know any better, and I hate myself for doing it. Is that what you want?”

Bobby kept looking at the floor.

Julian shouted, “Is that what you want?” and got ahold of Bobby's shirtfront and lifted him up, all the while telling God,
You took my daughter, You can't have my son
.

Eddie, grabbing Julian from behind, hauled him away. “Fuckin' stop. He's a boy.”

Julian let Bobby go and wrestled free from Eddie.

Glaring at Julian, Bobby shouted, “Why do you care what I do!”

Julian, panting, sank to his knees so that he was looking up into Bobby's eyes. “Be . . . because . . . I'm your father.”

Crouching like an exhausted runner, Julian let out a spate of sobs. Eddie put his hand on his friend's shoulder, and Bobby stood there, listening to his father cry.

I
n New Jersey, Mischief Night is celebrated on the evening before Halloween. Adults complain it's an unmitigated pain in the ass, while teenagers swear they'd rather clean their room than skip the festivities. After all, what could be more gratifying than soaping up car windows, adorning trees with toilet paper, and for the more hostile merrymakers, ringing doorbells and hurling eggs at anyone dumb enough to open up?

That year, Mischief Night was on Sunday, and before Bobby went out with Stevie he ate with Julian at the Famous, where Julian had initiated him into the Pastrami-on-Rye-with-Russian Fan Club.

Bobby said, “You always watch me eat when we're here.”

“It reminds me of introducing your mom to that sandwich. She liked it as much as you do.”

Julian had told Bobby about his and Kendall's past when he'd brought him back from Newark—after apologizing for losing his temper and making him promise not to go near Speedo's. Bobby relished hearing the stories, but with a sour note in his voice he'd asked, “Why couldn't Mom tell you about me?” Julian had replied, “It was my fault,” because why should a child resent a mother he'd never see again? Julian had explained Prohibition and the Third Ward Gang and his concern that the name Rose would be a burden to Bobby. “That's why it's ‘Dad' at home or with Uncle Eddie and Aunt Fiona, but nowhere else.”

Bobby seemed to accept Julian's answer and didn't bring up Newark again until Julian was driving him to Stevie's.

“Would Uncle Eddie have shot Payback and Colwyn?”

“To protect you or me, yes.”

“And you'd do the same for Uncle Eddie and me?”

“I would.”

“Then it's not wrong?” Bobby asked, and the seriousness of his tone startled Julian.

“It's wrong and it's against the law. And you're too young to worry about it.”

Bobby kissed his father's cheek, a recent development that warmed Julian in a way he'd longed for since Holly's death. That was another story he'd told his son, showing him a photo of Holly.
It'd be nice to have a sister
, Bobby had said. The kisses had started after that. But when he let him out at the Lerners', Julian had the uncomfortable feeling that he was missing the reason for Bobby's questions.

Stevie came out through the garage with his older brother, Alan, a taller, slimmed-down replica of Stevie. Alan was in from the University of Michigan to attend a wedding, and he wasn't returning to Ann Arbor until tomorrow. Bobby thought Alan was cool: he talked like Payback, and he'd chauffeur him and Stevie wherever they wanted to go.

“What's happenin', my man?” Alan said, and Bobby slapped him five.

Stevie shone a flashlight into the back of Alan's Mustang convertible. On the seat was a box of black berets and a stack of Mattel submachine guns.

Alan said, “You're gonna be Che and Fidel.”

“Who?” Bobby asked, and Alan recited a romanticized Cliff's Notes version of the Cuban revolution as he drove the boys over to Foster Court.

“We made a list of those this afternoon,” Stevie said, aiming the flashlight out at a three-foot-high lawn jockey. The jockey's face was painted a luminous black; the whites of his eyes were enormous; and his thick lips were as red as a candy apple.