CHAPTER 14

LARRY ANGELUZZI BEGAN to understand something of life when his second child was born and the railroad gave him only three days’ work a week. He also got a look at himself in a human mirror.

One Sunday, on their way to visit a friend, Larry and Louisa stood at the corner of 34th Street and Tenth Avenue waiting for the trolley. Louisa had one child by the hand and he carried the baby. Suddenly Larry saw his kid brother Gino watching them from the other side of the Avenue. On that dark, tough, small boy’s face was a look of bewildered, sad pity and some sort of disgust. He motioned to Gino to come over, and as the boy walked across the Avenue, Larry remembered when Gino had been just a little kid and leaned back to watch his big brother on the horse. He smiled gently at Gino and said, “See what happens when you get married, kid?” Jokingly, not knowing that his kid brother would never forget.

Louisa, her face already bony and dry, frowned at both of them and said roughly, “You don’t like it?”

Larry laughed and said, “I’m only kidding.” But Gino looked at her gravely, bewitched by them both, seeing beyond them into something else.

Gino, out of necessary loyal courtesy, kept them company until their trolley came. Larry thought, He’s growing up; I was working at his age. He asked, “How you doing at high school, kid?” Gino shrugged. “O.K.,” he said.

When Larry got onto the trolley with his family he saw Gino watch after them as they moved away.

Rolling on steel, moving almost magically off from his younger brother in the clear cold air of that Sunday morning, Larry felt a sense of loss; that his life was over. And it was this morning, this encounter, this moment of insight that led to his new way of life, quitting the railroad and his eight years’ seniority and his surely lifetime steady job.

One morning the following week, Larry went down to the panetteria for some breakfast buns. He had not worked the night before, the railroad still slow. Guido, the baker’s son, his upper lip hairy with a small mustache, greeted him with real pleasure. They chatted. Guido had quit school to help full time in the bakery. Feeling himself a man of affairs, he asked, “Larry, how’d you like a good job?”

Larry smiled. “Sure,” he said with natural agreeableness, with no intention of leaving the railroad.

Guido said, “Come on.” They went into the back room. There was the Panettiere, a glass of anisette before him, chatting with a man his own age, definitely Italian but dressed American, with no trace of the greenhorn; hair trimmed close, tie skinny and plain and solid-colored.

Guido said, “Larry, I want you to meet Zi’ Pasquale, Mr. di Lucca, he grew up with my father in Italy. Zi’ Pasquale, this is my friend, Larry, I told you about.”

Larry flushed with pleasure at the knowledge that people had been talking about him. He wondered if the man was really Guido’s uncle, or whether this was a courteous term of address to a close friend of the family. Larry gave them a big smile and shook hands firmly with the stranger. The Panettiere said, “Sit down,” and poured him a glass of anisette. Larry laughed and said, “I don’t drink, I could use a cup of coffee.” He saw Mr. di Lucca looking him over with the frankly appraising stare an Italian father gives the courter of his daughter, eyes narrowed, wary, suspicious, weighing.

Guido served coffee and filled the stranger’s anisette glass. He said casually, “Pa, Zi’ Pasquale told you he was looking for a new man, right, Zi’ Pasquale? I got just the guy, my friend Larry. Remember all I told you about him?”

Both of the older men gave him a tolerant, affectionate smile; the Panettiere raised his hands in a gesture of disavowal, and Zi’ Pasquale shrugged as if to say, “No harm—youth.” In Italy things were not done this way. Zi’ Pasquale said in Italian to the Panettiere, ”This one, he’s a good boy?” The Panettiere said reluctantly, “Un bravo.#8221; They all smiled at one another. They drank leisurely, and the two older men lit up De Nobili cigars. Everyone could see that Mr. di Lucca was impressed.

Larry was used to it. He had come to know that there was something extremely pleasing in his smile and manner, something that made him instantly likeable to both men and women. He knew this in all modesty, enjoyed it, and was thankful for his gift, which made him even more likable.

“You think you like a job with me?” Mr. di Lucca asked.

Here Larry’s more positive virtues came into play, his instinctive feeling for what was proper with these particular people. This was a personal question. Do you respect me as a man? Do you accept me as a tribal chief, as a second father, as an honorary godfather? If he dared now to ask what kind of a job, how much money, where, when, how, what guarantees, then all was finished. Everything would be over.

So even though he did not want the job, could not conceive of giving up his eight years’ seniority in the railroad, yet out of sheer natural courtesy and meaningless agreeability, Larry said with great sincerity, “It would be a pleasure to work for you.”

Pasquale di Lucca brought both hands together with a great thunderclap of flesh. His eyes flashed, his face took on a look of astonished pleasure. “Now by Christ in Heaven,” he said. “Is it possible that Italians still grow young men like this in America?” Guido burst out laughing with delight, and the Panettiere beamed at them all. Larry kept a modest smile on his lips.

“Now I show you what a man I am,” Pasquale di Lucca said. He took out a roll of bills and held out three twenties to Larry, saying, “This is your first week pay. You come to my office tomorrow morning and start work. You wear a suit and tie, neat, not flashy; like an American, like me. Here’s my office.” He took a small card out of the breast pocket of his jacket and gave it to Larry. Then he leaned back in his chair puffing on his cigar.

Larry accepted the money and the card. He was too stunned to say anything further except to murmur his thanks. This was twice the money he earned in the railroad, even full time.

Guido said proudly, “What did I tell you, Zi’ Pasquale?” And Mr. di Lucca nodded his head in agreement.

They all had fresh drinks, and now Larry could ask about the work. Mr. di Lucca explained that Larry would be a collection agent for the bakery union, that he would have a very quiet, easy territory and, if he did well, a more lucrative one in a year or two. He explained that all the bakery owners also paid dues, not just the hired help, and on a higher scale. Larry would have to keep account books like an insurance man, he would have to show tact, be able to pass the time of day, keep on friendly terms with everyone, never drink while working, never get involved with any women in the bakeries. It would be hard work, he would earn his salary. Mr. di Lucca finished his glass of anisette, rose, shook hands with Larry, and said, “Ten o’clock tomorrow.” Then he embraced the Panettiere with a manly hug, tapped Guido on the cheek and slipped him a folded bill, saying affectionately, “Work well for your father, eh? He’s too easy, like an American, but if I hear stories—your Uncle Pasquale comes down and makes you into a good Italian son.” Underneath the affection there was iron.

Guido gave him a playful push and said, “Don’t worry about me, Zi’ Pasquale.” He linked arms with him and took him to the door, and they laughed at each other as they went out. Zi’ Pasquale said, “Marry a good Italian girl to help in the store.”

When Guido came back he danced all around Larry shouting, “You made it, you made it.” When he quieted down, he said, “Larry, in two years you got your own house on Long Island. My Zi’ Pasquale is no piker. Right, Pop?”

The Panettiere drank his anisette slowly, then sighed. “Ah, Lorenzo, Lorenzo, my brave one,” he said. “Now you will learn what the world is and become a man.”

Larry Angeluzzi had a good living. He slept late, had lunch at home, and then made the rounds of the bakeries in his territory. The Italian bakers were fine, they gave him coffee and cookies; the Polish bakers were sullen but soon warmed to his charm, even though he would not drink hard liquor with them. They delighted in his success with the young Polish girls who came for Coffee An, and stayed until Larry had to move on to his next stop. Sometimes he even used the back room of a bakery for a quick screw, knowing the baker would be delighted to have something on the girl and would himself take her back there regularly.

The Italians paid their dues without question, as befitted people who in the old country gave eggs to a priest for reading a letter and wine to a village clerk for telling them what the laws were. The Poles paid the money just for his company and charm. He had trouble only with the German bakers.

It was not so much that they did not want to pay, but he felt they did not want to pay an Italian. They rarely offered him coffee and buns or chatted to show their friendliness. They paid him as they paid their breadman or the milk guy. That was O.K., he drank too much coffee now anyway, but it made him feel like a gangster.

But maybe he felt this way because he had trouble with only one bakery and that was German. And what made him more uncomfortable for some reason was that this baker made the best bread, the most delicious and generous birthday cakes, the fanciest cookies. He did a tremendous business, and yet he refused to pay any dues. He was the only one Larry could not collect from. When he reported it to Mr. di Lucca, that man shrugged and said, “You make a good living? Earn it. Try a coupla months, then talk to me.”

One day Larry was late on his rounds. On one stop, out of sheer nervousness, he had screwed an extremely ugly girl who then had the nerve to try and make a big deal out of it. It hadn’t helped. He dreaded stopping at Hooperman’s. The short, squat, squareheaded German now actually kidded him, treated him like a jerk, made jokes. It always ended with Larry buying some bread and cookies, not only to show good will, not only because they were the best in the city, but to give Hooperman a chance to say they were on the house and so to start some sort of friendly relationship.

Up to now the job had been great. Larry understood what it was all about but refused to face his own part in it, refused to face the fact that some day he would have to make Hooperman pay. Larry paid Hooperman’s dues himself just to avoid trouble. This was O.K. until the day two other German bakers stiffed him. They told him with a sly grin to ask next week. Larry started thinking about getting back his old job in the railroad.

He walked past Hooperman’s and around the corner. There was the precinct police station house. No wonder the bastard was so brave. Cops right around the corner. Larry kept walking and tried to think things out. If he didn’t make Hooperman pay, it was back to the railroad and the lousy fifteen bucks a week. He would have to wait until Hooperman was alone and tell him that Mr. di Lucca was coming personally. Then he realized with a shock that it was Larry himself Mr. di Lucca would send. Soon he would try to scare the kraut, and if that didn’t work, he would quit. A gangster! How Octavia would scream with laughter. His mother would probably get the Tackeril to give him a beating. Ah, hell, it was too damn bad just because of one lousy thickheaded guy.

After walking around an hour he passed the Hooperman bakery window and saw the store was empty. He went in. The girl behind the showcases nodded and he went into the back rooms of ovens and tray-laden tables. And there was Hooperman, guffawing with two guests, the bakers who had stiffed Larry earlier in the day. There was a large tin can of beer on the table and three heavy golden steins circled it.

Larry felt a shock of betrayal, then bitter resentment. The men saw him and they all burst out in unrestrained, delighted laughter. Its very lack of malice was insulting. Larry understood what they thought of him, that they knew him for what he was, that he would never make Hooperman pay, that he was just a kid trying to be a grown-up because he had a wife and two babies.

Mr. Hooperman turned a whoop of laughter into speech. “Oooh, here is the collector. How much I give you today, ten dollars, twenty dollars, fifty dollars? Look, I’m ready.” He stood up and emptied his pockets of change and crumpled wads of green paper money.

Larry could not force a smile, or even his charm. He said as calmly as he could, “You don’t have to pay me, Mr. Hooperman, I just came to tell you you’re out of the union. That’s all.”

The other two men stopped laughing, but Hooperman got hysterical. “I never was in your union,” he roared. “I shit on your union. I never pay dues and I never give free coffee and cake, so shit on your union.”

Larry said, trying one last time to get in good, “I paid your dues, Mr. Hooperman. I didn’t want you in trouble, a good baker like you.”

This sobered the baker. He pointed a finger at Larry. “You loafer,” he said with quiet anger. “You gangster. You try to frighten me, then you try the friend stuff. Why don’t you work like me? Why do you come to steal my money, my bread? I work. I work twelve, fourteen hours, and I must give you money? You little shit you, get out. Get out of my store.”

Larry was so stunned by this defiance that he turned away and walked out of the back room. Still dazed, but trying to compose himself and to show he had not been frightened, he stopped and asked the girl behind the counter for a loaf of corn bread and a cheesecake. The girl picked up the heavy tin of powdered sugar and sprinkled the cake. There was a roar from the back of the shop. “Don’t sell that crook nodding,” and Hooperman came charging out to stand behind the counter. He snatched the can of sugar from the girl and said to Larry with real hatred, “Out. Out of here. Out.” Larry stared at him, frozen with surprise and shock. The baker reached over and flicked his arm. Larry felt the powdered sugar spray his face and smelled the sweet scent in his nostrils. With absolutely no mental order, his left hand went out and fastened onto the baker’s right arm. Then Larry took his right fist and drove it into the short, blunt face. The head actually bounced away on its neck like a ball on a tight string and then bounced back again into his fist. He let go.

The face was ruined. The nose was smashed flat and flooded the sugared marble counter with blood. The lips were mashed into a red blob of flesh and on the left side the teeth had caved in. The baker looked down on the blood and then ran drunkenly around the counter to stand between Larry and the door. He called out thickly, “The police, get the police.”

The girl ran through the back room and out of the store. The two other bakers followed her. Hooperman stood barring the front door, arms outstretched, a wild maniacal glare looking out over his ruined face. Larry started around the corner to get out the back exit. He felt Hooperman rush at him, hang on him, not trying to punish, as if he did not dare, but dragging on him. Larry flung the baker away. Because he could not hit the man again, and because he realized now that he had disgraced the family and would go to prison, he swung his foot through the great shining glass front of the show counter. Broken glass flew around him and then he kicked the exposed long trays of cookies. The baker let out a howl of anguish and dragged him to the floor, and so the police found them, rolling over a glass- and cookie-covered floor in an embrace stronger than love.

In the police station two huge detectives took Larry to a back room. One of them said, “O.K., what happened, kid?”

Larry said, “I wanted to buy a cake and he threw sugar in my face. Ask the girl.”

“You shaking him down?”

Larry said no.

Another detective stuck his head through the doorway. “Hey, the kraut says this kid collects for di Lucca.” The detective who had been questioning Larry got up and left the room. In five minutes he came back and lit a cigarette. He didn’t ask Larry any more questions. They all waited.

Larry was overwhelmed. He could only think of his name in the papers, his mother in disgrace, himself a criminal and in prison, everyone despising him. And now he had spoiled everything for Mr. di Lucca.

The detective looked at his watch, left the room, and came back in a few minutes. He jerked a thumb toward the door and said, “O.K., kid, scram. You’re all squared away.”

Larry didn’t understand, and couldn’t believe what he heard. “Your boss is waiting outside,” the detective said.

One detective held the door open for Larry, and, as he walked out, he saw Mr. di Lucca standing at the bottom of the steps outside the precinct house.

Mr. di Lucca said, “Thanks, thanks,” and shook hands clumsily with the detective. Then he grabbed Larry by the arm and walked him down the street to a waiting car. The driver was a kid Larry had gone to school with and never seen since. He and Mr. di Lucca got into the back seat.

Then came the second surprise. Mr. di Lucca grabbed him by the arm and said in Italian, “Bravo, what a beautiful fellow you are. I saw his face, that animal, you did a lovely job. That bastard. Oh, you’re a beautiful fellow, Lorenzo. When they told me you hit him because he wouldn’t sell you bread, I was in heaven. Ah, if you were only my son.”

THEY WERE ON Tenth Avenue going downtown. Larry stared out the window at the railroad yard. It was almost as if he were changing second by second, each drop of blood, each bit of flesh, into someone else. He would never go back to work in the railroad yards, he would never be afraid as he had been in that station house. The whole majesty of law had crumbled before his eyes with that handshake between Mr. di Lucca and the detective; his swift rescue and the admiration that marked his freedom. He thought of the baker’s blood, of the baker’s arms outstretched to bar his escape, of the mad staring eyes above that smashed pulpy face, and he felt a little sick.

Larry had to speak the truth. He said, “Mr. di Lucca, I can’t go around beating guys up for the money. I don’t mind collecting, but I’m not a gangster.”

Mr. di Lucca patted him soothingly on the shoulder. “No, no; who does these things for pleasure? Am I a gangster? Don’t I have children and grandchildren? Am I not godfather to the children of my friends? But do you know what it is to be born in Italy? You are a dog and you scratch in the earth like a dog to find a dirty bone for supper. You give eggs to the priest to save your soul, you slip the town clerk a bottle of wine merely to bandy words. When the padrone, the landowner, comes to spend the summer at his estate, all the village girls go to clean his house and fill it with fresh flowers. He pays them with a smile, and ungloves his knuckles for a kiss. And then a miracle. America. It was enough to make one believe in Jesus Christ.

“In Italy they were stronger than me. If I took an olive from the padrone, a carrot, or, God forbid, a loaf of bread, I must flee, hide in Africa to escape his vengeance. But here, this is democracy and the padrone is not so strong. Here it is possible to escape your fate. But you must pay.

“Who is this German, this baker, that he can earn his living, bake his bread without paying? The world is a dangerous place. By what right does he bake bread on that corner, in that street? The law? Poor people cannot live by all the laws. There would not be one alive. Only the padroni would be left.

“Now this man, this German, you feel sorry for him. Don’t. You see how nice the police treat you? Sure, you’re my friend, but this baker, right around the corner from the police, he doesn’t even send coffee and buns over to make friends. How do you like that? The man on the beat, the baker makes him pay for his Coffee An. What kind of a person is this?”

Mr. di Lucca paused, and on his face came a look of almost unbelieving, finicky disgust.

“This is a man who thinks because he works hard, is honest, never breaks the law, nothing can happen to him. He is a fool. Now listen to me.”

Mr. di Lucca paused again. In a quiet, sympathetic voice, he went on, “Think of yourself. You worked hard, you were honest, you never broke the law. Worked hard? Look at your arms, like a gorilla from hard work.

“But there is no work. Nobody comes and gives you a pay envelope because you are honest. You don’t break no law and they don’t put you in jail. That’s something, but will it feed your wife and children? So what do people like ourselves do? We say, Good. There is no work. We have no pay. We cannot break the law, and we cannot steal because we are honest; so we will all starve, me, my children, and my wife. Right?” He waited for Larry to laugh.

Larry kept his eyes on Mr. di Lucca, expecting something more. Mr. di Lucca noticed this and said gravely, “It will not always be like this, living by a strong arm. Enough. Do you still work for me? One hundred dollars a week and a better territory. Agreed?”

Larry said quietly, “Thanks, Mr. di Lucca, it’s O.K. with me.”

Mr. di Lucca raised a finger paternally. “Don’t pay no more dues for nobody.”

Larry smiled. “I won’t,” he said.

When Mr. di Lucca dropped him off on Tenth Avenue, Larry walked along the railroad yards for a while. He realized that you couldn’t always be nice to people and expect them to do what you wanted, not with money, anyway. You had to be mean. What puzzled him was the admiration people had for a man who did something cruel. He remembered the kraut’s face all smashed and wondered at Mr. di Lucca’s exultation over it. Because of this he would make money, his wife and child would live like people who owned a business, he would help his mother and brothers and sisters. And honestly, he didn’t hit the kraut because of the money. Hadn’t he paid the guy’s dues all the time?