1

“May bananas grow in their throat; my God, I am passing . . . out!” the young man anguished in Yiddish after the emcee applied “heat” in the form of twenty dynamite sprints around the dance floor, causing the Yid’s girl to go squirrelly and imagine that she had been assumed into heaven and stood before the throne of the Almighty. The heat also drove several other dancers to quit, even though the clock showed less than five minutes to go until the fifteen-minute rest period. Margie Smith, his part-time dance-marathon partner, mostly earned her living as a whore. “When my ass gets tired,” she liked to say, “I enter a contest, but only for the specialty events.” During breakout numbers, the audience “sprayed” the best dancers with coins and gifts. They had made it through nine days, picking up a fair amount of change from specialty events, particularly the fast ones in 4/4 time, like the Charleston, until the emcee weeded out the weak with a series of “sprints.” As he dragged her dead feet around the floor, waiting for the bell, she fell asleep standing up. A pretty girl with a splash of red across her lips and mascara running down her cheeks, she wore a tired plaid bathrobe, dingy white socks rolled at the ankles, and open-toe terry-cloth slippers. Her waist-length brown ringlets, only nine days ago light and airy, hung like attenuated chewing gum, and her lifeless arms rested limply on his shoulders. Suddenly she awoke, groaning that her gut had exploded. Usually, she could sleep on her feet for three hours at a stretch, all the while moving. Not him. He never had the knack; besides, he weighed 160 pounds and Margie 110, so how could he have leaned against her? But on that sweaty Saturday night in early March 1934, just as the contestants began to drop out, Margie burst an appendix. When they took her to the hospital, she said she’d soon be back, but she must have meant on her back, because he later learned she’d quickly returned to Madame Polly’s house on High Street. Meanwhile, he hoped the fifteen minutes of solo dancing allotted by marathon rules would not expire before some guy quit and he could take that gal for his own. The more-than-two-hundred hours of hoofing had left most everyone bedraggled. With the clock almost expired, a short, dark-haired fellow, whose tattooed arms exhibited, among other symbols, a winged eagle and Maltese Cross, and who danced like a cement mixer, threw in the trowel. His companion, who could still strut her stuff, looked crestfallen. As she danced solo, her shapely legs moved smoothly and seamlessly, slipping from one step to another. Shimmering like a preening bird, she seemed to be saying, “Do you have the stamina and footwork to keep up with me in the specialties?” He knew then that she would rather call it a day than settle for a klutz who could do no more than shuffle his feet and sway weakly in time with the music. Breaking into several fast steps, he signaled to her that he was her man.

The event had begun just like the dozens of contests that Margie and Jay had entered before. The Dreamland Amusement Park in Newark, on Frelinghuysen Avenue across the street from Weequahic Park, regularly sponsored dance marathons, billing itself as the site of America’s first such pageant. No piker, Victor J. “Buddy” Brown, the builder, owner, and manager, attracted name bands, major entertainers, and well-known vaudevillians to entertain the evening customers, who paid from twenty-five to forty cents for admission, sometimes more for a special guest performance. Mr. Brown hung the hall in patriotic bunting and always catered to the welfare of his dancers as well as his audiences. The layout exuded class: a polished dance floor circled by a low wooden wall, blue lights, a stage at the far end of the floor, rest quarters with cots in red-and-white tents, one marked “Girls” and one “Boys,” a hospital area in larger tents to accommodate doctors, nurses, Swedish masseurs and masseuses, trainers, and beauticians. A row of booths along the wooden wall housed vendors touting foot eases, shoes, and hosiery. Refreshment stands sold hot dogs, Cracker Jacks, popcorn, and soda. Every advertisement reinforced the dream that fame and fortune would follow steadfastness. All of America seemed to have fallen for Horatio Alger’s hokum: persist and you shall succeed. Hardly a week passed when a new endurance record wasn’t set—for dancing, walking, piano playing, poetry reading, roller-skating, pole sitting, perambulator pushing, pie eating, oyster swallowing. Thousands of Americans, especially those out of work or underemployed, wanted to earn a check for $5,000 given to the last person standing—or prove themselves capable of shooting Niagara Falls in a barrel. Fame—it could even lead to a screen test in Hollywood, in which case, you could join the Okies flooding Highway 66, headed for golden California.

Her name, Arietta Magliocco, suggested dark operatic songs. Thin and limber as an eel, she had the staying power of an elephant. No sooner had they teamed up than the emcee called for another heat, a footrace through rubber pylons spaced at sharp angles around the floor. The added burden drove one fellow to quit for his cot, even though his partner kicked him in the shins, screaming that he had to continue. Another woman pleaded with her beau that she needed to sleep. “I’ll be all right if I can just take a short trip to dreamland.” Two more couples earned the audience’s displeasure, and a disqualification from the floor judge, for fighting. In the first rhubarb, the man repeatedly slapped his partner’s face; in the second, the woman punched her fellow’s nose, drawing a rush of blood. One cute girl, with Marcelled hair bleached nearly white, kept her partner upright by dancing with her right pinky stuffed in his left nostril. At this point, they all danced as if they wore snowshoes, but any thoughts of his quitting were dispelled by Arietta’s steely look.

Besides, he wanted to impress this demure elf with the bewitching widely spaced enormous green eyes. Strikingly fetching in her beautiful bones, she became his cynosure. Like a rash that itches all the more when scratched, she progressively invaded his skin. He felt like Odysseus encountering Nausicaa in a strange land—beached, bleached, and naked. The Mediterranean coloring, swan neck, Roman nose, and the sculpted line that ran from her high cheeks to the corners of her full lips, turned up slightly, brought to mind an odyssey of sin. Her brown hair, cut in a bob, made her look childlike, and yet, her constantly changing expression and penetrating eyes dispelled any idea of innocence. Within five minutes he loved her.

How could he not? Although they both laughed at the idiocy of marathons with their vaudeville routines and saccharine tunes that supplied the afternoon music—even the live musicians at night rolled their eyes when the emcee said that the “enduring American spirit” was on trial here—they joined hands to work the rail for a shower of coins and tokens of appreciation from the ringside ladies. Inspired by the mock weddings staged at marathons, he glibly told the applauding audience that he and Arietta had just met and would shortly be married, well aware that many a word spoken in jest is not without earnest.

A young woman with leg braces, sitting in a wheelchair, seemed particularly thrilled by the marital announcement and tossed nearly a dollar in coins. As they kneeled to gather them, Arietta whispered, “Another epidemic victim. Poor girl.”

During one of the rest breaks, after they had wowed the crowd with their turkey trot and Texas Tommy, the emcee introduced a vaudeville team, Ed and Florrie Lowry. Arietta retired to the rest area. As the couple performed, a man entered wearing a salt-and-pepper benny, the rim of his black fedora shading his eyes. Instead of taking a seat in the stands, the man paused at the women’s tent and then took up a position at the rail to watch the skit.

she: Say, Ed, don’t you think clothes give one confidence?

he: I certainly do. I go lots of places with them on. I wouldn’t go with them off.

she: How do you like these stockings? I got them in Paris. They cost only two dollars over there, and here you couldn’t touch them for less than fifteen dollars.

he: Say, how did you know what I was thinking?

At the end of the routine, the audience enthusiastically applauded, and the emcee led the orchestra through a tired rendition of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Then the gong tolled. As Arietta came from the women’s tent, he glanced over her shoulder and counted the couples left in the contest: fifteen. Even more frenetic than before, Arietta seemed intent on picking up the pace, though neither the music nor the rules required a quickened step. Breaking away from him, she swept into a rumba, danced solo for a few moments, and then extended a hand to a man dancing with another woman. Flattered, the stubble-cheeked fellow, stocky and light-footed, said “Mit vergnügung,” and joined Arietta for a few turns of the Lindy Hop, dancing stylishly and beaming. His partner did not smile. In fact, her lips were so thin and hard, she could brand you with a kiss. Jay watched them spin away and hardly saw the man in the benny and fedora vault over the low wall, run onto the dance floor, pull a gun from his coat, and pump two shots into the chest of Arietta’s new partner. The thin-lipped woman screamed; dancers dove for cover. The orchestra and emcee stumbled off the bandstand, and the ushers and attendants ran. The audience, suddenly realizing that the action was not staged, rushed screaming for the exits. In the commotion, the shooter escaped out the front door. The ticket taker subsequently testified that a car came to a screeching stop. A rear door opened, the murderer jumped in, and then the sedan roared off. She was too stunned to note the license plate numbers, but she thought the car resembled a Buick, or a Packard, or maybe even a LaSalle. It held two men wearing black homburgs. The driver, she noted, was wearing black gauntlet motorcycle gloves.

Bleeding from two large holes in his chest, the stricken man gasped for air and uttered some unintelligible German words. His partner sank to his side and took his hand. While trying to whisper in her ear, the victim expired. The dead man, according to his partner, was Heinz Diebel, the notoriously camera-shy American Nazi leader who’d been urging his followers “to drive the parasitic, Marxist Jewish race from America.”

That someone had plugged him was no surprise, since every Jew in Jersey wanted to see him dead, though probably not many knew what he looked like. Besides, his own National Socialist party, the Friends of the New Germany, frequently quarreled among themselves, threatening each other with dire consequences for failing to show enough passion for the Nazi line or too much for the softer one of the Teutonia Society. But as Jay quickly learned, wanting in the abstract to see a guy dead and seeing him shot before your eyes are two different things. Diebel choked and gurgled as blood issued from his mouth.

Arietta shook uncontrollably and kept repeating incredulously, “I just danced with him!” Jay’s sphincter and nausea told him to find a bathroom as soon as possible. If the coinage of life is blood, Diebel, owing to the holes in his chest, was now bankrupt. When the cops questioned Arietta, she said that she had never seen the man before the marathon and that she singled him out because she’d noticed his Lindy Hop. Diebel’s companion, Gretchen Kunz, who wore her flaxen hair in a long, intricately woven braid, insisted with trembling lips that “the Jews killed him.” Even days later, when the cops presented her with evidence that Mr. Diebel’s fervor for Hitler had alienated the more-moderate members of his own party and that his womanizing had prompted death threats from numerous outraged husbands, she still held fast to the view that his killer must have been a Jew.

The local newspaper opined that the killing had the marks of a gangland rubout. Several days later, the pistol, a Browning model 1910, was found in a deserted lot with its serial number filed off. Other theories soon made the paper. This particular model had been used by the Serb student Gavrilo Princip, who had assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914. Perhaps the killer or killers intended to make some sort of political statement; after all, Diebel was attached to the extreme wing of his political party. But what was the statement?

When the Newark Star-Eagle ran the story, printing the names Arietta Magliocco and Jay Klug, Mrs. Klug mourned her son’s low associations since completing college; and his father, called “Honest Ike,” regretted “young Mr. Klug’s dissolute life” and his frequent absences from work at the Jeanette Powder Puff Company, named after his wife. In their place, he might have come to the same conclusion: Jay is a bum. Having to live at home meant that his guilt never took a holiday, and his likeness to his father—lanky, lithe, and lean-faced, with full lips, thick lashes, and Levantine skin and eyes—made him feel joined at the hip. An only child, he had no siblings to diffuse his father’s expectations. He was the hope of the family, the hope that the powder puff company had a future. But he had no desire to spend his life in a factory overseeing cutters and sewing-machine operators. Powder puffs! Frankly, he found the product frivolous, even if it did pay the bills.

“Jay, I feel you are lost. Aimless. A college graduate without purpose. I sometimes wonder if you’ll ever find yourself.”

His father then lectured him on the value of hard work and self-discipline. With the admonishment over, Jay hoofed it toward the Tavern. As he walked past the tidy houses with their postage-stamp lawns, he wished he could share the certitude of those who inhabited them. Notwithstanding the country’s economic woes, the occupants seemed to know who they were and their function in life. Whether or not that assurance came from religion or self-regard or selflessness, he envied their certainty. He had seen many of these people in shul, which he and his mother occasionally attended on Friday night. As his coreligionists davened, he did as well, all the while remembering Turgenev’s definition of prayer: the hope that two and two will equal five. In light of the current state of the world, like his father, he asked, “Where is God?” Mr. Miller, his Hebrew teacher who prepared him for his bar mitzvah, had said enigmatically, “You come to God through helping others, not yourself.”

Jay’s ruminations continued until he reached his destination. Although just a simple neighborhood restaurant at Meeker and Elizabeth Avenues, the Tavern attracted Newark’s political bosses, business leaders, Bears baseball players, and even mobsters, whom Sam Teiger, the owner, founder, and manager, treated like everyone else. That particular evening, Ben Unterman, a journalist, lamented, “No matter how hard I try to beat the crowd, I lose.”

Jay didn’t mind waiting in line because Sam always supplied hors d’oeuvres, which Jews knew as forshpiesers. His wait, however, was brief because Puddy Hinkes and Willie Moretti invited him to join their table. He’d seen Moretti around and had heard about his involvement with “Longie” Zwillman, whose connections extended from the New York syndicate down to the cops on the beat and local ladies of the night.

Puddy, a small-time hood and boxer, could juggle debits and credits as well as Abbadabba Berman, Dutch Schultz’s bookkeeper. A bagman, Puddy brought the payoffs to the mayor, the state senators, and even the governor. The guy knew the inside of federal buildings as well as a con knows the pen, and his loyalty to his employers stamped him as a comer. Four years Jay’s senior, Puddy had taken a shine to him a year before, during a pickup basketball game at the B’nai Abraham shul, when Jay sank the winning basket in a game of twenty-one. At the time, Puddy had said that Jay’s skinny legs reminded him of a spider and told him that if he ever wanted to make some extra cash, he should see him. But as the son of Honest Ike Klug, he had avoided the rackets.

Willie Moretti kept busy overseeing the widespread New Jersey wire system and numerous plush casinos, as well as the many “sawdust” or dice barns that ran from the Garden State into Pennsylvania. A stocky, round-faced, puffy-cheeked loyalist, who talked out of the left side of his mouth, Willie had an edgy sense of humor. From the vestibule Jay had seen him bending Puddy’s ear. At the table, Puddy introduced them, and Willie cracked:

“Been grinding it at Dreamland lately?”

“I guess you read the papers.”

Willie immediately began to occupy himself with the salt and pepper shakers. “Yeah, I seen them. I hear the gunsel was all bundled up. No one got a good look at him.”

“That’s true.”

“Except for them spats, the cops probably woulda’ never gone nosing around the Friends of the New Germany. Lucky they did.”

Moretti was right. The killer had spats. But to that moment, Jay had forgotten, and the newspapers had never mentioned, the fact. So how did Moretti know?

“Whoever remembered that krauts like to wear spats was no fool,” Jay said, hoping to elicit more information.

“Yeah,” replied Willie, spilling some salt into his right hand and tossing it over his left shoulder. “Just for luck. I like to ward off any evil spirits. You know, it’s a Catholic thing.”

“What do you do when there’s no salt around?”

Willie guffawed. “Smart kid. I make the sign of the figa, like this.” Willie held up his fist with his thumb tucked under his fingers.

The two men had just finished dinner. Puddy and Jay ordered coconut cream pie. Willie paused.

“If I down another one of them cream pies, I’ll never fit into my new suit. Better I should just have cherry pie a la mode.”

“That’ll keep you slim,” said Puddy. “So, Spider, you still working for your old man?”

“Yeah, but a depression’s not a good time for powder puffs. And nothing else seems available.”

“If he needs a loan . . .”

“He would never ask.”

“Money’s money.”

“Not according to Honest Ike.”

Moretti continued to play with the salt and pepper cellars.

“What about you?”

Before Jay could answer, Puddy said, “We could use a smart lansman.”

“Why not?” thought Jay. His college degree had not brought him work commensurate with his education. Until now, the love he felt for his parents had kept him on the right side of the law. If his family learned that he palled around with Puddy . . . a shanda! It was rumored that even Zwillman made sure his mother never found out where his gelt came from. The bribe of bread had corrupted entire nations. Just look at Germany. “What’s the deal?” he asked.

“Tell you what,” said Puddy. “We’ll drive over to my place. We can talk there.”

Through the dessert, Moretti kept up a running commentary on Newark’s nightspots, especially the Kinney Club at Arlington and Augusta streets, which offered a racially mixed clientele a taste of the forbidden in the heart of Newark’s Barbary Coast. The Kinney Club was more than Jay’s pocket could afford. Hoping for a return to the spats, he listened.

Finally, they put on their overcoats. Sam Teiger clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Say hello to your parents, Jay, and always do the right thing.” Following Puddy into the gray street, he saw a new 1934 black Packard at the curb. A former schoolmate, Irv Sugarman, who’d left in the eleventh grade, opened the door. Irv apparently now worked for Puddy and Moretti.

“Hello, Jay. Hop in.”

The sound of the door closing behind him, as he slid into the backseat, gave him a sense of importance. He was a capable boy with connections to people who actually ran the city. Still, he couldn’t help wondering whether he would find himself in the underworld or in the respectable one, in crime or commerce? How would his family feel if his name appeared on a police blotter?

They drove to Puddy’s office, a small room over a delicatessen, with spindle-backed chairs and a battered rolltop desk, which depended on a deck of cards under one leg to offset the sloping floor. From downstairs rose the mingled smells of pickles in brine, chopped liver and onions, Liederkranz and Limburger cheeses. Through the one window he could see in the lamplight the pushcarts lining the curbs and the canvas awnings of the sidewalk stores.

“Sit down, Spider.” Puddy plopped down with his feet on the desk. “You don’t smoke, right?” Jay nodded without looking at him, his attention drawn to Moretti, who gravitated toward the window. Puddy removed the paper band from a cheap cigar, slipped it on his pinky, and struck a match on the side of the desk. “This stuff ain’t good for me. I’m supposed to be in trainin’.”

Moretti stared at the street below. “You’re a born canvasback, Puddy. I don’t know why you keep fighting.”

“Hey, I like it. Besides, it gives me a reputation.”

“What, as a punching bag?”

“No, a guy you don’t lean on.”

Moretti said nothing.

“We may have a job for you,” said Puddy. “But before I give you my spiel, you give me yours. What do you like doin’ most?”

“Writing.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I like to write. Stories and essays . . . that sort of thing.”

Moretti turned and stared as if in disbelief, and then returned his gaze to the window.

“Dutch Schultz . . .”

Puddy’s pregnant pause was calculated. Well aware of the Dutchman’s murderous reputation, Jay asked cautiously, “Yeah, what about him?”

“He has contacts in this part of town and we want to know more about ’em,” Moretti said casually.

“We own office space across the street from one of the Dutchman’s drops,” Puddy added. “All you gotta do is sit and watch—and keep an accurate record. The days and times cars arrive and leave. Also license plate numbers.”

“You might even get a glimpse of the Dutchman himself,” Moretti chuckled.

“The papers say Tom Dewey is after him for tax evasion. I wonder where he keeps all his dough?”

Moretti’s mood strangely changed. “Wise up, kid. If you don’t want your fuckin’ head handed to you on a platter, don’t ask questions that ain’t none of your business. Understand?”

“Absolutely!” Jay replied far too emphatically, feeling a trickle of urine escape from his pecker.

Puddy tried to play the peacemaker. “Hey, we’re all friends here. We ain’t gonna have a fallin’ out just ’cause the kid asks a question.”

“I don’t like snoops,” Moretti said morosely and began to pace. With each step his displeasure seemed to increase.

“Puddy, maybe I’m not your guy. I got too many things on my mind.”

“Like?”

“Who’s in charge? You never said.”

“Does it matter? Those times you ain’t watchin’, you can write. We’ll get you a nice desk, and a typewriter, too.”

“When my old man asks where I work and the name of my employer, I got to have a story. Because sure as hell he’ll ask.”

Moretti cracked his knuckles. “I’m fed up with your whining, kid. I thought you wanted a job with real money. Come on, Puddy, let’s go. He’s all jitters, no balls.”

Puddy tried to mollify his companion. “He’s still wet behind the ears.”

“So wet he’s drowning. Just remember, if anything goes wrong, he’s your guy.” Turning to Jay, Moretti snapped, “Tell your old man the Canadian-American Liquor Company.”

“I don’t know anything about Canada. If he starts asking me questions, I’ll be in the soup.”

A furious Moretti said, “Then try the New Jersey Vending Machine Company . . . 1464 North Broad Street in Hillside.”

“Doing what?”

“You talk to him, Puddy, I’m finished.”

“Tell Honest Ike publicity. You said you wanted to write.”

“And who’s my boss?”

“Shit,” said Puddy, now showing his annoyance, “you’re the inkslinger, not me. Make up what you fuckin’ want.”

“Does the company have a . . . phone?”

Moretti had shifted his bulky body in anticipation of starting for the door. “Look it up!” the enforcer growled. “And lock the door after you.”

On their way out, Puddy paused, “Waverly 3-3165. Maybe instead of calling you ‘Spider,’ I oughta call you Jitters.”

A week later, Jay found himself working from a shabby room, with a new desk and typewriter, three chairs, and a battered chintz sofa, between Spruce and Market on Prince Street over Lowitz’s grocery. From his window he could see Sam Tubeman’s Radio Repairs, across the street. The Dutchman’s gang used Tubeman’s as a drop for their Third Ward drug money. The dough then left Sam’s place stuffed in the shell of a radio console, collected by one of Dutch’s lieutenants.

Outside, he could hear the shoppers’ Yiddish banter: “You can’t dance at two weddings with one tuchis,” and “Poverty is no disgrace, but no great honor either.” The immigrants’ dreams could be gleaned from their proverbs, and the condition of their purses read in their lined faces and frayed clothes. The merchants whom they patronized offered services like tailoring and dry cleaning and sold everything from barreled pickles and herring to fruits and vegetables, bread, clothing, and paper goods, all at bargain prices. The busiest block, Jay’s, housed Kaplan’s Delicatessen, with its dull white, hexagonal tile floor. It served fat corned beef sandwiches and pickles to patrons seated on wire chairs at rectangular tables with bowls of cube sugar for the tea drinkers. A few doors away stood Moishe Hupert’s Fish Market, with “Moishe Fisher” painted on the double-glass windows. Inside, a large sheetmetal tank contained live fish—pike, carp, and perch for gefilte fish—which Mr. Hupert, as the housewives pointed into the tank, netted, killed on a butcher block with a single blow from a wooden club, scaled, and cleaned.

Telling his father that he had found a job for twenty dollars a week—five more than his father paid—he quit the family business. Asked for details, he prevaricated, saying he was hired by a vending machine company—and passed along the phone number. He mentioned no names.

“Jay,” his father sighed, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Does anyone—really?” Jay asked defensively.

His father reflected for a moment and kindly answered, “I guess not. To know is to know something, but what? That’s the mystery. Good luck with it.”

Late one afternoon, Jay ducked into Kaplan’s Delicatessen for a chopped liver on pumpernickel, heard the clack-clack of checkers, and saw at one of the rectangular tables a group of the synagogue faithful with their yarmulkes. On the white tile top rested a board with black and red pieces. A fire-engine-red alarm clock stood on the table set for fifteen seconds. Rabbi Silverman, wearing a fedora, and a well-known Negro, sporting a derby, hunched over a game of lightning-fast checkers. A lot of the schvarzes played, also Eastern Europeans. After a day of trying to grind out a living or looking for work, the men in the Third Ward migrated to Kaplan’s. When the deli closed, players continued the game on the sidewalk, even in the rain. Standing behind a Polish tailor sucking on a sugar cube, he stood with the kibitzers watching the colored fellow, who spoke perfect Yiddish and called himself “T,” short for “T-Bone Searle,” rag the rabbi. “Es vet dir gornisht helfen.”

“T, I always tell my parishioners that win or lose if they play checkers, their wives have nothing to worry about, because they’re not drinking, gambling, or running around with women.”

“Yeah, but checkers can’t do for them what their wives can.”

The kibitzers chortled, as Silverman lost track of the clock and forfeited his turn.

T-Bone, in his mid-thirties, had arms forged in brawny labor, having wielded a shovel for one of the government projects. The rabbi got beat badly. Jay waited until the next player likewise took a shellacking, which gave him just enough time to finish his sandwich and offer T-Bone a challenge. The two stacked up pretty evenly. Toward the end of the game, Jay ran off a sequence of captures but neglected to take the last piece and had to retract his moves, allowing his opponent to win.

“You’re leavin’, Jay bird? If you want lessons . . .” T-Bone laughed.

“I have an office just down the street. Why not meet me there for lunch tomorrow, if you’re working in the neighborhood.” Having bent a wire hanger into the shape of a miniature basketball rim and taped it to the wall, he added, “We can shoot buckets with a stuffed sock.”

T-Bone showed up the next day, carrying two Negro newspapers, the New York Age and the New York Amsterdam News, which were featuring stories about whether or not colored athletes should boycott the 1936 Olympics to be held in Berlin. Naturally, most Jews opposed participation because it would serve as a showcase for Nazism, a subject and problem that all of America seemed to be talking about.

“Shall we have a friendly game?” Jay asked, pointing to the board.

Until his work project ended several weeks later, T-Bone never missed a lunch hour. Jay looked forward to his legends and laughter. T usually found a way to win at checkers, though not at B-ball, which admittedly was not his game.

“You ever play baseball?” asked T-Bone.

“Just stickball in the streets with a Spaldeen.”

Slowly, T-Bone shook his head and positioned his checkers. “Great game. I’d still be playin’ if I hadn’t hurt my ankle slidin’ into second base ’gainst the Pittsburgh Crawfords.”

“You played pro?”

“Yeah, for the Kansas City Monarchs. The hot corner. I had an arm like a rifle and could one hop the ball better than any white boy in the majors.”

Having started in 1920, the Monarchs were the New York Yankees of the Negro leagues.

“How old are you, T-Bone?”

“Thirty-six . . . twenty-eight when I got injured and started swingin’ a pick and a shovel. If the Man upstairs had made me white, maybe my name would be right up there with Ruth and Gehrig and Lefty Gomez. But that can be said about a lotta black ballplayers, ’specially Satchel Paige and James ‘Cool Papa’ Bell.”

One evening, Jay accompanied T back to his digs at the Douglas-Harrison Apartments, a long row of redbrick buildings, and sat next to him on the couch leafing through his scrapbook. The living room had few amenities: a wooden cable spool that held a radio topped with a lace doily and a porcelain figurine of Mary cradling Jesus, a rocker, some chairs missing spindles, a couch that had given up the fight to support any weight, and a framed needlepoint expressing the hopes of an oppressed people: “When all is done, there is God.”

T-Bone’s mother, bedridden with emphysema, asked to meet her son’s newfound friend. A white-haired handsome woman, she shook Jay’s hand and apologized for not getting out of bed.

“Too many cigarettes,” she wheezed.

“You gonna be all right, Mamma, you just wait and see.”

“In heaven, maybe, but not here.”

“Everything happens for the best, Mamma. Trust in God.”

She took her son’s hand and beamed. “I do. And you also.”

Shortly after T-Bone’s work crew transferred to another ward, she died. Jay attended the funeral out of respect, the only white person present. Held in the basement of a church, the funeral took place in a room that had about twenty folding chairs, a table with crackers and cheese, and two pitchers of nonalcoholic punch. The mourners, in their frayed Sunday best, sat with hands folded through the service. Then two brass players—trombone and trumpet—played “Amazing Grace” as T-Bone, whose real name was Randall, wiped the tears from his cheeks.

On Saturday, March 17, 1934, around eight p.m., Puddy and Jay drove to a party in West Orange. It was a date Jay would never forget. Puddy had said a pal of his wanted friends to join him for a festive occasion.

“Who is this guy?”

“You’ll meet him, just hold your horses.”

“He doesn’t know me from Adam.”

“Relax, Spider. He said to bring friends. You’re a friend, ain’t you?”

“Yeah.”

They drove down Beverly Road, and pulled up at a Tudor mansion with decorated half timbering, tall narrow windows, massive chimneys, and a roof pitched steeper than a ski jump. Dozens of cars had spilled over from the street onto the expansive lawn. Just outside the front door stood two Cadillacs, one red and the other an all-weather black phaeton.

A butler led them into the house, which was overflowing with raucous guests and booze. A rainbow of balloons floated overhead; three musicians on piano, trombone, and sax played swing. Ladies wore fur stoles and beaded evening gowns that reflected the lamps glowing like golden apples, their necks and wrists dripping diamonds and pearls and rubies, with gents in dark English suits and silk shirts—white on white, black, silver, blue—sporting bloated pinky rings and smoking foot-long Habana cigars that they lit from platinum Ronson lighters. Two priests and a man wearing a white satin yarmulke moved easily through the room, stopping at the sideboards stocked with roast beef, cold lamb chops, pastrami, chopped chicken liver, smoked salmon, and whitefish. One table held just fresh fruits and desserts: lemon meringue pies, cheese cakes, cherry, apple, and blackberry pies, chocolates, Danish pastry, custards, cream puffs, and vats of ice cream standing in iced tubs. Amused to see three men of faith at this shindig, Jay moved close enough to listen. The Jewish man was talking.

“We really must stand together and rally public opinion. From our Berlin sources, I understand the Nazis so fear a boycott that they have dispatched undercover agents to different countries to suppress dissent—any way they can.”

The younger of the two priests, a wispy fellow, agreed on the importance of unity. “With Jeremiah Mahoney behind the boycott, other Catholics will follow.”

“Brundage,” said the Jewish man, “is immune to reason and dogmatically insists the games must go on. I do begin to wonder whether his scheduled trip to Germany is to promote the glory of sport or himself.”

The older priest, completely bald, laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Rabbi Wise, the Olympic Committee may follow Avery Brundage, but the Amateur Athletic Union will have the final say. And Mahoney is the president of the AAU.”

Of course: Rabbi Stephen Wise! His face had looked familiar. But here in this house . . . unbelievable! In his early sixties and Hungarian by birth, the good man was strikingly handsome with sharp features and dark hair. Shortly after Hitler took power in January 1933, Wise had denounced the National Socialists and had organized an anti-Nazi protest in Madison Square Garden. Calling for a boycott of the Berlin Olympics, he was meeting with resistance from Brundage and his ilk.

The older priest continued. “Catholics stand with Mahoney, who is, after all, a former New York State supreme court justice and the head of the Committee on Fair Play.”

To which his colleague added, “And Jeremiah has started a letter-writing campaign in support of the boycott.”

“For the life of me,” said Rabbi Wise, “I can’t understand why Brundage would want to hold the games. They will only glorify the Nazi regime. The man’s a college graduate, an engineer, rich. What does he stand to gain?”

The older priest replied softly, “Avery regards the opposition as Communists and, pardon the slander, self-serving Jews.”

A bar with a brass foot rail held a prominent place in the living room, manned by three Negroes dressed in white jackets and shirts, black trousers, and red bow ties. Every conceivable drink from ginger ale and beer to Bols could be had for the ordering. Half a dozen waiters, all in black tuxes, appeared, evaporated, and then materialized at a guest’s elbow with a tray bearing a drink. Glancing around the room, Jay had the impression of exotically colored cocktails floating through the smoky light. Puddy identified the famous gangsters in attendance. Awed by the company, Jay was all ears.

Charles Luciano’s drooping right eye was a souvenir of knife-wielding kidnappers who’d severed his cheek muscles. Having survived that “ride” five years before had earned him the nickname “Lucky.” Puddy said the guy could barely read a newspaper, but had had the moxie to arrange the deaths of Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, the Mustache Petes. Lucky stood listening to Meyer Lansky or, as Puddy respectfully called him, “the little man,” who was saying:

“They never learn, do they? Traditions are fine, but what holds men together is money, not rituals.”

The third member of this trio, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, agreed. “That omerta stuff’s old world. Come out to California and see the future. Los Angeles . . . that’s where it’s being made. Palms and pineapples and pinochle.”

A handsome guy with slicked-down hair, Bugsy was reputed to have a ferocious temper and was regarded as a cold-blooded killer. Frankly, Jay thought the man looked more like a movie star than a hit man.

Gerry Catena, said to be a business associate of Abner Zwillman, slapped Puddy’s shoulder and paused just long enough for Jay to be introduced, then vanished in the crowd.

A short, round-faced, cigar-chomping spark plug held up his dukes as Puddy approached. Jay recognized him immediately from the newspapers, where his mug had appeared more than once for his involvement in fights, in and out of the ring. A retired prizefighter, Nat Arno now worked for Longie Zwillman’s Third Ward Gang as an enforcer and as the head of a group of toughs, the Minutemen, dedicated to breaking up pro-Nazi meetings and busting heads. Nat whispered in Puddy’s ear and shook Jay’s hand like a vise.

“Arno’s the name. Nat. Ever see me fight?”

“’Fraid not.”

“Nat does his best fighting on the street,” Puddy chuckled.

“You know my motto, Pud, persuasion when possible, violence when necessary.”

Nat shifted the cigar in his mouth and moved off.

A fellow in his early thirties walked up and shoved his paw in Puddy’s. A moment later Jay met Morris “Moe” Dalitz, who led the Cleveland mob. Conservatively dressed in a blue suit and tie, Moe seemed interested mostly in criticizing the house owner’s collection of paintings.

“Run of the mill stuff.”

“What do you like?” asked Puddy.

“The real, not the idealized.”

Dalitz, despite his cruel eyes, extended lower lip, and small, hard body, could have passed for a cultured art collector. Apparently, a few days before, Moe had been in the Village trying to persuade the painter Edward Hopper to part with an oil, Room in New York.

“On the left side of the canvas,” Moe explained, gesturing with manicured hands, “a man in a dark vest and tie slumps in a parlor chair reading a newspaper. On the right, a woman in a spiffy red dress sits at a piano with one hand on the keys. The lower part of her body is turned toward the man, the upper faces the piano. A table stands between them. His interest in the paper and her posture suggest that he’s indifferent and she’s sad. The haunting loneliness . . .”

Moe would undoubtedly have continued had all the revelers not been interrupted by Luciano calling for everyone’s attention.

“You ain’t seen your host yet and that’s ’cause he’s been tied up with a surprise. Ladies and gents, Abe Zwillman and Jean Harlow!”

As the crowd applauded, Jean Harlow appeared in a sheer white dress that reminded Jay of a joke making the rounds: “I’m dying to see what the well-dressed girl will leave off this season.” Clearly visible were her breasts and nipples and more. The movie critics said that she had a perfect body and never wore underwear, observations any fool could have arrived at; the critics also said that she used peroxide, ammonia, Clorox, and Lux Flakes to bleach not only her famous platinum tresses but also her pubic hair. Though Jay couldn’t attest to the formula, he could to the color. Equally eye-catching was her creamy complexion, which resembled pink ivory and shone with a mysterious luminosity. On her left wrist she wore a jeweled charm bracelet featuring a pig, and on her left ankle a chain. She spoke like a guttersnipe and referred to herself in the third person, but her fans could never tell whether they were hearing her movie voice or her real one.

“You wouldn’t mind, would ya, if Jean had a carrot?”

The guests all roared because the rich repast did not include vegetables. “Miss Harlow,” she joshed, “has to keep her figure.”

One of the Negro bartenders made a beeline for the kitchen and returned a minute later with a plate of tomatoes, carrots, celery, mushrooms, and asparagus spears.

People immediately surrounded her, leaving Zwillman, called Der Langer, Yiddish for “The Tall One,” peering over the heads of her admirers. Though handsome, with black curly hair and bright observant eyes, Zwillman was no Clark Gable. A few years before, he and Harlow had been lovers. The columnists said Longie had paid movie directors to cast her and even invested in a film company for the sole purpose of advancing her career.

“How did you meet?” a breathless woman asked Harlow. The inquisitor, wearing a yellow dress with spaghetti straps, leaned so close to Jean they nearly bumped heads.

“In Chicago. I was appearing at the Oriental Theater. My host, Al Capone, took Abe backstage to meet me.”

“The Al Capone?” a strawberry blonde said with such longing that she looked as though she’d embrace Harlow.

“None other.”

The mention of Capone had elicited knowing looks and vacuous bursts of laughter, but before her fans could ask any further questions, she held up a hand.

“Jean is not the attraction tonight, someone else is.” All eyes shifted to Zwillman. But Abe shook his head no. “We have with us a man who has been called the world’s greatest entertainer. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Al Jolson!”

Materializing from one of the numerous rooms, a dapper Jolson, wearing an ascot, bounded into the crowd, shook hands with dozens, rolled out a repertoire of jokes and patter, puffed on a cigarette, strutted some dance steps, snuffed out the weed, called to the pianist, and, with the kind of Jack Diamond emotion that stamps a person as original, sang Fred Ahlert’s “Who Played Poker with Pocahontas when John Smith Went Away?”

Looking through my history,

I found a little mystery,

About a certain dame—

How did little Pocahontas,

Take John Smith for all his wampus?

I bet I know her game.

He taught her how to play poker;

She sent him home without his dough.

Every time that he came back,

He found her with a larger stack.

Now here’s what I’d like to know:

Who played poker with Pocahontas when John Smith went away?

As Joli performed, holding nothing back, revealing his feelings in the tenor of his voice, Longie and Jean retreated to the back of the room and disappeared. Puddy and Jay stood tapping their feet and clapping hands to the rhythm of the song. When Joli had finished, a woman nearly expelled a lung yelling “More, more!” By the time Joli launched into his third song, the thundering in the house could have been heard in Newark. One of the waiters touched Jay’s shoulder. “Mr. Zwillman would like to have a word with you.” Puddy’s open mouth spoke for them both.

A small fireplace cast a golden glow that filled the paneled room and reflected softly in the leaded windowpanes. Zwillman was stirring the embers to resurrect a flame. A phonograph, perched on a radio console, played Puccini arias. The record jackets were lying on a felt-top table, next to chips and a deck of cards.

“Forget it, Abe, the flame ain’t comin’ back,” said Jean in the same voice she had used in the living room.

Abe rested the poker against the bricks and contemplated her longingly, as he sat in a burgundy leather chair across from the matching couch on which she lounged. Her dress revealed more leg than one could see in a girlie show. However many hearts she had broken in Hollywood, she had definitely left one yearning in New Jersey.

“Make yourself at home,” said Zwillman.

Jay looked around at the substantial furniture and decided he hadn’t earned the right to sit as an equal. So he drew up a hassock, told himself not to slouch, and said nervously, “Nice house you got.”

“Someday it’ll be mine,” Abe replied enigmatically.

Incredulous that he could be in the company of a movie star, Jay enthused, “I’ve seen all your pictures, Miss Harlow.”

“Jean’s here on a visit.”

“Is one of those Cadillacs yours? I noticed the California plates.”

“The red one. A gift from Abe.”

“The black one,” said Zwillman, “belongs to Jolson. But he’s never driven it. He has a chauffeur.”

“Maybe, kid, there’s a caddy in your future. Right, Abe?”

The big man chuckled and, resting his elbows on his knees, cradled his chin in his hands. “Let’s talk.”

“If I can be of service . . .” Jay replied cautiously, breaking off because he knew that some of Zwillman’s unsavory enterprises took a stronger stomach than his.

“Your reports on Dutch’s boys are good stuff.”

So he had finally determined his real employer.

“Thank you, sir.”

“You have a way with words. When I read your accounts it’s like reading a story. I’m impressed.”

“I like to write.”

“That’s what Puddy says.” Abe lit a cigar and tossed the match into the fireplace. “You’re probably wondering why I wanted this information. Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t want to see any drugs in the Third Ward. Call it religious scruples. The Ten Commandments may not forbid it, but Jews shouldn’t be using dope. I’ve warned Dutch before, several times. We’re still friends, but . . .”

What, Jay wondered, was Longie’s real beef, the drugs, or the calculated slight of Dutch’s ignoring repeated threats? Maybe there was even another reason. Jay repositioned the book lying on the coffee table next to the couch: The Great Gatsby.

“Jean loves to read,” she said indolently, reaching for her handbag and removing a box of Chiclets. Shaking a few directly into her mouth, she cracked her gum, inviting Zwillman’s displeasure.

“Sorry, Jean thought she was with her own kind,” she murmured and laughed mischievously.

Zwillman, who couldn’t keep his peepers from her puss, responded with an affectionate smile that seemed like a secret code, and then turned to Jay. “The name’s Klug, right?”

“That’s what my parents tell me,” Jay quipped, trying to appear snappy.

“Curse or clever?” Abe asked playing on the Yiddish double meaning.

“Clever, I hope.”

“Me, too.”

“He looks real smart . . . cute, too,” said Jean, flashing a smile that promised she was prejudiced in Jay’s favor—and that made him her faithful fan.

“You used to work for your father. How was that?”

“Awful. He believes in the sanctity of labor, no matter how dreary the job.”

Longie huffed sympathetically. “Some jobs ennoble, most don’t. As a kid I peddled door-to-door. It brutalized me. I swore that I would never grovel again. Let me give you some advice, son, whatever you do, do for money, a lot of it. There’s nothing worse than a bad job and a flat bank account. Better to be a pimp than a pauper.”

“I’d just like a job that doesn’t turn my mind to rabbit droppings—and pays well.”

“Since you want to write, what would you say to reporting for the Newark Evening News, in the arts section?”

“I . . . you mean . . . just like that . . . me?”

“You, Jay Klug. The editor owes me a favor.”

At that moment, Jay could have used a drink. His mouth felt like feathers, and his dry throat brought forth only a croak.

“Did you say what’s the deal?” said Zwillman.

Jay nodded emphatically. Longie briefly glanced at Jean.

“You’ll be the movie theater critic for the paper, and you’ll get paid twenty-five dollars a week. In return, I expect to see rave reviews for Jean’s work.” Longie fixed Jay with his gaze. “Understood?”

Finding his voice, Jay said too loudly, “Hell, yes!”

“One other thing. I got you a room at the Riviera Hotel. I keep one there myself. In return, I’ll want some favors, including your writing newspaper articles critical of the Olympics, and letters for the American Jewish Congress, which is leading the charge to boycott the events in Berlin. I’ll give you a list of names and addresses, letterhead stationery, and stamped envelopes. Dutch Schultz is on the address list. Be sure he gets a letter.”

Jay desperately searched through his mind for an explanation that he could give his parents. They would undoubtedly ask how he could be earning enough money to pay rent in the Riviera, known for housing well-heeled businessmen, artists, politicians, and, yes, even some mobsters. His father would say that cub reporters make bupkis and live in boardinghouses in which you can’t tell the bed from the board. Did he dare tell him the paper was footing the bill because he was on a secret assignment? No, his old man would reply that papers don’t assign fledgling pencil pushers to undercover work, and then fold his arms across his chest and silently skewer him with that gaze Honest Ike always assumed when Jay lied.

Gerry Catena materialized at the door. “A telephone call for you, Abe. Important.”

Longie reached into his vest pocket for a small leather case that held business cards, removed one, and wrote on the back his personal telephone number. “If you’re ever in a tight spot, this may help.”

No sooner had Longie gone than Jean asked if he knew how to play poker; when he said yes, they sat down at the felt-top table and stacked the record jackets on the floor. She dealt the cards and declared:

“Aces wild.”

“Sure.”

She regarded her hand, muttered “Shit,” discarded three cards, and took three more.

Jay took two and asked, “How do you like being in the movies?”

“It’s a living . . . for everyone in the family.”

The gossip pages had often noted that Jean supported her parents and that her father had an insatiable appetite for luxury.

“Do you have any favorite actresses?” he asked.

“Yeah, Mary Astor. She’s a peach.”

Studying her hand, she grimaced and rearranged her cards.

“I can understand the rabbi, but why the priests?”

“Longie’s tutors.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, they befriended him when he gave a few bucks to some Catholic charity. They suggest books he should read and talk to him about philosophy.”

“You gotta be kidding!”

She put her hand down and gave him a soulful look. “What’s wrong with a guy improvin’ himself? If you wanna get ahead, Jay . . .”

Her unfinished sentence struck him less than the fact she had used his first name. He measured their difference in age: three years. “I’m trying. To tell you the truth, I promised myself that in the next few years I’d read all of Dickens.”

“Hey, don’t go overboard. You gotta leave time for other things.”

“Like?”

Without replying, she tossed away one card, took another, and spread her hand on the table. “A straight flush: ace, two, three, four, five.”

He tossed his cards on the table in a gesture of defeat.

“What’s my winnings?”

“I thought it was just a friendly game.”

“Jean takes her poker seriously.”

“All right,” Jay said, throwing up his arms, feigning a mock surrender. “Name your price.”

“You take me to dinner in Hollywood.”

“And if I don’t get out there?”

“Miss Harlow’s astrologer predicted a young man would come west and dine with her.” She paused, appearing abstracted, as if she were actually giving credence to the forecast of some stargazer. “If you ain’t got the dough, Jean will pay. Then after dinner we can go to her place and play poker.”

“Tell me, Jean . . .” he hazarded her first name and she didn’t object, “who do you play with at home?”

“You’re the reporter. Why don’t ya come to Hollywood and find out for yourself?”

On their drive back to Newark, while Puddy kept up a running commentary on the evening’s events, Jay’s thoughts were elsewhere. As an English major in college, he had become interested in dialects. This evening he had heard English conveyed in unfamiliar accents and tones. The words and idioms brought to mind a conversation with a linguistics professor. Jay had observed that on entering college he spoke one way, and was now leaving speaking another.

“I’ve gone from street slang to academic diction.”

His professor had replied, “Look at it this way, you are now bilingual, which will enable you to fit right in. With your neighborhood friends, you can speak in jargon, and in polite circles, you can use the King’s English. Call it protective coloration or adaptation. It’s all very Darwinian.”