I found Sammy at Izzy’s Deli. I wasn’t sure it would still be a hangout for him, what with the ensuing years, but there he was, at the same old table, staring down at his crème soda. He hadn’t touched his bagel.
He looked up and saw me. All he did was nod, like he’d been waiting there for me. I guess he could tell by my face that I was troubled.
‘Polonius saw you in the dressing room, Sam,’ I said right away. ‘She told me, just as I was eliminating all the actors as suspects. Only now I’ve got a new suspect, and he’s ignoring a perfectly good bagel.’
Before I could sit down, he said softly, ‘The cops are gonna find my prints on the pencil that was in Emory’s neck.’
‘Because you put the pencil there, right?’ I asked, just as softly.
He shrugged.
‘I only wanted to help Phoebe,’ he said softly. ‘That Emory, she was a nightmare. I didn’t mean to ice her. I only wanted to scare her.’
‘You couldn’t think of some better way to do that?’ I complained, taking my seat. ‘Other than stabbing her in the neck with her own pencil?’
‘It was handy.’ He shrugged.
‘That wasn’t my question,’ I began. ‘You came to me for help with Phoebe. Why didn’t you just let me take care of it? This does not add up. What’s the matter with you?’
‘I …’ he began, but he couldn’t seem to go on.
‘What happened between you and Emory that could have made you—’
He held up his left hand, took one bite of his bagel, and stood up. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where do you think we’re going?’ I asked him.
‘I figure you wanna take me to the cops,’ he told me, ‘now that you’re an upstanding citizen.’
‘I’m not taking you to the cops,’ I assured him. ‘I’m just going to tell them what I know. Except I’m going to leave out your name, and you’re going to blow town.’
‘I can’t do that,’ he began. ‘I’m in love with Phoebe.’
‘How do you think she’s going to react to the news that you killed somebody?’ I asked. ‘You were nervous about even introducing her to your hoodlum friends. Her world’s all make-believe and play-acting. Your world is … you know.’
He nodded. He did know.
‘So.’ He stared out the window. ‘You tell the boys in blue that you know who done it, as they say in the movies, and Phoebe gets out.’
‘Meanwhile,’ I added, ‘you abscond.’
‘Like you did,’ he said, but it wasn’t an accusation, it was an agreement.
‘Like I did.’
He finally looked me in the eye. ‘Why are you doing this, Foggy? I ain’t seen you in a good while, and plus you went straight. You got good. People, like, admire you. If it gets out that you let the killer go, what’s gonna happen to your rep?’
‘One, I don’t care about my rep,’ I began. ‘And two, you’re my friend.’
‘We were friends once,’ he allowed, ‘but it was a fair number of years ago.’
‘I’m supposed to forget that you saved my life?’ I asked him. ‘I’m supposed to ignore the fact that you took soup to my mother when I couldn’t? That would be more likely to sour my rep than anything else, don’t you think? People would say, “What kind of a weasel is this Moscowitz character? He turned in a pal!”’
He smiled. ‘You just said you didn’t care about your rep.’
‘Come on.’ I fished a twenty out of my pocket and tossed it on to the table. ‘I’ll figure something out. I just don’t know what. Yet.’
He lifted his eyebrows about as far as they would go. ‘I guess you could call your aunt Shayna.’
Now, my aunt Shayna was one of the ten most loving women in the world. A hug from her was better than a gin martini. And do not get me started on her brisket.
By Shayna had also, in her youth, been the bookkeeper for the Combination, a collection of the most professional hitmen on the planet. Everybody said that Shayna dated Allie ‘Tick-Tock’ Tannenbaum, one of their guys, when he lived in Brooklyn, but she denied it. Like taking the Fifth.
They also said that Allie and my father had worked on hits together once or twice. I never knew my father, but he was a legend in our neighborhood – mine and Sammy’s.
And Shayna, sweet, short, round little bundle of love that she was, also was still connected. So when Sammy said her name, I understood what that meant.
‘Right,’ I told him softly. ‘I guess I could call my aunt Shayna.’
But I couldn’t just show up. I’d have to explain that I’d been in the city long enough to see Blossom Dearie and get involved with a murder. In a theatre, no less. That was going to take some finesse.
So I did it this way. I took Sammy with me back to the Benjamin and while he watched Happy Days on television, I called Brooklyn.
My mother picked up the phone and before she could say hello, I said, ‘I’m in town.’
She paused. ‘Are you in trouble?’
‘No,’ I assured her. ‘Blossom Dearie is playing at Reno Sweeney’s.’
‘You’re calling me from Reno Sweeney’s?’
‘No. Look. Where’s Shayna?’
‘Shayna?’ my mother asked. ‘She’s in the living room watching Happy Days. Why?’
‘You remember my old pal with the two shoes?’
‘Oh. Yes. I remember him. Why?’ She was wise. She knew that if I didn’t say his name on the phone, she shouldn’t either. And the fact that I wouldn’t use his name told her a lot. Like, for instance, that some switchboard operators at some hotels like to listen in.
‘Well, I ran into him,’ I told her, ‘at Reno Sweeney’s, you know, and it’s old times and so forth, and we were wondering if we could come visit you and Shayna. For old times’ sake.’
‘Oh.’ Again, she got it. ‘The good old days. Yeah. Got it.’
My mother and I weren’t as emotionally connected as Shayna and I were, but my mother could read my mind since I was three, and it always impressed me.
‘So, shall we say, like, within the hour, if we can get a cab right away?’
‘You’re taking a cab? What are you, suddenly Mr Moneybags? The subway’s not good enough?’
‘It’s good enough,’ I said, smiling, ‘it’s just not fast enough. My friend is on his way out of town and doesn’t have much time.’
‘And he’s in a hurry to see your aunt Shayna before he goes,’ she said.
‘Yes. You know how close they are.’
They weren’t close as far as I knew.
‘I understand completely,’ she said. ‘Shayna and I will put together a little something right away, so you can sit down and eat the minute you get here.’
‘That sounds perfect. We’ll see you as soon as we can.’
‘Shayna!’ my mother hollered and hung up the phone.
My smile only got bigger and I hung up too. ‘Man, my mother is on the ball.’
Sammy turned my way. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘We just spoke in some sort of arcane code that we were making up as we went along, and I think she’ll have something for us by the time we get there.’
‘Something for us?’
‘I think they’ll have a plan for your lam as soon as we get there.’
He stood up right away and clicked off the television. We were down on the street in under five.
The traffic was a little heavy, but we still made it from the Benjamin to the apartment in Brooklyn where I grew up in about forty minutes.
I hadn’t seen the old neighborhood in a while. It was funny to see the things that had changed, and the things that hadn’t.
It was a quiet afternoon, a little cloudy, not too hot.
When you walk down a street where you grew up, you’re not just walking down a street right then, you’re also walking down the street ten years ago. Twenty. The place where the old broken-down Chevy used to sit. The stoop where Mrs Linden sat alternately talking to herself and yelling at her cat. Which had been dead for a couple of years. The store at the end of the block that used to be a flower shop, but you couldn’t tell what it was now.
We stopped in front of the building where I grew up, and I looked up at the window where I knew my mother would be watching. I knew if there was any kind of trouble, she’d give me some kind of high sign, and Sammy and I would walk on to the whatever-it-was store.
But there was nothing. So I looked at Sammy.
‘I feel weird,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t expect to.’
‘You been gone,’ he said, very sympathetically. ‘When you left you were basically a loveable car thief. You’re back and you’re a local legend. That’s a complicated thing to live up to.’
‘I guess.’ I stared up at the window. ‘But it’s more like I don’t know how to behave around my mother and my aunt anymore. I’ve been an adult in the extremis for a number of years now. But the second I walk into that living room, I’m a kid again.’
‘And it will always be that way,’ he told me. ‘My name is Samuel, and many people call me that now. But what do you call me?’
I smiled. ‘Sammy Two Shoes.’
He smiled back. ‘There you go. And the fact is I like that you call me that. I like that there’s a part of me pitching pennies on the curb with you. In this way, I am forever young.’
‘My least favorite Bob Dylan song,’ I assured him, and then started up the stairs.
My mother greeted me at the door with tears in her eyes, and then she jabbed my upper arm with a pretty tough knuckle or two.
‘You come into town to see Blossom Dearie and you don’t call me?’ she demanded.
‘I didn’t want to get you in trouble,’ I explained. ‘I’ve still got paper …’
‘Oh, it’s all right to avoid me when it’s musical,’ she continued to object, ‘but when it’s murder you don’t mind?’
I started to answer, and then rethought it. ‘Sammy’s in trouble.’
She turned her love light on. ‘Hello, Samuel.’
She reached up and patted his cheek.
She had put on a good dress for our visit. And real shoes. Under most circumstances, she would have been in a nice kimono and a pair of expensive Japanese slippers. But a visit from the long-lost son and his old pal Samuel, that merited a smattering of dress-up.
Shayna was nowhere to be seen.
My mother beckoned. ‘I made kugel.’
And with that, we headed for the kitchen.
I missed a lot about New York, and Brooklyn, and the neighborhood, and the street, and the old apartment, but more than everything else put together, I missed that kitchen.
It was nothing special in the traditional sense, I guess. A sink, a stove, a table, some chairs, dishes and towels and pale-blue cabinets. But the kitchen was where most of the memories lived. I had to steer myself away from the ghosts entirely, or I would have been lost in reminiscence and where would that get Sammy?
My mother sensed my dilemma and took charge.
‘I would like to spend a week catching up,’ she said to me, ‘and after that another week just cajoling you until you invited me to visit you in Florida.’
‘Visit me in Florida?’ I grinned. ‘You haven’t left this block since 1966.’
‘True enough,’ she agreed, ‘but you could at least invite me!’
‘Ah, well then,’ I said. ‘Please. Mother. Come visit me in Fry’s Bay.’
‘With my knees, a trip like that?’ she railed. ‘Are you trying to kill me?’
I shook my head. ‘All right, now that that’s over with …’
She sat down at the kitchen table without the kugel. ‘Was that so hard?’
‘But to the point …’ I prompted.
‘Right.’ She patted the top of the table. ‘Sit, sit.’
We did.
‘The first thought was to send Sammy to your place in Florida,’ she began, ‘because we figured, Shayna and I, that the chumps and beach-heads wouldn’t know oneΔ50 Brooklyn lamister from another. But Shayna pointed out that Sammy is taller than you, and his shoulders are twice the size of yours. This much differential even a Baptist would notice.’
‘Well, also,’ I began, ‘I have friends there who know me, like, really well.’
‘So we discarded that idea,’ she rushed along. ‘Then I thought Canada. But after a second, I remembered what a bruhaha you had down your way with the Canuck crowd a while back. So we settled on Atlanta.’
She folded her arms, sat back, and smiled in a very contented way.
Sammy and I looked at each other.
‘Atlanta?’ I finally asked.
‘We know a guy.’ That appeared to be all she wanted to say on the subject.
Sammy squinted. ‘I don’t wanna go to Atlanta. I mean, for starters, what would I eat down there?’
‘Who’s the guy?’ I asked her. ‘The guy you know.’
‘Mike, but I don’t like to say his last name,’ she whispered, ‘because he’s a millionaire on account of the porno peep machines down there.’
‘How in the world would you and Shayna know anybody associated with the world of pornography?’ I asked her, trying to stifle a grin.
‘This guy, Mike,’ she allowed, ‘is connected to a guy who knows a guy who works for a friend here in New York.’
‘What friend in New York?’
‘Her name is Candice, but she goes by Candida,’ my mother said, avoiding eye contact.
I knew who she meant. Candida was a genuine artist, and a true feminist. Her newest career was as a performer in what were sometimes known as adult art films, but her commitment to a more honest assessment of sexual behaviors was, to me, revolutionary. In short, I admired her.
‘So Candice knows, however circuitously, a guy in Atlanta,’ I concluded. ‘And you’ve done the vetting. It’s safe for Sammy.’
She nodded once. ‘Even got him a job.’
‘What’s the job?’ Sammy piped up.
My mother rolled her eyes. ‘Does it matter? It’s legit, low profile, minimum wage, and easily lost in the system.’
‘When do I leave?’ he said.
‘You already left,’ she told him and handed him a bus ticket.
I stopped wondering a long time ago how my mother and Shayna could do the things they do. I just accepted it as a part of life.
Sammy took the ticket and stared at it. ‘Well.’
‘Foggy is not gonna know the specifics,’ my mother went on. ‘So when he goes to the cops, he can be more or less honest when he says he doesn’t know where you are.’
Sammy nodded. He looked like he was going to say something, first to my mother, then to me, but in the end, he just turned around and left the kitchen. A second later we heard the front door open and close, and Sammy Two Shoes was gone.
As soon as the door closed, Shayna appeared. After the hugging and the kissing and the what-the-hell-are-you-doing-in-town, we all sat down.
‘I didn’t want to come in while Samuel was here,’ Shayna told me, ‘so I could honestly say to the cops that I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. The best lies are the ones that are true.’
So that’s where I got that idea.
My mother weighed in. ‘I’m better at the “I’m an old woman, what do I know” schtick. I can run a cop around in circles. It’s fun.’
I smiled at them both. Nobody stood a chance against these two.
‘So.’ My aunt Shayna patted my hand. ‘You missed New York.’
I sighed.
My mother cut a huge piece of kugel and slid it toward me across the pink linoleum tabletop.
‘I was gonna come see you,’ I began, ‘after I heard Blossom.’
‘But you’re staying at the Benjamin,’ Shayna said, looking down.
I started to protest, then I started to ask her how she knew, but in the end, I just said, ‘Yes.’
My mother said, ‘As my old friend Damon Runyon used to say, “A story goes with it.”’
I don’t know if she actually knew Runyon or not, but she certainly wanted to hear the story, so I told her. Starting with sitting in the barber chair and reading about Blossom in the New Yorker and ending with figuring out that Sammy killed an actor.
They both sat in silence for a moment, and then my aunt Shayna smacked me on the back of my head. Not hard, but serious.
‘How in the hell could you think Samuel would do a thing like that?’ she demanded. ‘He’s not a maniac. He’s a nice boy with a few bad habits. Period.’
‘And not one of those habits includes anything like killing anybody,’ my mother added. ‘Even an actor.’
‘I think you’d agree that your mother and I know a thing or two about killers,’ Shayna went on. ‘Samuel’s not the type. Not even.’
‘Look,’ I said to them both, ‘he did it. He shoved a pencil in a girl’s neck. He told me so. And he said it in a way that made me believe him.’
‘And what way was that?’ my aunt asked, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms.
‘He said the cops were going to find his prints on the pencil. He said he did it for his girl, this Phoebe. Speaking of which, I have to go get her out of jail.’
I stood.
Shayna looked at my mother. ‘Prints.’
My mother nodded. ‘There’s more to the story.’
‘There probably is,’ I agreed. ‘But if the cops do find Sammy’s prints on the pencil, he’ll be gone from us a very long time, right?’
‘Sammy who?’ my mother said.
‘I haven’t seen the boy in years,’ Shayna added softly.