Sally had snagged a job as a telephone operator, and though she hated leaving her mother, she was tired of sleeping on the couch and needed time away from a needy parent. Her place was only twelve blocks away, and Mom would be all right with Izzy still at home. To make Sam laugh, she’d put on fake operator voices and tell him far-fetched stories. One night after doing that, he said, “You’re making a hurtin’ turtle out of me, if you don’t marry me.” First time he ever said it.
“Hurtin’ turtle? That don’t even rhyme,” she said, and then she got buried in laughter. It took two more proposals before he got her to say yes.
Sam’s sergeant called him in and told him there was a major hoodlum named Harry Gross putting the bite on dozens of storekeepers and bar owners. “If we don’t stop him, he’ll be mayor before we know it.”
A funny one, and Sam laughed but could see how true it could easily be. The sergeant said he was giving Sam a transfer. “Detective Brian Hirsch over in Investigation needs more men to bust this guy. There are written tests and a probationary period, of course, but then you’re good to go.” He said Sam caught Hirsch’s notice when Hirsch assisted an undercover officer in a numbers bust with two precincts involved, and Sam was one of two cops handling crowd control. Hirsch liked his deportment and, when he checked, his record. Sam didn’t even know who the detective was, but he gave his sergeant his thanks, along with his regrets. And when he left the building, he threw a kiss to the sky.
The weeks went by fast. Sam aced the tests; why wouldn’t he? He bragged to Sally. They talked about a wedding date for fall.
Detective Hirsch leaned in across the cluttered desk that wasn’t even his, wasn’t anybody’s, just a desk with everybody’s junk on it. This man who looked like Sam’s own father, with a hairline that was almost a memory and the rest of it Brilliantined so shiny it was close to blue; hazel eyes that could drill out any lie you ever thought you could get away with; and hands that should’ve belonged to a guy lifting wrestlers two at a time out over the ropes.
“Graft,” Hirsch said. “Too many of our guys got dirty hands. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t pin on this badge so I could have a side job taking cash from criminals. You with me on this?”
An easy yes from Sam.
“There’s a gonif who, shall we say, perpetrates persuasion for Harry Gross.”
Sam nodded and asked, “Knee-capping, rib-pounding, like that?”
“Knuckles, knives, kicks to the jewels,” Hirsch said. “Just like Gross doesn’t do it himself, this guy has gorillas, too. One of these days a client’s gonna get capped, and Gross and his henchmen will be candidates for the electric cure. I’d like to send a message to Gross before he gets any bigger for his britches. This gonif working for Gross; he wears scarves and floppy hats to conceal something that happened to his face. Spotters say you can tell because it’s waxy-like. The nose is not the same size every day. Some days he’s Jimmy Durante, some days he’s Pacific Islands.”
“Wait. A guy with a fake nose?”
“Right. He-”
Sam said it slowly: “Tino Carlo Caruso.”
Detective Hirsch said, “You know him?”
“I might.”
Not Tino, damn it. Not the Tino who got his crotch stuck on the barbed wire in basic because he slid under the wire instead of on his stomach. Was it the war? Was it what happened the day of the sniper? Or had Tino always been on the brink, and Sam just didn’t know it because the two weren’t reared in the immediate vicinity of each other? Cops on the take was one offense. But Tino, from the neighborhood-at least sort of-put an ache in Sam’s gut in a different way; as if Sam were somehow responsible for him, had been responsible for him on a Belgian road one toe-curling winter. That cursed day, Sam had told him to keep a glove clamped on his face until they reached a medic. Had Tino been saved for this?
The only thing impeding Hirsch’s plan now was that Sam knew Caruso. That meant no undercover on this plan.
All the same, Sam was getting ready for If and When. He pushed weights and ran track and was the first to split the leather on the gym’s new punching bag. He’d learned hand-to-hand in military training camp and underwent a skim of personal combat in police academy, yet every Sunday he paid an instructor in Chinatown for a private three-hour class in pa-kua, the Chinese battle art featuring eight animal movements. His favorites were the lion and the snake. His reflexes and timing were impeccable, and he advanced through the belt rankings quickly.
One Saturday morning, Sally got him to go to a new temple on Fourteenth that Izzy had joined. Sam pretended to like the droning lay cantor, the very young rabbi, the short ladies telling him how handsome he was. But it was hard for him to hear anything while in the pews because of Izzy, five rows up, reciting loudly, davening like a man with fumes on the brain during prayer. He didn’t know if Izzy saw him there.
Sally was taking classes at City College and had to study, so she and Sam necked in the car she’d just purchased and regretted already, and then he drove her home.
Sunday he took a bus to where Izzy worked at a tire store. Sam knew the street the shop was on. Parking was tight even up to the apron of the shop, and he had to approach between cars. Izzy was outside, signing a paper for a deliveryman who brought a tire that now leaned against Izzy’s shin. When the guy left, Izzy looked after the truck a moment, and then he took the tire to a car on the far side of the shop door. He unlocked the trunk with a key, lifted the trunk gate, and put in the tire; he shut it and looked around again. Sam was already stooped between cars. It was too noisy on the street to talk to him there. He would wait until Izzy was back inside.
A mechanic came in from the garage at the same time Sam pulled open the shop door and asked Izzy if that was the tire delivery. Izzy said no. The mechanic left grumbling.
When Izzy faced the front and saw Sam, he said, “You would come here?”
Sam waited a beat and then said, “Why’d you do a thing like that, Iz?”
Izzy tipped his head down, looked this way and that at the floor, then met Sam’s gaze and said, “Shut your face, oh-holier-than-thou.”
“Iz, Iz. You need extra dough? I can-”
“Not from you.”
“You can’t do that, Iz, come on.”
“Maybe it’s not what you think.”
“Maybe it is,” Sam said.
Did he have the thing right, though? What if Izzy intended to deliver the tire to someone else, and it was a different tire the mechanic was expecting?
A customer came in. Sam hung around reading wall charts and tire labels. The man paid a balance from work previously completed, telling Izzy to be sure to thank his boss again for letting him run a tab. When the customer was out the door, Izzy stayed behind the counter. He said, “I got one question.”
“Fire it up,” Sam said.
“Are you or are you not a stinkin’ rat-fink Communist?”
“Look, Izzy, that’s not it, and you know it. Some things, they just come to you. You don’t mean for it to happen. Sally and I love each other, we really do. It’s been a year. No. Seven months, two weeks, and three days I’ve known it was her. I’d like you to be my best man, Iz. Will you do that for us? Day before Valentine’s Day, Sally says, so I won’t forget the anniversary. Do that for us, Iz?”
The color dropped from Izzy’s face. He reached under the counter and brought up an oil-smeared tire iron, laid it on the counter slowly, and said, “How you like them apples, Sergeant?” Sergeant-with a level of contempt in his voice you’d expect from a bad stage actor. And sure, Sam would know about bad theater, because Sally had him take her to plays uptown, so they could claim some culture, too.