Evan Hunter - Streets of Gold

“Look,” I said, “this is my livelihood....”

“This is ours ,” one of them said.

“Which hand?”

“How much are they paying you for this?”

They both laughed again.

“I’m serious. I don’t know how much they’re paying you, but I’m sure...”

“Forget it.”

“And make up your mind, you hear? Otherwise we’ll break both fuckin’ hands and get it over with.”

“The right or the left? Which one?”

The right or the left? Which one, Ike? Which hand do you find most useful to the geography of your performance? Which of these precious appendages do you find essential to the definition of contours and shapes? Which of your eyes would you like plucked out, because those hands in addition to being your source of income are also your eyes, Ike, you have been using them to see with since the day you were born. Which could you most readily do without? Which one will you sacrifice? The left hand that strikes the chords or the more inventive right hand that creates new melodies? Which? Choose.

“Break them both,” one of the men said.

“Wait a minute!”

“Then which one?”

“The... look,” I said, “please don’t break my hand. Please. Please, I...”

“This guy’s gettin’ on my nerves,” one of them said.

“Which fuckin’ hand ?” the other one said.

“The... the... the left,” I said and I began to whimper.

One of them stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders. I heard the other one moving a piece of furniture over to where I was sitting. “Please,” I said, “please,” and he seized my left hand by the wrist and held it firmly to the top of whatever he had moved into place in front of me, and I said, “Please, no, don’t, please,” and I thought of Basilio Silese in the locker room of the Boys’ Club, and I wished my brother Tony were there to rescue me as he had rescued Basilio, wished he would barge into the room and shout, “Hey, what are you doing there?” but my brother Tony was dead, he had been killed in Italy by an Italian soldier. “Please,” I said, “please don’t, please,” and the man standing behind me said, “Shut up, you cocksucker,” and looped a folded towel or napkin or handkerchief over my head and into my mouth like a horse’s bit, twisted it tight from behind with one hand while the other hand forced me back into the chair again. I tried to say please, please, please around the cloth, but the other man smashed something hard down on the knuckles of my hand, and then methodically and systematically and apparently emotionlessly — he did not grunt, I could not even hear him breathing heavily — smashed three of my fingers at the middle joint.

I passed out after the first finger.

The boys did not quite wreck my career, though I’m sure the oversight was unintentional. They left my pinkie and my thumb intact. This allowed me to play shells the way Bud Powell used to play them way back then when I learned to hate his style.

My mother called the day before Rebecca and I were scheduled to leave for Europe. My hand was still in a cast. We had arranged for Sophie to stay with the children while we were gone; she would be assisted by our live-in housekeeper and a college student we had hired to chauffeur the children to their various activities. Sophie had arrived, with three valises, a week before our departure date. She told us she wanted to get accustomed to the routine, learn her way around the thermostats and the garbage disposal unit. I spent a lot of time hiding from her in my studio. It was there that I took the call from my mother.

“Hello, Ike,” she said, and I knew instantly that something was wrong. My mother’s voice is a delicate instrument. It can promise the hyacinths of spring or the gardenias of death in a single breath.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“Is Grandpa all right?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Are you all packed for your trip?”

“Yes, Mom. Mom...”

“Is Sophie there?”

“She arrived last Thursday.”

“Give her my regards.”

“I will. Mom, is anybody sick or anything?”

“No, no.” She hesitated, and then said, “Aunt Cristie came to see me this morning. She came all the way from Massapequa.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” my mother said, but she was weakening, I was beginning to reach her, not for nothing was I her son, not for nothing had I listened to countless interrogations and cross-examinations conducted by Stella Di Palermo, Mr. District Attorney, in various kitchens I had known.

“Is Uncle Matt okay?”

“Yes, he’s fine.”

“Then what is it, Mom?”

“Your aunt wanted to talk to me,” my mother said, and sighed.

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“Mom, she didn’t come all the way from Massapequa to talk about nothing. Now what the hell is it?”

She hesitated for a long time. Static crackled on the telephone wires. Then she sighed again, and said, “It’s Luke.”

“What about Luke?”

“He drinks,” she said, and fell silent again. “Do you know what I mean? He’s a drunk ,” she said. “My brother.”

I waited. I could hear the electric clock humming on my desk. My hand inside the plaster cast felt suddenly confined.

“I can’t understand it,” my mother said. “I just can’t understand it, Ike. We used to have such fun together, Luke and me. We used to go to the movies together every week, oh, we saw everything, all the big stars, all the pictures, we had such fun. Just Luke and me. My father wouldn’t let Dom go till he was older, and Cristie was too tiny, it was just Luke and me, he was so much fun, he was such a good brother. He used to have this very high, silly laugh, Dee. When Charlie Chaplin or Fatty Arbuckle came on, Luke used to bust out laughing, oh, what a laugh he had, and all the kids began laughing the minute they heard him, they knew it was him, they recognized that laugh of his. He was funnier than the movie, I swear to God, it makes me want to laugh just thinking of those Saturdays when we... when we...”

My mother sighed, and fell silent. I waited.

“I couldn’t believe Cristie,” she said at last. “When she told me, I just couldn’t believe it. Luke? I said. Are you talking about Luke ? Are you telling me Luke is a drunk? Yes, she said, yes, Stella. But, Cristie, I said, are you sure this isn’t something like... like once at a party or... or with the boys or...”

She stopped talking. For a moment, I thought the connection had been broken. Then she said, “Always be a good boy, Ike. Luke was always a good boy, I can’t understand it. Cristie told me he’s so drunk sometimes he can’t even stand up at the pressing machine. Do you know the big iron Grandpa has, the one he uses for hand pressing? Luke left it on a pair of pants the other day and burned a hole in the leg and almost started a fire in the shop. I don’t know what to do. Grandpa will kill him if he finds out”

“No,” I said, “he won’t kill him.”

“You don’t know Grandpa,” she said.

“I know him,” I said.

“Oh, what are we going to do?” she said. “What are we going to do?”

I did not know what to tell her. Our plane was leaving for Rome early the next morning. I finally suggested that she contact my Uncle Dominick, and asked her to please write me, she had the itinerary.

On our third night in Rome, Rebecca and I looked up an Italian saxophone player with whom I’d been corresponding over the years. He was playing in a nightclub on the Via Emilia. He recognized me the moment I came through the door, even though we’d never met. He introduced me to his sidemen and they played a set in my honor, starting it with “The Man I Love.” They were not very good jazz musicians. I was discovering that hardly anyone in Italy played good jazz. But they were overwhelmed by my presence, and they tried hard. At the end of the set, they came to our table. One of them had a cousin in Chicago, and wanted to know all about Chicago. I had played there frequently, of course, but Rebecca had never been to Chicago. She became restless as we chatted in Italian, a language she found impossible to grasp, though it was simpler than the French she’d studied at Barnard.