espi•o•nage /n [F espionage.] the act of obtaining information clandestinely. Applies to act of collecting military and industrial data about one nation or business for the benefit of another.
Loo-Loo also looked up clandestinely. Which made his heart thump even faster.
The phone rang. Stunned out of Crown Heights, Larry Sloan picked up. It was the producer demanding to know: “How many pages?”
“I haven’t counted. Leave me alone, Roger. I’m trying to work.”
“Well, work fast. We’ve got another project coming up. You could be right for it, Larry. No promises.”
“Want to tell me now?” Larry asked.
“We’ll talk about it,” Roger said, dangling the invisible carrot with which Larry was so familiar.
“Goodbye,” Larry said.
“Don’t go anywhere. Pages, okay? Later.”
Even before school let out for the summer, some June days of 1953 could be stifling at P.S. 189, this being the era before everything in the city was routinely air-conditioned.
On such blazing days, school ended early, releasing to the damp heat Loo-Loo and a couple of his inner-circle pals, Teddy Newman and Lester Dank. They hightailed it across Lincoln Terrace Park to the Creamflake, in the cause of a guaranteed gratis charlotte russe for each.
The coveted charlotte russe consisted of a slab of sponge cake set in a little white cardboard cup, topped with whipped cream and a ceremonious glazed cherry — a particular favorite of the chunkier Lester. As the boys entered, Al Scharfsky sized up the troop and ordered Manya, the Czech refugee beauty with the visible gold tooth who worked behind the counter, to give the boys what they wanted. Manya did.
Manya always wore a tight sweater, making it hard for Loo-Loo and his friends to keep their eyes off the cushiony outlines. Whenever Manya saw the boys staring, she smiled, and her gold incisor would catch the light in Slavic appreciation.
As instructed, she now gave Loo-Loo and Lester and Teddy a charlotte russe. Then Al asked his son’s two pals to take a hike because he needed to talk to Loo-Loo privately. This was unusual, but the boys left, their faces smeared with whipped cream as they stole a last look at Manya’s majestic sweater.
“What’d I do, Pop?”
“Nothing. Come in the back, we got a job for you.”
“We” meant Pop and Mr. Horn, who never talked much. The two men moved to the end of a long butcher-block worktable, motioning for Loo-Loo to come close. Back by the ovens, the Russians turned to watch.
Al Scharfsky lit up a Chesterfield and took a deep drag. He spoke in a muted tone, with exhaled smoke punctuating his words. “You know the Union Bakery?”
“Yeah.”
Al reached into the secret petty cash drawer under the butcher block and extracted a five-dollar bill. Loo-Loo knew about the drawer because it was where his father and Mr. Horn kept a gun in case of a robbery.
“Take this and go to the Union Bakery,” said Al, handing over the fiver to Loo-Loo. “Buy a chocolate layer cake. Don’t tell them who you are or where you’re from. Just give them the money and bring back a chocolate layer cake.”
“The Union is our competitor, right? Can I go in there?”
“Sure you can. Just don’t say nothing.”
“But why, Pop?”
Mr. Horn — in charge of cakes, after all — chimed in. “Because we need to know what they’re putting into the layer cakes,” said the man who didn’t say much. “Understand? It’s business.”
“But what if they find out that you sent me?”
Al placed a fatherly hand on his boy’s shoulder. “They’re not gonna find out, bright boy, because you’re not gonna say nothing. Just buy the cake. Is that so hard?”
“No,” said Loo-Loo. He liked being called bright boy. “I thought you said the Union is owned by the mob.”
“I didn’t say. I only heard.”
“They’re gonna know where I’m from.”
“No. They don’t know who the hell you are,” said Al. “You’re some kid buying a layer cake. Now hurry, before they sell out.”
All eyes were on Loo-Loo. Al, Mr. Horn, and the Russians were studying him, assessing his bravery. Especially the Russians, immigrants being naturally curious about matters of risk.
Al said, “You can keep the change, Loo-Loo. After you do it, that is.”
Mr. Horn inquired, “You ain’t a sissy, are you?”
With the fiver deep in his pants pocket, Loo-Loo proceeded up Utica toward Eastern Parkway — past Chudow’s radio repair shop, past the chicken store, past the fruit market.
At Union Street, a hotness crawled across his chest. It felt like the prickly heat rash he sometimes got in August, but this was only June.
Espionage! They were asking him to commit espionage. Loo-Loo, a bright boy, was about to procure secrets from the competitor and deliver said intelligence to the Creamflake.
Wasn’t this kind of thing against the law? Wasn’t it punishable by J. Edgar Hoover and his federal authorities, who had sent Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg to the electric chair? And what about that higher court in the sky that Al and Dotty had talked about when Loo-Loo was little?
At that moment, he caught sight of McEntee, the huge cop of the neighborhood. He was ambling down Utica with a bunch of grapes in one hand and a peach in the other. He was always eating something he got from the storekeepers for free. Loo-Loo jaywalked to the other side, trying not to look suspicious.
What if McEntee asked him where he was going? Would Loo-Loo confess? Kids could go to jail. The city was getting tough on juvenile delinquents. Loo-Loo had seen plenty of reform schools in the movies. Full of delinquents, mostly Irish kids who would beat the crap out of you if you looked at them funny. Especially if your name was something like Loo-Loo.
Loo-Loo passed Union Street now, and found himself in the repeat line of little shops. Then the big sign over the street like a movie marquee: Union Bakery. Loo-Loo dragged his heels over the pavement, shuffling forward. He didn’t want to move, but he was somehow moving anyhow.
What if it was true that gangsters had taken over the Union? Gangsters would know the minute Loo-Loo walked in that he was up to no good, that he was a spy for the Creamflake.
They’d grab him right there, take him in the back of the bakery, and tie him up, make him talk. So you won’t talk, huh? Hey, Tony, get a hot coal out of the oven and let’s burn a hole in his freakin’ head. Or else they’d stick the spout of the doughnut machine in his ear and press the lever, filling his skull with strawberry jelly. They did things like that, these gangsters. Loo-Loo had heard the stories, he’d watched the Kefauver hearings. And didn’t he faithfully study the crime blotter in the Daily Mirror, just the same as Al himself did during his long stays in the can?
But even if the Union guys weren’t gangsters, Loo-Loo reasoned, he was still doing something really wrong in buying their cake — clandestinely!
So when J. Edgar Hoover sat Loo-Loo Scharfsky down on Old Sparky, would the electrodes function properly? Or would smoke come billowing out of his head? Say — how about if Loo-Loo managed to escape to Coney Island and hide out in room 623 at the Half Moon Hotel? Would somebody toss him out the window, making it look like he did the old brain-dive?