“You’re talking about the Warrick Brothers Gang?”
“Quiet, all right? Jeez, you want to get me capped right here?”
“It’s funny, Charlie, but I don’t see you as the gangster type.”
“Hey, it ain’t all rough stuff. I ain’t so big, sure, but neither was that Meyer Lansky.”
“Even Meyer Lansky was bigger than you.”
“I was making a point, is all. I got some skills, don’t think I don’t.”
“So why are the Warrick guys so mad at you?”
“I maybe said some things to some people. Hey, I could go for some soft-serve. You want to get me some soft-serve?”
I pressed my lips together for a moment and then said, “Sure. What flavor?”
“Vanilla. And don’t forget the jimmies. I like all them different colors. It makes it festive. Like a party in your mouth.”
“You got it.”
“And make it a big one,” he said.
I pushed away from the railing and got in line at the Kohr Bros. stand. I needed just then some time away from whiny little Charlie. Not that Charlie didn’t have anything to whine about, what with the mother he had waiting for him. But if he decided to stay on the lam, I’d have to give back the pile of plunder sitting in my drawer. On the other hand, considering the FBI’s keen interest, and what Charlie was intimating about his former running mates, it might be best for everybody if Charlie stayed out in the cold.
“You don’t like custard?” said Charlie after I brought him a cone nearly half his size.
“Whenever I get soft-serve it ends up dripping on my shoes.”
“You should buy a pair of sandals, that way it slips right through.”
“Look, Charlie,” I said. “What am I doing here? You sound like the last thing you want to do is to come home.”
“Yeah, I knows, but you know.”
“I know what?”
“It’s my mother. She says she wants me to say good-bye. She says it would make up for everything, she could see me one last time.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think I’m sick of running. And I ain’t living the life of Riley, you know?”
“Who the heck is Riley anyway?”
“Some guy who ain’t living in crappy week-to-week walk-ups and sweeping floors, who’s actually looking forward to retirement because he’s got Social Security coming, who ain’t waiting for a knock that ain’t about the rent or the rats, but about something worse.”
A father took his three sons over to a bench by the rail to eat their cones. The kids’ faces were smeared with chocolate, the youngest was crying about something, the middle was hitting the eldest, the father was ignoring them all and staring slack-jawed at the underage girls who strolled on by. Ah, fatherhood.
“Are you going to be able to take care of me?” said Charlie.
“I don’t know.”
“My mother said you could.” He took a wet lick of his cone. “She said you would work it out.”
“I don’t know if I can. It’s a little more complicated than she might have thought.” I glanced at the family. “Let’s take a walk on the beach,” I said.
“I don’t want to go to the beach,” said Charlie. “I hate getting sand in the socks. It chafes my toes.”
“A bit more privacy might be the ticket, don’t you think?”
Charlie did his swivel-head thing, checked out the father and three boys on one side of us, a young couple on the other. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
We took the wooden stairs to the beach. On the way down, Charlie tripped and lurched forward. As he grabbed hold of the metal rail, the mound of vanilla atop his cone tumbled over and splattered onto the step.
“Ah, jeez,” he said. “My ice cream. I hate when that happens.”
He stood there, staring forlornly down at his now-empty cone and the white Rorschach blob at his feet. He looked right then, with the light streaming from the boardwalk behind and leaving him a round, bald, silhouette, like an overgrown toddler, about to break into tears.
“Want me to get you another one?”
“Would you? Really? Really?”
“I’ll meet you at the water’s edge.”
Charlie was waiting for me just above the reach of the tide, in front of the stone jetty. The sea was black, with lines of phosphorescent foam rising and falling in the darkness. Behind us the sounds of the boardwalk turned tinny, as if being played from an old transistor radio.
“Why is the FBI still chasing you, Charlie?” I said after I gave him the cone and he sucked down half of it while staring at the ocean.
“Maybe something I done a long time ago.”
“Something with the Warrick gang?”
“No,” he said. “Something from before. When I was still legit and trying to prove myself to my mother. Something what I done with four of my pals I grew up with. Just something that we pulled.”
“A little prank?”
“I guess yous could call it that.”
“When?”
“Almost thirty years ago. It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because whatever I do, I won’t rat out the old crew. The Warrick guys, they can rot in hell. But the old gang, they’s more family than family, if you understand.”
“Tell me about them.”
“What’s to tell? The five of us, we grew up together.”
“Like brothers.”
“Sure we was. One of them was Ralphie Meat, what lived just a few streets down from me. Bigger than anyone you ever saw, hard as tacks. And that rumor what gave him his name, it wasn’t a rumor. He was the terror of his gym class. All those kids with their little weenies taking showers with this huge hairy thing waving in their faces. It was enough to put the whole class of them in therapy for years. Ralphie Meat.”
“Is he still around?”
“Who knows? Who knows about any of them? There was also Hugo from Ralph’s same street, a real troublemaker, one of those guys who was always scheming a way to slip a fiver out of the other guy’s pocket. And Joey Pride, who lived in the border area between our neighborhood and Frankford. Joey was car crazy and certifiable – I guess you needed to be back then as a black kid hanging with a white crew. But it was Teddy Pravitz, the Jewish kid from across the alley, what made us more than we had any right to be. The thing that we done, it was him what convinced us we could.”
“Could what?”
“Pull it off.”
“Pull off what?”
“I can’t talk about it,” said Charlie.
“Come on, Charlie. What the hell did you pull?”
“Listen, it ain’t important. I’m not spilling about any of this. I got loyalties, you know. And secrets, too, dark ones, if you catch the drift. Whatever they want, they don’t get that.”
“I talked with the D.A. They’d give you something for flipping on what’s left of the Warrick gang, but the feds are apparently looking for something else.”
“I bet they are. And let’s just say whatever it is they’re looking for, I can get my hands on it.”
“On what?”
“Does the what matter? I knows where it is, the thing they’s still looking for.”
“If that’s true, I might be able to work something out.”
“Would it let me come home and say good-bye to my mother without getting my ass blown off or me dying in jail?”
“I could try to get you a deal and protection, if that’s what you want. Maybe even set you up someplace in Arizona with a new life.”
“Arizona?”
“It’s nice there.”
“Hot.”
“But it’s a dry heat.”
“Clear up my sinuses.”
“That it will.”
“I miss her.”
“Your mother?”
He turned to me, and it was strange, the way this old man could appear, in the shadows, like the youngest of children. The lights from the boardwalk collected in his eyes and then began to roll down one cheek.