JC2 The Raiders Page 5

  Word got around. Maurie Cohen was back from down south. Prob'ly carrying a fortune he'd taken off the rednecks. No? Well, the goyim could be bastards. Anyway, he was back, in a good suit, a sharp guy, a wise guy. Guys could use a man like Maurie.

  A little fellow like him could not work as a legbreaker. But he was sharp. He had a head for figures. He was honest. Well ... you could trust him. He was given a job as a numbers runner, then as a numbers book. He made money. He had everything a man could want: nice clothes, a comfortable apartment, a girl when he wanted her ... Some good years. Then He had suffered nightmares. At last a dream. The Christians, in their smarts and beauty, imposed Prohibition on a nation that was going to drink, one way or another. A whole new business! Numbers was suddenly small potatoes. And Maurice Cohen was smart enough to see it.

  In a small way at first. Then bigger and smarter. Smuggling the stuff in from ships or across the Canadian border was a fool's game. Make it here! You could make gin easy, and beer easier. It could be done by anybody. Of course, where there was real money there would always be thieves, guys that skimmed money off the take. To make money go where it was supposed to, you needed a trusty guy who could keep books — and cook them, too, when you wanted him to.

  That was for Maurie. He had a head for figures. He started in New York. But the Eye-tyes began to take over. Sicilians. Maurie looked around. He'd been around and knew the country. Guy like him would be valued anywhere. In 1922 Maurie went to Detroit to talk to a guy named Firetop — so known for his red hair. They made a deal, and Maurice Cohen became a member of the Purple Gang.

  Prestige. Everybody had heard of the Purple Gang. In Detroit and Toledo, the guy who kept books for the Purple Gang was somebody. He was forty years old, and suddenly everybody wanted to know him. Guys wanted to know him. Broads wanted to know him.

  He was the guy who toted the revenues and payouts. To pay him, they gave him a piece of a numbers book. The guy who worked it cheated. When Maurie reported that to Firetop, the guy disappeared into Lake St. Clair.

  Maurie counted the shipments and the bucks. He never knew, or professed not to know, what happened to guys who shorted. He knew he didn't see them again. He was never tempted to count wrong. His reputation was that he never shorted. He cooked the books, sure, but he cooked them to rook other guys, never the Purple Gang.

  Trouble was, it was small-time. He wore handsome suits. He wore spats over his shiny patent-leather shoes. His gray fedoras were of beaver felt. Wearing no more celluloid collars, he now wore silk collars and paid twenty-five cents apiece for them. He was shaved by a barber every morning. He had his hair trimmed twice a week. He lived in a comfortable apartment and listened to a six-tube console radio that worked on socket power and required no batteries. He smoked dime cigars and drank real Scotch smuggled over from Canada. He drove a 1926 Chevrolet.

  Small-time. He could not afford to buy a house in the suburbs. He could not afford a new Cadillac or Packard, the kind other guys drove. He didn't take vacations in Florida or sail to Europe. He bought girls when he wanted them but didn't feel he could afford to keep one, not a classy one anyway.

  The worst thing was, he took orders, and he knew where he'd stand if he made any kind of a mistake — dead at worst, on the street at least. They liked him. Sure. He was a good boy. An errand boy.

  Oh, they'd sell him a piece of something, sure. But only for cash. When you bought a piece of the action, there was no such thing as time payments.

  In 1927 they made him manager of a carpet joint on the road between Detroit and Toledo and just across the Ohio line — a roadhouse called The Clock, where a customer could buy a drink, gamble, and take a girl upstairs. It was called a carpet joint because it was fancy enough to have carpet on the floor. It attracted a high-class clientele, including Harry Daugherty and Will Hays, the late President Harding's attorney general and postmaster general. They came to The Clock because they were assured that Maurie Cohen, the manager, was an absolutely trustworthy guy. Hays was now the czar of the movies, responsible for the nation's morals. His sexual predilections were so bizarre that Maurie could never persuade a girl to see him twice, no matter what he paid.

  Maurie made bigger money as manager of The Clock. He bought his Packard at last. But he was still an employee.

  Toledo had a fine burlesque house downtown. Maurie liked it. Coming out of it one night, he happened to walk past a movie theater where a Western was playing. The star was a handsome cowboy named Nevada Smith. Even in poster artwork, the face looked familiar.

  Maurie went inside and watched the picture. It was Max Sand! No question. Nevada Smith was Max Sand!

  That night Maurie wrote him a letter. He was discreet. He didn't use the name Max Sand. He just said he wondered if Nevada Smith remembered his old friend Maurie Cohen.

  2

  Max remembered. Maurie received a note three or four weeks later, saying sure he remembered, and someday when he was in the area he'd stop by and say hello.

  The man in the camel coat and the white homburg looked like a gangster. By his clothes. The resemblance ended there. He was tall and lean and tanned. He was Max Sand.

  Maurie hurried across the room. "Max ..." he said quietly as he took his hand. "Nevada Smith. Congratulations. You've done damned well!"

  Nevada glanced around. "Looks like you're doin' okay yourself."

  Maurie shrugged. "Well ... C'mon. Have a drink. Have — What can I do for you?"

  What Maurie could do for Nevada was not the question, it turned out. Before the evening was over, Maurie had told Nevada how dolefully precarious his position was and had put the touch on his old friend for money to buy a piece of The Clock.

  "You need a stake," said Nevada dryly.

  Maurie nodded.

  "How much?"

  Maurie shrugged.

  Twenty thousand dollars was a lot of money in 1929. Maurie swore he would pay it back. It was enough to buy The Clock: all of it, not just a piece.

  3

  Maurie made payments to Nevada over the years, but it took him fifteen years to repay the twenty thousand dollars. Only two years after the loan was made, he repaid the favor — even if Max never knew.

  Nevada met Maurie on the station platform. Maurie had been in Texas but never in California, and he found the sun blinding and the heat oppressive. Nevada led him, not into shade, but to a magnificent Duesenberg roadster. With the top off and the sun beating on their heads, they rode behind a chauffeur who drove them through palm-lined streets and up into barren hills studded with gorgeous mansions.

  Nevada's house was not pretentious, yet was the home of a movie star.

  His wife was there: a woman conspicuously overwhelmed by her circumstances and not really happy with them. She was almost as old as Nevada and was dark-skinned and pudgy, with a weathered face that said this luxurious life was new and troubling for her. She seemed not to know there was such a thing as a swimsuit and swam innocently nude in the pool behind the house, while Maurie and Nevada sat at poolside and talked about old times.

  After dinner, when the woman was washing the dishes and going to bed, Nevada and Maurie sat in the living room over cigars and more whiskey and talked. Nevada told Maurie about a problem he faced.

  "Y' remember what happened to Fatty Arbuckle?" Nevada asked.

  "Charged with rape," said Maurie.

  "Yeah. He wasn't guilty of it, but it ruint his career."

  "Don't tell me that you —"

  "Yeah," Nevada grunted. "I never even seen the girl. But her mother claims she's pregnant and says I'm the daddy. Worst part, she's just fifteen years old. Hell, even if they can't prove a thing, just the story gettin' out will prob'ly be the end of Nevada Smith."

  "Sounds like extortion to me."

  "Right. They're askin' fer money."

  "That's a dirty shame, Max. What's her name?"

  "Emily. Emily White. Her ma is Ruby White."

  Maurie shook his head. "A dirty shame," he repeated. />
  The next morning Maurie made half a dozen telephone calls, putting the word out that the bookkeeper for the Purple Gang was in town and wanted to talk to somebody about a personal problem. Several men in Los Angeles were glad to do something for a representative of the Purple Gang.

  Three days later Maurie was at lunch with Nevada at the Brown Derby and was called from their table to take a telephone call. His caller told him they had confirmed what they suspected, that Ruby White was using the threat of a paternity suit or even a statutory rape charge to extort money from Nevada Smith. She had threatened Francis X. Bushman the same way, and he had given her money to get rid of her.

  "Want us to take care of it?" asked the man on the phone.

  "I'd appreciate it."

  "Consider it done," said the man.

  The next morning's newspapers carried the story of a fatal accident. Ruby Smith, drinking and driving, had taken a curve too fast on the Coast Highway. Her Buick had crashed through a guard rail and rolled down a rocky slope and into the ocean. She and her daughter were killed.

  Maurie didn't tell Max what he had done. If Max guessed, he didn't mention it. The thing was done, there was nothing he could do about it, and it was not Max's way to do a lot of talking about what was done and couldn't be changed.

  4

  Saturdays were big times at The Clock. People came early and stayed late. A third of all the whiskey and beer sold in a week was sold on Saturday nights. The girls made most of their week's money on Saturday nights.

  Just before midnight, Saturday, November 21, 1931, three men pushed their way into Maurie's office.

  "You lyin', cheatin' Jew bum!" one of them yelled.

  And then the beating began. He was too small to struggle against it. When the men left, he lay unconscious on the floor. His nose, jaw, and a cheekbone were broken. Also two ribs.

  Six days passed before detectives could question him in the hospital.

  "Okay, Cohen, who did it?"

  Maurie shook his head. "Don' know," he muttered through his teeth. His jaw was wired shut.

  "Th' hell you don't!"

  Maurie shook his head again. "Huh-uh."

  "Omertà, huh," the detective grunted. The cops were starting to talk in Italian terms. They spoke of the Black Hand and used the word omertà, meaning code of silence.

  Maurie was able to smile faintly. "Me? Omertà?"

  "You c'n learn their tricks," said the detective. "I guess you have."

  Of course he knew the guys that beat him. What he didn't know was why.

  He found out when Firetop came to see him. The big redheaded man sat down beside his bed, took his hand, and explained —

  "It was a mistake," he said. "Somebody told us you were sellin' beer somebody else cooked. Not true, we know now. Too late, but we know now. We'll make it up to you some way, Maurie. We'll take care of you right."

  Maurie nodded and smiled painfully. " 'S okay," he muttered.

  "And you've kept your mouth shut," said Firetop. Then he grinned and shook his head. "Bad choice of words, hey? But you didn't tell the cops who did it. We won't forget that, Maurie. That's somethin' we'll never forget. There'll always be guys that'll remember that. You'll always be taken care of."

  What Firetop said was true. Maurice Cohen was from then on a favored man, the man who took a savage beating he didn't deserve and didn't squeal on the guys who did it to him. Firetop soon went away to serve a life sentence. The Purple Gang was broken up. But there were always guys who would remember. There would always be something for Maurie.

  5

  One thing they couldn't save him from. The Toledo detectives were furious. They knew who had beaten him. They had wanted those leg-breakers for a long time but could never make a case against them. Now they had beaten a man who could identify them, and he wouldn't do it.

  On another Saturday night, January 23, 1932, The Clock was raided by state Prohibition agents. Maurie was taken out of his carpet joint in handcuffs and lodged in the Lucas County jail. The Clock had operated for years without a raid, but the Toledo detectives had demanded this raid. Selling liquor was against the law. Few were arrested anymore, since Prohibition was likely to be repealed soon, but it was a handy tool occasionally when somebody wanted to embarrass a politician or punish a guy like Maurice Cohen.

  On an icy day in February, Maurie — again in handcuffs and trembling with fear — was led inside the high stone walls of the notorious Ohio Penitentiary. He had been only eighteen years old when he entered the Plaquemine prison camp: young enough and resilient enough to survive. Now he was fifty, and he was not certain he would live to the end of his three-year sentence.

  As at Plaquemine, the first day was the worst. The warden himself described the intake process as a day that made grown men cry. Maurie would remember spending six or seven hours stark naked. Issuing clothes was the last step in the process, and the new inmates were herded naked from shower to barber to doctor to dentist to fingerprinting to mug shot to indoctrination lecture, with long waits at each station. Finally, in their uniforms, the new convicts were marched across the yard and into the bewildering labyrinth of the huge prison. They ate their first meal in the dining hall. They were marched to a cell block and assigned to a cell.

  Maurie compared what he had to endure here to what he'd had to endure in the Louisiana camp more than thirty years ago. In some ways this confinement was easier, in other ways harder. He wore no leg irons, but the convicts were organized into companies and marched as companies from the cell blocks to the cafeteria, to work, to the cafeteria again, back to work, to the cafeteria again, and back to the cell block. Only with a written pass signed by a guard could a prisoner cross the yard alone on his way to the infirmary, the library, or the chapel.

  At Maurie's age, no one wanted him for a "wife," so he was not assaulted. He was not the only Jew in the prison. In fact there were so many that a rabbi held services in the ecumenical prison chapel on Saturday mornings. His work assignment was the noisy little factory where the convicts made license plates. He sat at a bench six hours a day, stuffing license plates into brown envelopes.

  He wore what the convicts called a hickory shirt, made from a fabric so coarse and rough that it must have been mattress ticking, oversized blue jeans that he had to roll up, a cap, and black shoes made inside the prison. The shirt must be buttoned to the collar; that was the rule. Except when locked in his cell, every man had to keep his cap set squarely on his head.

  He lived in a cell meant for two men but housing four. From their stations and while walking their rounds, the guards could peer through the chain-link cell doors at all times; and, unlike the Louisiana guards, these did not leave the prisoners alone all night while they went off somewhere and slept. It was a rule that prisoners must not masturbate, and to be sure they didn't the rule required them to sleep with their hands outside their blankets. When a guard spotted a man with his hands under the blankets he would bang on the cell door with his baton and order him to get his hands out. One of the men in Maurie's cell was caught masturbating and spent ten days in solitary for it.

  After a little time, Maurie knew he would survive, but he was not absolutely sure he wanted to. Weeks and months of his life passed in utter monotony, wasted and never to be recovered. He did not suffer from systematized cruelty but from constantly oppressive discipline, total want of privacy, and austerity so severe that it dispirited even men who had never known much of comfort or amenities.

  Firetop arrived to begin his life sentence. Maurie saw him occasionally but could almost never find a chance to say a word to him, since they were not in the same company or the same cell block.

  When he had served one year of his term, he appeared before the parole board. In the argot of the prison, the board "flopped" him — denied him parole. They thought of him as a gangster. Besides, the Toledo police recommended he be kept in prison till the end of his term.

  That is why he was surprised when he was granted parole in
1934, with a year of his term remaining. The board reasoned that it was pointless to keep a man in prison for violating a law that had been repealed.

  Maurice Cohen never reported to his parole officer. He went directly to Detroit. The Purple Gang was no more, but that didn't mean there was no gang. Maurie was welcomed home with a wild party, at which it was announced he was the new manager of a new carpet joint in Flint. He was Maurie, he was the guy who hadn't squealed and had even done time in the Ohio pen because he wouldn't squeal. There had to be something good for a guy like that.

  Maurie had an announcement too. From now on, he told his friends, his name was Morris Chandler.

  6

  He was always glad to hear from Max. This time he was glad to have the chance to do him a favor.

  They had seen each other from time to time over the years, as Chandler moved from managing the carpet joint in Flint to managing others in various parts of the country. For eight years he managed one in Saratoga Springs during the racing season, then moved to Fort Lauderdale and managed one there during the winter. Max visited both of them.

  More and more, the Sicilians took over everything the gangs had operated. It made no difference to Chandler. If anything, the new managers had even more respect for a man who had kept his mouth shut. With them, omertà was a matter of honor, the essential quality of every man they trusted and accepted, an essential foundation stone of their organization. Morris Chandler would not become a "made man," would not be inducted into their society, but they accepted him as a man of honor and courage, whom they could trust.