"Come inside, Lieutenant," he said easily. "We can straighten this out, I'm sure."
The lieutenant followed Gennuario into the building and it seemed to David that they were gone forever. But ten minutes later, they came out, both smiling.
"All right, you guys," the lieutenant said. "It seems we made a big mistake.
Mr. Gennuario explained everything.
Let's go."
As quickly as they had come, the detectives disappeared.
David stood staring after them with an open mouth.
Needlenose sat silently on the wagon beside David as they turned into the stable.
"I tol' yuh everything was fixed," he said when they came out in the street.
David looked at him.
Fixed or not, this was as close as he wanted. Even the twenty-five dollars in his pocket wasn't worth it.
"I'm through," he said to Needlenose. "No more."
Needlenose laughed. "Yuh scared?"
"Damn right I’m scared.
There must be an easier way to make a living."
"If yuh find one," Needlenose said, "let me know". He laughed.
"Shocky's got a couple or Chinee girls over at his flat.
He says we can screw 'em tonight if we want."
David didn't answer.
"Sing Loo will be there," Needlenose said. "You know, the pretty little one, the dancer who shaves her pussy."
David hesitated, feeling the quick surge of excitement leap through him.
It was one o'clock by the big clock in the window of Goldfarb's Delicatessen when he turned the corner of his street. A police car was parked in front of the door.
There was a group of people surging around, peering curiously into the hallway.
A sudden fear ran through David.
Something had gone wrong. The police had come to arrest him.
For a moment, he felt like running in the opposite direction. But a compulsion drew him toward the house.
"What happened?" he asked a man standing on the edge of the crowd.
"I dunno," the man answered. He peered at him curiously. "I heard one of the cops say somebody was dying up there."
Suddenly, frantically, David pushed his way through the crowd into the house.
As he ran up the staircase toward the apartment on the third floor, he heard the scream.
His mother was standing in the doorway, struggling in the arms of two policemen.
"Chaim, Chaim!"
David felt his heart constrict.
"Mama," he called. "What happened?"
His mother looked at him with unseeing eyes.
"A doctor I call for, policemen I get," she said, then turned her face down the hallway toward the toilets.
"Chaim, Chaim!" She screamed again.
David turned and followed her gaze.
The door to one of the toilets stood open. His father sat there on the seat, leaning crazily against the wall, his eyes and mouth open, moisture trickling down into his gray beard.
"Chaim!" his mother screamed accusingly. "It was gas you told me you got. You didn't tell me you were coming out here to die."
4.
"So it is my fault his father dies before he can finish school?" Uncle Bernie said angrily. "Let him get a job and go nights if he wants to go so bad."
David sat on the edge of his chair and looked at his mother. He didn't speak.
"It's not charity I'm asking, Bernie," she said. "David wants a job. That's all I'm asking you for."
Norman turned and looked down at his nephew suspiciously.
"Maybe a job you'd like in my company as a vice-president, hah?"
David got to his feet angrily.
"I’m going out, Ma," he said. "Everything they said about him is true."
"Say about me?" his uncle shouted. "What do they say about me?"
David looked at him.