by his ambassadors-at-large (for Shtrudel and Turtletaub had never gotten over their shellacking), as indispensable.
I had become a person to be reckoned with on the East Side while at the same time enjoying carte blanche in the uptown haunts of the sultans of capital crime. Some of these establishments you entered through cellar doors with spyholes or a meat locker in the rear of a butcher shop; others operated brazenly under the averted eye of the law. Among the latter was Dutch Schultz’s Embassy Club, where I once saw the Dutchman himself drag Francis X. Bushman out from under Vilma Banky’s table, while Helen Morgan swayed on the bandstand in a lavender spot. I suppose it turned my head a bit, the rubbing elbows with celebrity. After all, Waxey and his boys had the trappings of an organization that was here to stay; they were professionals, whereas Naf the Sport’s outfit was a fly-by-night sideshow by comparison, and the Lower East Side was Broadway’s dirty backyard.
What’s more, despite the advantages I had personally put in his way, Naftali Kupferman’s fortunes were in decline. He was mortgaged to the eyeballs from trying to maintain his stake in the great vertical combine that was bootlegging. His payoffs to the Tammany satraps, the municipal judges and district attorneys, were eating up the revenue from his other rackets, and his trespassing into territories outside his control had prompted rumblings throughout the fragile alliances of the underworld. As a consequence, beyond bankruptcy he was worried about becoming the target of a gang war he couldn’t hope to survive. From the vantage of my own mobility I sort of enjoyed watching him squirm, but I never forgot what I owed his largess. Still, with a personality that fluctuated between peacock posturing and hand-wringing despair, Naftali was never easy to warm to. The nine-iron he wielded sometimes like a scepter, sometimes a popgun, he now leaned on like an invalid’s walking stick, and there were rumors that his syphilis was entering a dangerous stage.
While his moodiness was not apt to inspire sympathy, even less endearing were the remarks he and his lieutenants made to the effect that Kid Karp had outgrown their humble company: “The Kid has bigger latkes to fry,” and so on. I made an effort to reassure them that I was still their boy, though they were right, of course; the old ghetto had become as constricting to me as Alrightniks Row. Then Naf let it be known that he’d recently raised his protection rates, and the businesses that he’d once let slide he now felt compelled to dun for welshed payments. This included Karp’s Ice Castle, which particular concern was still being difficult and needed to be taught a lesson.
“You understand this is nothing personal, Kid,” he assured me, his sleepy eye weeping a nacreous matter, and while I was perfectly aware I was being tested, I told him I understood. Then he said he wouldn’t think of letting anyone else do the job.
For maybe the first time in my life I asked myself if I had a conscience; I concluded that I apparently did not. Naturally I vacillated, but this was mostly due to my resentment at having my loyalty called into question. With Dago’s guarantee that there was always a place for me in Waxey’s bunch, I had a good mind to switch allegiances on the spot. But something in me didn’t like to burn bridges; Naftali was my original benefactor, and what would it cost me to win back his respect? I confess I’d thought that arson as a means of persuasion had gone out with thumbscrews and iron maidens; the businesses themselves were anyway more likely to anticipate the gangs in torching their property, “Jewish lightning” having been epidemic in the neighborhood for generations. My father had insurance in any case; he wouldn’t be ruined, and wasn’t the cankered old wooden Castle an accident waiting to happen? I’d be doing him a favor, after which he could reconstruct the place according to modern specifications. Moreover, Naf was right: He did need to be taught a lesson; and besides, I’d never lit a really big fire before.
NAFTALI ASSIGNED PRETTY PINSKY, the gang’s resident arson mechanic (his scalded face his best credential), and Morris Baumzweig to accompany me. Since the Ice Castle’s personnel worked late and started early, we had only a brief interval in which to do our business with impunity. Pretty and Morris the Worm, his nickname derived from