Read Online The Hoods by Harry Grey - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Harry Grey
Tags: Literature
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elementary course in the hardest soup school in the city.
Now we were entering the sophomore phase of our education. Our classrooms were the backyards, the cellars, the roofs, the market places, the river and the gutters of the East Side. We roamed the maze of streets, like jungle hunters seeking big game. We were curious about everything. We soaked in all sorts of information, experienced bizarre adventures. We carried black jacks of our own manufacture, made from the lead solder melted off the covers of milk cans. We waylaid prosperous-looking pedestrians on dark narrow streets.
We took a postgraduate course in sex, from a skilled and experienced teacher, Peggy the Bumehke.
After our bi-weekly delivery of “junk” from the Professor to the address on Mott Street, we would explore the streets of Chinatown, interested and entranced by the strange sights and smells. There we observed the habits and distinctive antics of the addicts to various narcotics.
Under the Professor's expert tutelage we learned the secrets and skills of many illegal professions. He initiated us into the soothing, dreamy pleasure of opium smoking. He supplied us with an assortment of guns and other lethal weapons necessary in the skilled art of committing mayhem.
We became more callous and hardened, and truly adept at acts of violence.
Cockeye Hymie had been practising driving on his brother's taxi-cab. He developed a skill in handling an automobile that was sheer wizardry. On many occasions we utilized this skill and his brother's hack, with the license plates removed, for a small heist. We developed a style all our own in the heist profession. We took our victim's pants off before we made our getaway. The newspapers headlined us as the young pants burglars. We were proud of our originality and the publicity. We became cocky and conceited. That was our undoing.
On a small-time drugstore heist which netted us $22.50, the proprietor immodestly ran out of his store into the street without his pants, and gave the alarm. In the getaway in Cockeye Hymie's brother's cab, with the police after us, we ran out of gas on Delancey Street. We leapt out of both doors and ran in all directions. We were too fast for the cop and sergeant who were pursuing us. Silently, I thanked Maxie for the vigorous physical training he had insisted on. It stood us in good stead. I heard shots. I thought we had all made a safe getaway.
Later, in the back of Gelly's candy store I got the sad news. Dominick was dead. He couldn't keep up with us. Little pudgy Dommie got a bullet in the back of his head. The police sergeant shot him. The precinct detectives rounded us all up. Maxie's uncle's influence with the Tammany district leader came in handy. We were allowed under custody, to attend poor Dommie's funeral. At the funeral parlor where Dommie was lying at rest, his parents and relatives gave us harsh and sullen looks. They muttered and cast imprecations upon us in Italian. In an undertone Patsy interpreted them for us. We attended the funeral mass at the church. The quiet, sorrowful moaning of poor Dommie's parents was heart-rending. When the priest walked all around poor Dommie with incense and blessed him, I felt a heavy cramp in my heart, as if it was tearing apart. My insides were numb with pain.
I couldn't cry.
From the church we followed poor Dommie out to Long Island to his grave. I watched as they put him in a hole. Everybody was weeping and praying as the priest blessed the grave and asked God to forgive poor Dommie for his sins.
On the ride back to New York, I tried to figure it out for myself.
Good old Dommie, laughing and joking only a few days ago, had been full of life, a nice smile on his face, when he called me, “Hey, Noodles.” Now he was lying cold in a box with a bullet in his head at the bottom of a hole. I couldn't figure it out. It was hard to understand I wouldn't see my friend Dommie again.
CHAPTER 7
The district leader did everything he could
Now we were entering the sophomore phase of our education. Our classrooms were the backyards, the cellars, the roofs, the market places, the river and the gutters of the East Side. We roamed the maze of streets, like jungle hunters seeking big game. We were curious about everything. We soaked in all sorts of information, experienced bizarre adventures. We carried black jacks of our own manufacture, made from the lead solder melted off the covers of milk cans. We waylaid prosperous-looking pedestrians on dark narrow streets.
We took a postgraduate course in sex, from a skilled and experienced teacher, Peggy the Bumehke.
After our bi-weekly delivery of “junk” from the Professor to the address on Mott Street, we would explore the streets of Chinatown, interested and entranced by the strange sights and smells. There we observed the habits and distinctive antics of the addicts to various narcotics.
Under the Professor's expert tutelage we learned the secrets and skills of many illegal professions. He initiated us into the soothing, dreamy pleasure of opium smoking. He supplied us with an assortment of guns and other lethal weapons necessary in the skilled art of committing mayhem.
We became more callous and hardened, and truly adept at acts of violence.
Cockeye Hymie had been practising driving on his brother's taxi-cab. He developed a skill in handling an automobile that was sheer wizardry. On many occasions we utilized this skill and his brother's hack, with the license plates removed, for a small heist. We developed a style all our own in the heist profession. We took our victim's pants off before we made our getaway. The newspapers headlined us as the young pants burglars. We were proud of our originality and the publicity. We became cocky and conceited. That was our undoing.
On a small-time drugstore heist which netted us $22.50, the proprietor immodestly ran out of his store into the street without his pants, and gave the alarm. In the getaway in Cockeye Hymie's brother's cab, with the police after us, we ran out of gas on Delancey Street. We leapt out of both doors and ran in all directions. We were too fast for the cop and sergeant who were pursuing us. Silently, I thanked Maxie for the vigorous physical training he had insisted on. It stood us in good stead. I heard shots. I thought we had all made a safe getaway.
Later, in the back of Gelly's candy store I got the sad news. Dominick was dead. He couldn't keep up with us. Little pudgy Dommie got a bullet in the back of his head. The police sergeant shot him. The precinct detectives rounded us all up. Maxie's uncle's influence with the Tammany district leader came in handy. We were allowed under custody, to attend poor Dommie's funeral. At the funeral parlor where Dommie was lying at rest, his parents and relatives gave us harsh and sullen looks. They muttered and cast imprecations upon us in Italian. In an undertone Patsy interpreted them for us. We attended the funeral mass at the church. The quiet, sorrowful moaning of poor Dommie's parents was heart-rending. When the priest walked all around poor Dommie with incense and blessed him, I felt a heavy cramp in my heart, as if it was tearing apart. My insides were numb with pain.
I couldn't cry.
From the church we followed poor Dommie out to Long Island to his grave. I watched as they put him in a hole. Everybody was weeping and praying as the priest blessed the grave and asked God to forgive poor Dommie for his sins.
On the ride back to New York, I tried to figure it out for myself.
Good old Dommie, laughing and joking only a few days ago, had been full of life, a nice smile on his face, when he called me, “Hey, Noodles.” Now he was lying cold in a box with a bullet in his head at the bottom of a hole. I couldn't figure it out. It was hard to understand I wouldn't see my friend Dommie again.
CHAPTER 7
The district leader did everything he could
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