Billy Bathgate Read Online Free PDF Page B

his enterprise was an independent kingdom of his own law, not society’s, and that it was all the same to him whatever was legal or illegal, he would run things the way he thought they ought to be run, and fuck woe to anybody who got in his way.
    So there you see the heart and soul of what we were, in that moment in the history of the Bronx, and you would never know from these dirty skinny boys of encrusted noses and green teeth that there were such things as school and books and a whole civilization of attendant adults paling into insubstance under the bright light of the Depression. Least of all from me. And then one day, I remember it was particularly steamy, so hot in July that the weeds along the spear fence pointed to the ground and visible heat waves rose from the cobblestone, all the boys were sitting in an indolent row along the warehouse wall and I stood across the narrow street in the weeds and rocks overlooking the tracks and demonstrated my latest accomplishment, the juggling of a set of objects of unequal weight, a Galilean maneuver involving two rubber balls, a navel orange, an egg, and a black stone, wherein the art of the thing is in creating a flow nevertheless, maintaining the apogee from a kind of rhythm of compensating throws, and it is a trick of such consummate discipline that the better it is done the easier and less remarkable it looks to the uninitiated. So I knew that I was not only the juggler but the only one to appreciate what the juggler was doing, and after a while I forgot those boys and stood looking into the hot gray sky while assorted objects rose and fell through my line of vision like a system of orbiting planets. I was juggling my own self as well in a kind of matching spiritual feat, performer and performed for, and so, entranced, had no mind for the rest of the world as for instance the LaSalle coupé that came around the corner of 177thStreet and Park Avenue and immediately pulled up to the curb in front of a hydrant and sat there with its motor running, nor of the Buick Roadmaster with three men that came next around the corner and drove past the warehouse doors and pulled up at the corner of 178th Street nor finally of the big Packard that came around the corner and rolled to a stop directly in front of the warehouse to block from my view, if I had been looking, all the boys slowly standing now and brushing the backs of their pants, while a man got out from the front right-hand door and then opened, from the outside, the right rear door, through which emerged in a white linen double-breasted suit somewhat wilted, with the jacket misbuttoned, and a tie pulled down from his shirt collar and a big handkerchief in his hand mopping his face, once a boy known to the neighborhood as Arthur Flegenheimer, the man known to the world as Dutch Schultz.
    Of course I am lying that I did not see it happening because I saw it all, being gifted with extraordinary peripheral vision, but I pretended I was not aware he stood there with his elbows on the car roof and watched with a smile on his face a juggling kid with mouth slightly open and eyes rolled skyward like a beatific boy angel in adoration of his Lord. And then I did something brilliant, I glanced out of my orbit across the hot street and let my face register ordinary human astonishment, to the effect of omigod it’s him standing there in the flesh and watching me , and at the same time continued the pistonlike movement of my arms, while one by one my miniature planets, the two balls, the navel orange, the egg, and the stone, after a farewell orbit, plumed out into space, and went soaring in equidistant intervals over the fence to disappear down into the New York Central chute of railroad tracks behind me. And there I stood with my palms up and empty and my gaze transfixed in theatrical awe, which to tell the truth was a good part of what I felt, while the great man laughed and applauded, and glanced at the henchman beside him to encourage