Everybody Goes to Jimmy's Read Online Free PDF Page A

way over.
    He said, “I’m supposed to tell you—” but his eyes went wide as he saw something behind me. It was so dramatic I thought he was playing with me, but he spun around and bolted down the street. I looked over my shoulder and damn near jumped out of my skin. Standing right behind me was an old woman in black giving me the evil eye as hard as she could. Her face was right up next to mine, and her breath was foul. She flicked her fingers at me, muttering something I couldn’t understand. I thought it was Italian. I knew she was cursing me and slipped my fingers into the knucks. She glared at me some more, then turned and stalked away.
    It took me a few seconds to shake off the chill she gave me. I waved down a cab and thought that the night was getting off to a strange start. I didn’t know the half of it.

Chapter Three
    It was around seven thirty when I got out of the cab and went back into the speak.
    We had seventeen customers—fifteen regulars, and two strangers at the bar—a little light for a weekday night. A couple of Dutch Schultz’s guys were in a booth, and Mercer Weeks was at the bar. They had no reason to like each other. I didn’t know Dutch’s guys by name, but Weeks dropped by most evenings. Weeks worked for Jacob Weiss. In fact, he was Weiss’s muscle and right-hand man. Everybody knew that Jacob the Wise didn’t do anything until he talked it over with Weeks. Word was about that Dutch was trying to horn in on Jacob’s numbers racket. That was their business, as long as Weeks and Dutch’s guys didn’t try to fight it out in my place. Everybody was welcome at Jimmy’s—crooks, cops, citizens, as long as they didn’t start anything. No guns, no fights. I nodded to Weeks as I passed him, and he nodded back. He knew the rules and wouldn’t do anything. I wasn’t so sure about the guys in the booth, but decided that they were just a couple of mugs who didn’t know from doughnuts about any plans Dutch might have had, and they weren’t going to start any trouble.
    I bought the place from Carl Spinoza in January, 1929. I can’t say that I really wanted to own a speakeasy, but I couldn’t continue doing what I had been doing. That was handling whatnot for A. R. and stealing trucks and cars for Meyer Lansky, as I mentioned. I also delivered booze for Lansky, Charlie Lucky, and Longy Zwillman over in Jersey.
    The reason I couldn’t keep doing what I had been doing was because you needed two good legs for that kind of work. Eventually, somebody’s going to try to catch you, and you’ve got to be able to outrun him. But on the night that Rothstein got shot, in the autumn of 1928, I tore up my right knee. I’ve told the story before. It comes down to this. I was where I wasn’t supposed to be and got scared and ran away. I ran so fast and reckless that I fell and tore apart some tendons or ligaments inside my right knee.
    After that night, I couldn’t take a step without a cane or a crutch. Eventually, my knee got stronger, and I got a brace to keep it from buckling beneath me, but my running days were over. As it happened, some associates and I had invested wisely in the 1919 World Series, so when I was forced to find a new line of work, I had the cash to buy Carl out. Spinoza’s was a fairly prosperous speak in midtown. Like a lot of places, it was easy to get to, but the booze was rotten. Carl would sell any kind of coffin varnish you could pour into a glass.
    When I took over, that changed. I made a deal with Lansky to buy the good stuff directly from him, and Jimmy Quinn’s sold the best booze at premium prices. We did great business. Less than a year later, the stock market crashed. Since then, we’d been doing OK. Most months, I was covering my nut and making a little money—not as much as before the crash, but I turned a profit. Like most people, I felt I was damn lucky