Free Everybody Goes to Jimmy's by Michael Mayo Page A

at a two-top with the Professor. She was a mannish-looking woman who always wore tweed coats and skirts, no matter what the weather, and a beret. She came to my place because she loved nothing better than listening to criminals and lowlifes and cops tell stories of their adventures. She’d hang on every word, and she was usually good for a round or two if the stories were really depraved and lurid. I never heard her called anything but the Professor, and I don’t know where she taught, or if she even taught at all.
    Weeks was one of those rawboned guys who always seemed too long for his clothes at the wrists and ankles. He had a sharply angled, bony face, and he kept his graying black hair short on top and shaved on the sides. He wore cheap dark suits and heavy brogans. He was the enforcer for the loan-sharking side of Jacob Weiss’s policy racket. Word was that Weeks would stomp deadbeats with those big brogans, and after he’d done a job on a guy, there was no cleaning them up, so he bought the cheapest ones he could find and had a dozen shoeboxes in his closet.
    At least that’s what they said. Personally, I never borrowed any money from Jacob Weiss or anybody else. I’ve been lucky. At the times when I’ve had the need for large amounts of cash, I’ve always been able to steal it.
    Weeks and the Professor had nearly empty glasses in front of them. His was rye and ginger. She drank vodka in honor of her Soviet comrades, she said, because she was a member of the Russian Mutual Aid Society, or some such. At the time, she was the only person who ordered the stuff. We got it special for her. She raised a hand to Frenchy to order another round for the table. I figured Weeks must have been spinning quite a tale. Frenchy brought their drinks and a brandy for me.
    Weeks took a pouch of tobacco and papers out of his breast pocket and rolled a slow, careful smoke.
    â€œI noticed that a couple Dutch’s guys were in earlier tonight, Lulu and Landau,” he said, and I realized he’d had more to drink than usual. “Was it business?”
    I shook my head. I’d never seen him like that in my place before.
    â€œThey didn’t ask you to handle Schultz’s numbers?”
    â€œOf course not, that would be nuts.”
    â€œYou sure? Jacob might be interested in making an offer.”
    â€œThis street’s already taken, isn’t it? Somebody’s running numbers in the bakery around the corner. I thought that was you and Weiss.”
    â€œIt is,” he said, nodding. “I was just thinking, maybe, you know, something different.” It took him a try or two to fire up a kitchen match with his thumbnail to light his smoke.
    Nobody ever explained to me why they called it “policy.” It was just a rigged pick-three numbers game. I never understood why it was so popular, either, but it sure was. The way it worked was you chose any three numbers and you bet on that combination. Your bet could be as little as a penny. I don’t know what the top limit was in Weiss’s game. But say you bet that penny. If your numbers came up, you won six dollars. Now, you don’t exactly need to be a genius to figure that the odds are 999 to 1, and the payout is 600 to 1.
    Of course, Weiss had a lot of overhead. People played their numbers all over the city at shoeshine stands and grocery stores and dress shops and laundries. Jacob had kids who’d go into the tenement apartments where women couldn’t get out or didn’t want to be seen betting their pennies. There were runners who moved the money and betting slips, and bookies and bankers and shop owners who got their cut. The winning number combination was something that was published in the papers every day and, supposedly, couldn’t be fixed, like financial statistics from the treasury, or the win, place, show numbers at a particular horseracing track. I’m pretty sure that Jacob Weiss’s