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Survive & Thrive
MUSHY’S PERSONA

J Quinn Brisben

��Mushy had not been to a funeral for so long that he had to call his nephew’s father-in-law to get instructions on how to conduct himself. He was told to get a hat or get a yarmulka at the door. The funeral home would be quite used to people who had forgotten the prayers or even the Hebrew alphabet. There would be a card with a translation. He should just mumble along with the rest.

��The funeral home was way out in berwyn on a block full of vacant lots. Mushy did not like vacant lots, which was another reason he liked Chicago better than Loa Angeles. Out in the suburbs a Los Angeles landscape was taking over. The funeral was small, not at all like the one that Mushy remembered of Nails Morton when he was a boy. At that one there had been gigantic floral wreaths and judges, legislators, and altermen by the dozens. The next day some of the boys had gone out to the stable in Weshington Park and shot the horse which had thrown Nails Morton and caused him to break his neck. Mushy could not image anyone doing anything like that for Jake Guzik and thought the world a poorer place for that.

��The rabbi droned on and on about what a good man Guzik had been, how many of his relatives he had supported, how many charitible causes he had aided. Not all of Guzik’s old associates were afraid of having their pictures taken. Ralph Capone had come all the way from morthern Wisconsin to be there. Mushy expressed condolences to the family both for himself and on behalf of the Maltese brothers and made sure that his presence was noted by all the eminences who mattered to them.

��Besides the relatives and the eminences there was a group whom Mushy supposed to be neighbors and friends of Guzik or legitimate business associates. There was also a smaller group of younger men who stayed close to the eminences but were ignored by them. Clearly they thought they were important enough to be there even if the eminencesdid not share their opinion. Finally there were a dozen miscellaneous spectators who had no obvious connection to Guzik or anyone else in the room.

��After the services had ended, Mushy heard his name spoken, He turned around to face one of the spectators, a tall young man with glasses and a moustache which was evidently supposed to look like Clark gable’s but which did not come close. He had travelled some distance to be here, for his shoes and trouser legs were spattered with mud, and he had a battered suitcase with a much-repaired handle which he kept near him.

��Mushy corected the young man’s pronunciation of his last name and shook hands with him. They talked about movies. The young man could remember every movie that Mushy had ever made, including some that Mushy himself had forgotten. He even knew about some movies where Mushy had been left on the cutting room floor.

��“There was an Alan Ladd movie where I am pretty sure I heard your voice on the screen as part of a group in a chase scene, but I never saw your face,” the young man said.

��“You’re very observant,” Mushy said. “I had two or three scenes in that movie, but the director thought a lot of my face and started putting extra things for me to do. This bothered William Bendix, who was the main ugly face in the movie, and he raised a stink until all my sceneswere cut. He shouldn’t have bothered. I got paod wheter my scenes were in the final cut or not. I wasn’t ambitious, and I couldn’ t have done the sympathetic parts or the comedy that Bendix did anyow.”

��The young man asked about a similar situation where Mushy had made a brief unbilled appearance in an East Side Kids picture.

��“I had done bits with them when they were still the Dead End Kids, and their producer offered me a big part in one of their pictures. It didn’t work out. Bela Lugosi could do something threatening to the kids and get laughs. Whn I played a gangster and threatened them, it never got laughs no matter how sillythe lines were. They scrapped most of what they had shot with me, but those things were done on a shoestring, and they had to leave one or two of my scenes in to get continuity evenwhenthey re-wrote the script.”

��An acned young man whispered to Mushy that he shouldn’t talk to reporters.

��“You’re not a reporter, are you?” Mushy asked.

��“I’m working in a Ph.D. in U. S. History ot the University of Wisconsin,” the movie fan said. Mushy gave the whisperer a signal to buzz off, which was reluctantly obeyed.

��“Then I’m going to was you a question,” Mushy said. “I’m here because I knew Guzik a little but mostly because I am partners with a couple of people whout thought I ought to be here. You don’t look like the type of person who would know Guzik at all. You don’t even sound like you come from anywhere near Chicago. So why are you here?”

��The movie fan explained that his field was American social history and that he proposed to write a doctoral dissertation onthe business enterprises of Al Capone and his associates during Prohibition. He admitted under Mushy’s questioning that his professors were not enthusiastic about the idea and that he had found nothing of value except for journalistic accounts and the court records of the Capone income tax trial. However, he insistedthat studying enterprises that were long lasting and highly organized despite the fact that their sanctions could be enforcedby no legal authority would provide inportant insights into the real workings of American society.

��Mushy suspected that the young man was strongly attracted to violence, that he was like most of the people who had enjoyed watching Mushy be pummeledand shot for so many years, excited and ashamed of their excitement at the same time and wanting a harmless chaneel for their feelings. Mushy did not know why people were losing their hang-ups about sex and acquiring them about killing each other, but Mushy suppposed that it was a good trade-off. The movie fan’s solution was dubious but unique, and Mushy found the idea of being studied and commented upon like some fragment of the Talmud to be unexpectedly pleasing.

��The scholarly movie fan had plans to hitch hike back to Wisconsin, but he had no pressing engagements, so Mushy invited him back to town for a good lunch and a long chat. In the mid-1950’s tape recorders ere bulky and beyond the resources of graduate students, and the movie fan knew no shorthand, but he happily scribbled notes all afternoon.

��Mushy had never been a part of any capone enterpirse, but he had known a lot of people who were, and he had spent much time in Hollywood talking to ex-Chicago reporters who had transformed the random violence of that era into enduring myth. the movie fan was indeed interested in all the gory details, but he had a good sense of the bsic structure of his subject. He was confirmingwhat he had already intuited: that American gangsterism wasonly a variation of usual capitalist business practice, operating by the same rules and mouthing the same cliches.

��Mushy invited his waiters and some of his late afternoon patrons to join him in telling stories to the movie fan. Stash told about making people be missing for Joe Saltis. Another waiter told of growing up in a West Side flat which always smelled of alcohol being cooked for the Genna brothers. Several remembered the time the Manhattan Brewery was raided and the evidence destroyed by pouring the beer into the sewers, making a geyser of every manhole in the neighborhood. The movie fan ate bagels with cream cheese with his left wand and took notes with his right. Mushy was delighted by how much sense his life made when analyzed by a scholar.

��As th dinner rush began, the movie fan retired to collate and expand his notes in a seldom used back booth. When he came out about eight-thirty, Mushy was at his usual front table neat the bar, rtrading jokes with the customers. The movie fan thanked him profusely and announced his intention of hitch hiking back to Wisconsin.

��“Kid,” Mushy said, “We’ve ha da good day today. I’ve been a little bit amous before, but getting into your notebooks has made me feel, well, permanent or something. So I’ve been thinking about what I could do for you. You’re poor, but in your line you don’t really need a roll of bills or good clothes or things like that to let people know you’re somebody. Anyhow, you claim those notebooks are valuable, so you ease my mind about them. I’m giving you enough for a ticket back to Wisconsin, so you can keep them safe and warm until you get them back to a library or something; and I’m having the boys in the kitchen fix you a bag of stuffso you won’t have to eat that awful garbage they serve in train and bus stations. God Bless.”

��Then Mushy caught suight of a familiar sports coat. the bill collector for the Maltese brothers was back, this time without either Charlie or Nick.

��“A friend of mine told me you were talking to a reporter a Jake Guzik’s funeral,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

��Mushy had listened carefully to Stash’s warning of the day before, but he was reasonably certain that the young gunman was doing this on his own, without the knowledge of his bosses. He was tired of letting the Malteses lean on him anyhow. As Mushy had hoped, Stash had moved behind the man, and two of Stash’s special friends were covering him from other angles.

��“Stash, we’ve got a rule in here about not allowing the customers to carry guns,” Mushy said.

��Stash reached over the gunman’s shoulder and took both the shoulder gun and the belly gun with no trouble, since the gunman could see he was in a hopeless spot.

��“Put those behind the barwith your other artillery,” Mushy said. “Nick or Charlie can pick them up any time they want to. As for the punk, I don’t want to see him in here again. If he tries to crash the gate, cut his trigger finger off and keep it as a souvenir.”

��The movie fan was still standing nearby, holding onto his suitcase.

��“I didn’t plan that last bit, kid,” Mushy said. “Believe it or not, I’ve never done anything like that in my life before.”

��Later, Stash said “Mushy, you’re not used to this sort of thing. You should either tell Charlie and Nick to kill the kid, or you should let me do it. Otherwise, he’s going to kill you. He’s dumb, but he could get lucky, so you’ve got to take him out of the way.

��“My god,” Mushy said, “you want me to be like this face.”

��“You’ve made a good living and had a lot of laughs with that face for a long time,” Stash said. “You know what you have to do now.”

��“Call or fold,” Mushy said.

��Stash nodded.

��When Mushy returned to his room at the LaSalle that night, a stewardess had come in from Midway. For several months they had spent a night together whenver she had a layover in Chicago. They were both tired, but, after a while, they decided they were not at all thattired and made love. It was very good.

��She left early in the morning and Mushy stayed in bed another hour before ringing for breakfast. His usual waiter, Josh, brought him his usual order of scrambled eggs and sausages. Josh had been a number runner un gary for many years, and they valued each other’s insights into gambling.

��“How’s your son, John?” Mushy asked.

��“He’s doing very fine. He graduates next June. Then he wants to go to medical school. He just might make it, too. He’s a smart young man.”

��“Your old boss, Hutchinson out in gary, he used to send all of his runners to college if they wanted to go, didn’t he?”

��“Yes, sir, he did,” Josh said. “he sent them to West Virginia State, which is a good Negro college. Hutch used to say that those scholarships were the best bets he ever made.”

��“He was probably right, Josh,” Mushy said. “You see my suit hanging on the back of that chair? Get my wallet out of the inside jacket pocket. There ought to be a couple of hundred dollar bills in it, plus some twenties. Take the two hundres out and put them in your pocket. This is a one time thing, but I’m going to bet big on your boy today, Josh. You do the same. It’s probably the best tip I’ll ever give you.”

��“Yes, sir,” Josh said.

��Mushy was dressed and on his way to the barber shop in the lobby a little before eleven. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and ordered a good close shave. He had a hot towel on his face and did not even see the gunman enter the shop or feel the bullet pierce his heart.

��Morris’s son Moishe recently published a well-recieved article in Commentary on the place of athlees and gamblers in the diaspora heritage.

��The movie fan switched to a safer dissertation topic but published an article based on his interview material after he got tenure.

��Stash is very old now, but he drops in frequently at the tavern on South Kedzie that is owned by two of his adoptedsons. Occasionally he will take the bottle withthe gunman’s trigger finger in it off the back bar and show it to the customers. Mushy’s idea were nearly always good for the saloon trade.





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