Odessa Beach by Bob Leuci

Author:Bob Leuci
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd

Chapter Thirteen

FRIDAY MORNING

Niki saw him sitting on a bench, the one nearest the ramp that went down onto the beach. In his outfit you could hardly miss him. He sat as if on a pew.

He was small, you could even say tiny, and he wore the long, black coat and fur-rimmed hat of a religious Jew. His beard was red, thick and tight like a black’s. Niki guessed his age to be close to his own, thirty-three or -four.

Three hooligans stood over him, taunting, abusing him.

“Silly-looking fool,” Niki said to himself, “I wonder if he knows what he looks like.”

The morning air was gray and cool, dark clouds dropped lead streaks into the ocean. Except for the five of them, the boardwalk was empty. Niki watched from twenty feet away, on the fringe really. The hooligans whirled and shouted and pointed at the man. Niki hoped they would stay where they were, away from him.

He’d gone to the nightclub to work on the books. He was making money, a lot of money. He could expand, maybe open another restaurant. But this business with Malatesta haunted him. So he’d walked to the beach to deal with his plans, his strategies. To dream a dream and look at the sea. He wasn’t up to dealing with three hooligans and a Jew.

“One million dollars,” he thought, “one million dollars for a telephone call, a little telephone call. Who wouldn’t do it?”

He recalled his important connections, the way he always did. How they’d helped. How clever he was to use them, all of them, yes, even Viktor. In eighteen months he hadn’t heard a single word from Viktor. Maybe the old policeman’s liver had exploded and he was dead.

He looked toward the Jew, the hooligans were really carrying on. Niki said nothing, and breathed slowly.

The Jew seemed calm or he pretended to be. His hands played on the top of the bench and he kept his eyes straight ahead.

The hooligans laughed their heads off.

They called him kike, “fucking weird-looking kike.” They were trying to work him up, yet he sat still, and said nothing.

At last the Jew got up from the bench. He moved along the boardwalk slowly, dragging a leg, stumbled and sat down, closer to Niki now.

The hooligans followed.

Niki wanted to leave, turn his back and go. But somehow he couldn’t. He looked straight into the Jew’s eyes. Niki felt his mouth twitch and he smiled. After a long moment, the Jew smiled back. But Niki could see that his fingers were trembling.

The hooligans persisted. Then one took the fur-rimmed hat and laughed he-he-he, like a crazy man.

The Jew seemed just on the point of speaking, but he only shook his head and smiled broadly at Niki.

Niki didn’t have to go far, three steps and he was between them.

“I want to tell you something,” he told the hooligan holding the hat. But his English failed, and he groped for words.

The Jew spoke, quickly, loudly, in Yiddish.

The hooligans laughed harder, wilder, when Niki said, “Don’t speak that language to me.

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