The Redemption of Benny Gantz

What we intend doesn't ensure what we achieve.

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            Everybody thought Benny Gantz was a Jew. Ya’ know, ‘cause of the name. If Benny had ever been a Jew, it must’a been a long time ago. Now he’s just a nickel & dime crook, the kind’a  guy Chandler would’a called a street punk. Benny looked out for Benny. The only higher-power he respected was anybody better at boostin’ than himself. 

          Benny lived on what the mob guys couldn’t be bothered with like, shopliftin’, bad checks, smash n’ grab, small cons, ya’ know, all that kind’a stuff. Benny was street-smart, very cool. Nobody could con him because he was a con. He kept track of all the talk sliding ‘round the corners. He wasn’t gonna be blind-sided by anything.

         Then he was.

         Benny and his pal, JD, robbed a small delicatessen. Hardly worth the doin’. The haul was only a handful of bucks outa the cashbox. It wasn’t much but it was easy, except - except this time, the codger behind the counter put up a fight. JD knocked the old guy to the floor. They left him there, out cold and bleeding. Just routine. Too bad about grandpa. Too bad there wasn’t more cash. Oh well, tomorrow.

          Tomorrow came.

          The old man was dead. 

          JD was a big guy, his one punch killed Mr. Gillato. 

          Man, talk about bad luck. It turns out this particular Mr. Gillato was father to Dolores Gillato. Dolores was girlfriend to Joey De Mato. Joey was number-two capo for the Mob down in Stringtown. Benny didn’t know ‘bout any of this because Joey had been doin’ his wooing of lovely Delores on the q.t. - Joey was a little old fashioned, only his closest soldiers knew. Night before last, Joey had gone hat-in-hand to the home of Mr. Gillato to ask permission and blessing for the hand of his daughter in honorable marriage.

          JD’s bloody, bashed remains were bagged two days later. The police called it, “overkill”. Joey De Mato somehow found out that it was two guys did the robbery. They also found out that JD was one’a them. They grabbed JD and did their best to beat the other guy’s name outa him. JD kept his mouth shut. They kept on beating him. Then they beat him some more. 

They kept on beating him until he could’nah opened his mouth even if he’d wanted to. 

          They still wanted his pal.

          Benny’s head was spinnin’. “At least they don’t know my name. Not yet. They’ll find out. What the hell am I gonna do? How come JD didn’t tell’em? Maybe he did? Maybe they put out the story that he didn’t… just to trick me into stayin’ put. I don’t know. Why didn’t JD rat me out? I didn’t even know him that well. Hell, I don’t even know what JD stands for. Well… JD stood up for me. . . Ha, sure, stood up. . . more like fell down. Why’d he do that? I gotta get out of here. Maybe I should get a gat. Yeh, a gat for Benny Gantz. Wait a minute. Nobody says gat anymore. I’m thinkin’ crazy… but I better get a gun. Yeh, then I better get outa town. No, no, they’ll track me down if I try to score a gun . . . Maybe I should get outa town first, then get a gun. I didn’t do nuthin’ to deserve this. . .  What was JD thinkin’. . . why didn’t he crack”?  Why, why? . . . It was just a bad break . . . just an accident.                   

          Benny Gantz us’ta know everything. Now he didn’t.

          The clack-clack-clack of the up-state train put him to sleep.

          Benny woke up to the noise of the depot. He didn’t know where he was. 

          Perfect. 

          Maybe Joey De Mato wouldn’t know, either. 

          It was a small town, just big enough to be called a city, just big enough to get lost in. Benny decided to stay. He got a room in a run-down hotel close to the depot. He shaved off his mustache and parted his hair on the other side. He also needed a new name; a name that didn’t sound Jewish, or Italian, and he needed some kind’a background story to go with the name.

          From now on Benny was history. Jack Reed took his place. Jack came from a backwoods County south of Knoxville. He had no living relatives. He’d come north looking for work. 

The work would have to be of the temporary sort; sweeping up, dish-washing, stockin’ shelves - jobs where no questions were asked. There were a lot’a them in the run-down part of town ‘round the rails and depot. Benny, Err… Jack, changed jobs every few weeks, sometimes every few days. He did the same for the cheap rooms he rented. Sometimes he went back to jobs and rooms he’d had before. Few remembered. Those who did remember, didn’t care.

          Months went by. Nobody asked questions.

          Benny started to relax. Maybe he even started to half-way believe he was Jack - Jack Reed, a simple rube from the country - the kind’a guy Benny used to scam. Imagine that; Benny scamming Jack. It made him smile. 

          By the end of the first year, Jack was thinkin’ of Benny as a guy he us’ta know, not such a nice guy, either. He remembered how Benny was always cool, smart; he took what he wanted, he did what he wanted. Nobody owned Benny. Yeh, but nobody wanted to own Benny. If they said anything about him, they’d usually spit afterwards. Benny had a lotta respect for Benny. 

Nobody else did. Well, so what, Benny was hip, he didn’t need nobody.

          Yeh sure, thought Jack, and nobody needed Benny, either.

          Benny never knew where his next crooked dime was coming from. He spent most days lookn’ out for cops and trying to find his next mark. He was usually on edge, jittery, always lookn’ over his shoulder. Jack thought of a line he’d heard, somewhere, “no rest for the wicked”. Even on the lam, Jack was doin’ better than Benny ever did. 

          Jack didn’t have to worry about cops because he didn’t do no crime. He didn’t have to worry about money because he always had some. He didn’t get paid much, but he didn’t need much. The shabby rooms he rented were pretty cheap. So were his meals. Once a week, he’d stock-up on bread, salami, cheese and a six-pack. Sometimes, if he had a little extra, he’d get a few tins of sardines or a can of peaches. It was enough. 

          One rainy day between jobs, Benny, who was now Jack, made himself a sandwich, opened a beer, listened to the rain outside and relaxed for the first time in a long time – maybe even for the first time. Life seemed good. Was that crazy? He had food, a roof, and a funny peaceful feeling. For the first time in his life things seemed good and right. If that was crazy, he was happy being crazy.

          That was the day Benny went away for good, and Jack was born.

          Jack settled into his new life. He didn’t look back much. Every now and then he’s pick up a home-town paper down at the depot newsstand. Folks passin’ through on the trains liked to keep-up with what was goin’ on back where they’d just come from. Jack didn’t know why he bothered. There was never much to read.

          Until there was. 

          Front page, too - with a banner headline, “JOEY DE MATO: DEAD”.

          Delores had put a 38-Special an inch away from Joey’s ear and blasted his brains all over their rarely shared bed. Turns out the brief marriage of Joey and Delores had not been happy. 

Delores blamed Joey for her father’s murder. She got it into her head that Joey’s enemies had killed her father to get back at Joey. That didn’t really make much sense, but neither did her dad’s murder. She couldn’t shake the thought.  

          She stayed married to Joey because she was a good Catholic girl, but she couldn’t give herself to the man who was the only reason her father got killed. Joey started runnin’ around with other women. That was the last straw for Delores. She pulled the trigger, confessed to the cops, and then blabbed everything to the papers. The reporters couldn’t get enough. They ran stories on the murder for one whole week. None of the stories mentioned JD, or Benny. Mr. Gillato’s murder was always described as a senseless homicide.

          It was over. Benny could go home.

          Except, he didn’t want to.

          There was nuthin’ for him there but bad memories.

          Funny, the papers didn’t mention JD. He died for Benny and nobody even knew.

          Benny didn’t care about that, but Jack did. Jack’s head was full of thoughts that were not there before. “Why this, and why that”? But now he wasn’t askin’ these questions about himself; he was askin’ why everything, why anything - what did it all mean?

          Jack Reed went back to the temporary jobs, the cheap rooms, and the salami sandwiches that had kept him sheltered and fed for the nearly two years he was forced to live undercover. He didn’t have to do any of that anymore. He was free to do whatever he wanted. He could  have changed but he didn’t. He could see now that what he had been forced to do might also be what he wanted to do. He liked the freedom of temporary jobs and temporary rooms. 

          He liked the freedom. 

          Jack thought, “Benny liked his freedom, too, that’s why he was a crook. He thought bein’ a criminal made him free. It didn’t. Every day was a scramble for angles. Every day somebody might be comin’ for him. He worked harder than Jack ever did. Benny was a schmuck.

          What? Where did that come from?

          Jack remembered that people always thought Benny was a Jew. Schmuck was a Jewish word.  Maybe Benny was a Jew. Nah, no. . . he would’a known. Still, the thought. .  a little doubt, stuck. When guys got cheated outa money they’d say, “I got Jew’d”! Benny cheated a lotta guys  outa money. Maybe another  reason they thought he was Jewish?

          Thinkin’ thoughts like these, he walked into a synagogue he’d walked past many times before. It was a little box of a building. You wouldn’a known what it was, except for the sign outside. Jack sat close to the door. He couldn’t make out what was goin’ on. Some of what they were sayin’ was in English; some was in a foreign language. Jack was thinkin’, “probably talkin’ Jewish”. When it seemed like it was over, Jack started for the door. He was stopped by some older guys with the usual questions that come with welcome talk. Questions made Jack nervous. Then he remembered that he didn’t need to worry anymore about questions. One’a  the guys gave him a small book. It was a Torah, in English. Jack said, “thanks”, put the book in his coat pocket and made a polite getaway.

          When he got back to his room he put the Torah in the bed-side desk drawer, next to the Gideon Bible that was in every room he ever rented. Several nights later, he pulled both books out. He was surprised that both books started out the same. He wondered why. He put the books back in the drawer.

          Next morning, without thinkin’ ‘bout it much, he put the Torah in his coat pocket and   walked off toward the tracks. For the next few days he’d be unloading some freight cars stored on a side-line of the main track. It was near the end of winter, almost warm, and this job payed a little more than most of his jobs, Jack was happy. By the end of the day the weather changed to cold and slush. Jack pulled his hat down, his collar up, and started back across the tracks. 

He walked a little faster than usual. He smiled, thinkin’ of his warm room up ahead. 

          He heard the train comin’. It was ten minutes away. He would’a had plenty of time to get across except for the ice. The fall pushed one foot through the loose gravel under the rail, where it stuck.

          The clean-up crew waded through about thirty feet of flesh, bones, and organs lookin’ for ID. All they found was a bloody battered pocket-sized, Torah. They couldn’t tell who the guy was, but they were pretty sure he was Jewish – ya’ know, ‘cause of the Torah.

          Well. . . That’ the way I heard it. 

          Lt. Crowley crushed out his smoke . . . Who’d you hear it from? “Why, Jack, of course”.

“Jack told you about his own death”? “No, no, I just guessed about that. “When he didn’t show up last night, I didn’t know what to think. This mornin’, I heard talk about some guy getting’ killed on the tracks. Then I heard about the Torah. “What else could’a happened”?

          That’s quite a story!  

          Lt. Crowley went to the door, “Jenny, please come in here - bring your notebook”. 

          “Jenny, this is Gus , , ,  what’s your last name”? “Bennet, Gus Bennet”. “Well Gus. This is Miss Jenny Carson. She’s going to take down your story and then type it up for your signature. I’ll be back later with a few more questions”.

          Lt. Crowley told Chief Cox about Gus’s story. “I guess we better let the Bluth P.D. know about this. It could help solve a couple of cold-case homicides”. The chief agrees. “Another thing, Chief . . . my reporter pal, Tom Dubray, might be interested, too. Would it be ok to let him cover all this”?

         “Sure, I guess. Why not”.

          “Hey, Lt. Jimmy, what have I done now”? 

          “Nothin’, It’s what you might wanna’ do. I think I’ve got something right up your alley.

         Tom’s mother was Yankton Sioux. He loved his mother, but he rarely talked about her. Folks around Platte City had a lot of family stories passed down from pioneer days; there weren’t many that included happy memories of Indians. Half-breed heritage was better left unsaid. Tom’s father’s name sounds French, but nobody from Tom’s branch of Dubray had thought of themselves as French for at least two hundred years. If you asked Tom his nationality, he would say, American. If you asked his profession, he would say – Writer.

          Tom Dubray wrote for two newspapers, The Platte City Times and The Bluth Gazette. Despite that, he did not consider himself a reporter. Reporters write plain-fact articles about: who; what; when; where; why; how. Tom wrote stories that put flesh on the bare bones of reported stories. He wasn’t an employee of either paper. He sold permission to print the stories he wrote, which were about whatever he wanted to write about. He had neither assignment nor deadline. It was an arrangement that suited all.

          Gus’s was nearly finished with his testimony by the time Tom got to the station. Introductions over, Tom said he’d like to hear more about Gus’s story. Gus seemed fidgety, saying, “Yeah, Sure, sure. . . but I gotta get to work right now”. “I’ll give you a ride”, says Tom, we can talk on the way.

          “So, where’s work”? 

          “The Come Rite Inn - down by the corner of 182 & Dakota. . . been washin’ dishes there two, three weeks. Jack got me the job”. “Good job”? “Yeah, yeah, they treat me good. . . food’s pretty good, too. It ain’t no fancy place, but It ain’t no dive, neither. I can take home whatever  I want, of whatever’s leftover. . .  It’d go bad otherwise”. 

          I could talk to you tomorrow, but I don’t get up ‘till ‘bout ten o’clock”

          “Ten o’clock it is. Cabin 8, the O.K. Motel”?

          “Yep”.

          Tom brought a carton of Chesterfields’ and a pint of Old Crow for Gus. “Thanks for the smokes”, said Gus. You keep the booze. That’s what got me in trouble to begin with”. Gus poured some coffee for them both, lit one Chesterfield for himself, and offered another to Tom.

          The smoke curled in lazy swirls around their talk.

          “So, how did you meet Benny”? “He’s Jack to me”. “Jack then, how did you meet Jack”?

“Well, it was last winter, freezin’ cold. . . must’a been fifteen below. I was huddled up in an alley tryin’ to stay out’a the wind. Jack walked right by - then he walked right back. He said, ‘Nobody hangs around an alley in a snowstorm unless they got no place to go. You come along to my place. I’ll make some coffee. You can warm up’. “I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what he was up to. Jack just smiled and said, ‘Well, if I kill you, that’s still better than freezin’ to death.’ That made sense to me”. 

          “Jack turned out to be the nicest guy I ever met”. 

          “Next mornin’ I woke up warm. . . right here, in Cabin 8. Jack was gone, but he left a note: ‘Gone to work. Help yourself to the sandwich in the icebox. I’ll be back tonight – Jack”.  

          I didn’t even know his name until then. That’s how I meet Jack”. 

          Gus said he owed his life to Jack. “Jack knew a lot’a ‘bout me without even askin’. 

He knew it was the booze that turned me into a bum. He knew that bums don’t get hired for anything. He said I didn’t have to be a bum. He was gonna help me. I don’t know why, but he did. 

          Next day he got me a razor and some clothes from the Salvation Army. He said “Clean neat people ain’t bums. When you get cleaned up, you won’t be a bum. When you show up for work, sober, on time, every day, you won’t be a bum - you’ll be a man - a man respected and employed, for a very long time”.

          “I knew he was right. I guess I always knew that, but somehow, now, I knew it different than I did before - deep down. Jack did that. Jack saved me”. He got me jobs, too. I did the best I could. I didn’t want to let Jack down. After a while, I didn’t want to let anybody down. Pretty soon, people started askin’ me if I could come back next day. That made me feel real good”.

That’s how I got the job I have now. Folks at the Come Rite Inn asked me to work for them full-time. I guess you could say Jack brought me back to life. 

          “Jack stopped worryin’ ‘bout me. I was bringin’ in money. We was friends. That’s when Jack started tellin’ me ‘bout his life before, when he was Benny. Ya’ know, all that stuff I told 

Lt. Crowley ‘bout”. 

          Tom and Gus talked right through a pack and a half of the Chesterfields. Toward the end,

Tom asked how Benny and JD got together. Gus couldn’t remember, then he said it might have been at a boxing gym. . .  

          “Yeah, yeah, that was it. . .  JD was a boxer. Benny went to one of his fights. Turned out it was JD’s last fight - a fight he lost. Benny was havin’ a drink at the gym’s bar when JD walked over from the locker room”. “Tough luck, kid, can I buy you a drink”? JD took the drink and said, “ It wasn’t bad luck. I just can’t box”. “Well, you sure got a helluva punch. “Yeah, but that’s all I got. I trained and trained, worked on my footwork, even got better, never enough, don’t think I’ll ever be enough. I’m quittin’. 

          Benny nursed his drink, considering . . . 

          “I got a job you’d be good at, you interested”? “What kind’a job”? “Bodyguard - for me”. Benny explained. I loan a lotta guys money, guys that own small shops and stores, when it comes time to pay back the money, sometimes they don’t want to pay – they say, ‘come back next week’. Sometimes they say that for a lotta weeks, Sometimes they don’t wanna pay, ever. That’s where you could help me”. “You want me to beat’em up”? “No, no. You’re a big scary guy, you walk in with me, they’ll pay up right away”. 

          “I don’t know, what if they don’t”?

          “Then I don’t get paid. We walk out and that’s the end of it”.

          “But they’ll pay. I know how these guys think. We go in ‘round closin’ time, after the customers have cleared out and the cash box is open. We go in fast. I look really nuts-mad. I yell, “gimmie the money’, they look up and see you lookin’ mean and hard. I guarantee they won’t be able to hand that money over fast enough. . .  and if they don’t, we just walk out”

          Of course it’s robbery, but the kid thinks he just helpin’ a guy get back money he’s owed.

The first two times worked just like Benny said. The third time was the delicatessen.

          Tom shakes his head, “That’s crazy”. ”Yeah, I know, but that’s what Jack told me.    

          After thanks and goodbyes, Tom took the pint of Old Crow with him, along with his notes. Then, before leaving for Bluth City, he went to see his friend, Jim Crowley.

          Lt. Crowley gave the Old Crow to someone who would appreciate it. He advised Tom to talk to Sgt. Jim Kelly at Bluth P.D. headquarters. “He’ll know something or other you’ll want to know about”. “Thanks Jimmy, I’ll see what I can find out”.

          Sgt. Kelly said the info from Gus’s story helped fill-out the file on Mr. Gillato, but they still couldn’t close the case because JD - being presumed dead, couldn’t be charged. Plus JD’s murder couldn’t be investigated because there was no body. Plus they didn’t know JD’ real name. “Hell, we couldn’t even prove he ever existed. Ditto for Benny Ganz” “Thanks, anyway, maybe you’ll be able to turn up something. Oh, one more thing. . . when you’re poking ‘round Stringtown, be careful askin’ questions about any De Mato guys”.

          Tom asked about Dolores. Sgt. Kelly said she was doing five years at Rockwell. It was a pretty light sentence for Murder-1. Both Judge & jury were sympathetic. Dolores was sweet. Joey was a gangster. Had the law permitted, they would have let her go free. Tom wondered if Gus’s revelations would make her feel better, or worse.

          Next stop: The Bluth County Historical Society. Miss Eleanor Allen, spinster and Chief Archivist ran the Society very efficiently from the ground floor of her home. Eleanor recognized Tom from his byline on the stories he had written for the Bluth Gazette. She was pleased to share her extensive knowledge of Bluth County with an intelligent young writer as charming as Mr. Tom Dubray. She knew a lot - all of it interesting, some of it useful. They chatted for an hour or so. Tom took notes, thanked her for her scholarly assistance, then bade her goodbye in order to write-up what he had learned.  

          In 1863, Gordan Stuart Bluth sailed from Edinburgh, Scotland to New York City, America.

He next traveled by rail to the growing stockyard city of Chicago. From Chicago he traveled partly by rail and partly by wagon to the intersection of the Missouri River and the well-worn Indian trail that stretched from Kansas to the Dakotas. G. S. Bluth was eighteen years old at the time. He had been putting away money and planning for this trip since he was fourteen.

          He came supplied with several wagons of dry goods, lumber, assorted tools, and cash.

          Very few people lived on the windswept prairie that sprawled for hundreds of miles in any direction around this spot. But there were some. Most were pioneer families trying to scratch through the tough buffalo grass to the fertile soil below. Young Mr. Bluth hired several sons from these few families to help him build a general store and blacksmith shop. When this work was done, he hired one of the lads to help him manage the store and another to do the blacksmith work.

          It was the right place at the right time. 

          Gordan’s German father, Oscar William Bluth, had wandered restlessly all over Europe, before finally settling in Edinburgh, Scotland - where he improbably courted and married the lovely Mary Stuart Tweed. Oscar’s family background was largely unknown. Mother Mary’s family was linked in precisely delineated branches to the great Scottish House of Stuart. G. S. Bluth consolidated the proud resolution of his mother and the adventurous spirit of his father. The result was the small community that blossomed around G. S. Bluth’s General Store & Blacksmith Shop – a community that later became the town of, Bluth, Iowa.

         As the years passed. The village of Bluth became the town of Bluth, then the city of Bluth.

          Sometime between village and town, disreputable businesses such as brothels, saloons, and gambling halls started sprouting like weeds along the old Indian trail that was now known as, Dakota Trail. Everyone called this row of wicked enterprises, Stringtown. 

          Townsfolk, churches, and city council all frowned on these Stringtown businesses. They liked the tax revenue though, and also most of Stringtown’s customers didn’t come from out-of-town; they were husbands and fathers. Stringtown grew along with Bluth as a semi-autonomous district - not completely accepted, but tolerated. The biggest surge came with the Eighteenth Amendment to the American Constitution.

          Overnight, most of the nation went dry. Bluth City remained wet; nowhere more so than in Stringtown. At the time, Big Jim Stanton ran Stringtown in his own rough and unsteady way. Murder, rape and mayhem were rampant. Big Jim addressed only the crimes personally interesting to him, such as any disturbance that disrupted business - his businesses - and the many other businesses that paid tribute to him. The Bluth P.D. avoided the area as much as possible. 

          The dollars passing through Stringtown increased, then doubled, then tripled.

          The scent of so much green attracted larger business interests.

          Chicago sent emissaries to manage the harvest more efficiently. Heading up Chicago’s delegation was, Luca Santos De Mato. Mr. De Mato was well respected in the organization as both earner and manager. He was now settling into the Golden Years of his long career. 

He brought his eldest son, Joey, with him to handle the day-to-day, and more physical aspects of the work. 

          Joey’s first task was to persuade Big Jim Stanton that relocating further west would be in his best interest.  Big Jim reluctantly agreed. With no more bloodshed than necessary, Mr. Stanton transferred his operations to the bright lights of Grand Island, NE. It was a good decision for everyone. Stringtown was very soon a safer town for commerce. 

          Customers who habitually caused trouble were escorted to nearby, Pawnee Flats. 

There hadn’t been any Pawnee or any other living thing at Pawnee Flats for quite a long time. The area was distinguished by a singular geological oddity - a long narrow gulch perpetually filled with a thick black muck. Anything thrown onto the muck would slowly sink some six feet to the solid slate slab below - never to be seen again.

          Questions about sudden disappearances were usually answered: “I think that guy moved to Pawnee Flats”. It didn’t take too long before such disappearances became unnecessary. The administration of the De Mato organization was widely viewed as a much-needed improvement to public safety. Stringtown blossomed. Old buildings were renovated. New buildings were built. Everyone was making money. If the De Mato Family required a certain percentage of this new money as payment for their services, none complained. It was considered much like the taxes paid to Bluth County - except that the benefits were easier to see.

          The north end of Stringtown merged carelessly into the city of Bluth. It was an old part of town, mostly residential, with a few Mom-and-Pop shops attached to owner’s homes, a few boarding houses, and a few quiet neighborhood saloons. The largest building belonged to Jamie Johnson. The sign outside read: Jamie Johnson’s Boxing Gym & Emporium. Jamie didn’t exactly know what an emporium was, but It sounded businesslike and important; that was enough.

          The first thing Tom saw when he opened the door was the boxing ring. It dominated the large two-story high room. Behind it, on the left, were the standard punching bags and exercise equipment. To the right, stacked high, were some two hundred wooden folding chairs. These were for the comfort of boxing match audiences. There was a small bar at the front left. Behind the bar a dangerous looking man was washing glasses. Tom walked over to him. 

          “Hi, I’m looking for Jamie Johnson”. 

          “You got an appointment”? Tom stammered. . . “No. . . I didn’t know . . . I . . .”  “Hah”! The dangerous looking man slammed his paw flat on the counter - “Just kiddin’. I’m Jamie Johnson, What can I do ya’ for”? 

          Recovering, Tom explained. 

          “Well, I sure do know JD. .  trained him myself. This guy, Benny Gantz, I seen him around, can’t say I ever talked to him”. “Did you ever see JD and Gantz together”? “Not that I recollect. Might be he came ‘round to watch one of JD’s matches. Don’t really remember”.

          “What kind of boxer was JD”? “Mmm . . well . . . ?  JD was more promise than delivery. 

He had a helluva punch. The same day I signed him up for training, I put him in the ring with Dickie G. just to see what he could do.  Dickie has spared with the best. Three minutes in, JD knocked Dickie to the canvas. JD was pretty pleased with himself, but he really didn’t know a dammed thing about boxing. 

          I told him why. ‘First of all, you ain’t supposed to kill your sparrin’ partner. Second, Dickie landed fourteen solid punches. You didn’t land any’. ‘I knocked him down’. ‘You hit his gloves, you didn’t hit Dickie”, ‘Well, he was jumpin’ ‘round’ ‘Yeah, that’s called footwork, of which you got none”.”

          “I trained him, every day, for about four months. That’s not much time, but he learned, a little, and he was rarin’ to go. He won his first two matches by knockouts – but only after takin’ a lot of punches. He could knockout anyone that’d give him a clean shot - which boxers don’t much do. He fought two more rounds to bloody draws. He won his fifth match by decision. He lost his sixth match. After that, he quit. He was discouraged. I think he realized that despite his big punch, he was never gonna be a boxer. Never saw him after that”.

          “Did you know his real name”? “Yeah, I did, can’t remember it though. When he signed up for boxing he signed his real name, and an address. Got it back in my office”.

          “Here it is . . . Jagr Drdla. Now I remember why I forgot it”.

          The name reminded Tom of a Czech name he’d seen somewhere. He had no idea how to pronounce it. He took down both name and address, thanked Jamie and started toward the door. A young Indian woman carrying baskets of dirty gym laundry was just walking out. Tom called to her in Dakhota. Surprised, she turned and asked, speaking Dakhota, “You are Yankton”? Tom answered in English, ”my Mother”. 

          He explained that he had forgotten most of the language he had known as a kid on the reservation. They exchanged names. Hers was ‘Sue’. Tom asked how she was called by The People. She answered in Dakhota, ’Walks-with-the-Wind’. “That’s a pretty name”, said Tom, thinking how Indian names so often sound like poetry because Indian languages don’t have many words for modifing their nouns and verbs. ‘Why did they call you, ‘Walks-with-the-Wind’? Sue said they called her that because she was a day-dreamy sort of girl.”

          “Where did, ‘Sue’, come from’? ‘Oh, when I first come to city, people say, ‘who are you”?

I say, ‘Sioux’. They thought I say, ‘Sue’. It was easier. I keep, ‘Sue”. 

          Tom asked her about JD and Benny Gantz. She knew nothing. She turned to pick up her baskets and leave. Tom said goodbye in Dakhota, and wished good fortune for her laundry business. As she walked away she smiled and said, “I do good. Wasicu have plenty dirty laundry”. 

          Tom wondered if she had intended the irony in her words.

          Sgt. Kelly received JD’s real name and last address nonchalantly. “Well, now we know the guy actually existed. We still don’t know he was murdered. The dead guy we bagged two days after the Gillato murder might’a been him, might not, no way to identify the body. Thanks anyway. I’ll add it to the file”. . . .Oh, wait, we found something on Benny - a complaint. 

          Cissy Beech had waited weeks before going to the police. Her tenant, Benjamin Gantz, had not paid her on the first of the month. She wasn’t worried about the money. She was worried about Benny. “He seemed like such an industrious young man, always away on some sort of business, hardly ever in his room, always paid promptly on the first of the month. I’m worried something dreadful has happened to him”. Cissy’s made her complaint twenty-seven days after Mr. Gillato’s murder. She was a very patient lady.

          Tom didn’t try to talk to her. She had probably already said all she knew. He did drive by her boarding house. It wasn’t far from the address JD had given Jamie Johnson. The house at that address was boarded up. Next door, an elderly couple was sitting on their porch taking in the pleasant evening air. Tom approached them. “We aint’t buyin’! “That’s good. I don’t have anything to sell, just wondered what you could tell me about that boarded-up house”.  

          “Didn’t know those folks too well” - His wife added, “They was foreigners, Bohemians”. Tom said he believed they had a son called, JD. They remembered JD. “Big kid. . . wasn’t ‘round too much”. They also remembered the father as a drunk and the mother as being sickly. “ they died, ‘bout two years apart, the old man first. House’s been empty ever since”. “Do you know what school JD might have attended”? “Sure, Freemont, only school around, down by the river on Coulter St. just across from the library.

          The Principal fished through the files . . “Here he is:  J-a-g-r  D-r-d-l-a. . .  must’a been Bohemian. He graduated seventh grade, never showed up for eighth. I’m sure Miss Hamilton would remember him. Wonderful teacher. She’s retiring next year. We’re gonna miss her”.

          Miss Hamilton was the kind of teacher all teachers should be. She took great personal interest in all her students - she remembered everything. She remembered JD. “Oh yes, he was an unusual boy, not so much as a student, but as a person. He was very big for his age. Once, on the playground, he rescued a younger boy from being bullied. Gerald Lande was pushing and hitting little Billy Preston. JD walked over to them, picked up Gerald and threw him on the ground. The other children really respected him for doing that. But you mustn’t think he was violent. He was usually quiet and withdrawn. 

          He didn’t care for schoolwork, but he did like to read. I’ve always kept a shelf of books for any children that might want to explore them. JD often stayed after school to read a book. I don’t think he had a happy life at home. He talked to me about two that really impressed him: King Arthur & the Round Table, and Kit Carson, Indian Fighter. He told me he liked the way the knights stood up for each other and how Kit protected helpless people and how they all lived by a code of honor. Such an interesting child. I was so sorry he didn’t return for eighth grade”.

          Tom didn’t tell her JD was dead, or how he died. 

          Miss Hamilton’s remarks went a long way toward explaining why JD so inexplicably gave his life to protect a man he barely knew – Benny Gantz.

          Tom decided to take a look at the scene of Mr. Gillato’s murder. He stopped for coffee at a doughnut shop along the way. The shop turned out to be owned and operated by a lively attractive lady only barely past full bloom - Roxy Peterson. The sign outside read: Roxy’s Sinkers & Joe - below the name was a colorful cartoon depicting a virile cup of coffee dancing with a flirty fried donut. Roxy thought it said all that needed to be said. 

          “Hard to disagree” said Tom. He lingered over his coffee because he enjoyed Roxy’s company. This was the middle of the afternoon. Tom was the only customer. By the second cup Roxy had discovered what Tom was doing in Bluth. . . “Ya’ know Delores worked here”. 

          “What”? 

         “Yeah, for a couple years, right outa high school. She was a sweetie pie, and I needed some help. For years I only made fried cake donuts, after I started makin’ raised donuts - ‘specially the ones with the maple frosting. I got a lot more people comin’ in. ‘Should’a done it earlier. Anyway, it was gettin’ harder to keep up with making the donuts and serving customers at the same time. Dolores shows up looking for work, I hired her right away. She was great. 

A lot of young guys suddenly developed a craving for maple frosted donuts. I let her run the counter, I stuck to makin’ donuts.

          “That’s how she met Joey De Mato. Joey comes in one day with two of his goons to try out these new donuts he’d been hearing about. Joey was impressed, but he was impressed with Dolores more than the donuts. Dolores thought he was a very important businessman ‘cause he drove up in a fancy new car with two assistants. She was so cute. I didn’t have the heart to tell her he was a gangster. I guess I should’a ‘cause he came in more and more often. It wasn’t too long before they were deeply in love. It wasn’t too long after that, they was getting’ married. Ya’ know, even if I’d told her he was a gangster, I don’t think it would’a made any difference. True love don’t care ‘bout bein’ smart.  

          Tom was surprised to find Mr. Gillato’s delicatessen open.  A tall dignified gray-haired woman was behind the counter. She graciously agreed to answer Tom’s questions - she may have even wanted to. 

          She was Allegro Gillato - Delores’s sister - some twenty years older than Delores. 

For most of her life she was known as, Sister Clare Teresa. She had been granted dispensation of her vows in order to attend to her ailing mother. 

          After Mr. Gillato’s murder, his wife, Loretta, ran the delicatessen. She had to, it was her only source of income. Delores tried to give money to her mother, but her mother refused.

“Gangster money! I don’t want no gangster money. . . don’t know why your father let you marry a man like that . . . God will punish Joey De Mato . . . I pray He won’t punish you, too . . . I don’t want anything to do with that dirty gangster money ”.

          Delores talked Joey into encouraging more business for the delicatessen. It wasn’t hard.

Joey loved Delores and Joey was still brooding about the assassin that got away – He was happy to do this small service to help make things right - or at least a little better. Loretta noticed the new customers, but didn’t make the connection. Things went well enough until the stroke made it impossible for Lorretta to keep up with the day-to-day work.

          That was when Sister Clare Teresa became once more, Allegro Gillato.

          All this Tom learned from Allegro.

          She had more to say – much of which would have been unbelievable, except that Allegro Gillato did not seem like a woman who knew how to lie.

          The Gillato family did not discover that Joey De Mato was a gangster until after Delores’s marriage. They did not know about the De Mato crime organization. They didn’t know anything about gangsters, at all. “How”, asked a stunned Tom, “is that possible”?

          Allegro explained. “We were a very religious family, and we were Catholic. As you know, there are not many Catholics here in Bluth or for many miles around. We rarely talked to anyone other than the congregants in our small parish church downtown. Mother drove me, and later, Dolores, to the small Catholic school next to the rectory, every day, of every school year. That was the only reason we owned a car. We kept to ourselves. Our thoughts were on God. “Even so, your father must have heard something - loose talk from his customers, some something”? “If so, he would have paid it no heed. He certainly would not have said anything about it to us. He did not approve of gossip”.

          That was the end of it. Tom couldn’t think of anything else to investigate. There was nothing more to report to Sgt. Kelly, or Lt. Crowley. Some crimes are beyond the reach of the law. Tom returned to Platte city, organized his notes, and started to write. The result was a six-

part series that ran in both The Platte City Times and The Bluth Gazette. The last part, of the last part of the series, combined summery with soliloquy:

          One thing led to another, meaningful consequence grew out of seemingly random and unconnected events. How often does that happen? Every day? All the time? Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe there is purpose to it all. Maybe not. 

          I do know that the process turned Benny Gantz, a small-time street punk of little use to anyone into a much better man, Jack Reed - who turned a drunken dying bum into a man

respected and employed. Redemption upon redemption?

          A robbery gone wrong that ends in unintended murder. A young knight that gave his life to defend a friend. Was it the most honorable moment JD could have ever hoped for in his otherwise unpromising life? Did Mr. Gillato die in vain, or did he fulfill his scheduled destiny?

Was Dolores’s misguided murder of Joey pointless, or one more turning point for events she couldn’t have imagined. 

          The Greeks of classical times characterized tragedy as linked events that led to a final horror that could not be avoided. Redemption was impossible.

          I don’t agree. Redemption is always possible.

Epilogue:  Tom’s series was later reprinted in the Des Moines Register. Later still, it was developed as a radio broadcast of WHO Radio. The station modeled their production on CBS’s popular, Mercury Theater on the Air. The story is still Tom Dubray’s most successful work.

By K. L. Shipley

Website: https://www.eclecticessays.com