356
RICHARD G. STERN
Gelb, the cigar man, ducked under his counter, and she, safe in her
den, watched and waited for Irish brains to go flying down to
Seventy-First Street. Only half a squad of uniformed micks leaping out
of the Peacock Room preserved the cop. And then they made Mendel
a hero, took him into the Peacock Room, shot him full of whiskey,
and then elevated him upstairs in triumph.
There weren't many triumphs riding armchairs in the Winthrop
lobby, not many triumphs anywhere for Mendel. And the only other
thing she could think of in this line was his escaping indictment after
pushing Lepidus out of the window; you might as well count not
falling off the Empire State Building or catching pneumonia triumphs.
What did she object to in Mendel?
It wasn't idleness. He worked, went downtown three or four
times a week till Lepidus's death. He'd once been a success according
to Ina, had managed a whole men's department in Buffalo
till
he'd
punched a customer who'd tried to "return" a suit from another
store. Not idleness.
Nor was he particularly crooked, only particularly cheap. The
number one Jew for cheapness. The Winthrop never collected a penny
more from him than his rent. To telephone, he came down to the
lobby, day or night, using the pay phone and saving a nickel. He never
went into the Peacock Room except to use the toilets, and then only
when Sam, the attendant, was running the back elevator. He never
bought a cup of coffee in The Nook, and he avoided Gelb's cigar
stand so conspicuously that despite twenty-five years of sharing the
same lobby, the two never exchanged good mornings. When sick, he
sent for borscht with a hard-boiled egg from Sheffrin's, the delicatessen
on Columbus Avenue where he ate every day of his life but Yom
Kippur and Rosh-Hashonah, when he took his trade to Chock-Full-of–
Nuts. This according to the young thief Sonny, who also told Lester–
who'd become his confidant after the armchair heist-that except for
these two restaurants, the Yorktown Movie Theater-forty cents before
one o'clock-and the annual Thanksgiving Dinner downtown with
Ina's brother, his father hadn't been inside another place of enter–
tainment since-big leer-his mother had died.
Miss Swindleman was aware of the Thanksgiving Outing. Next
to
Macy's Parade, it was the surest sign of the holiday. Mendel and the
two nut sons washed their faces, put on clean ties, and paraded out of
