At Camp Gordon training camp, southwest of Augusta, Georgia, the young recruits found another from their neighborhood: Tino Caruso. His house was at Avenue D and Sixth. That gave him a direct shot into the East River Park if he wanted, where there was no noise from kids playing stoop ball and stickball in the streets and girls playing potsie on sidewalks. Sam liked recalling a day he’d wielded a broom handle to smack a high-bounce spaldeen missile with such muscle it took out a basement window across from Izzy’s place: instant home run. But the tinkling glass and the holler from inside had all the kids running down Avenue C, right in the middle, weaving around cars whose drivers laid on their horns. It was all fun, but once in a while he’d like a walk in the park … maybe with a girl.
The boys all made it through Military Police Corps combat training. Sam got stamped sergeant because of his city police experience, brief though it was. Izzy and Mike did okay, too. Tino Caruso was a bit of a dawdler, the last one over the obstacles, the last one to hand in written work. They requested codeployment and were surprised when they got it.
On the third day south of Bastogne, Sergeant Samuel Rabinowitz trudged through two-foot snow alongside Private Caruso. Manhattan winters saw snow, yes, but here Sam’s bones quivered from the cold and the constant explosions and shrieks of strafing and the grind of engines above, which was not Allied cover but German Stutkas concealed by a white lid of clouds. The enemy had fuel to fly while Allied aircraft sat dry-docked on tarmacs with near-empty tanks. It was later learned that the English-speaking Germans in stolen uniforms did more than misdirect traffic and cut communication lines. They raided critical supply lines: rail cars, trucks, warehouses.
That day when Sam and Tino slogged along a barely visible road, they saw a high rock face ahead where they could take a breather. Just before reaching it, there was a crack and something grazed the right side of Sam’s face. He swiped at his cheek with the back of his glove, then saw Caruso stumble but regain his feet and point to what Sam had already judged was a sniper’s nest in a tree thirty yards away. In a flat two seconds, the shooter was meat on the ground. When Tino turned to say thanks, Sam understood that what had popped onto his cheek was the better part of Tino Caruso’s nose.
Caruso lived, of course. All the guys from the Lower East Side who codeployed lived. After the war’s end, they burrowed back to their neighborhoods. Sam stayed with his mother for the time being. She could use the help and he could save for the day, whatever that might be. He snagged a Seventh Precinct badge again, which didn’t happen for every former officer coming back from the war.
He was grateful but soon restless. He couldn’t help but think of a certain something: in the snowy woods of Belgium, he had ordered an enemy soldier wearing a hijacked American MP uniform to be shot for giving wrong directions and switching road signs to send soldiers off to nowhere. Not that Sam wanted to be making a decision like that today, but here, on wheeled or foot patrol, he spent his days slapping citations through drivers’ windows and writing up accident reports.
So much had changed. Conversations centered on labor disputes. Unionized longshoremen had picketed, forcing hundreds of jobs to go idle. Fifteen thousand city elevator operators refused to punch buttons to take people up to their apartments and offices. Then the tugboat crews struck. The Irish and Italians were fussing at each other more than ever, who knew over what. Many more Jews were moving on from pushcarts, succeeding in their small businesses and relocating their families to classier suburbs.
And small crime was thriving—if you could call it that. The top district attorney was trying to fight it, placing more undercover cops to bust up prostitution, the numbers games, the creeping narcotics trade. But as of now, Samuel Rabinowitz could only walk his beat, chalk tires to see how long a car had been parked at a space with a posted time limit, and keep an eye out for no-goodniks prowling for something to lift.
A year passed, and the better part of another. He took to going to temple after not attending for a long, long time. There he met a girl named Ruth. She loved him. He tried loving her.
One afternoon he and Ruth took a table at Katz’s Deli. It wasn’t until their order came that he noticed Izzy and his sister two tables over. The sister, holy joe, had she ever changed. She was what, seventeen, eighteen, now? Sally. That was her name. Sally. And there was that sign: SEND A SALAMI TO YOUR BOY IN THE ARMY. Yellow, just beyond Sally Jacobs’s light-brown, curl-sprung head. A crown it could be.
Sam brought Ruth over to say hello. Izzy invited them to sit, bring their food. The rest of the time at that table, Sam did not register Ruth in his consciousness at all.