Saranac Lake Requiem -e

Saranac Lake Series, Vol. One

by Shel Damsky

When Gabriel Levine punches out a guy who is being rude to a dancer, then learns the next day the guy's name is Dutch Schultz, retreat seems in order.

To avoid a gang war Lucky Luciano sends Gabe to Saranac Lake to recuperate from tuberculosis.?in love with a beautiful woman, and surrounded by people who look up to him, Gabe doesn't know that even in Saranac Lake, tuberculosis is not his most dangerous enemy.

ISBN 978-1-59431-200-1 Historical / Mystery /Romance/ Suspense

Cover Art by Ariana Overton

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.



Chapter 1

New York City

At ten o?clock on a Spring morning, as the noises and smells of the crowded Lower East Side came in the window. Housewives screamed at the pushcart guys; the pushcart guys tried to stop the gangs of kids from stealing their rotten vegetables.

Gabriel Levine sat on the edge of his rumpled bed, not tumbling yet to the idea of how much trouble he was really in. He ran his hand through his light brown hair, lit a Lucky Strike, drank a shot of bad bootleg whiskey, coughed for almost thirty seconds straight and wondered why naked women walked like ducks.

Like the mahogany beauty coming into the bedroom with a cup of coffee for him. Even with her lithe dancer?s body, naked she walked like a duck. In clothes and high heels they walked just great, with everything moving the way it should. But considering everything, Gabe thought, naked ducks had a lot going for them too.

"Here's your coffee, babe," she said, putting the mug on the bed table. Like the rest of the room the table was old and scratched. Two books almost evened up the bottom of its broken leg. Other than the railroad flats he had grown up in, until their new country had killed his father and mother, his father from never understanding and his mother from tired, and his sister had married the first luftmensch that promised to take her out of there, this room was the only home Gabriel Levine had ever known.

The girl sat next to him on the sagging mattress. "You're too skinny," she said. "You're almost six feet, and I bet I weigh almost as much as you do. And you're too pale. Don't you ever get any sun?"

"I lost some weight," he answered, "but I'm okay. And how much sun do you get driving a hack?" But he wondered if the coughing had anything to do with it. Doc Horowitz had told him that he was getting worse, that pretty soon he had to get out of the City, go somewhere in the mountains. Wherever they were.

"How you feeling?" she asked, with concern in her voice that puzzled Gabe.

"Pretty good," he answered. He smiled. "You give a guy a workout. But something's bothering me, something running around the back of my head. Like when you wake up all of a sudden and you don't remember all the money you lost playing poker or on the horses. Then it hits you. Only whatever it is, it's where I can't reach it."

"You don't remember last night?" she asked.

"Sure. I dropped some fares off up in Harlem, the Cotton Club, went in to see if I could scare up some business back downtown, had some drinks and then?"

"And then?" she prodded.

"Jesus, I got in a fight. Now I remember. Some bozo got fresh with you and grabbed your ass and--." A grin pulled up one side of his wide mouth. "And I hit him. I decked him. Son-of-a-bitch, I got in a fight and knocked somebody down. I knocked somebody down."

She stared at him as if she thought he had missed a cue somewhere.

"Some bozo?" she said, her voice rising, "some bozo? You don't know who you hit?" Her eyes were so wide all he could see were the whites. Like Ruby Begonia must look like on Amos 'n', Andy, he thought.

"No. Should I?"

"You're goddamned right you should."

Sounds from the street came into the window. Yelling, screaming, cursing, in Yiddish, Italian, German, and Polish, floated up from the teeming street.

"Because that 'bozo' was Dutch Schultz, that's why. It was wonderful the way you helped me, but you hit Dutch Schultz. The Dutchman was who you hit."