Chapter One

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.”

“Oh my god!” Gabe said. “I don’t do much right, do I? Why didn’t he kill me right there?”

“Oh, he would have, believe me. But there was too much confusion. He was screaming, his bodyguards were trying to get him up off the floor, and I got you the hell out of there.”

There was a loud knock at the door. They looked at each other, and then Gabe put on a robe while the girl ran into the bathroom. Gabe opened the door and stepped back. The man was so big that there didn’t seem to be any light coming in the doorway around him. Gabe started to say something but the man held up a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt.

“Ten minutes,” he said. “Fifteen tops. Downstairs.”

Gabe closed the door and went back into the bedroom. He sat down on the bed and took a pull at the bottle. He looked up at her as she came into the room. She was partly dressed. Her eyes were wide, staring at him.

“You see him?” he asked her. “You see the size of him?”

She nodded. “I was peeking around the bathroom door,” she said.

“He must be one of Schultz’s boys,” he said. “They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?” He stared up at her, his hazel eyes narrowed to slits over his narrow face. She sat down on the bed and took the bottle from him, took a long pull and put it back on the bed table

 “I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ve seen him at the Club, but not with Schultz. He’s always with Lucky Luciano. But everybody knows Lucky and Schultz hate each other. So why should Lucky’s goon want to see you?”

“How the hell do I know,” Gabe said, his forehead creased with deep wrinkles. “To kill me, probably. Anyway, I got five minutes to shower and shave and get down there. Can I see you later?”

“Sure. Call me at the Club tonight if everything’s all right. And Gabe—?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks again for helping me. Maybe we can see each other some more?”

“If I live until tonight, sure,” he answered, going into the bathroom.

He shaved quickly, nicking himself a couple of times because his hands were shaking and rushed through a shower. He splashed Lucky Tiger on his hair and combed it straight back, no part, like Valentino did in The Sheik, dressed and went downstairs. The huge man was leaning against the door of a black La Salle. He opened the front door and motioned Gabe in. Gabe snuck a look in the back seat, wondering if someone was waiting for him there. He knew, hell, everybody knew, that the Jewish gangs used ice picks, the guineas used garrotes, both easy from the back seat of a car.

The back seat was empty. Gabe let out a long breath, and asked the driver where they were going.

“Shut the fuck up,” he responded, the only thing he said the whole trip. He stopped the car in front of the Hotel Astor, which stood high over Times Square like a fat rich lady looking over her estate. Two men in dark suits waited at the curb, not bothering to hide the bulges under their armpits.

“He heeled?” one of the men asked the driver.

The driver laughed. “This punk?” he said, “he never had nothin’ but a water pistol his whole life.”

One of the men opened the door and Gabe got out. They herded him across the lobby to the elevators and rode to the top floor. And into the first hotel suite he had ever seen, where, like in a William Powell movie, the elevator door opened right into the living room. But that was nothing compared to the shock when he saw the two men sitting at a coffee table, drinks in front of them, their faces showing all the expression of wallpaper.

Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. He had never seen them, just their pictures in the paper, but he knew who they were. Everybody knew who they were.

They were both dressed in dark blue pin striped suits, over white on white shirts and regimental striped neckties. They looked nothing alike, but they were thought of as twins. People said they didn’t have to even talk to each other; from the time they were kids on the street stealing pennies from back alley crap games, they could read each others minds. The dark man with the straight black hair and one droopy eyelid, was Luciano. Charley Lucky, the capo de tutti capi. The little man with the deeply lined face and big ears, his face tanned from all the time he spent in Miami and Havana, was Lansky, the brains behind Charley Lucky.

They said around town that Meyer Lansky trusted only Lucky Luciano and Lucky Luciano trusted nobody.

Besides the two at the cocktail table, a half dozen men ranged around the room. They played gin rummy, stood around, or looked out the windows at Times Square far below. They were interchangeable in dark clothes, expressionless faces and guns in shoulder holsters. They appeared to have no interest in the meeting, but each one was ready on request to serve drinks, open a window, or shoot someone—whatever was required.

When he had walked into the suite, the little man with the big ears got out of his chair and extended his hand. “Good morning, Gabriel,” he said. “Thank you for coming up,” like it had been Gabe’s idea to stop by as long as he was in the neighborhood. “This is Charles,” nodding toward Luciano, who stood, walked over to Gabe and shook hands, like he was meeting his banker, Gabe thought. “Get Mr. Levine a drink,” Luciano said over his shoulder, and one of the gorillas went over to the wet bar and poured some whiskey. He handed the drink to Gabe. “Here, you Jew son-of-a-bitch,” he said, “choke on it.”

“Easy, Salvatore,” the little man said. “Bad temper got us into this mess. Let’s not make it any worse.”

Bad temper, Gabe thought. Then this was about the fight last night. He had relaxed a little when they gave him a drink instead of shooting him. Now he stopped relaxing. Stopped dead, he couldn’t help thinking.

“Tell me Gabriel,” Meyer Lansky said, “what do you know about Saranac Lake?”

The question came from so deep in left field that Gabriel didn’t know what to say at first. Finally, “I don’t know. It doesn’t ring a bell. What is it?”

“It’s not a thing,” Luciano answered, “it’s a place. Upstate. You know upstate?”

”I was in Albany once,” Gabe answered. “Drove a Senator up there. Is it near there?”

Lansky nodded. “Saranac Lake is another couple of hours north of there. It’s mostly for people with TB.” He stopped. “We did some checking. You got TB, don’t you Gabriel?” he asked.

Gabe nodded. He didn’t know how they knew, but they knew.

“Not only a TB place,” Lansky went on, “but I hear there’s a lot of action up there. Somebody told me it’s a cross between a big hospital and a wide-open town. I can’t picture that mix, but that’s what they say.”

“But why would I be interested?” Gabe asked.

“Let’s stop the shit, kid,” Luciano growled. “One, it’s a famous place for getting cured of TB If you don’t do something you could be dead in maybe a couple of years.” He thought for a minute. “And after last night, if you stay here you could be dead in a in a couple of hours. So there might be better.”

Lansky broke in. “Let me put this in perspective, Gabriel,” he said. “You see, there’s lots going on. And suddenly you’re part of it.”

“Oh.” It was all Gabe could think of to say.

“I’ll make this quick. Dutch Schultz wants our okay to kill this new prosecutor. And that would be the dumbest thing we could do. The heat would never let up.”

He paused and without any break, Luciano took up the story. “And we can’t let that happen. Because it would start a war. And if we have a war here, people like Capone look to pick up the pieces, or Longy Zwillman is licking his chops across the river in Jersey, or the Purple Gang in Detroit would love to move in and everybody all of a sudden got his hand on his gun.”

“Schultz wants to kill everybody in sight. Between him and that grizzly bear he’s got for a bodyguard, nobody’s safe,” he went on. “And after last night, they’d be happy to start with you.”

Lansky took up the story. “And Legs Diamond is always looking for an excuse to rub out Schultz. They hate each other.” He paused, sipped his drink, and said, almost sadly, “Now you’re up shit creek, and all just the Dutchman grabs your girlfriend by her black ass.”

“You got to leave town, kid.” This from Luciano, who almost sounded like he really cared what Gabe did. “But it works out for everybody. We’re interested in all the booze that the Bronfmans and their people are sending in from Canada. We know it goes over the border somewhere near this Saranac Lake. You’re a cab driver. You could help a lot.” He looked at Gabe for a minute, lit a cigarette, and then went on.

“If we go into business up there, you can drive for us. Make sure the stuff gets in from Canada, through little places they call Chateaugay and, I think, Chazy and this Saranac Lake to Albany and here in the City. And maybe get your health back at the same time.”

“That sounds great,” Gabe said, not sure at all how it sounded, but at least it sounded better than getting shot right here in this room. “I can be ready to go in just a couple of weeks.”

“You go this afternoon,” Luciano said. He nodded to one of the hoods at the door, who brought an envelope over to him. “Here’s your ticket. Your train leaves Grand Central at 5:30. And here’s everything you need to know, about where you’re staying and like that. And there’s some cash in here.”

Gabe took the envelope and put it in his pocket without looking at it. He didn’t think it would be smart to look like he didn’t trust them. As it was, he didn’t know whether he trusted them or not, because everything was going too fast for him. The last thing you wanted to do, Gabe thought, was make these people think you didn’t trust them. It could really be the last thing you did.

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about last night. I’m really sorry I started this mess. I’m sorry I caused so much trouble for you. And I appreciate your helping me like this, instead of, uh, instead of ….” He didn’t finish the thought, because he didn’t want them to start thinking about an instead solution to all this.

“Could I ask you something?” he asked.

“Sure.”

Well,” he started, slowly, “you already know. About the girl, I mean. The dancer. The one I socked Dutch Schultz over, even if I didn’t know it was him.”

“So?” Luciano said.

“Well, she’s pretty swell, and she’s pretty scared about what happened last night. She’s afraid to even go back to work, you know? So I wonder if, maybe, if it’s okay with you, if she could maybe go with me to this Saranac Lake place. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about her. And maybe — “

Lansky put up his hand, stopping Gabe. “Don’t worry kid,” he said. “We already thought about her. We don’t want her getting hurt, so she’s going to be a featured dancer in one of our places. Miami, maybe, or Havana. Anyway, it was important to get her out of town before she got hurt. In fact, she’s on her way south right now. I’m sorry you won’t get a chance to say good-bye.” He looked at Luciano who looked back with no expression at all.

Gabe couldn’t think of anything else to say, and no one seemed to expect anything. He stood up and shook hands with each of them. He started to leave the room when Luciano called him back.

“You carry?” he asked.

“Do I what?”

“A gun,” Luciano said. “You got a gun?” He shook his head in disgust, like he had to ask if Gabe wore shoes.

“No.”

Luciano turned to one of the men looking out the window. “Give him a piece,” he said. The man walked over to Gabe, reached under his left arm, which made Gabe wince, and pulled out a large revolver. He handed it to Gabe. “Here,” he said, “shoot yourself. Save us all the trouble.”

Gabe put the pistol in his coat pocket, surprised at how heavy it was. He nodded at Lansky and Luciano and left the room with the two big men who had brought him there wondering how much trouble having a gun was going to get him into.

* * *

The elevator doors had barley slid shut when Lansky said, “It went pretty well, I think.” When Luciano only shrugged, he added, “It’s a touchy situation.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Luciano said, grudgingly. “I would have taken him out right away, but maybe your way is right. It’s crazy to start a war now over a little thing like this. If we take the stupid kid out, Schultz thinks it’s because we’re afraid of him, so he does god knows what. Then we have to hit back at him, to show him he can’t get away with anything he wants, and then everybody goes nuts.”

Lansky looked at Luciano. “And the boy is sick, so either god or the Dutchman takes him out,” he said. “Either way it’s okay. The girl, Charles?” he asked, an almost regretful tone in his voice “The dancer?”

Luciano walked over to the telephone and dialed a number. He listened for a moment, without saying anything, hung up and walked back to the couch.

“And?” Lansky asked.

“Terrible thing,” Luciano answered. “She was waiting for the train to take her up to Harlem when she slipped just when the train was coming in and went down on the tracks right in front of it.”

“Terrible,” Lansky said. “When did it happen?”

Lucky Luciano looked at his watch.

“Any time now.”

* * *

Gabe stood in the crowd in front of the gate leading to track 18, lighting a cigarette taking a few quick puffs and grinding it under his heel, then lighting another one, trying to make sense of everything that had happened in the past few hours.

He took off his flannel cap and ran his hand through his light brown hair. Waking up with the dancer, he thought, then the guy at the door, the hotel suite, rushing home to throw the few things he had in a cardboard suitcase and here he was in Grand Central.

All because he had punched a guy. The only other time he had tried that was when some wiseacre started flirting with his date in a speakeasy on 42nd Street. Gabe had taken one swing and woke up just as he was being put in the ambulance with a bent nose and three broken ribs. Just in time to see his date walking off with the wiseacre.

He looked around Grand Central and up to the windows high up on the marble walls. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people rushed around. The grand staircase reminded him of that girl in the fairy tale he read as a kid, the one whose son-of-a-bitch stepmother wouldn’t let her go to the ball but she went anyway. She must have walked down a staircase just like that, Gabe thought. He had almost snapped at the wiseguy in the information booth who made him feel like a Rueben for not knowing where Saranac Lake was, but stopped himself.

Maybe the guy worked at this lousy job all day, answering dumb questions without having the chance to tell people how dumb they were. Gabe understood that, from his life driving a hack and from his old man who had worked twelve, fourteen hours a day in a sweatshop for maybe a dollar and if he said anything to the boss about the pay or the lousy loft he worked in he’d get fired on the spot.

Instead he came home and yelled and screamed at Gabe’s mother because she couldn’t make nice dinners for him on no money. She just sat in the kitchen chair sobbing and moaning and Gabe and his sister would hide in the bathroom until it was over.

The clanging of the iron gates opening and the man in the conductor’s uniform shouting, “All aboard,” interrupted Gabe’s thoughts. The 8:15 North Star. Stops at 125th Street, Harmon, Yonkers, Briarcliff Manor, Rhinebeck, Croton, Poughkeepsie, Albany, Herkimer, and Utica. Passengers for Saranac Lake board car number 6. Only Saranac Lake passengers in car number 6.”

Gabe wondered what was so special about people going to Saranac Lake that they had their own car. For some reason it made him uneasy. What about these people going into the same car he was? Were they all sick?

He boarded car number six and found an empty seat. He put his one suitcase on the overhead rack and looked out the dirty window. The train started with a jerk. First the tunnel and then out into the sunshine. The tenements on either side started to glide past. Funny, he thought, it’s like the train was standing still and the telephone poles and buildings were moving.

Gabe put the Colliers he had picked up in the station on the seat. And the New York Sun. The Sun had the best sports section of all the papers in town. He was startled when someone asked, “You got room here? The car’s pretty full.” The words “car” and “here” seemed to end in Hs instead of Rs.

He looked up to see a tall man, well over six feet, with flaming red hair over a long, ruddy face.

“Yeah, sure,” Gabe said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“You going to Saranac Lake?” the man asked.

Gabe hesitated. “I guess so,” he answered. He didn’t really want to get into a conversation. New things always made him uneasy and this day was all new things. He didn’t need any more.

“You guess so?” the man said, sounding surprised. “You’re not sure?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Gabe answered.

The tall man, who wore a green and white checked flannel shirt over corduroy pants, didn’t answer at first. He remained standing, looking over the car. “Happy looking bunch,” he said, almost to himself, “very happy looking bunch.” He put his suitcases on the overhead rack and sat down. He surprised Gabe by asking, “What the hell are you doing on this train? Why in hell are you going to Saranac Lake? You a rich hunter, or fisherman, going up for the season? Or are you going to climb some mountains or take up with a 300 pound Indian woman for the winter?”

Gabe couldn’t keep track of the flow of words. He noticed that the man’s eyes were so pale a blue that they seemed to be watering. The more he talked the more he swung his arm like he was nailing down each word like it was a piece of wood.

“Well,” Gabe started to answer, but stopped and shrugged. The real reason he was on the train was nobody’s business. Besides, the redheaded man sounded like he was just looking for an argument.

So Gabe didn’t say anything. Instead he looked out the windows of the train at the tenements lining either side of the tracks as the train left the tunnel and slowly picked up a little speed. He could see right into the windows. He saw people sitting around, or reading the paper, or having something to eat, or in one window, making love. Jesus, he thought, Delancey Street was bad, with the crowded tenements and the pushcarts and the noise, but how could people live with trains going by every few minutes and people looking in at their lives?

“You know anything about it?” The red-haired man’s voice cut into Gabe’s thoughts.

“No, I guess not,” Gabe answered. “How about you?”

“I’ve read some. The place was nothing, a wide spot in the road when this doctor from New York, he was dying of the TB, see, well he came up there for one last hunting trip, only he didn’t die, he started to feel better, and so he stayed up there and started looking for cures for TB. And sick people started coming from all over the world.”

“Like that place the Arabs go every year,” Gabe said. “Mecca—? I think its Mecca.”

The redhead paused. “I guess like Mecca,” he said. “Or Lourdes maybe. People who are dying open their hearts and minds to miracles, even if there aren’t any. Show them a statute of the Virgin with tears running down her cheeks, or mineral baths that cure people, or a smoky cave someplace and they’ll come so fast they’ll run you down.”

He stopped and lit a Chesterfield. He sounds educated, Gabe thought. When he calms down he’s pretty interesting. “Pretty soon,” the redhead went on, “the sanatorium he started couldn’t hold all the people who were coming and they just kept coming.”

He paused. “You got anything to drink?” he asked.

“Yeah. I got some Scotch in my suitcase.”

“Can we have a drink, like to start our trip?”

“Sure,” Gabe said. He reached up, got down his suitcase and took out a bottle of Scotch. He unscrewed the cap and handed the bottle over. “Drink hearty,” he said, closing the suitcase and putting it back on the rack. “I’ve got a bottle of soda to go with it,” he said. “Cuts it some. The stuff’s pretty rough.”

“Ayuh.” The red headed man tilted the bottle toward Gabe in a silent toast, took a deep pull and handed it back. “Incidentally,” he said, holding out his hand, “I hate drinking with strangers. My name’s Keith. Edward Keith. Call me Ed.” Gabe shook the offered hand. “I’m Gabe Levine,” he said. “I’m from New York.” Gabe took a drink, offered it again, got a no thanks nod and put the bottle back in the suitcase.

“You from Boston?” he asked. “You sound like you’re from Boston.” “Boston,” the tall man exploded. “Boston? Hell no, what makes you think so? You New York people, you got such a funny accent, you’d think you could tell when somebody spoke proper English.” His face was getting red again, the arm starting to chop.

Here we go again, Gabe thought. “Where is that?” he asked.

“Maine. Ayuh, Bangor, Maine. Not any gawd-damned Boston that would sell Babe Ruth just to put on a musical comedy in New York.”

“How do you make that noise?” Gabe asked.

“Noise? What noise?”

“That ‘ayuh’ noise you make. It sounds like you mean yes.”

The redhead laughed. “Well now,” he said, “I guess that is real Maine. And it does mean yes. It’s easy. You just inhale and say yes at the same time. Try it.”

Gabe tried it and almost choked. “You do it. I’ll say yes the regular way.”

Gabe took our his handkerchief and dried his face. He hoped that Ed hadn’t noticed the spots of blood on the handkerchief.

“You’ll get used to that “ayuh” thing,” Ed said. “Let me see, before you started to choke to death I was talking about this Saranac Lake. From what I’ve read, so many people started to come there that the big sanatorium started to fill up, and they didn’t take anybody that didn’t have a good chance at getting better, anyway. So people starting adding rooms to their houses or built bigger new ones and started taking in patients. I guess people up there live anywhere from a tent to a mansion. And I guess a whole lot of people live in ordinary houses, just like we do.”

Gabe looked at him, but didn’t say anything. Maybe you lived in what you call an ordinary house, he thought, but I sure as hell never did. There were no houses on the Lower East Side. Just tenements. Railroad flats. Two or three tiny rooms with the bathroom at the end of the hall, with rats and roaches all over, where sometimes two or three families lived and sometimes set up sewing machines so they could do piece work at home after ten or twelve hours in a sweatshop.

The conductor came by for their tickets. He was stout, his red face giving him a cheerful look.

“What time do we get to Saranac Lake?” Ed asked him. The conductor took out his big round watch, studying it for a time as if all the reality in the world were on the face of that watch, put it carefully back in his pocket.

“We’re making good time,” he said. “Be in Utica a little after one in the morning. Then this car will be hooked onto an Adirondack Division train for the rest of your trip. Be in Saranac Lake mid-morning, I expect.”

“We were wondering what it’s like,” Gabe said. “You know the place?”

“Oh, sure,” the conductor answered. “I’m from Lake Clear, just up the road. Go over to Saranac Lake a lot.”

“All the sick people don’t bother you?” Ed asked.

“Not a bit. They got real strict health rules there. Hell, they even got a fifty dollar fine if you spit in the street.” He thought for a minute. “And besides, there’s more there than sick people. Sure, there’s lots of them, but there’s more. It’s the busiest town on our route up there. But mostly it’s a hell of a place. I read that somebody called it a ‘place of carefree gaiety.’ Honest to God, that’s what he said. ‘Carefree gaiety.’ Hell of a place, boys. You’ll have yourself a time there.” He gave them an exaggerated wink. “And remember, boys, you’re not married after you leave Utica.”

Ed and Gabe looked at each other, puzzled.

 Finally Gabe said, “What do you mean? I’m not married.” He turned to Ed. “You?”

Ed shook his head.

“All the better,” the conductor said. And walked away, laughing, leaving them even more puzzled.

They had another drink from Gabe’s bottle, made themselves as comfortable as possible and for the rest of the night dozed or talked, now and again taking another drink.

By the time light was starting to show through the grimy windows Gabe felt that they knew a fair amount about each other, but not too much, because Gabe never gave too much away about himself, for fear he’d talk too much and sound foolish. And the redhead didn’t say an awful lot about himself. Gabe had heard that people from up in New England were like that. It was okay with him.

At one point, while it was still partly dark, Ed stood up to stretch and stood there, looking around the car. He reached down and poked Gabe’s shoulder, motioning for him to stand up.

“What’s the matter?” Gabe asked.

“Look around the car. What do you see?”

“Just people. Sleeping, talking, staring out the window.”

“Ayuh. What else?”

“Well, the sleeping ones, and the one’s just sitting there, a lot of them are sitting sort of close to each other. You think they know each other?”

“You ever bring home kittens?” Ed asked.

“No. Why?”  

“When you bring home a couple of kittens, you put them in a nice warm box so they’re comfortable and because they’re scared. When you look in on them in the morning they’ll be sleeping close, all four paws wrapped around each other.”

“Sort of like those people?” Gabe asked. “Like that?”

“Ayuh. Just like that.”

      About Shel Damsky

Shel Damsky is a graduate of Colgate University and Cornell Law School. During  his fifty years of practicing law, he authored and coauthored several legal articles and one book, and taught legal subjects at SUNY at Albany and Pace University.

During all this time, he wanted to write short stories and novels. Even if it took seventy or so years to do it, he says, “It’s a real thrill.”

Shel is married to author Dorice Nelson and they lived for a time in Saranac Lake, before moving to their present home in Cambridge, NY.  

You may contact Shel by e-mail