They were all avid gamblers, and they all came to Frankie. Sometimes, preferably on Saturday afternoons, because no funerals were officiated and she was allowed to gamble on the front steps, Arlyne would visit her grandmother. On those occasions, she would go down a back staircase leading to the neighboring basement and visit Uncle Frankie and his friends. She used to find them stretched out on a couple of old couches, going over the race sheet and listening to the standings on a big old wooden radio. They didn't seem to mind that little girl hanging around. Sometimes Frankie or one of the others would sneak her a quarter and a pat on the cheek. In fact, as Arlyne recalls, those men were "the Uncles." For example, there was Uncle Milty Tillinger, the loan shark. Once, when one of Milty's relatives was on the run from justice, Ida hid him in the coffin room until the danger passed, earning the loyalty of the Tillinger family forever. There was also Izzy Smith, owner of Zion Cemetery do

Although pleasant at first, these formalities began to wear on Miss Blum's patience. Constrained by convention, she could not initiate contact without a suitable pretext. Fortunately, one did present itself. One of the funeral homes was going to hold a raffle and all the East Side undertakers were given a handful of ballots to sell. Ida Blum, who usually handled these matters, called her daughter and asked if she was interested in trying her luck with the Weiss brothers. At her mother's timely suggestion, Billie went to Houston Street on the pretext of selling them ten raffle tickets. Irving was willing to buy all ten, but Henry stopped him, telling him that five would be enough. That confirmed what Billie thought: that Irving was the most generous, and the best catch. In fact, Billie had left nothing to chance. Before approaching them and without anyone seeing her, she had lifted the red Mafia Girl 46 stamps from the ballots in order to guarantee that she was selling a winning one t

When she picked up the phone, however, she heard the stern rebuke in her father's voice, who shouted, "Arlyne!" She withdrew her hand. With one brief command, Irving had just firmly excluded her from his most intimate affairs. That was the way things worked in the Weiss family. Doors that slammed shut. Mirrors that stared back. And telephone rings that hid secrets. Maria De La Cruz would have been slow to reflect on her mother's writings, at least she discovered that her real name was "Arlyne", and that she had made a kind of auto-bibliography written in the third person, but how could I find out? Well, those sheets hid an admirable truth and bandit, they coincided perfectly with her father's chest. She was confused for a few days, she wasn't sure what her real surname was, her real name, and she certainly had become quite messed up in her mind. However, in the shadows of her questions, she was filled with relief and emotion for the blood that ran in her veins; even though they carrie