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Billy bathgate book5/7/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() On the way to that bloody night (in 1935) in a dingy back room, plenty will happen to this American-Dickensian Billy Behan (a.k.a. In the next few months of his life he will graduate from lowly coffee-fetcher for the hoodlums (there's Schultz, his brains Abba-dabba Berman, his hit-man Lulu Rosenkrantz, his driver Mickey, his faithful aide Irving) to pickup man, to trusted lookout and information-getter, and finally-just before the gang is killed the following October in a surprise shootout in a bar in Newark-to full-fledged and salaried member of the Schultz mob. Schultz"), Billy reveals an ingenuity and Oliver-Twist-like daring that accomplish his ends. Determined that he'll somehow infiltrate his way into the inner sanctums of the gang ("whatever my life was going to be in this world it would have something to do with Mr. Billy Behan, a fatherless Irish-Jewish kid from the East Bronx, is 15 when he first has the luck one day to see Schultz in the flesh-and the greater luck briefly to catch the illustrious mobster's attention. but this time in order to chronicle, with a detail and color and immediacy that make celluloid seem almost clumsy and unnecessary, the decline and fall of the legendary New York gangster Dutch Schultz. As in World's Fair, Doctorow returns once again to his impeccably rendered 1930's. ![]()
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