There was a chill in the air, for April, as Morris Raab headed back down Seventh Avenue. And a chill was always good for the coat business, anyone on the street would say.

He and his brother Sol had had their own firm for seven years now. They had sixty machines in operation, a steady production in two other factories on Allen and Rivington Streets downtown, and a growing business even in the teeth of the Depression, when dozens of their competitors had been forced to close their doors. There were six years between them — six years which could have been twenty. Sol had always planned to pursue a reliable trade, like accounting or the law. But as the oldest son, when their father died it had fallen on him to take care of the family, so he dropped out of accounting school and found work preparing the books for the bridal shop on Orchard Street and for an engraver on Grand.

It was Morris, his younger brother, who had asked him to come on board.

"What would I possibly do for you?" Sol asked skeptically. "I don't know garments. I know numbers."

"I know all you'll need to know," his younger brother said. "And what I can't teach you, you'll learn. It's not exactly rocket science."

"If it was, I doubt you'd be much of a success," Sol said.

From the start it was a schlecht shidech, their mother always said. A bad marriage. A circle made of two squares.

And yet the "marriage" had worked.

To Sol, who labored over every dime, Morris never seemed to spend a minute thinking much on anything. He only saw things as he wanted them to be, as he felt he could make them happen. Morris was tall, over six feet, with full shoulders and muscular arms that made him appear even larger. And he never backed down from anything. Sol was shorter and thin, with already receding hair and fists that had never been clenched in anger. The two were as different as two people could be who had come out of the same womb.

"Ich zol azoy vissen fun tsoris," Sol would mutter in Yiddish with a shake of his head. I should only have half the trouble you cause for me. "You know that, right?"

"Du machst nich veynen," Morris would reply with a dismissive wave. You're making me cry.

They had grown up rough-and-tumble on the Lower East Side. While Sol was always in the books, Morris saw no point in staying in school when, at twelve, he was already set to make his way in the world. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way. He had a firm jaw and a wide, flattened nose, as if reshaped by a heavyweight's jab. His hands were solid and rough, his knuckles scarred from a hundred scraps, not the hands of a man used to solving things by sitting across the table. And he had learned how to use them early on, and capably.

When he was only fifteen he had forged his mother's consent and enlisted to go fight in Europe in the Great War. By then, he had already dropped out of PS 48 on East Fourth and joined in the trade. They sent him to basic training at a camp near Aqueduct Raceway in Queens. He was the only Jew in his unit; his fellow recruits, all street-hardened Irish and Italian boys, acted like they'd never even met one before. A week into their training, Morris's corporal and four of his tent mates wrestled him from behind and shoved him into the latrine, basically a ditch dug outside half- filled with piss and excrement, while the rest looked on, laughing, peppering him with taunts of "Christ killer" and "Rumpleforeskin." Two or three even opened their flies and let go. When Morris crawled back out in shame, soiled with piss and shit, the corporal said he smelled so vile he'd have to go sleep with the horses in the stables. When Morris finally told him to go fuck himself and charged, the rest of the unit tackled him and held him down while the corporal ran a sharp-bristled horse brush down his back until his skin was bloody and raw. Morris spent two days in the hospital, bandaged and covered in salve. When the sergeant found out, he tried to get Morris to divulge what had happened, but Morris refused to give up a name.

A second sergeant got involved, this one a Jew. A drill sergeant, with arms like cannons and a demeanor as tough as any soldier in camp. "I figure you'd like to get back at these bastards," he said to Morris, sizing up what had taken place. Morris said, yeah, he damn well would like to get back at them. "Well, not here," the sergeant said. They had a boxing team on base, so he said they would take it out in the ring.

Morris, who was ready wherever, said, "Fine. Pick any one of them," leering at the corporal.

"Not any one." The sergeant looked at him and handed him his gloves. "All." All ... Morris looked back at him, sure he hadn't heard correctly. These were tough Irish and Italian kids, all with three years on him. Why would another Jew set him up for the biggest licking of his life?

"And if you take a quick fall," the sergeant said, with an earnestness that made Morris sure he meant it, "be sure I'll step in the ring myself and you'll have to deal with me. Fershtayst ...?"

"Farshteyst." Morris looked at him and nodded. I understand.

So one by one he took them on. All. And each who came up cockily went down just as quickly, staggering sideways back to their corner, rubbing their jaws. The last to go was the corporal who had pushed him into the latrine and run the wire brush across his back, who turned out not to be so tough without his unit to back him up. At the end, his nose broken, his eyes puffed out twice their size, Morris himself could barely stand. He staggered back to his corner and collapsed onto the mat. He looked at the sergeant, blood streaming down his face. "You said all, right?"

"Yeah." The sergeant finally smiled and nodded. "All."

Soon after, the army found out Morris's true age and sent him home. Which turned out to be a good thing in the end, since his unit ended up wiped out to a man at Belleau Wood.

But from then on, Morris was a man who others knew had the will to stand up for himself, and the means to back it up. And he operated his firm with the same conviction. There were pressures in the business, things that could sink a company every day. And not just the teetering economy, which had put enough of his competitors on their backs. The unions, which were no longer unions in any traditional sense, but rackets, taken over by the gangsters, who squeezed companies for payments — worker benefit funds, they were called, ostensibly for the slow periods, but everyone knew exactly what they were. Protection money. Protection from the unions themselves. And they had taken over the suppliers as well, forcing firms into agreements to buy only from them, adding a nickel here or a dime there to their costs, which went straight into the union's pockets. And anyone who refused to pay up or play by the rules didn't stay in business very long.

So far Morris and Sol had been left alone, but they both knew it was only a matter of time.

As he turned onto Thirty-sixth Street, where many of the garment firms had moved now, the block buzzed with...