One summer morning in the early '20s, a tough little boy hung by his fingers from a tenement cornice, five stories above a littered Bronx street. Leaning on their window sills, Jules Garfinkle's neighbors gawked and gasped. Jules pulled himself back up on the roof and proudly collected his dime bet. Except for fighting in the streets, he liked nothing better than making easy money by showing off.
Jules's mother died when he was seven; his father, a presser in a garment factory, never found time to curb his son's surly, defiant spirit. At...
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