Billy, questioned as to why he bought the gifts, lies and says that he bought them on impulse without admitting his relationship with Drew. The ruse buys enough time for Harvey, whom Billy contacted beforehand, to pick up Drew and take her out of the country to safety. Billy uses the allowance Berman provided him with to have flowers and expensive gifts delivered to Drew, making it impossible for her to be harmed without attracting attention. Billy quickly realizes that he's been set up, and that Schultz has arranged for his best hitmen to kill Drew as he fears she will implicate him in Bo's murder. On the day of the trial, Berman instructs Billy to take Drew to the horse races at Saratoga Springs. She then scrambles down the side of a waterfall and swims in the pool underneath, where Billy comforts her. One afternoon, Drew goes for a country hike with Billy and asks him to tell her the truth about Bo's death. Billy poses as Schulz's ward with Drew as his governess, while Schultz works to win over the locals by paying off debts, making charitable gifts, and even converting to Roman Catholicism at the town church.

Seeing Schultz as simply the latest of her sexual conquests, Drew agrees to become his gun moll and is taken with him when he settles in Onondaga as part of his plan to avoid conviction for tax evasion. Billy discovers Drew is married, and that her wealthy husband, Harvey, is gay. Afterwards, Schultz has Billy take Drew back to her apartment to gather her things. Billy follows them out to a riverboat, where he witnesses Schultz having Weinberg thrown into the East River with his feet encased in cement. Believing that Weinberg is a traitor, Schultz has him and his girlfriend, a socialite named Drew Preston, kidnapped at gunpoint.

When Berman tasks Billy to spy on the gangsters who go to Schultz's nightclub, Billy witnesses Bo Weinberg, Schultz's lieutenant, meeting with a pair of men affiliated with the rival Italian mafia. To avoid the stigma of having an Irish boy work for a Jewish crime boss, Billy changes his last name to 'Bathgate' after a local street. Billy later finds and infiltrates Schultz's offices without being seen, resulting in Schultz's accountant and trusted advisor Otto Berman agreeing to take him into the gang. When Billy demonstrates his skill at juggling, an amused Schultz calls him a 'capable boy' and tips him. One afternoon, Billy is present when infamous Jewish mobster Dutch Schultz arrives to inspect a shipment of illegal beer. Plot summary īilly Behan is an impoverished fifteen-year-old living in The Bronx with his mother. Ī film based on the novel was released in 1991 to very mixed reviews. Doctorow that won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction for 1990, the 1990 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 1990 William Dean Howells Medal, and was the runner-up for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the 1989 National Book Award. Billy Bathgate is a 1989 novel by author E.

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