The Yiddish Gangster's Daughter (A Becks Ruchinsky Mystery Book 1)

by Joan Lipinsky Cochran

  “You can’t mean that. It’s been over for weeks. You’re the one I love.”

  “You wouldn’t have slept with Dawn if you loved me,” I say, my anger building. “I want you out of here tonight.” Tears stream down my face.

  I rise and open the door that leads from the kitchen to the garage. “I’m going for a walk. If you ever gave a damn about me, you’ll be gone when I return.” I slam the door behind me and leave the garage open for his departure.

  As I roam the deserted streets of our neighborhood, my sobs fade. I wonder if I’ve done the right thing. If I should have stayed and talked it out. But my grief and anger are too raw. All I’ll do if I go back is lash out at him. Memories of my parents’ fights flash across my mind. My mother screaming at my father, then running to their room to cry. She invariably took Dad back. I hated her for it and refuse to turn into the doormat she became.

  When I return home a half hour later, Daniel’s car is gone. I race upstairs. Trousers and shirts are missing from his side of the closet. I stare at the gap in the shelf that held his suitcase. It mirrors the hollowness in my chest.

  I’m not much of a drinker. But I can’t think of anything else that will ease the pain. I go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. Then another. And one more. In an hour, I’m so woozy I have to hold on to the walls as I stumble down the hall to the family room. I’m planning to watch television, hoping it’ll distract me, but the photo album from our family vacation in Yellowstone draws my attention. I pull it off the cocktail table onto my lap and flip through photos.

  The first picture is of Daniel and me on horseback. We’re smiling and waving. Daniel looks silly in a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. In the next, Daniel and the boys smile over their shoulders as they walk toward a bison at the edge of the road. In the third photo, taken by a waiter at the Old Faithful Lodge, Daniel drapes an arm over my shoulders as the boys lean into the picture. We look like such a happy, normal family.

  What went wrong? When did he decide it was okay to break the rules of our life together? Everything was going so well. Josh and Gabriel were away at college. My father and I had resolved our differences. And Daniel and I were planning a week’s vacation in Montreal. The photos make my loss feel worse. At six o’clock, I return the album to the cocktail table, then go upstairs and change into pajamas. Our king-sized bed looms large and empty. I pull the covers up to my neck and realize it’s the first time in almost thirty years that I’ve slept alone.

  I hate it.

  ----

  3

  ----

  A week later, as I drive south on I-95 to pick up my father for dinner, I consider lying about Daniel’s and my separation. But it’s pointless. This will be the first time in months I’ve come without my husband and Tootsie will know something’s wrong. Better to get it over with.

  “So where’s the doc?” my father says as he opens the car door. “Get called away for an emergency?”

  “Daniel and I aren’t talking.”

  My father slides into the seat next to me and cocks his head. “What happened? The two of you never fight.”

  The old man’s not far off base. We rarely argued. I always assumed it was because we got along so well. But maybe we communicated so poorly we never had a reason to fight?

  “I threw Daniel out. He was cheating.”

  My father, who’s been fiddling with his seat belt, jerks his head up. “What?”

  “Daniel’s screwing his nurse.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” My father shakes his head, then laughs. “I’m sorry, Doll. I can’t see Daniel . . . How’d you find out?”

  “A phone call from his office manager. And he admitted it.”

  “Jeeze. Is it still going on?”

  “He says no.”

  “And this is the first time he’s cheated?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “If it’s just this once . . .” He’s silent a moment. “Maybe you should let it go. It’s not such a big deal.”

  I pull away from his building and drive through the Schmuel Bernstein’s gate a bit faster than usual. My face grows hot and blood throbs through a vein in my neck. It creates an irritating tic near my Adam’s apple. So much for sympathy from my father.

  “He cheated on me. What am I supposed to do? Say okay. Let’s get on with it?”

  “You’re married, what, thirty years and this is the first time he’s cheated? There’s nothing wrong with forgiving and forgetting.”

  “That might’ve worked for you and Mom.” I glare across the seat at him. “But not me.”

  “Honey—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know but—”

  “I said forget it. Let’s go to Wolfie’s. And talk about something else.”

  Driving back from dinner, the thermometer on a bank marquee along Biscayne Boulevard flashes ninety degrees but my father insists we hang out on the front porch of his apartment building. The evening air is thick and steamy. But Tootsie’s always cold so I’m out here with the alter cockers, the old folks, and my hair is plastered to my scalp with sweat. I glance at the porch’s dozen or so elderly occupants, who sit in two symmetrically-spaced rows of wheelchairs and lawn furniture facing onto the black-topped parking lot. When we first sat down, my father pointed out a man who owned the Italian bistro near our house. It’s hard to envision the old guy with purple-bruised arms and loose-skinned neck as the dark-haired, handsome restaurateur who greeted us at Angelo’s. Most of the residents chat quietly or read magazines. No one else seems bothered by the heat. In fact, a few wear cardigans and lap robes.

  We’re fully engaged in digesting our pastramis on rye when an elderly woman comes trundling toward us with her walker. Her cheeks are cavernous hollows in a long narrow face, and her wispy gray brows furrow into a vee of angry determination. It’s an agony to watch her struggle to lift the aluminum walker, swing it forward, and take another arduous step across the patio. I rise to help her, then, taken aback by her rage, drop in my seat. Her eyes are fixed on my father.

  I’m about to ask my dad if he knows the approaching woman when she comes to a halt and plants her walker squarely in front of him. Her finely-lined face contorts into a series of gremlin-like grimaces as though she’s probing the loops and tangles of her brain for a hidden memory. Finally, her features go still and her eyes focus intently on my father. He returns her stare and tilts his chin, studying her.

  Then, with no warning, the woman’s lips pull away from her teeth and the perplexed look she’d directed at my father turns into a coal black glare of rage. She points a skeletal finger at his face. “Ach, ach. Murderer. Murderer. Du bist a rotseyekh.” I recognize the Yiddish term for killer. Her voice is low and raspy. But there’s no mistaking her horror at encountering my father.

  A chill creeps up my spine at the venom in her voice. My father’s no angel, but no one’s ever accused him of murder. I assume she’s blaming him for the death of someone at the home—a resident they both know. He doesn’t tell me much about his life here, but I think he’d mention it if a close friend died.

  I’m so stunned it’s a second before I notice my father pushing the woman’s hand away from his face. He glances to the left, then right, before returning his gaze to the old lady. No one seems to be paying attention, though she sounds like a frantic crow as she rasps out the litany “murderer, murderer.”

  I reach a protective arm around my dad’s shoulders, which rise and fall as he struggles to catch his breath. His health is good for an eighty-five year old but he has asthma and I’m afraid he’ll start wheezing. After what feels like hours, but could only have been a minute or two, a male nursing assistant in a crisp white uniform comes over and takes the old woman’s elbow. He guides her across the porch; she continues to mumble “rotseyekh, rotseyekh.” I clasp my father’s hand, which is cold a
nd clammy, and hold it until his breathing returns to normal.

  “Who is that?” I ask, surprised by my father’s willingness to let me comfort him. Normally, my father would sooner die than let me be his protector.

  “Nobody you need to know.” He pushes my arm away and starts hacking. It’s the cough he gets when he’s upset or angry, a series of snorts that start in his nose and gets trapped at the back of his throat in a repetitious “ung, ung, ung.” His shoulders shake and his hands grip the sides of his chair.

  I’m sweating from the tension as much as the heat and when I wipe the back of my neck, my hand comes away soaked. Being careful to avoid her gaze, I watch the old lady as the nursing assistant eases her into a chair at the far end of the porch. She looks much like every elderly woman at the home, tiny and fragile as a newborn hatchling. When she leans to the left to let the assistant drape a lightweight sweater across her shoulders, I catch a glimpse of the sparse white hair that covers a balding pink spot at the crown of her head. The passion’s drained out of her, and she resembles a deflated pastel balloon. Once the assistant leaves, the old lady sits alone staring straight ahead, red lipstick and expectation splashed across her wrinkled face.

  “You might as well tell me who she is,” I say once my father stops coughing and I can see he hasn’t ruptured anything. “It’s obvious she knows you.”

  “The old broads here think they know everyone. Probably thinks I’m her dead husband.”

  Or an old boyfriend—given his past.

  I send my father a menacing glare, the one that frightened my sons into admitting when they’d missed their curfews or forgotten to do their homework.

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” he says, crossing his arms.

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

  He looks away, then back, and compresses his lips.

  “Yeah, I know her,” he admits. “Florence Karpowsky. She just moved into the Alzheimer wing. Her putz of a husband screwed me over years ago.”

  My father’s choice of words is less than ideal. Growing up, my friends thought his colorful language—not to mention unusual name—was a hoot. I was embarrassed and tried to keep them away from him.

  I wait for Tootsie to continue. My father tells stories in his own way and in his own time. These days, they come out in dribs and drabs, bubbling up from somewhere deep in his mind like a pocket of air rising through a pot of simmering cholent.

  “You heard of Florence Karpowsky? The fancy society lady?”

  I shrug and he looks at me like I’m stupid.

  “They named a wing of this place for her husband. The old broad’s so senile, I’m surprised she recognized me.” He gazes at me out of the corner of his eye and snorts. “She probably doesn’t recognize herself. Which is a good thing. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she was a beauty in her day. Red hair and one of those, what do you call it, pinkish complexions. She was a little zaftig, but that was fine. We liked a little meat on the girls then. And nice. My old buddy, Fat Louie, grabbed her up the minute she moved to Miami.”

  He mutters something in Yiddish. I don’t speak the language, but from the way he curls his lip and spits out the words, I figure Louie’s persona non grata.

  I remind my father for maybe the billionth time that I don’t speak Yiddish and he switches back to English. “Louie saved my life on Utah Beach. You know that story.”

  “I knew you were shot, but you never told me who saved you.”

  He stares at me incredulously. “You must have forgot. We went through basic training together, got sent overseas together. Fat Louie and I were together on D-day. I made it off the assault boat and on to shore but got a bullet in my gut before I’d gone five yards.” He starts to lift the front of his polo but thinks better of it.

  “I can’t believe you don’t know this.” He raises his eyes heavenward as though God can explain his oversight. “Louie crawled up the beach next to me and stayed at my side. I thought I was done for. Louie kept yelling for a medic until one showed up and shot me full of morphine. I owe my life to him. I got shipped back to a hospital in England to recuperate then finished out the war pushing pencils at a base post office in France. Louie fought in Europe.”

  He stops and glances at his watch. His eyes are red. “Jeeze, it’s getting late.” He grabs the chair arms as though to rise. “I’m heading upstairs.”

  “But you haven’t finished the story.”

  “It’s ancient history.”

  “Not for her,” I say, looking at Mrs. Karpowsky.

  We glare at each other for a half minute before my father lifts his hands, palms up, in a gesture of surrender.

  “You don’t give up, do you? But I got to go upstairs soon. Okay, I don’t see Fat Louie for months after I’m shot. But when it comes time for our discharge, I send a letter to his parents’ home in New Jersey, asking Louie to visit me in Miami Beach.

  “My father—your grandpa Leo—retired there during the war, bought a couple apartment buildings. I figured we’d have a nice place to stay, take our time finding jobs. I’d been to Miami Beach. The girls there were something else.”

  He gets that sly look that means he’s going to divulge something I don’t need to know about his sex life.

  “So why’d the lady call you a murderer?” I break in.

  “Hold your horses. I’m getting there. You know what a wise guy your Uncle Moe was. He was discharged from the army a few months before me and landed himself a job running numbers. An operation out of Havana. Some big shot got it going in Miami. Bolita. You heard of it?”

  I shrug. It’s not the first time he’s suggested Uncle Moe was dishonest. But he never said his brother, who was also his business partner, ran numbers. My Uncle Moe died when I was eight, but I remember the laughter that surrounded him when our families got together. It’s hard to imagine him a hoodlum.

  “By the time we get to Miami,” my father continues, “Moe’s bought himself an Oldsmobile and has his own bachelor pad. Louie and I spend a few weeks working on our tans. A month after Louie arrives, though, your grandfather lets us know he’s not supporting a couple of moochers. We pick up the newspaper and study the want ads, but most of the jobs seem tame after what we’ve been through. Then one Saturday, we’re at a bar and Moe suggests we pay a visit to his boss, this Murray Landauer. Says the money’s a lot better than what we’d make as desk jockeys and Landauer’s hiring. Moe is pretty closemouthed about what he does for a living but assures us it’s all above board. We take him up on his offer and he sets an appointment for the next Tuesday.

  “What a day that was. Moe takes us to the Sands Hotel. We walk through this fabulous lobby, everything elegant—marble floors, crystal chandeliers, mirrors on all the walls—and meet Landauer to work things out. He’s at this little cabana room off to the side of the pool sitting at a concrete table covered with chunks of colored tile. I guess he’s feeling generous because Moe gets a promotion, doing who knows what. Louie and I get routes in Overtown—it was a hopping Negro neighborhood then—picking up cash and receipts from the shopkeepers who took bets from their customers. Landauer says if we want to work together, fine by him.”

  I have a hard time picturing my father and uncle meeting with a gangster at a Miami Beach hotel. When I was a kid, Tootsie talked about taking my mother to fancy Miami Beach restaurants and nightclubs when they were dating in the 1940s. I pictured them as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He never said anything about picking up bets in Overtown.

  “So you and Louie . . .”

  “Will you let me talk?”

  I nod.

  “Everything’s great for a year or so. Louie and I are making enough moolah to hit the clubs, take girls to the hotels for the big bands. Count Basie. Tommy Dorsey. You name it. Everyone who was anyone played Miami Beach. Louie met Florence that year at the Five O’clock Club on Collins and t
hey were married three months later. Louie was a real sport, throwing money around on dames, so I was surprised to see him settle down. I met your mother, may she rest in peace, a few months later. He was the best man at my wedding and vice versa.”

  He lifts a hip off the chair and wrests a neatly-folded white handkerchief from his rear pocket before dropping back in the seat. I wait for him to blow his nose and collect himself. Lately, he seems to tear up at the merest mention of my mother. I suspect it’s old age but hope it’s also regret at how he treated her. Though my parents were separated at the time, he seemed to grieve as much as my sister and I did when our mother passed away.

  “About three months after your mother and I were married,” he says, “I get a call from Fat Louie. ‘Toots,’ he says ‘I got an idea. You know how some of them businesses in Colored Town are from Brooklyn? Well, these guys are used to paying protection. But no one’s collecting it here. You want to do them a favor?”

  I cringe at the term, Colored Town, but don’t bother to correct him. At eighty-five, he’s not about to change his ways.

  “Louie’d mentioned it before, but just joking around,” my father continues. “So I decide to play along. Louie says we’ll let them know, friendly-like, that we’ll take care of them. Give them a price. See if they bite.

  “I didn’t like the sound of that. But I figure he knows what he’s doing. Louie had a way with people, kibitzed with them and got what he wanted. He was a short guy with a solid barrel chest that made him look fat. And always with the big smile on his face and slicked-back hair. The kind of guy who cared how he looked. I’d hang back, keep my trap shut. I knew when to turn on the scowl. And I was in shape then. Not like now.”

  He pats his stomach, which has softened from a solid beer gut to a less than impressive mound of flab, then punches me in the arm. “Didn’t know your old man was such a tough guy, did you?”

  I laugh. It’s hard to picture my father a tough guy. He’s tall but always moved with a soft fluidity that suggested a lack of muscle tone. We lived in Coral Gables, suburbia itself, and as with all my friend’s dads, he left for work in a suit and tie and came home expecting dinner. He was the joker, the soft touch among our parents. All this talk of running numbers and providing protection makes me uncomfortable, as though I’m talking to a stranger disguised as my father. The man he describes, this tough guy, has nothing to do with the dad who took the family and dog to the beach every Sunday.