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

by Joan Lipinsky Cochran

  Moe agreed to join me to break the news to Landauer. And no surprise, the old gangster went ape, rising from behind his desk to yell at Moe and me. His face went bright red and I thought he’d have a stroke. Then he tells us we brought Louie into the operation, we’ve got to take him out.

  The bile rises in my throat as my chest burns. I toss the deck on the table and leave the card room. On the elevator ride to my floor, I picture Becks, her eyes wide as she presses me to tell her what happened fifty years ago. I told her more than I should. It’s painful enough recalling those days—never mind repeating what happened to her.

  Inside the apartment, I go to the kitchen and down an antacid with a glass of milk. I finish it off with one of the sleeping pills I’ve been hoarding for those nights when the nightmares return. I always end up wide awake with the shakes, unable to fall back to sleep. This is certain to be one of those nights. A sleeping pill. That’s what I need. For a few hours at least, my memories will disappear.

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  5

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  It’s Monday morning and I’m running late, thanks to heavy traffic on I-95. The fifty-mile drive from Boca Raton to Miami usually takes an hour. Today, it takes an hour and a half. When I called the historical museum last Friday, the librarian I spoke with ordered me to be there by eleven. By the time I find the parking garage, circle the ramp to the top floor, and squeeze in between a black Hummer and a red Cadillac, it’s eleven thirty. I race down the stairs, stepping gingerly around a homeless man snoring beneath layers of newspaper on the second floor landing.

  My chest contracts as I realize that the last time I came here was when Daniel and I brought Gabe and Josh to the art museum. The boys made no secret of the fact they’d rather stay home, but Daniel and I insisted. Gabe followed us around the whole time whining that he was bored. Josh plopped on a bench in the first room we entered and said he was too tired to budge. After fifteen minutes, I gave up and told the boys to wait outside. By the time Daniel and I joined them a half hour later, Josh had mustered enough energy to kick a beer can around the plaza. Gabe sat on the ground watching his brother.

  That was five years ago. The cultural center is still a beautiful complex, with large Mediterranean-style buildings of cream, fossilized limestone and orange barrel-tiled roofing. As I cross the bridge that links the parking tower to the cultural center where the museum’s located, I glance through the ornate wrought iron railing to the street fourteen feet below. It’s still packed with small shops selling cheap electronics and Cuban food. The open-air plaza that connects the three buildings is dotted with black metal tables and chairs where unshaven men and women in dull baggy clothing chat and smoke. Years ago, the plaza held a health food kiosk and the chairs were filled with stylishly-dressed business people. But I’m not surprised. These days, the homeless are as much a part of South Florida’s cultural landscape as Miami Beach’s art deco district.

  But I’m not here to solve South Florida’s social problems. I’ve made this trip in search of recipes. Rosh Hashanah is three weeks away and I’ve promised my editor something unique for the High Holiday spread by the end of next week. We both agree it’s enough already with the brisket prepared fifteen different ways. I’m on a mission to learn what Miami’s original Jewish settlers prepared for the holidays. There is, of course, more to this than meets the palate. I’m growing impatient with the short restaurant reviews he’s assigned me of late. I know I can write better than that. It’s time to prove my culinary writing skills with a front-page story.

  When I enter the museum, it’s easy to spot the librarian I’ve arranged to meet. She has to be the petite woman waiting in the lobby with her arms crossed and her lips pressed into a pencil-thin line. The narrow gold bar on her lapel reads “Mrs. Dupree.” I feel like a giant next to this Thumbelina of a librarian. Slim and no more than four feet nine, she wears a tailored tweed suit that might have been stitched together for a child-sized doll. Tiny pleated skirt, petite white blouse with a delicate lace collar, and a miniature suit jacket.

  After a quick nod and handshake but no acknowledgment of my apology for being late, she leads me through double glass doors labeled “Archives.” The clicking of her patent leather heels stops so abruptly in front of a small wooden desk that I almost rear-end her. A single wooden chair is pushed under the desk. We remain standing.

  “I found what you want, but be careful. Don’t smudge the pages,” she says, wagging a finger in my direction before lifting a book from the stack she’s set out on the desk for me. The tome is bound in faded green buckram and splotched with grease marks.

  “And, whatever you do, don’t rip the pages. They’re fragile.”

  I find her remarks insulting, but nod politely and reach for the book.

  She retracts it and purses her lips.

  “You may use the copier in the back room, but don’t press the spines too firmly,” she continues. “The bindings are old and delicate.”

  She gives me a once-over, head tilted, eyes slit. I’m tempted to inform her that I do know how to handle books, yet feel an unreasonable surge of guilt, as though she suspects I’m the type of person who tears recipes out of magazines in doctors’ offices. Which, in fact, I am.

  “If you have questions, call me.”

  That sounds like a sign-off, so I reach toward the books she’s piled on the table. But she’s not through yet. She inserts her tiny frame between me and the table. “You do understand that you may not remove anything from this room without my permission.” This time, there’s a definite challenge in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. I’m fifty years old, for crying out loud. Why does this little tyrant make me feel so guilty?

  With a brisk nod, she turns and marches off.

  I take a minute to look around the room. It’s long and narrow and a series of wooden tables run down the center. Every table, except the one at which I’m working, is mounded with books and maps, newspapers and magazines. In contrast to the librarian, who is tidiness and efficiency personified, the place is a massive and disorganized collection of . . . who knows what. The detritus of dead Floridian’s lives? I assume there’s some order to the books, magazines, yellowed newspapers, and albums crammed into metal cases mounted along both sides of the room. I’m tempted to poke around before I get started on the cookbooks. But I don’t want to get caught going through her things. So I sit down with the stack she left me.

  In the last week or so, I’ve been considering what to do with myself, where to go with my career. With Daniel and the boys gone, I have more time on my hands. I’m trying to be positive and view this as an opportunity to focus on myself. But I’m not kidding anyone. I’m rattling around in a big house and need something that’ll get me out in the world. Friends have been great about meeting me for lunch and Aviva and Noah, the couple Daniel and I spent most Saturday nights with, invited me out to dinner last weekend.

  I’ve been considering pulling together a cookbook since I started my food columns two years ago. I’d like to focus on Jewish cooking, including my mother’s recipes. This might be the project I need to get my mind off Daniel. I’ve already been through my own files for ideas. This morning, I hope to gather a few recipes for my Rosh Hashanah article as well as my book. It’ll give me a goal to work toward and, with luck, help me become more financially independent. Daniel’s been generous so far, giving me enough money to run the house, but that won’t last forever.

  The librarian’s collection is disappointing. The Settlement Cookbook is the same my mother used and I’ve already tried most of the recipes. It was written at the turn of the nineteenth century to raise funds for East European Jews migrating to Milwaukee and includes basic recipes for steak, chicken, and the like. But it’s too American. Mrs. Dupree included five charity cookbooks by the National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah, but these date back only to the 1970s.

  The most valuabl
e find is a stack of recipes assembled by a group of Jewbans, Cuban Jews who moved to Florida, most after Fidel Castro’s revolution. The yellowing pages are stapled together to form a small booklet and many look promising, certainly more exotic than the bland Ashkenazi matzo balls and gefilte fish on which I was reared. The oldest item on the pile, a booklet entitled Crisco Recipes for the Jewish Housewife, is written in English and Yiddish and dates back to 1930. I smile at the idea of immigrant women—in babushkas and flowered aprons—debating what to do with this big metal can of vegetable shortening.

  I take the Jewban collection back to the room Mrs. Dupree indicated and copy three recipes, dropping three dimes into the rusted Maxwell House coffee can on a table by the copier. It hasn’t been a productive morning and I’m anxious to head across the plaza to the library to check their cookbooks. But I don’t want to leave without thanking the librarian and informing her page thirty-five of The Settlement Cookbook was ripped before I touched it. The problem is, I have no idea where to find her. I decide to nose through the archives and leave if she doesn’t return in fifteen minutes.

  After making sure that the spines of my cookbooks are as perfectly aligned as Mrs. Dupree left them, I wander over to the nearest bookcase. Each shelf is labeled with a tiny handwritten sticker. The top two shelves contain maps and books on the Miami River and the two below are packed with similar materials on Biscayne Bay. I make my way down the wall, leafing through collections on Florida’s Tequesta, Seminole, and Miccosukee tribes.

  I’ve given up on the likelihood of Mrs. Dupree’s imminent return and am ready to leave when I spot a smudged label at the bottom of a shelf. I have to squat to read it. “Miami crime.” That’s intriguing. Not a topic I’d expect to find in a museum celebrating South Florida history. Mrs. Dupree still hasn’t returned so I poke around for information about the 1940s, when my dad’s story about Fat Louie took place. The documents don’t seem to be in any special order and, after leafing through a few magazines, I pull out a book about Murph the Surf, which sounds like a reasonable name for a gangster. But the book’s about a jewel thief and murderer. I pick up a few books about rum runners and cocaine cowboys, but find nothing about gangsters.

  I’m about to give up when I spot a large photo album bound in forest-green tooled leather. It looks promising so I bring it to the desk and prop it on my lap. There are no identifying signs on the outside, which is odd given the amount of work that obviously went into assembling the book. It’s filled with newspaper clippings, arranged chronologically, about the Kefauver investigation into organized crime in Miami. I’d heard about the investigation, but didn’t know much about it. The articles date from 1950 to 1951.

  It’s pretty scandalous stuff, though dry at times, and most of the articles cover testimony about racketeering and gambling dens. I get a thrill when I recognize the names of characters I’ve heard about from gangster movies — Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis. Then, as I’m reading an account of a hearing, the name of one of the men called to testify catches my eye. I read the sentence twice before it registers and stand so abruptly the album topples onto the floor. Newspaper clippings scatter all over the ground and I drop to my knees to gather them.

  I’m breathing heavily, as much from shock as the effort of crawling around on the ground to collect papers, when a pair of tiny black pumps appear on the floor in front of me. I look up. But not far. The tiny librarian scowls down at me, hands resting on her narrow hips.

  I rock back on my heels and stare at her.

  I should apologize.

  Tell her I was killing time while waiting for her to return.

  Thank her for letting me use the archive.

  There’s a lot I could say.

  But the words that escape my mouth are, “Holy cow, it’s Uncle Moe.”

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  6

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  The old man’s full of piss and vinegar tonight. When I arrive at his apartment for Sunday dinner, he’s standing with the door open, squirming like a kid with a secret. I figure he’s been sitting by the window for a half hour, watching for the so-called “classic” Mercedes my husband Daniel left behind when I threw him out. Unlike his Volkswagen, which spends its life in the shop, the Mercedes Daniel bought secondhand twenty-five years ago refuses to die.

  I called Tootsie Monday after getting home from the library and he told me I was nuts. It couldn’t have been his brother in the article. Sure, Moe had friends in the mob. But by the time Kefauver held his hearings in the early fifties, Moe and Tootsie were running a legitimate restaurant supply business. And didn’t I have anything better to do with my life than read about dead criminals?

  “I’m not mistaken. I saw his name, clear as could be,” I insist. “It said he testified about this outfit, S and G, that ran bookie operations.”

  “And what did your uncle have to say about S and G?”

  “Not much. Just that he’d heard of the group and thought they were legitimate businessmen. That he’d met with members of the company at various hotels to discuss their restaurant supply needs.”

  “I don’t remember anything about that. But we did business with a lot of parties. If the newspaper says your Uncle Moe testified, it may be true. He was the big shot in the family. He didn’t tell me everything.”

  I’m not satisfied with his explanation but let it drop. My Uncle Moe died years ago, and neither my father nor I are talking to his son, Zvi, who would’ve been too young to know what was going on at the time. I tried to explain to my dad how shocked I was to read about Uncle Moe’s appearance before a committee investigating organized crime—especially after learning of his own ties to the Jewish mob. The old man kept mute. I’m pretty sure he knows more than he’s telling me. Lying in bed at night these days, unable to sleep, I sometimes feel as though I’m spinning off into a strange world. First, Daniel betrays me, then I learn my father and uncle may be gangsters. No one seems to be who I thought they were.

  Tonight we’re having the stuffed cabbage my father bought at Epicure, a gourmet grocery across the causeway from the Schmuel Bernstein. Back in the fifties, when Miami Beach was a refuge for retired Jews, everyone went there for their borscht, chopped liver, and matzo balls. Straight from the shtetl, the Old World, my father claims. The Epicure still caters to the old Jews. But they also stock gourmet cheeses and mineral water for the skinny models and what my father calls feygeles—slang for gay men.

  Stuffed cabbage is a big deal for Tootsie. He asks me to make it at least once a month since my mom passed away. This week, when I again remind my father I don’t make Mom’s recipe, he acts like I’m holding out. “A balebosta like you. A big shot food writer. You’re running her noodle pudding and chicken soup recipes in the newspaper. And you can’t come up with her stuffed cabbage?”

  Maybe he hears me shrug over the phone or tires of riding my rear. “Okay,” he concedes, “Sadie Goldfarb’s daughter, Mavis, brought us to The Epicure Wednesday and I filled the freezer with cabbage rolls. I can spare a few for my favorite daughter.”

  That’s what he calls me when he wants a favor. It’s also what he calls my sister, Esther, on the rare occasions she phones or visits.

  When I got off the elevator on my dad’s floor, I was accosted by the rancid odor of several generations of boiled beef and cabbage. But once I step inside his apartment, I’m greeted with the pungent aroma of simmering tomatoes and vinegar. Tootsie turns down the heat on the stove and gives me a kiss, then follows me into the living room where I plop on the couch.

  He plants himself in front of me and shifts from foot to foot, rocking like a dinghy on rough seas. “You notice anything different?”

  I glance around the small room. The swivel chairs are covered with faded blue sheets. Back issues of the Forward, a Jewish newspaper, are strewn across the cocktail table and couch. The bulletin board next to the kitchen, normally plastered with colorful ads for early bir
d specials, is covered with black-and-white photos. I can’t make out the images from where I’m sitting.

  “I don’t see anything,” I say, looking straight at my father. I reach for the newspaper lying on the couch beside me. “Should I?”

  He walks over to the bulletin board and taps its edge. “You know who this is?”

  I get up, grunting, making a big show of the effort it takes, and walk to the board. My stomach contracts. An attractive thirtyish woman stands on a boat dock in one photo, leans against a market stall of straw hats in another, waves from the passenger seat of a 1950s convertible in a third.

  And she’s not my mother.

  Her skin’s fairly light but her features—the fullness of her lips, the curl of her hair—suggest African blood. A snapshot in the middle of the display shows my father with his arm around the woman in a banquette. I recognize the restaurant in which they’re sitting as a once-famous Bahamian nightclub. When my father brought us to Nassau the summer after I finished sixth grade, we had dinner there and I admired the giant jeweled elephant statues that stared at us from shelves around the club. My father—who always used the term schvartze, a derogatory Yiddish word for blacks, when he talked about the truck drivers he employed—made a big show of his friendship with the owner, having me shake hands with the darkest man I’d ever seen. I felt intimidated by the man, whose deep laugh and large frame filled the nightclub, and was surprised by the gentleness and warmth of his handshake.

  When I turn to my father, I catch a nasty glimmer in his eyes, a hint of wiseass in the curl of his lip. I wonder if he put the pictures out to brag of his prowess or get my goat. It’s a game he plays, daring me to react. I want to snarl, but resist the urge. I look back at the photos and ball my fists, pumping them open and closed. This time he’s gone too far. I walk to the bathroom and slam the door. When I’m through splashing water to relieve the heat flushing my cheeks, I look in the mirror.