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

by Joan Lipinsky Cochran

  Before I can speak, the receiver clicks.

  The phone call leaves me with an uncomfortable, out-of-sorts sensation. She didn’t make much of an effort to explain why she can’t see me or suggest another date. It seems odd, a bit insulting, after she sought me out. I think back to my father’s words: “The little pisher’s a liar.” I wonder if he sensed something I missed.

  After the meeting with my editor, I stop in the newspaper’s research department. Maya Dipaolo, with whom I’d become friendly while collaborating on stories, agrees to run a search on Sella and Craig Miles. I feel sneaky. But I am an older relative. I have an obligation to look after her.

  I sit on a wooden chair at the corner of Myra’s desk and read the newspaper as she taps at the keyboard.

  “That’s weird,” she says after a few minutes.

  I stand and look over her shoulder. The monitor reads: “Craig Miles, a.k.a. Craig McPherson, a.k.a. Greg Minos.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I tried a few sites and finally got a hit on the Broward criminal court system.” Maya says. “Doesn’t look good.”

  I wait as she scrolls down the page.

  “There might be more than one Craig Miles. It’s not such an odd name.” She tries to reassure me. “I hope it isn’t your cousin’s husband.

  Look at that.” She points to a column on the far right of the monitor. The Craig Miles listed on the screen had twice been charged with identity theft, but acquitted. My stomach clenches. Does this mean Sella’s a con? Or is she being conned?

  “Anything else?” Maya asks. She looks up when I don’t answer. “I’m sorry,” she says “Maybe it isn’t him.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I give Maya a peck on the cheek and turn down her offer of lunch. I have no appetite.

  I call my father that night and tell him what I’ve learned. He insists I let it go — that Sella’s a con artist too and I’m better off without her. I decide to drop the subject until after the high holidays, then give her a call.

  The following Sunday is the day before Yom Kippur, when it’s traditional to visit the cemetery and honor one’s ancestors. Normally, I wouldn’t remember. But this year Tootsie insists I drive him to Mount Nebo, where Miami’s Jews are buried.

  Plotniks have been in South Florida for over a half century and, in that time, we’ve made a nice little investment in Mount Nebo real estate. Problem is, deceased Plotniks are dispersed throughout the cemetery. On a hot day, visiting my dearly departed can turn into a nasty little search-and-schvitz operation. Tootsie insists we pay our respects to my mother and every other Plotnik of blessed memory.

  It rained that morning and the cemetery’s mosquitoes are rejoicing in the condensation of moist, sticky air by flitting around the long grass near the graves, taking an occasional break to suck blood from my ankles. We’ve visited a horde of uncles, aunts, and grandparents, and are heading in what we hope is the direction of my mother’s grave when I notice a pink granite stone set at odd angles to the others. It looks shoved in, as though it might belong to the Zimmermans, who rest in peace between the Plotniks and Goldfarbs. The stone is small, almost Victorian in its ornamentation, and stands more upright than the older stones near it.

  It’s been a few years since I visited the cemetery and I don’t remember seeing that stone before. “Who’s buried there?” I ask my father, walking around to the front of the stone to read the inscription. When I see what’s written, I step back, almost stumbling across a footstone in the earth behind me. A shiver creeps up my spine. I don’t say anything as my father circumnavigates the stones to join me. I watch Tootsie take it in. His face goes from confusion, to shock, to anger. I grab his arm, afraid he’ll faint.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispers.

  The stone is inscribed Sella Plotnik. I read the dates below her name. She’s been dead six years.

  “I’m so sorry, Dad,” I manage to get out, not knowing what else to say. We look at each other. “If this is Sella, then what—”

  “I’m not stupid,” my father interrupts, turning his back on the grave and heading in the direction of my mother’s plot. “The girl’s a liar.”

  I drop my father off at the Schmuel Bernstein and drive home in a daze. I feel sadness and disappointment, then frustration, at missing the chance to know my cousin Sella. By the time I get home, though, I’m in a rage. Not the least of it is my anger at being taken in. My father sensed something was wrong. Why hadn’t I?

  My father’s ability to pick up on Sella’s lies reminds me of a book I read about the concept of the “gut reaction.” The author described it as a combination of accumulated knowledge and experience, superimposed upon a deep emotional response. I wonder how my gut reaction to Sella and Craig could’ve been so wrong. And my father’s so right. I’d sensed something was off. That’s why I asked Maya to do a search on Craig. But I wanted to be mistaken. I dearly wanted this girl to be Sella.

  In my eagerness to reconnect with the child I’d known years earlier, I ignored what my gut was telling me. It makes me question my instincts. Could there have been something wrong in my marriage that I didn’t see—or refused to acknowledge? Daniel and I didn’t have a perfect relationship. But I thought we were fine. We’re both busy and I never objected when he came home late because it gave me more time to work. Did he read that as disinterest? And did I sense he was unhappy and refuse to see it?

  I bring myself up short. Now I’m making excuses for Daniel. Blaming myself. Just like my mother. She thought she could win Tootsie’s love by changing herself—dressing beautifully and preparing elaborate dinners. I’m not playing that game.

  “Well, girlie,” my father says when I call his apartment that night to discuss our revelation. “Your old man isn’t such a fool.”

  I expect him to give me a hard time about being so gullible. But he doesn’t. I hear sadness in his voice, regret as well, and wonder if he too hoped this would be the rare case in which his pessimism was unfounded. We talk a few minutes and make plans for breakfast the next week.

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  13

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  Tootsie

  I’m hunched over the kitchen table gazing at the darkening sky. It’s going to start raining like a son of a bitch soon so I’m stuck in my apartment. I’d planned to call Winchell to line up a game of poker, but I’m in no mood for it now.

  I just got off the phone with Becks. It’s hard to believe she fell for the scam that pischer was trying to pull off. With the boys away at school and that damned Daniel out of the house, she wanted the girl to be her cousin. She needs someone to take care of. The funny thing is I would not have been surprised if the girl was Sella and a con artist. Lord knows she’d have come by it honestly. Her grandfather was a swindler and her father isn’t much better. I’m sorry Zvi lost his daughter. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to call that bastard and offer my condolences.

  It’s uncanny how people from my past are popping back into my life lately. First Florence confronts me, then Becks digs up Abe. All I need is for Zvi to crawl out from under his rock with his old accusations.

  I sink deeper into my chair. Five decades as an honest businessman and the past still haunts me. Sure, I did things I regret. But that was another lifetime. There’s got to be some way to stop Becks from digging any deeper into my past. If she learns the truth, she’ll cut me off. Maybe I deserve it. But it would kill me to lose her now.

  I didn’t want to bring it up with Becks tonight, but Daniel stopped by an hour before she called. I wasn’t expecting anyone and was surprised by his knock on the door. I hadn’t seen him in two months. He looked like hell, his hair disheveled and his face a sickly shade of gray.

  “Tootsie, please talk to her. Tell her I’m miserable,” he said after dropping on to the couch and glancing around the living room.

  “I’m not hiding her,” I said, trying to ma
ke a joke.

  “Can’t you convince her to take me back?”

  “I’ve tried. But I’m the last person she’ll listen to. What does she say when you call?”

  “Nothing. She won’t pick up the phone when she sees my number. I’ve tried calling from different lines, but it’s no use. She hangs up.”

  The two of them are a mess. She won’t talk to him. He wants her back.

  “Keep trying. Send flowers and candy. It worked with Bernice.” I try to come up with something encouraging. “She seems lonely too.”

  A half hour later, Daniel leaves, shuffling off like an old man. I’m afraid he’ll start crying in the hallway. There’s nothing I can do.

  I sip my coffee and gaze outside. The rain’s let up though the wind’s still blowing. The lousy weather does nothing to ease my sense of doom. The past is closing in like a tiger stalking me in a nightmare. At least Landauer is out of the picture. Last I heard, he escaped from jail and skipped the country to join Lansky’s gambling operation in The Bahamas. No one’s heard from him in decades. He’s supposed to be buried at Mount Nebo. His wife and children abandoned him years ago and he had a lot of enemies so I doubt many people showed up.

  It’s a miserable end but no worse than what I’ll have if the girls learn the truth. It seems an awfully high price to pay for mistakes I made before they were born.

  I go into the kitchen and fill the teakettle. There must be some way to convince Becks to leave well enough alone.

  When I glance toward the sliding glass doors to see if the rain’s stopped, I notice the directory of Schmuel Bernstein residents on my bookshelf. I walk over and pick up the thin blue booklet. Winchell said he’d done time in his twenties for breaking and entering. Maybe he could help me break into Becks’ house and toss a few things around. It might convince her to back off.

  It’s a lousy thing to do. She’s got enough problems with Daniel and the extra work she’s taken on with that cookbook she’s writing. But it might put a stop to her nosing around. It’s worth considering. And it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. She’d feel a hell of a lot worse if she learned the truth about her old man.

  The teakettle releases a long, shrill whistle. I turn the heat off and shift the pot to a back burner. Then I return to the living room, open the blue directory, and pick up the phone.

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  14

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  I’m up early on a damp Sunday, banging around in the kitchen, when the phone rings. Normally, I’m a late sleeper, but the staccato hammering of rain on the roof awakened me. I finished my book last night and didn’t want to begin another this morning so I got up and started the chicken soup I promised my father. He loves when I make it with flanken, the way my mother did.

  Less than an hour after I’m up, a rich, intense aroma of simmering onions, chicken, and fatty meat hovers over the kitchen. It’s still dark and rain is blowing hard from the east, creating a clatter as heavy wet drops bounce like ping-pong balls off the Chattahoochee floor of the patio before splashing against my French doors.

  I’m having a hard time balancing the heavy pot over the sink, so I ignore the phone and continue straining the soup through a colander into a large glass bowl. When the ringing starts again, I pick up. It’s my father. I’d planned to wake him with a happy birthday call, but he rises earlier and earlier each year.

  “Hi, Dad. Happy birthday.”

  “I checked the obits this morning,” Tootsie launches in. “My name’s not there.”

  “That’s great.” I try to sound amused. He’s made the same joke every birthday I can remember. This is his eighty-sixth.

  “Outlived that old bastard, Schatzi Lipschutz. Can you believe it?”

  I search my memory. Schatzi Lipschutz? Not a cousin. Maybe one of the old man’s business associates? I don’t think so. I’d remember that name.

  “Haven’t got a clue,” I concede, which is exactly what he wants. “Who’s Schatzi Lipschutz?”

  “I’ll hold on while you run outside and get the Herald.”

  He buys his paper on Saturday night. It lets him wake me up Sunday with the latest news.

  “It’s only six. I don’t think my paper’s come yet. I’m still in my house robe.”

  “You got a minute,” Tootsie says, “I’ll tell you about my old friend, Schatzi.” The way he pronounces “friend,” I’m pretty sure he means anything but. Tootsie doesn’t concern himself with such niceties as refusing to speak ill of the dead.

  Without waiting to hear if I have time, he continues. “The son of a bitch got me mixed up with the Nazis.”

  My neck’s already cricked from holding the phone with my chin while I wash out the pot, so I stop him. I’m curious. But once he starts in with the stories, he doesn’t stop. “How about you give me an hour, I’ll come get you,” I say. “Your chicken soup’s ready and I’ll bring it over. We’ll have breakfast at Rascal House and you can tell the story there.”

  He agrees readily. The old man never turns down a meal at Rascal House. I transfer the soup into the plastic wonton containers I save from Chinese takeout and load them into a cooler with ice packs.

  Tootsie’s standing in the portico when I arrive, a section of newspaper neatly folded and clasped in his hand. He scurries over and opens the car door.

  “You can’t comb your hair for the old man?” he says before easing himself into the passenger seat. He offers his cheek for a kiss, then slams the door and stares at me. It’s a purposeful look, deliberate and cynical. I wait for the zinger. It comes. “I don’t like being seen with ugly broads,” he tells me. “Especially on my birthday. Pull over and put on some lipstick. And do something with that mop.”

  I haven’t bothered with my appearance—jeans and a tee are good enough for breakfast at Rascal House—but I brush my hair and swab on a smear of lipstick to please the birthday boy.

  Tootsie’s making this weird buzzing at the back of his throat and, after listening a few minutes, I realize he’s humming. I can’t name the song, but recognize it as one of the Barry Sisters’ tunes he’d play on the hi-fi every Sunday morning of my childhood. The sisters sang jazzed up, schmaltzy renditions of Yiddish songs, with plenty of harmony, quite peppy in an Old World East European fashion. My father’s in fine form. Why not? It’s his birthday. He’s having breakfast at Rascal House. And he’s outlived this Schatzi fellow.

  We land a booth, thanks to my father’s status as a fifty-year regular. I slow down on the way to our table to examine the strawberry and pineapple cheesecakes that glisten inside the glass pastry case. After checking out the Formica tables and red leatherette booths for familiar faces, Tootsie stops at the lunch counter to shmooze with an elderly man I don’t recognize. I leave him behind and trail the waitress to our table. She hands me a menu the size of a Buick and leaves another behind for Tootsie.

  Five minutes later, Tootsie joins me. He tosses the newspaper section he’s been clasping on the table and taps his finger on a two-inch obituary. “Schatzi Lipschutz.”

  I pull the article over and look at a photo of a young man with a 1940s-era pompadour. I read the usual: ninety-year-old retired businessman dies, survived by two sons, donations should be sent and so on.

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “Oy, Becks,” he says. “The stories I could tell if you weren’t my daughter.”

  I roll my eyes, which should be paralyzed in an upward position from the number of times I’ve reacted to that line.

  “You know Meyer Lansky?” he asks.

  “We were never properly introduced, but I remember the name. He got thrown out of Israel in the nineteen seventies. Something about being a crook?”

  “A crook, my ass. Lansky was a gangster, a big shot in the underworld. Ran most of Vegas, Miami, and Havana before you were born. By the time he was thrown out of Israel, he was worth millions. He wen
t there to avoid charges of tax evasion.” Tootsie snorts. “That’s the best the feds could do. Taxes.”

  He squints at me like I’m supposed to challenge him. Which I don’t.

  “So what’s the story with Schatzi Lipschutz?” I ask again.

  “Schatzi.” He rolls the name around his tongue, slowly, appreciatively, nodding his head. “He used to live on the Lower East Side of New York, near where your Uncle Moe and I grew up. Lot of tough kids in that neighborhood. We’d fight for the hell of it. The Italian boys would come into the neighborhood and try to make it with Jewish girls. Schatzi and Moe would stop them, wait on corners on Saturday nights and pick fights when the boys came to pick up their dates.

  “Your grandmother hated Schatzi, called him a hoodlum, but all the kids in the neighborhood thought he was something else. Here’s this big tough Jewish boy, six feet, and he’s ready to beat the crap out of any schmuck stupid enough to challenge him. Hoods from outside the neighborhood would try to rob and push around the old guys who ran newsstands, tobacco shops, places like that. You think anyone called the cops? No way. They called Schatzi, or your Uncle Moe if Schatzi wasn’t around. The creeps never showed their faces again.”

  The waitress returns with metal buckets brimming with kosher pickles and coleslaw and we place our order. I wait as Tootsie clasps a pickle between his thumb and forefinger, studies it for a few seconds, and takes a bite. He chews with a lot more noise than is altogether necessary.

  I wait until he pauses to make myself heard above his eating. “So what about the Nazis?”

  “Hold on. I’m getting there.” He swallows. “This all happened in nineteen thirty seven, thirty-eight when things were looking bad. We’re still in the Depression and the Nazis are holding rallies around the country. Everyone’s worried about anti-Semitism but afraid to do anything about it. Like maybe we’re asking for trouble by bringing attention to ourselves.

  “Not everyone saw it that way. Including Lansky. From what I heard, some big judge calls him, knows Lansky and his pals don’t give a shit what the gentiles think. I don’t hear the whole story until years later, but this judge asks Lansky to round up some muscle and break arms at Nazi rallies.