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

by Joan Lipinsky Cochran

  “I’m not going to kid you, Doll. I was no Boy Scout. I wasn’t as tough as Schatzi or Moe but I could hold my own with anyone else in the neighborhood. Schatzi’s already running numbers for some outfit by this time, and Moe—well, I don’t know what Moe was into. But when Schatzi tells Moe he volunteered to take the moxie out of these Nazi bastards, Moe says he’ll join up. Moe tells me what’s going on and there’s no way I’m missing out on this action.”

  My father takes another pickle, examines it, and takes a bite. He raises one finger, a signal I should wait for him to chew and swallow.

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  “What do you mean, what’d I do?”

  “Did you beat up the Nazis?”

  “Sure I did. We went to the big hall where they were meeting. When the bastards came out, we attacked them. Surprise.” He raises both hands, fingers outspread.

  “Were you hurt?”

  He shrugs. “Not much.”

  I’m getting frustrated. He starts these stories, then cuts them off as they’re getting interesting. I try another tack.

  “Where were the police?”

  My father laughs. “I read in the news that the cops were called in to break up the fight, but it took them a couple of hours to get there.”

  “Did you ever do anything like that again?”

  “Unfortunately, no. A week later, Moe got sent off to basic training. I wanted to join up but I was too young and your grandmother wouldn’t sign the papers. Schatzi stuck around awhile and I heard he helped bust up a couple more Nazi rallies in Jersey. Worked with a Jewish fighter who had an in with the cops there. I asked Schatzi if I could join him, but he told me to get lost. Eventually, he enlisted too.”

  The waitress returns, her arms laden with heavy white china plates of bacon, eggs, and pancakes. Bacon, my father claims, is the only cut of pork that becomes kosher when eaten outside the home.

  I break the yolk of my fried egg over my pancakes. As I eat, I imagine my father fighting in the midst of a throng of rioting Jews. It’s not hard to envision. I’ve seen him fight his temper, his left eyelid twitching as he struggles to rein himself in. Sometimes, he’d get so mad at my mom, she’d send us to our rooms where we’d listen to him raging.

  “So what happened to the Nazis?” I ask once we’re nearly through the meal.

  Tootsie looks up from his plate, considers my question. “They kept meeting, but not in such large numbers, and they demanded a police guard. Can you believe that? You’ve heard of Mayor LaGuardia? Like the airport.”

  I nod.

  “His mother was Jewish and he spoke Yiddish. But he still provided police protection at Nazi rallies. He had to love that.”

  “And Lansky?”

  “What about him?”

  “You see him again?”

  “Yeah, once, a long time later.” He looks over my shoulder and out the window before returning his gaze. “It’s funny. No one talked about breaking up Nazi rallies after the war. Hell, after the liberation of the camps, you’d think every German in America loved the Jews.”

  We eat in silence. At least I do. My father’s making enough noise to rouse the dead. Which, in a sense, he has.

  Once we’re through, I turn around to signal the waitress, who is waiting on a couple in the booth next to us. When I turn back, the man Tootsie stopped to see at the counter is approaching our table. He’s tall with elegant silver hair and wears a soft aqua cashmere cardigan over linen pants.

  My father introduces me to Winchell Levin as his kaddish, meaning I’m the one who’ll say prayers in his memory once he’s gone. He tells me Winchell’s an old friend from New York.

  “You going to Schatzi’s funeral?” Winchell asks. “It’s at noon today. The old neighborhood will be there, at least those who haven’t kicked the bucket.”

  Tootsie turns to me. “What do you say?”

  “Whatever you want.” I’m not doing anything. And I’m dying to meet these characters from my father’s past. “We can drop the soup at your place and head over.”

  Tootsie stands and pats Winchell on the back. “We’ll see you there.”

  “Yitgadal v’yitgadat sh’may rabo.”

  Every one of the old geezers at the graveside service is reciting the mourner’s prayer. I’m not. For one thing, I can’t remember the words. For the other, Tootsie keeps poking me in the ribs with his elbow and whispering in my ear. It’s like a Who’s Who of alter cockers with whacked-out nicknames. Bernie “The Weasel” Shapiro. Mort “Schmutzy” Lieberman. Daniel “Peanuts” Wolinsky. Even the old lady who accused my father of murder is there, in her wheelchair accompanied by a nurse in a white uniform. An old man chats with her, then looks our way.

  The whole thing is so incredible, these old guys floating around in their too-large suits, wiping away tears and missing the days when they beat the crap out of each other. My father’s riding a seesaw of emotion, crying one minute, chattering rapidly the next. Neither of us mentions Abe Kravitz, who glares at my dad before turning back to the service.

  “Peanuts, over there,” my father says, pointing to a short bald guy leaning on a walker, “had something to do with the dockworkers strike after the war. And Schmutzy,” he says, motioning toward another midget, this one in a wheelchair, “had a fist like a golem.”

  The high point of the funeral comes about fifteen minutes in, when a gray Ford pulls to the end of the row of cars parked on the right side of the cemetery’s main road. Two men in their midforties step out. The driver is tall, an obvious bench presser, his chest muscles straining at the seams of his gray suit. The man who gets out on the passenger side is a trace shorter, with a facial palsy that gives him a permanent, crooked grin. Their identical sunglasses catch the sun’s glare and even I recognize them as cops.

  If this were an Italian Mafia movie, everyone would be edging back to their car. But these are old Jews who probably haven’t pulled off a job in five decades. Everyone, including the widow, a tiny octogenarian with raven black witch hair, looks toward the cops before returning his or her attention to the service. No one gives a damn. The cops keep their distance, hovering ten feet behind the mourners.

  My father grabs my arm. ‘’We need to go now,” he whispers.

  “It’s almost over,” I say. “Can’t you wait?”

  “I’ve got to piss.”

  He drags me toward my Mercedes, leaning forward to propel himself more rapidly. As we near the car, I recall rumors that floated around the family about my father and Uncle Moe. When I was in my teens, a cousin from New York swore that Uncle Moe and my father had killed a man. I didn’t believe it. Now I wonder if the old man’s being paranoid or has a good reason to leave. He stares over his shoulder at the cops as we get in the car and drive off. He’s scowling and his silence makes me nervous. I wonder if his rapid departure has anything to do with Fat Louie’s murder. I don’t ask. He’s so tense that he’s grasping the door handle in his fist. I don’t want to upset him more.

  It’s Tootsie’s birthday and, being an obedient daughter, I return him safely to the Schmuel Bernstein. On the way there, he asks if I’ll arrange his funeral. He asks me this every time we attend one. I tell him I don’t want to discuss it. I’d rather talk about why we had to leave Schatzi’s funeral early. He won’t answer so I drop the subject. I’ll try another time. A half hour after we leave the cemetery, I pull up to his building and watch him shuffle through the double glass doors. He looks more stooped than usual. I’m dying to know why he became so upset at the sight of police officers at Schatzi’s funeral. I’ll ask him the next time we meet. And hope that he tells me the truth.

  15

  Tootsie

  By the time Becks pulls into the Schmuel Bernstein, my heartburn’s killing me. It was a struggle hiding my panic from Becks. When I got inside, I collapsed into a chair in the lobby to catch my
breath.

  Am I going nuts? It’s been five decades since I last saw him, but the man chatting with Florence Karpowsky at the cemetery looked a hell of a lot like Murray Landauer. The bastard’s supposed to be six feet under in a grave at Mount Nebo. When I spotted him, it felt as if the devil had risen from hell.

  That would explain why the cops showed up. Landauer and Schatzi worked together in New York. Maybe the police heard Landauer was back in Florida and figured he’d be at the service?

  To top it all off, Becks pestered me to stay until the service was over. What was I supposed to tell her? That I’d seen a ghost? I shouldn’t have brought her to the funeral. I’m becoming too dependent on the girl.

  Once inside my apartment, I make a beeline for the kitchen and toss back two antacids. It takes awhile for the pain to subside so I return to the living room to rest on the couch. As my heartburn eases, I consider the funeral. My panic at spotting Landauer. But also the loss of Schatzi. I felt it a lot more than I’d have thought. He’d been a hero to a lot of kids on the Lower East Side, myself included. Truth be told, I never would have become involved with the mob if it weren’t for Schatzi. What’s odd is that it started idealistically, with this business about the Nazis.

  It was a late Sunday afternoon the winter I turned sixteen. I was already six feet tall and as strong as my brother. Moe and I had come downstairs in our apartment building and planned to run out to get a newspaper for Dad. I was surprised to find Schatzi waiting near the bank of mailboxes in the hall.

  “I had a visitor last night,” Schatzi said. He grabbed Moe’s arm and pulled him toward the door. “There’s going to be some action.”

  Schatzi looked at me, then Moe, waiting for my brother to tell me to scram. Moe surprised us both. “Let him come,” he said. “Time the kid grew up.” I tried to act nonchalant, to hide my excitement at being included.

  The three of us stepped outside and turned left, bending our heads against the wind. The snow had stopped falling in the early afternoon, leaving a thick slush of icy water and coal dust on the sidewalk. I winced as I stepped into the raw air. It was only three in the afternoon but already dark and the windows of the tenement buildings emitted a pallid yellow glow that scarcely illuminated the sidewalk. A piercing wind spit slivers of ice down the narrow street and I shivered, as much from the arctic air as the thrill of hanging out with my brother and Schatzi. They were five years older than I was but seemed a generation removed because of their street smarts and reputations as toughs.

  “You heard about the Nazis holding their meetings in Yorkville?” Schatzi asked once we were clear of the building and its prying ears.

  “Rumors,” Moe said. “I heard they were pretty harmless.”

  “I don’t know about that. They’re planning a pro-Hitler rally this week. Harmless or not, we’re not letting them get away with it.”

  I hadn’t read anything about Nazis in New York, though I’d heard stories about Germans rounding up Jews and taking them away from their homes. A week earlier, Mrs. Gottlieb from next door came over in tears to tell my mother her sister hadn’t written in six months. Ma made me leave the apartment.

  “Those big shot rabbis can talk all they want about laying low, keeping out of sight of the Christians. But that’s crap,” Schatzi said. “If someone calls me a dirty Jew, I’ll break his jaw. I’m not letting the bastards walk all over us.”

  Schatzi and Moe took long strides and I had to run to keep up.

  “What’re you going to do? Beat them up?” Moe said, then laughed. He and Schatzi got in plenty of fights.

  “I might. There’s this guy, Lansky. Word is out that he’s looking for Jews to take on the Nazi bastards.”

  We stopped at the intersection with Delancey and waited for a truck to pass before we crossed the road. Orchard Street, which was crowded with push carts heaped with vegetables and fruit in the summer, was deserted in the cold. Once across, Schatzi turned his back to the wind to light a smoke. He lit a second cigarette off that and handed it to Moe. When he eyed me, I shook my head. I was afraid I’d get sick and embarrass myself.

  “Some judge gave Lansky a call,” Schatzi continued after releasing a cloud of smoke. It hung in the cold air. “Wants him to break up the Nazi rallies. Bust some arms and legs too. He called in old favors and is getting young guys, like us, to join. You in?”

  “You bet,” I said before I realized Schatzi was looking at Moe. My brother and his friend exchanged glances.

  “You can come along, but don’t get in my way,” Moe said. “Anything happens to you, Ma’ll kill me.

  The subway doors slid open with a squeal and the raw onion stink of unwashed bodies assailed me as I stepped into the car behind Moe and Schatzi. It had been two days since Schatzi appeared in our hallway and we were on our way to the Nazi rally. I’d ridden the subway to visit relatives in Brooklyn, but that had been in the daytime, when the cars were crowded.

  Tonight, the nearly deserted subway felt like a ghost train racing into the dark. Two Negroes in tan porter’s uniforms nodded off five benches down. Across from them sat a fat man with his arms folded and his bulging eyes half closed. The man kept his hands in his pockets, not bothering to pull them out to brace himself on the sharp turns.

  Motioning his head to draw us closer, Schatzi pointed a thumb toward the stranger. “That’s Harry Shapiro,” he whispered, “one of Lansky’s men. Bet he’s on his way to beat up Nazis.” I glanced at the stranger, who was openly staring at us now. “The big idea tonight is to listen and keep your mouth shut,” Schatzi continued. Then to me, “If you can’t take the fighting, get out. We don’t need to worry about you.”

  I nodded. The strangeness of riding a subway at night added a tinge of fear to the excitement I’d felt all day. My stomach ached. Ma hated Schatzi and would yell at me if she found out I was hanging around with what she called the “nogoodnik.” Schatzi was always getting into trouble and bringing Moe along. As Schatzi got older, his troubles got worse. He’d been picked up by the cops twice in the last year.

  The night before, we’d heard Lansky speak. I was nervous then too, but not as bad as tonight. The auditorium was crowded with hard-looking men in their twenties and thirties and a half dozen boys around my age. I tried to look streetwise, slouching against a wall, but I wasn’t fooling anyone.

  The three of us waited a half hour before a short man with big ears stepped up to the stage, silencing the crowd with his presence. He wore a fancy suit with a pink silk handkerchief in the breast pocket and looked like a businessman or a lawyer. An outfit like that, I expected the man to have a classy voice. But what came out of his mouth was straight from the old neighborhood. Turned out the guy was Meyer Lansky. And he’d grown up on the Lower East Side, just like us. He told the crowd where to meet the next night and that it was okay to break bones—arms, legs and ribs were fine. But no killing.

  The man was a rousing speaker and the throng cheered him on. I’d never heard anything like it. Lansky made it sound like it was our patriotic duty to take out the Nazi bastards, that we were fighting for America and for the suffering Jews in Europe. When he asked for volunteers, every hand in the hall shot up.

  But that night, hanging on to the subway’s metal overhead bar on the way to the Nazi rally, my stomach contracted. I’d been in plenty of fights and could hold my own with the kids who wandered into our neighborhood looking for trouble. But in a few hours I’d be taking on grown men. Moe and Schatzi had done a fair amount of street fighting and would be okay. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by getting beat up. And I sure as hell didn’t want to end up in jail or the hospital. That would kill Ma.

  I pictured her standing over me in a hospital bed, crying like she always did when Moe and I got in fights. I turned my back on Moe and Schatzi and stared at my reflection in the window. The ache in my stomach had worked its way up and lodged like a melon in my chest.

>   “You want to move it, buddy?” A deep voice broke into my reverie.

  It was the man with the bulldog eyes. We’d reached our stop. I stumbled out of the subway car and ran to catch up with Moe and Schatzi, on the platform and heading for the stairs. When we reached street level, we buttoned our coats against the cold and turned south. No one spoke as the faintly-lit street filled with a dozen or so men, most young and broad-shouldered with a stony set to their jaws. Moe, Schatzi, and I joined the small army as it advanced down the block past closed storefronts and restaurants. Eventually, we stepped into the shadows of the buildings across the road from a brick auditorium.

  We waited an hour, then two, shivering in the frigid air and whispering to one another as we listened to cheering from the auditorium. No one told us what the signal to act would be, but I figured we’d know when it came. My feet were almost numb with cold when I heard the crash of shattering glass and saw two bodies fly through a window to the right of the auditorium’s entrance. In seconds, three thugs I recognized from the night before had scampered up the fire escape on the side

  of the building.

  I raced after Moe and Schatzi toward the auditorium and ran to the top of the broad staircase. Men in khaki outfits and business suits dashed like angry ants from the entrance, trying to escape the Jews who greeted them, punching and kicking as they tried to descend. In seconds, Moe was swinging the nightstick he’d stuffed down his pants and Schatzi and I were using our fists on everything that came within arm’s length. The cheers we’d heard from the building moments earlier were replaced by the grunt of fist meeting gut and the heavy breathing of men in combat. Blood trickled down my cheek and my knuckles burned, but I kept swinging and connecting.

  Stopping for a brief moment to catch my breath, I saw Schatzi slam his fist into a heavily-muscled man in a brown shirt guarding a short, plump character with a Hitler-style moustache. Maybe it was the mustachioed man’s look of contempt for the fighters as he approached the stairs, or the fact that two hoodlums in brown shirts lunged at Schatzi as he neared the plump man, but it was obvious the fellow at the center of the goons was big in the Nazi organization.