An Image of Death

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  He also kept up his networking, continuing to sponsor conferences in Eastern and Central Europe. That was critical, he maintained. Not only did these conferences provide a window for potential investors, but it was important that fledging businesses and industries study the successful methods used by western captains of industry.

  Of all the articles I skimmed, only one was less than praiseworthy. Written by a curmudgeonly Chicago financial analyst for his company’s newsletter, it questioned the speed with which Gold Coast Trust had ramped up. A bank that went from rags to riches in ten short years, Donald Robinson claimed, was nothing short of a miracle, and miracles were in short supply in this economy. He advised readers to take a close look at this shooting star to make sure it didn’t burn itself out.

  I glanced at David’s photo on the shelf above the computer. I’d taken it last summer when the three of us biked up to the Botanic Gardens. He knew Max Gordon and Gold Coast Trust; he could probably fill me in with more detail than a few articles. But calling him was out of the question. In fact, I should probably take his picture and throw it away. I sighed. I couldn’t do that yet. But I did turn the frame around so that his picture faced the wall.

  I printed out the articles and stashed them in a file folder. Then I went downstairs to brew a pot of coffee. While it was perking, I ran out to pick up Rachel from school. Her friend Katie climbed into the car with her. Back at the house, they grabbed a bag of cookies and two pops, and bounded up the stairs.

  “Whoa, there, road runners. Where are you off to?”

  Rachel stopped on the top step. “We need to get on IM. There’s this really hot—”

  “Sorry.” On the way to pick Rachel up, I’d realized there was something else I wanted to check online. “I need the computer.”

  “Muhhthherrr.…”

  “Another half hour.”

  Katie looked crestfallen, but after a moment, Rachel recovered. “No prob. Let’s jog over to the Forest Preserve. By the time we get back, we’ll go online.”

  Katie shot Rachel one of those “are you crazy” looks. She was apparently the type who thought clicking on a remote or a mouse was more than enough exercise.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “How about some cocoa to gird your loins?”

  They both brightened. I made hot chocolate with marshmallows, which they sucked down like liquid candy. Then they put on their coats and headed outside.

  Back in my office, I Googled “Tattoos and Russian army.” Only one Web site popped up, revealing an obscure crest that was supposedly tattooed on white army recruits during the Russian Revolution. Other links, however, and there seemed to be a slew of them, promised information about tattoos and Russian prisons. Recalling what the Buddhist tattoo artist said about tattoos and gulags and jails, I clicked on them.

  Like most prison populations, tattoos were common in Russian jails. Of the 35 million people jailed in the Soviet Union between the mid-sixties and the late eighties, 85 percent were tattooed. Certain tattoos meant that a prisoner was a high ranking criminal, a pakhany, or had some special status before being imprisoned. Others meant they were one of the razboyniki, or mob. Some tattoos indicated a prisoner had done time in solitary confinement. Nazi imagery wasn’t uncommon.

  There was even a cadre of Russian street thugs known as the “Tattoos.” Described as a cross between the Gambinos under John Gotti and Hell’s Angels, the Tattoos were muscle men who ran the rackets and extorted payoffs. One of the Web sites claimed they had a virtual lock on almost every aspect of the Russian marketplace.

  According to a Russian criminologist, tattoos were a passport, business card, and résumé all rolled in one. Criminals distinguished one another’s rank in the underworld, their past incarcerations, even their area of “specialty” from their body art. But so did the police, who gradually learned to use tattoos to identify and apprehend criminals. As a result, the criminologist said, the application of tattoos might have peaked.

  I took my empty coffee cup down to the kitchen and looked through the window. Rachel and Katie hadn’t gone jogging. They were dragging some neighborhood kids around on a sled. I pressed my forehead against the windowpane. Icy tendrils of frost coated the glass. I ran my finger across it, letting the wavy wet line bisect them.

  After all that research, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for or what I’d found. Max Gordon seemed like a gifted businessman, and with the exception of the one article, above reproach. He had put his loyalty to his homeland to good use. Yet, a construction worker at his site wore a ski mask, the same mask worn by a murderer. Both men had a limp. The woman on the tape had been killed at a dental office. So were the Russian immigrants who owned it. The man who might have sent me the tape had connections to a Russian strip joint. And a tattoo that might have originated in the Russian army or prison was on the dead woman’s wrist…the same tattoo that had shown up on a diamond courier in Antwerp.

  I felt as if elements were whirling around me like electrons around the nucleus of an atom. Everything required to restore order was there, but whizzing around so fast, I couldn’t identify them. Layered on top was an urgency, an edgy sense that I needed to piece everything together before…before what? I didn’t know, but I had the distinct feeling I was running out of time.

  I backed away from the window and went to the phone. I doubted it would make any difference, but I left a message for Davis telling her what I’d learned.

  ***

  I came out of the bathroom that night to find Rachel curled up in my bed, engrossed in the end of civilization as we know it on her Game Boy. I threw back the covers, slid into bed beside her, and pulled the blankets up to my chin.

  As she clicked on buttons and arrows, voices screamed, tones chimed, and colors flashed. I tried to determine some logic to the sequences, but the patterns were either beyond my ability to comprehend or totally random. After a particularly unearthly shriek, Rachel paused the game and everything went silent. Without looking at me, she asked, “How come you turned the picture around?”

  “What picture?” I said, though I knew the one she meant.

  “The one of David at the gardens.”

  I shrugged one shoulder, producing a slight lump in the quilt.

  “There’s a problem, isn’t there?”

  I took out my hand and smoothed out the covers. She put the Game Boy down and rolled onto her side. I sighed. I had to tell her sometime. “It seems as if David has a new girlfriend.”

  Her eyes grew round as plates. “What?”

  I repeated myself.

  “How could he?” Her voice turned suddenly suspicious. “What did you do?”

  “As far as I know, nothing.” This time.

  “Then what happened?”

  I explained as much as I felt she could understand.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “I think it’s pretty unbelievable, too.” I bit my lip—it wouldn’t be a good idea to fall apart in front of my fourteen-year-old daughter. “But there are times when things just don’t work out.” God, what a pitiful answer. “And we end up hurt.” Just as inane.

  “You know just what this sounds like?” She shot me a look. “It sounds like the junk you told me when you and Daddy got divorced.”

  Back then, I’d bought one of those “how to explain divorce to your kids” books. Its strict guidelines mandated that parents tell the child together in a neutral location. We should stress that it wasn’t the child’s fault. We followed the advice. It didn’t work.

  “I already went through it once.” She bristled. “I don’t want to do it again.”

  “I—I’m sorry, Rachel.”

  She rolled over, got out of bed, and stormed into her room.

  The gas heater clicked on, and hot air pushed through the vents. I lay in bed wondering how life, which had seemed so normal a few weeks ago, had become so unsettled. David. The tape. Petrovsky. Max Gordon. And I seemed to be the only person who cared about any of it. David didn’t ca
re about me; the police didn’t care about the case; Ricki Feldman and Max Gordon cared only about their business.

  But, how do you learn not to care? To shrug off doubts and reclaim sleepless nights? Maybe I should take a few lessons. I switched off the light, for once welcoming the dark for its indifference.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Friday night I dropped Rachel at Barry’s for the weekend. His condo, on the third floor of a small, upscale apartment building, isn’t far from the house—it was one of the more rational decisions he made when we broke up. Barry met us at the front door in the lobby, which, considering the frigid temperature, was surprising. Usually he lurks in his apartment, waiting for me to ring the bell and deliver Rachel as if she were a package from UPS.

  He came out to the car and leaned his head in. “How ’bout you come to dinner with us? We’re getting Thai.”

  “I—I’m already cooking for Dad.”

  “He can come, too.”

  Rachel had told me how Barry’s affair with Marlene, the aerobics queen, had cooled. Considering my run-in with her last fall, I wasn’t unhappy. And despite their differences, Dad and Barry tried to get along. But I was feeling vulnerable, which was exactly what Barry was counting on.

  “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

  Barry shrugged as if to say “I tried,” and slipped his arm around Rachel.

  “Bye, Mom. Tell Opa he owes me a game of chess.”

  ***

  There’s nothing like the aroma of a good Shabbos brisket on a cold winter night. To some people, the smell is an aphrodisiac. I tend to think of it as foreplay—sniffing can be better than the main event. Tonight, though, Dad seemed impervious to its siren song. He’d been quiet on the ride up, but once inside, he proceeded to sit in three different chairs, like a wizened, male version of Goldilocks.

  I lit candles, and Dad recited kiddush. After Motzi I served bowls of my homemade matzo ball soup. I dug in—I make good matzo balls, even if they come from a box—but Dad took one spoonful and pushed his away.

  “Too much salt?” I looked over.

  He reached for his cane, lumbered to his feet, and started to pace around the dining room table.

  “What’s with the shpilches tonight?”

  He pressed his lips together. “I’m beginning to think that guy Kevorkian has the right idea.”

  I put my spoon down. “Excuse me?”

  “At a certain point in your life, you get let out to pasture.” I started to interrupt, but he overrode me. “No, it’s true. Once you’re over the hill, you’re marginalized. No matter who you were before. And if you’ve got health problems on top of it, you’re in even more trouble. People shove you into a corner, roll their eyes when they deal with you—”

  He held up his palm when I tried to break in. “I’ve seen it happen. What I’m saying is if you get to the point where you can’t even wipe yourself without help, maybe someone oughta give you a push into the Almighty’s arms.” He sniffed. “It happens a lot more than we think. It’s just no one ever talks about it.”

  “You think that kind of thing should be sanctioned?”

  He rounded the table. “Here’s the thing, Ellie. Who decides when it’s time to pull the plug? Let’s say I draft a living will—you know, put in that no special resuscitation clause, if I think I’m gonna end up a vegetable. And say you’re my executor. If I’m not in any shape to make decisions, how do I know you are? How do you know when it’s time? Do you ask the doctors? Do you rely on your own common sense?”

  “That’s a lot of speculation.”

  “Exactly. Which is why it’s all so crazy. What if you’re just fed up—what do they call it now when you’ve had enough?”

  “Burnout?”

  “Right. What if you’re burned out with taking care of me? How do we know—how does anyone know if the decision you made was in my interests…and not yours?”

  I leaned my elbows on the table, remembering a conversation we’d had when I was younger and much more sure of myself. We’d been discussing medical miracles, and how they save lives, even though the cost of them might drive the patient into bankruptcy. I’d been arguing against the principle; it was creating a two-tiered health care system. Medicine for the rich and famous, I’d called it—middle-class need not apply.

  “Who wants to live to be ninety-five, anyway?” I’d asked huffily.

  Dad looked at me, then answered quietly, “The guy who’s ninety-four.”

  I never forgot that. I repeated it now.

  He sat down heavily. “But what if you don’t know how old you are?”

  I finally realized what was making him so morose. “Sylvia’s worse, isn’t she?”

  He nodded slowly. “She needs more care than the place can give. But.…” His eyes glittered. “Her daughter-in-law’s ready to send her to one of those advanced care facilities. You know. The places you go when you’re waiting to die. And everybody else wishes you would.”

  I winced.

  “Her son isn’t convinced she should go. He’s got a good nashoma, that boy. He wants her to move in with them. But his wife? Forget it. God forbid it interferes with her paddle tennis or their kid’s soccer practice.”

  “Watch it,” I said.

  “Come on. You know what I’m saying. It’s not the money. I’d understand it if they couldn’t afford a decent nursing home, but they can. They can even afford in-home care. The wife just doesn’t want to be put out.”

  “What about Sylvia? What does she think?”

  “She just sits in her room.” He sighed. “She stares at the clock all the time now. Keeping track, letting it wind down, I don’t know. I visit her every afternoon, make her a cup of tea, and we talk. But, Ellie.…” He turned an anguished face to me. “I can’t do this again.”

  When my mother was dying of cancer, my father dropped everything to stay by her side. He nursed her, fed her, entertained her, comforted her. Watched as each day she became a little less of the person she’d been before. And when it was all over, he cried and packed up all her things for the Ark, a Chicago Jewish good-will agency. It was an experience no one should repeat.

  I stood up and put my arms around him. “You don’t have to.”

  He shaded his eyes with his hand. “She’s got no one else.”

  I stroked the back of his head. “How much longer can she stay there, you think?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe a month.”

  I was quiet. Then, “That month could be the best month of her life.”

  He looked up and gazed at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. “I suppose.” After a moment, he hugged me. “Thanks, sweetheart.” A glimmer of a smile played around his lips. “Okay. Time for some of that brisket that’s been smelling up the house.”

  ***

  “How’s David?” he asked a few minutes later.

  “Fine,” I lied. One of us crying into our soup was enough. Especially considering the time it took me to make it. I changed the subject and told him about the ground-breaking ceremony. He nodded when I mentioned Max Gordon.

  “You know him?”

  “I know who he is. Short, bald Jewish guy. Sticks his hand in his jacket like Napoleon.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Don’t know a thing about him—except that he wants to be the Trump of Chicago. Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged.

  “I see right through you, sweetheart. You’re your mother’s daughter. She never could hide anything, either.”

  “You’re right. I feel uneasy about the guy. But everybody else seems to think he’s the best thing to hit town since Michael Jordan. I even did a search on him, and only one article was the slightest bit critical. And even that wasn’t really critical. Just guarded.”

  “Why do you care about Max Gordon’s reputation?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shot up as if I’d just pronounced a secret password. “I worry when you start out like that.”
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br />   “I’m not in trouble this time. Promise.” I tried my most reassuring smile. “But there are some strange—well, I don’t even know if you could call them coincidences…more like confluences of events.” I told him everything: the woman on the tape, the killer’s ski mask, DM Maids, the van driver, Celestial Bodies, the dentists’ office, the woman’s tattoo, the note, Max Gordon’s reaction to my comments about the construction worker.

  His eyebrows went sky high “How did you happen to meet the women at Celestial Bodies, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I—I was there. With the police.”

  He scowled.

  I skipped the part about the gun at my head. “It was fine, Dad. Really.” I passed him the meat. “So, what do you think?”

  “I don’t like you being involved.”

  “Me, I’m not—not really.”

  He pointed to the gravy boat. “They don’t know that.”

  I passed it over. “I know what you’re saying, and I am trying to stay out of trouble. But I did wonder if I should call the guy who wrote that newsletter article on Gordon. Maybe I’d learn something that would help.”

  “Dream on. What do you think the guy’s gonna tell you? He has no idea what you’re gonna do with the information.”

  “You’re probably right.” I sighed. “So what should I do?”

  Dad took a bite of meat and chewed it thoroughly. “I don’t know why I’m helping you—it’s a sure sign of trouble. But I know someone who might be able to give you a heads-up on Max Gordon.”

  ***

  Dad’s buddy Frank Mayer looks like a combination of Alfafa and Albert Einstein. Tufts of frizzy white hair stick out at odd angles, framing his head like some ethereal halo. He was alone in the card room enveloped by a cloud of cigar smoke. A bright light hung directly over the table. A TV in the corner blared the news. His thick glasses almost obscured his eyes, but his face creased into a smile when he saw Dad.