Redemption Street

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “The other Jews,” she said, “the Hasids, they hate ‘em.”

  Suddenly, I was less interested and pretty fucking angry. Having grown up with several children of concentration-camp survivors, I found the notion of people playing at this sort of thing repulsive. The whole victimization thing made me want to puke. Didn’t they know, everyone was a victim?

  Oh God! Molly had played “Piano Man” again. It was no longer nine o’clock and it was getting perilously close to being Sunday. Time to go, but I feared making a graceful exit wasn’t going to be easy. Molly had grown a little touchy-feely. There had been a time not too many years ago when I would have gone home with her. She was likable enough, cute in her way, and she sure liked me, but even before I met Katy I’d given up on one-night stands. The sex, good or bad, was never at issue. No one should ever mistake me for a knight of the Round Table. It was just that the lack of intimacy had begun to suck the life out of me.

  “I gotta go, Molly.”

  She took my hand in a death grip. I admired people who didn’t give up without a fight; however, I preferred admiring them from outside the ring. I took the offensive, knelt forward, and kissed Molly long, but softly on the cheek. Pulling away, I brushed my hand across her cheek and mouthed the words “Thank you.” She let go of my hand. The battle was won. No one seemed scarred for life. Then why did I feel like such a shit?

  Fresh air had never smelled so sweet as it did when I stepped out of Hanrahan’s. Another hour in there and I’d be coughing up a lung. As it was, I considered burning my clothes instead of having them cleaned. It’s almost impossible to fully get out the smell of smoke. Apparently, the smoke from the old Fir Grove fire still hung over Old Rotterdam like a permanent cloud. I thought I could almost smell it myself. The vision of Andrea’s charred body popped back into my head.

  The street was awfully quiet. That’s the thing about the city: it’s never quiet, not like this. The quiet made me uncomfortable. A lot about this place made me uncomfortable.

  Chapter Seven

  November 29th

  I woke up missing Katy and Sarah. My evening with Molly had been a painful reminder of where my life had been headed before Patrick M. Maloney fell off the face of the earth. Most of the time, I could hold down the panic associated with the thought of my father-in-law’s ratting me out. This was not one of those times. Panic was all around me. I had come close to confessing to Katy on several occasions, but the words weren’t in me, nor was the courage to speak them if they had been.

  I got out of my room as fast as I could. Bad food was apparently a remedy for panic. The coffee alone was enough to put a man back on the straight and narrow. And once I bit into my bagel with lox and cream cheese, the only thing I was panicked by was the onset of food poisoning. Admittedly, I was never much of a lox eater, but this stuff was rancid. The old folks around me didn’t seem to mind too much.

  When I spotted Mr. Roth, again splendidly dressed, entering the dining hall, I waved for him to come sit with me. He was only too pleased to join me as long as I was still willing to share a drink with him later in the day. I told him I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “I see you’re not enjoying your lox,” he observed after placing his order for bran cereal and a banana. “Terrible stuff. I wouldn’t feed it to a pig.”

  “Nice sentiment.”

  We had a laugh over that. I asked Mr. Roth where he came from.

  “Boca Raton via Brooklyn via Auschwitz,” he said, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a five-digit tattoo on his forearm. “And my name is Izzy, so you don’t have to call me Mr. Roth, Mr. Prager.”

  “That’s Moe, or Moses, Mr. Roth.”

  “Oy gevalt, they had less trouble figuring out the shape of the negotiating table for the Vietnam War, for Chrissakes! Call me whatever you want.”

  “You, too, Mr. Roth.”

  When his cereal came, I let him get some of it down before starting the conversation again. I asked him why he bothered coming to a place like the Swan Song if he knew it was a dump. He gestured at the other people in the room.

  “Most of us live in the same retirement community. We have very little family left, the majority of us. So we get a big discount and come up to the mountains twice a year. We come at Thanksgiving, and in the summer for a week. Fewer of us come each year, but the mountains are a place we all have such happy memories of. Mister, I could tell you stories….”

  I smiled. “I hope you will.”

  “Later.” He waved. “Later.”

  “Why the Swan Song?” I asked.

  “They give the biggest discount, and we remember Sam from the old times. He was pretty famous almost, once. Would you believe it? I don’t know. Where else would we go? Old people don’t like change much. We haven’t got the time to deal with it, so we put up with the bad coffee and the mystery lox and we remember sunnier days. Hold on to those days tightly, Mr. Moe, like an eagle holds its prey.” Mr. Roth’s lips turned down at the corners.

  I changed the subject. “So what did you do for a living?”

  “I owned a fine men’s-clothing store on Flatbush Avenue for thirty years. House of Roth, you ever hear of it? The Dodgers used to shop there all the time. I got pictures. Let me tell you, I got pictures. Me fitting Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, the Duke. But I liked the colored players the best: Jackie Robinson, and Junior Gilliam, and the crippled one, the catcher—”

  “Campanella.”

  “That’s him, Campy. Such a pity, a man like that. But the colored players, we understood each other,” he said. “We understood what it was to struggle. We appreciated the little things.”

  I didn’t doubt it. I excused myself. I found I really needed to hear Katy’s voice.

  “Later?” he almost pleaded.

  “Later.”

  This time I got her at home. The wonderful thing about it was that she sounded even happier, even more relieved to hear from me than I was to hear the sound of her voice. Mr. Roth’s words about appreciating the little things rang in my ears. She filled me in on what I had missed at my in-laws’. Nothing. It had been a quiet stay. Her father had mentioned taking a trip down to Coney Island in the spring to spend a day with Sarah on the rides. Those words rang in my head, too, but flat and out of tune.

  Katy, Miriam, and Cindy had gotten drunk together and spent the better part of the evening sharing bad blind-date stories. I thought about asking for more details and quickly changed my mind. I could have dealt with some of Katy’s stories, but I didn’t want to think about my little sister or my three-times-a-mother sister-in-law out on dates. Call me old-fashioned. Katy and Sarah had spent the night at Aaron and Cindy’s. Sarah was still there being fawned over by her big cousins.

  “It’s good to get some time alone,” Katy admitted, “but I’d rather spend it alone with you.”

  We got around to talking about the case. When I tried to explain, I realized the only tangible thing I had was a cracked windshield and a new paint job on the hood of my car. I carefully omitted those details. There was no need to worry Katy. What I did tell her was that I had a hunch, but, I cautioned, every broken-down horse-player I ever met had a hunch. Some had sure things. The only sure thing was that most hunches don’t pan out.

  “You had a hunch about me,” she said.

  “I said most hunches don’t pan out, not all.”

  “Good thing for you some do.”

  Feeling better for having spoken to Katy, and with nothing on my plate until later, I decided to go and do some souvenir shopping, or maybe even take a ride up to the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

  Mr. Roth’s room wasn’t so different from mine. His TV worked a little better. Instead of snow on the screen there were wavy negative images. Everything looked like the special effects from The Outer Limits. “We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical….”

  “In Boca, we got cable. Perfect reception all the time. Too bad there’s only dreck to watch, but it’s crystal-clear dreck! So
metimes I watch the soap operas, with their crazy plots, in the afternoons. I think more people get amnesia than the common cold on those things. And resurrection! They bring more people back from the dead than Jesus Christ. You got cable in Brooklyn yet?”

  “The politicians haven’t been sufficiently paid off,” I said. “We’ll get it just in time for them to invent something new, and then my grandchildren will wait for that.”

  He clicked off the set. “Vodka or scotch?”

  “Scotch.” He disappeared into the bathroom and quickly emerged with two hotel glasses in hand. He said something in a Slavic tongue I didn’t recognize, clinked my glass, and made his vodka vanish in one swallow. He didn’t make a show of it: no grunting or throat clearing, no head shaking, no “Oh, that’s good.” I liked that about the man. There’s something refreshing about a lack of pretense. Maybe that comes with age.

  “Another?” he asked.

  “Not just now, thanks, but you go ahead.”

  He made another trip into the bathroom and came out carrying both the scotch and vodka bottles.

  “Too much exercise,” he said. “I already make too many trips to the bathroom.”

  He helped himself to half a glassful and sat down on the edge of the bed, sipping his vodka this time. I took the desk chair over by the window.

  “So you’re a cop,” he said matter-of-factly.

  This was getting ridiculous. Too bad I didn’t have my old uniform with me. It would save people the trouble of guessing.

  “Who told—”

  “No one had to tell me. You carry yourself like a cop. When you’re a haberdasher for your life, you learn how people carry themselves. It’s no different than in the jungle or in the camps. An animal survives by being able to see who carries himself like a predator or like prey.” Mr. Roth looked down at his drink. When he picked his head up he was smiling. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on that way. It’s just that, when old people are together, we talk a lot but we never say anything. It’s like you’re suddenly aware that God is really listening and you better watch your mouth. You’re gonna be seeing Him soon enough.”

  “You believe?”

  “There was a French philosopher, I think, who once said something like if you can’t prove God doesn’t exist, you better act like He does. You know, Mr. Moe, it doesn’t matter if I believe in Him or not. What matters is if He believes in me.” He held up the bottle of scotch. “Another?”

  I liked listening to Mr. Roth, but if he was going to plumb the depths of metaphysics I needed more than one scotch. I held up my empty glass for a refill.

  “So …” he said.

  “You wanna know what I’m really doing up here?”

  He winked at me. “All I said was ‘So …’ “

  Mr. Roth sat patiently as I introduced him to the cast of characters. Surprisingly, he seemed unperturbed by the Yellow Stars.

  “Life is life,” he said, “and dress-up is just dress-up. What does it matter to me?” He did remember the fire, but couldn’t add any detail. “I was here with Hannah—my wife was still alive then. She’d spend the whole summer, and I’d come up on Saturday night to Tuesday every week. I couldn’t leave the store for too long. That summer we were at Grossinger’s with friends. When we got up that Sunday morning, the dining room was buzzing with the news. What was bad was that it was mostly kids. We all had kids who’d worked up here in the summers. That hurt. You know sometimes when you hear terrible stories on the news about a typhoon or volcano killing thousands of people, you can ignore it because when was the last typhoon in Brooklyn? But when it could have been you or your kids …”

  I tried asking him about his kids, but he just deflected the questions. Eventually, I got the hint and moved on. We had one more drink and finally got around to talking about the good old days. I told him about my one week of glory at the Concord.

  “The Concord, huh, Mr. Fancy Moe? Maybe I should call you Your Highness. From what I hear, only royalty and the rich stay at the Concord.”

  I held out my hand. “Kiss the ring and maybe I’ll let you call me Moe.”

  He liked that. When he finished his drink, he sang me a song: “We’re gonna hitchhike up to the Catskills….”

  “We lived for the summers, to come up here and be amongst ourselves,” he said unashamedly. “You don’t know the pressures of coming from another place, a different culture. We could speak Yiddish or Polish without the guy on the subway next to you giving you the eye. We could be ourselves again for a little while. Oh, the silly things we used to do.”

  “Like …”

  “Will you respect me in the morning if I tell you?”

  “Mr. Roth, I get the sense I’d respect you no matter what.”

  His mood turned suddenly dark: “Don’t be so sure.”

  “Okay, but what about the silly things?”

  He brightened up again. “Sometimes we’d plan and rehearse all week for a wedding, but not just any wedding. They called it a mock wedding. The men would dress up like women and the women like men. And we made up funny ceremonies. You know, like what we imagined the goyim did in their churches. And maybe there was a little drinking and a little fooling around. It was like a big party and play and a little revenge all at once. But it was fun like I can’t tell you. It would seem so stupid now, but I miss it.”

  “Why don’t you get your friends together here and—”

  “Forget it! It’s not like on the soap operas. You can’t bring back the past.”

  “I didn’t mean to get you—”

  “You didn’t upset me, Moe. I’m maybe just a little tired and a little drunk, you know?”

  “Okay, Mr. Roth. I understand. Why don’t you get a bissel sleep.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, stretching back on the bed, yawning. “Sounds good.”

  I shook his hand and rolled the comforter over him, but when I got to the door, he called after me.

  “What is it, Mr. Roth?”

  “Remember what I said before about not respecting me?”

  “I remember, yeah.”

  “I like you very much, so I’m gonna give you some advice. Be careful of the people you like. Unlike in the jungle, humans can learn to carry themselves like prey when sometimes they’re the hunters.”

  “Are you talking about yourself?” I asked.

  “Not this time, Mr. Moe. Just you watch yourself. A glad hand and a joke may not be what they seem. Go in good health.”

  Jesus, another cryptic warning. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Mr. Roth was speaking about Sam, but exactly what he was saying was unclear. Was Sam Gutterman the Antichrist, or was he going to pad my hotel bill?

  Chapter Eight

  November 30th

  I ate breakfast out, escaping the sage advice and cryptic warnings of my new friends and mentors. A man can stand only so much imparted wisdom. Today I had to focus. Richard Hammerling, Councilman at Large, was batting in the lead-off spot, and I needed to be sharp. Silly songs about the Catskills and fanciful tales of mock weddings were fun but beside the point. Even before I woke up, the vision of Arthur Rosen’s lifeless body weighed heavily on me. The stink of his room was in the air I breathed. I barely noticed the black paint on the hood of my car. The same could not be said about my rear windshield.

  Old Rotterdam Town Hall hadn’t improved with age. And with the warmer temperatures and thaw, the surrounding mud served only to enhance its ugliness. It looked even more out of place without the camouflage of snow. I wondered if Hammerling had had anything to do with selecting this neo-Sing Sing design. When I walked in, I checked the big sign to see if it listed the Sunday football scores. It did not, but the little politicos’ names were all still up there for the world to see.

  Molly Treat was at her station, faithfully guarding the information table. I tried sneaking up on her, to no avail. Molly, true to her word, knew everything about the place, including, apparently, the sounds in the hallways. Without raising her head awa
y from the papers spread out before her, she pointed up at the big Seth Thomas clock across from her desk.

  “I’ve been expecting you. Dick’s set some time aside, but you better get in there. You’re a little late. Room 112.”

  I laid down on Molly’s desk the rose I’d bought from a Moonie on Ellenville Road and a cup of coffee. She finally looked up. She was meticulously made up and dressed quite a bit more lavishly than the job required. In any case, she was better dressed than the last time she sat at this desk, or at Hanrahan’s Pub. Though she’d no doubt deny it, I suspected this fashion statement had more than a teeny bit to do with the anticipation of my presence.

  “You look lovely.”

  “I had fun the other night.” She licked her lips. “But you left too soon.”

  “No, I left just in time or I’d be feeling pretty guilty today.”

  “Guilty pleasures are the spice of life.”

  “And the cause of nine out of ten divorce proceedings. I didn’t know how you liked your coffee, so I got it with a little half-and-half. I figured you had some sugar or whatever in your desk.”

  She pulled two packets of sugar out of a drawer and shook them at me. “Now you know for next time.”

  “Till then.” I winked. “That was Room 112, right?”

  “One twelve. Go to the end of the hall and make a left.”

  Room 112 was actually two rooms. There was a drab, uninviting room full of metal desks, filing cabinets, and phone banks for secretarial and administrative staff that was currently occupied by the invisible. I figured it must not have been an election year. During an election year, staffers work round the clock to make sure that every cat is rescued from every tree and that every media outlet in the Free World knows about it.