The Bootlegger's Confession

by Allan Levine

Each time Lou said his brother’s name, the hair on the back of Klein’s neck stood up. “I’m not sure I can help you, Lou.”

  “Sam, I know you’re angry with Saul and you have every right to be. I don’t know what’s got into him. He should never have disrespected you and Sarah the way he did. But it’s done, over. And I have to agree with Saul that there’s too much at stake here.”

  Dolly arrived with a thick piece of bread and her famous homemade strawberry jam, which she placed before Klein. He thanked her, ripped off a piece, dipped it in the jam, and took a bite.

  “You hear me, Sam?” Lou repeated. “There’s a lot at stake. We’ve got half a million dollars of stock ready to move and we can’t have the provincial police snooping around our stores and warehouses near Vera or anywhere else. And we don’t want any more trouble. And…”

  “And what, Lou?”

  “Nothing. Just like I said, there’s too much at stake. We need this resolved quickly. And, if I may say so, you do owe us.”

  Klein bristled. “And we are paying back our debts on the house and the store every month with interest. So please don’t throw that in my face.”

  Lou waved his hand. “I shouldn’t have said that, Sam. I apologize. You know I was more than happy to help you and Sarah with the house and, whatever you think about him, Saul was more than willing to help Sarah with the shop.”

  Klein’s face reddened. “Seriously, Lou, you think that your brother was just being nice? I know exactly what he was doing.” Klein steadied himself; he had no desire to lose his temper in Dolly’s. “In all honesty,” he said more quietly, “I don’t know if I can be involved in anything with that asshole. Things at home with Sarah aren’t great at the moment.”

  “I’m truly sorry to hear that. You and Sarah are bashert. You were meant to be with each other. I know that. I’ve always been fond of your wife.”

  “Yeah, you and your brother,” muttered Klein.

  Lou sighed. “You have no idea how sorry I am about what happened. When I found out…”

  “You did what?”

  “I told him that he had no business near your wife.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Lou shrugged.

  “Exactly,” said Klein.

  “Look, Sam, this is none of my business…”

  “So when has that stopped you?”

  Lou smiled. “Sarah’s a special woman. There’re not a lot like her.”

  “Well, she’ll never be one of those Hadassah ladies in River Heights sipping tea and raising money for Jews in Palestine, that’s for certain.”

  “That’s so. You have to forgive her and move on. Think of your three kinderlach.”

  Klein threw his hands up. “Let’s talk about the case instead.”

  “Why not?”

  “You think someone might be trying to put you out of the booze trade? That possibly Max’s killing was a message?” Klein rubbed his chin.

  “That’s occurred to me, yes.”

  “And Saul thinks so too?”

  “He says I worry too much. But I don’t think I do.”

  Klein took another gulp of his coffee and finished his cigarette.

  “I’ll triple your fee,” said Lou. “And cover all of your expenses, of course.”

  “What expenses?”

  “You or that kid you work with will have to take a train to Vera soon. Talk to some of the goyim there. Learn if anyone saw or heard anything. Aren’t you pals with that detective McCreary?”

  “We know each other, why?”

  “He’s heading the provincial police now.”

  “Yeah, I heard that. We don’t see each other much.”

  “Well, maybe you can convince him to leave this alone.”

  Klein laughed. “Lou, as far as I know, no one, let alone me, has ever convinced Bill McCreary of anything. He looks and acts as mean as a snarly dog because he is one. But I could see what he knows. What else? What about speaking with Rosen?”

  “You want to go to New York?”

  “Don’t know. A telegram or phone call might do it. If anyone knows what the hell’s going on, it’s Irv.”

  “He’s a busy man. Personally, I wouldn’t bother him.”

  “You not telling me something, Lou? Because if that’s the case…”

  “I’m telling you everything I know. I swear on my parents’ graves. Please find out what happened to Max and who’s behind it.”

  “For triple my normal fee, sure, I’ll do it, Lou. But I don’t want any questions from your brother about who I see, where I’m going, or how I conduct my investigation. That asshole so much as tries to interfere with me, I’m done. Do we have a deal?”

  “Okay, Sam. It’s a deal.” The awkward look on his face, however, told Klein that Lou wasn’t sure at all how he’d keep Saul from pestering him. That was his problem, however, not Klein’s.

  “The casket with Max is arriving later this afternoon at the CPR station with Rae and the children,” said Lou. “The funeral is early Friday afternoon at the Shaarey Zedek. If you want, I can arrange for you to speak with my sister later that day or Saturday. Because of Shabbat, we won’t be sitting shiva until Sunday, of course. It’ll be at my house on Scotia.”

  “I’ll get there, Max.” Klein stood up.

  “There’s one more thing, Sam,” said Lou, rising from his chair. “This could get ugly. So please, my friend, watch your back and be extra careful.”

  “I always am,” said Klein with a slight grin.

  “Booze and money have a way of making most men meshuggina. They’ll stop at nothing. As soon as you go poking around…”

  “Rest easy,” said Klein, lightly touching Lou’s shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

  3

  As was his custom when he embarked on a new case, Klein’s mind raced a mile a minute. He made a mental list of all of the things he had to do and the order in which he had to do them.

  Based on his discussion with Lou Sugarman, his gut feeling was that someone in the town had watched and waited for Max Roter to be paid off by this bootlegger named Taylor and then robbed and killed him. Perhaps, he reasoned, the murder was unintentional and committed in the heat of the moment. That seemed to make the most sense, though as Klein’s past experience told him, logic did not always dictate crime and murder. The first item on his list was to send his assistant, Alec Geller, to Vera and have him poke around to see what he could learn. Though he was only nineteen years old, the kid was smart—smarter than Klein was when he was that age—and resourceful. Klein knew that one day he’d make a skillful private detective if he indeed wanted to follow in Klein’s footsteps as he had said he did on several occasions.

  This wasn’t the case Klein particularly wanted. However, that was the business he was in. Besides, Lou’s offer of tripling his fee was hardly something Klein could refuse, especially in this lousy economic climate. You only had to walk downtown to come across the gaggle of unemployed men. Many of them were Great War veterans who had saved the British Empire and now could not find decent full-time jobs. Even trying to get hired for the day on a road or construction gang, backbreaking work to be sure, was difficult to secure. It wasn’t Klein’s imagination; there were definitely more beggars on the streets and men as well as women seeking temporary shelter at Immigration Hall. Many of these impoverished souls had no choice but to stand in line for relief payments at the city’s office. Yet like most Winnipeggers, Klein thought this was a grave error. Give a man a nickel and he’ll want two. It was as simple as that.

  Klein contemplated stopping at Sarah’s shop at the Boyd Building, but then changed his mind. What was the point, he thought. He was angry and hurt and nothing she said this morning, or would say if he saw her now, would fix things. Sarah wanted to shove their problems under the rug; he was not prepared to do that—at least not yet.<
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  Once Klein reached Main Street, he stepped into the telegraph office at the Canadian Northern Building. He grabbed a pencil and scribbled a message:

  To: Rosen c/o Ratner’s, 102 Norfolk Street, New York, NY. Urgent. Information needed on Vera. Please send details. Request from brothers. Klein.

  He handed the yellow paper to the operator behind the desk with instructions to put it on the Sugarman account.

  Klein was fairly certain that the quickest way to reach Irv Rosen was at the speakeasy that he and his volatile partner Nate Katz ran in the back room of Ratner’s Kosher Restaurant in the Lower East Side. The eatery, as Klein recalled, was a few steps from the daily chaos of Delancy: a constant parade of street peddlers, handcarts, and horse-drawn wagons, merchants shouting in Yiddish, hawking dresses, hats, and squawking caged chickens, kosher eateries offering pickles, borsht, knishes, and chopped liver, students and religious scholars arguing loudly about the Talmud, and young children playing hooky from school and stickball in the streets. Klein had always thought that the Selkirk Avenue bazaar of clothes and food shops was frenzied, but it was tranquil compared to what he had witnessed in the Lower East Side.

  He had been to Ratner’s only once on his visit to New York on behalf of the Sugarmans last year. The blintzes at Ratner’s alone were worth the trip. The secret bar at the back—which wasn’t so secret at all—was classy: red plush furniture, stunning, wood-panelled walls, and a magnificent and well-stocked bar. Klein was impressed.

  Rosen was not a big man. He might have even been mistaken for a typical Lower East Side or North End peddler. Yet when he spoke, always looking at you right in the eye, he did have a particular aura about him, even for someone only twenty-five years old. From the moment Klein had met him, he knew that Rosen was not a man to be taken lightly.

  As soon as Prohibition was implemented, Rosen, as head of the “Nate and Irv Mob,” had already set up an extensive operation to obtain booze from Canada and ship it as far west as Minneapolis. There were even plans to set up an export business—“Rum Row” is how Rosen referred to it—more than three miles off Long Island and beyond US jurisdiction. That way, Rosen and his men could ship booze from Canada and Europe literally anywhere they wanted.

  Though Klein got along with Rosen, he wasn’t as enamoured with his young, wise-ass partner, Nate Katz. He was a good-looking kid with sparkling blue eyes and a penchant for fancy suits, and he obediently did whatever Rosen told him to do. But Klein had heard about Katz’s nasty temper. For forty dollars, Katz would do just about anything—including murder. At least, that’s what the gangster gossip was. The two were also partners with Leo Forni, an Italian bootlegger, though Klein did not meet him on his visit. About the only problem Rosen, Katz, and their gang had was dealing with Willie “the Boss” Amari, who didn’t think too much of the two Jewish punks attempting to move into the liquor and gambling business. And Willie the Boss was not someone to be taken lightly. But Rosen had assured Klein that he had everything under control and that he was happy with his arrangement with the Sugarmans.

  As Klein proceeded to his office, it dawned on him that maybe Max’s murder was not a local matter after all, but connected to gangster trouble in New York that had reached Manitoba. Anything, he supposed, was possible.

  “Niecee, keep up. I’m going to be late,” said Sarah sternly. She was moving briskly down the south side of Portage Avenue, pushing Mel in a carriage and dodging other pedestrians as she walked.

  Aggravated by her husband’s pig-headedness, Sarah was in no mood for her daughter’s tardiness. She glanced at her new Longines wristwatch and sighed ever so slightly. The watch was another fib to Sam. She told him it had been a gift from a customer. In fact, Saul Sugarman had given it to her weeks ago, before she had told him that nothing further would happen between them. One part of her knew that she shouldn’t be wearing it. Yet, as a woman who had always appreciated fine jewellery and clothes, the slender Swiss watch was too lovely to pass up. There were likely only a handful of women in the city that had one. However, that watch was the reason for her troubles.

  She had replayed it over and over again in her head. She had not planned to tell Klein what had happened. Saul had given her the watch and then in a foolish moment of weakness, she had kissed him. She didn’t know why. It just happened. And then she had only made matters worse when, wracked by guilt, she told Klein what she had done—though leaving the part about the watch out. She told him the kiss had meant nothing and that it had merely been a momentary lapse of judgment. But, of course, he was furious and who could blame him? At the same time, she was not about to let this stupid mistake break up her marriage or family. Her children needed both her and Sam together, not living apart. She had seen with one of her friends, Anita Margolis, how upset Anita’s two children had been, when Anita’s husband Mitch had divorced her. Sarah didn’t know how to repair her relationship with Sam yet, but she was determined to do so, one way or the other.

  It was 9:30 a.m. Mrs. Kingston’s appointment at the shop was in about fifteen minutes. Sarah knew that it would be a lucrative meeting and one she could definitely not afford to miss.

  Betty Kingston, the young wife of Nicholas Kingston, president of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange and the owner of the Standard Grain Company, had taken a liking to Sarah and more importantly to the stock of New York dresses Sarah had acquired through a dealer in Montreal. No other store, not even Holt Renfrew or Hollinsworth, one of her neighbours at the Boyd Building, had such fine fashions coveted by the likes of Mrs. Kingston, a vivacious woman of impeccable taste—at least from Sarah’s perspective.

  Betty powdered her nose, wore brash but tasteful sweaters, fringed skirts, multi-coloured scarfs, blouses with Peter Pan collars, and low-heeled “finale hopper” shoes. She was what the newspapers were now calling a “flapper,” a modern woman who was not shy about smoking in public, using cosmetics, or expressing herself, and in a vernacular that was akin to a secret language. She was no “tomato,” that was certain; she was beautiful yet had brains to go with her sleek look. Best of all, from Sarah’s view, she had an indulgent and wealthy older husband.

  The society columns had been bursting with news of their nuptials. It was deliciously scandalous when forty-six-year-old Nicholas Kingston, a widower with two teenage children and the scion of an old, moneyed Winnipeg family, took as his bride twenty-three-year-old Elizabeth “Betty” Scanlon from Toronto, the daughter of a stockbroker with a less than scrupulous reputation. Betty played her part as the wife of the most important grain executive in the city—but in her own unique way.

  And now, because Sarah’s regular babysitter, Molly Jacobson, was detained because of something to do with her grandmother’s missing cat, the girl would not be able to watch Bernice and Mel until later in the afternoon, before Freda returned from school. Sarah was genuinely fond of Molly, a pretty young woman who usually looked like she had stepped out of an Eaton’s catalogue. She lived with her parents on Bannerman Avenue and Sarah had met her by chance soon after the Klein family moved into the house on Cathedral. She was pleasant enough and Freda, Bernice, and Mel instantly took a liking to her. Last year, when she decided to leave St. John’s Tech after grade ten, Sarah offered her a part-time job as a babysitter. Her one real flaw, apart from being infatuated with movie magazines, was her interest in young men. But Sarah could hardly fault her for that.

  Today, however, Sarah had no choice but to bring the two children to the shop. She had no idea how she was going to get through the day, a day that at nine thirty in the morning was already too hectic for her liking.

  “Coming, Mama,” Bernice shouted. The five-year-old was skipping along, petting every stray dog and cat she came across and picking up twigs and other junk strewn along the sidewalk. “I’m thirsty.”

  “There’s water at the shop, Niecee. Now please, hurry up. I’m going to be late. Be a good girl for Mama, please.”

 
; Bernice ran ahead and grabbed hold of the carriage. “I want to push.”

  “Not now. I’m in a rush.” Sarah’s tone was firm, though not especially angry.

  Yet it did not take much for Bernice to cry. “I want to push Mel. Me,” she said through the tears.

  Sarah calmed herself down. She knew there was no point in yelling at her further; that would only make her cry harder. She gently took her daughter’s hand and wiped away her tears. Instantly Bernice stopped crying. Sarah and the children crossed Edmonton Street. Betty Kingston was standing outside the shop waiting for her.

  “Mrs. Kingston, my sincere apologies,” said Sarah. “My sitter didn’t show up today, and as you can see, I had to bring the children to the shop…”

  Betty Kingston smiled. “First, Sarah, my dear, call me Betty. And never mind it. I was just cutting myself a piece of cake.”

  “A piece of cake?” asked Sarah, scrunching her eyebrows.

  Betty giggled. “That’s flapper talk for waiting patiently.”

  Sarah shrugged. “I see. Here let’s go in.” As soon as she unlocked the shop door, Bernice obediently held it open so her mother could wheel in the carriage.

  Sarah stooped down so she was at eye level with her daughter. “Niecee, Mama needs you to be a big girl right now. Can you do that?” Bernice nodded. “I’m going to take you and Mel to the back room. There’s something for you to drink there, and then you can watch Mel for a few minutes while I talk to this nice lady. Can you do that?”

  Bernice nodded again and a broad smile crossed her face.

  Sarah planted a kiss on her cheek. “Excuse me for one moment, Betty, while I settle them.”

  “You take however much time you need. I’ll just look around. You know your shop’s the cat’s pajamas?”

  “Okay,” said Sarah, wrinkling her eyebrows again. “Is that a good thing?”

  Betty laughed. “Yes, very good.”

  Sarah pushed the carriage to the back of the shop and parked it in a small alcove where she kept her cash books and supplies. There was also a sink with running water and a small icebox that Klein had bought for her at Oretzki’s on Selkirk. She poured Bernice a glass of slightly murky water and gave both her and Mel a handful of Arrowroot biscuits. “Now be good and let Mama work.”