The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats

by Hesh Kestin

  “Absolutely. What do you want to know—where Shushan Cats is buried? I don’t know. I don’t know if he is buried, if he is dead, or if he just skipped out. It’s a week before his trial.”

  “We’re aware of that, Russell.”

  “Good. Then be aware as well that I’m an innocent bystander here. I’ve done nothing and know nothing.”

  “Is this what you’d call an innocent bystander?” She handed me a stack of eight-by-ten black-and-white glossies. In each of the photos there I was, big as life. Under other circumstances I would have thought, Hey, Russ, you take a good picture. But these were not other circumstances. A half dozen photos were from the funeral: me and Shushan so tight we could have been lovers, me and Ira-Myra’s, me and the Italians shaking hands, me and the Chinese shaking hands, me and Royce and the brothers shaking hands. The next batch took me by surprise: Me and Terri Cats face to face on Lexington Avenue in front of a florist and a jewelry store; further on down the street, with Terri kissing my cheek; me entering the Westbury; me, Shushan, Ira-Myra’s and Justo in front of the restaurant in Chinatown. God, it looked awful. “This means something?” I tried. “I already told you. I helped with the shiva.”

  For answer Grady pulled a sheaf of stapled-together sheets from her folder. If the folder didn’t have my name on it, I’d be surprised. “I have here sworn testimony from one Father William Callinan that you, Mr. Shushan Cats and Mr. Ira Kaminsky did threaten him with bodily harm in his church in East Harlem.”

  “I never threatened anybody.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Yes, I was there.”

  “And did you in any way protest when you witnessed Mr. Cats and his criminal associate, Mr. Kaminsky, threaten and intimidate a priest in his own church?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Father Callinan makes no mention of it.”

  “Father Callinan and his two brothers beat the shit out of me the week before.”

  Grady’s eyebrows lifted. “According to sworn testimony by Father Callinan, given today, by Mr. Monroe Callinan, a New York City fireman, and by Mr. Patrick Callinan, an officer of the NYPD, it was you who assaulted them and caused them bodily harm.”

  “What is this, Russia? Yeah, I invited them to my apartment so I could wreck the place while beating the shit out of them with my face, and afterward for good measure I begged them to destroy my car. Are you for real, Dolores? Because if you are, this interview is over.” I rose.

  The two detectives came alive. Each took a tentative step into the room.

  “Sit down, Russell,” Grady said. “This interview is over when I say it is.”

  I sat.

  “Think about this, Russell. Does it or does it not look to you like your actions, to say nothing of your background, indicate a pattern of behavior that any jury of your peers would conclude is criminal? You have an altercation with Messrs. Callinan, and the first thing Mr. Shushan Cats does when he arises from the shiva period is threaten vengeance on the same Messrs. Callinan?”

  “Dolores, I’m a college student.”

  “According to Brooklyn College, you’re rarely there.”

  “For crying out loud, I’m excused from classes because I’m in the honors program. I’m not supposed to go to classes. I’ve read all the books.” I paused, getting it. “You’re not believing any of what you’re saying, are you? This is just to make me... uncomfortable.”

  “Are you?”

  “Uncomfortable? Yeah, very. You might even say scared. But I still don’t know where Shushan Cats is.”

  She smiled, showing small, somewhat irregular teeth, also gray. In 1963 cosmetic dentistry was in its infancy. Fluoride had only recently been introduced into New York’s drinking water. Half the population had bad teeth. “I know that,” she said. “And probably the people who do know where Mr. Cats is are never going to say. I’m afraid Mr. Cats is no longer with us.”

  For some reason the weight of this struck me for the first time. “How do you know?”

  She shrugged. “After he and Mr. Kaminsky delivered you to your apartment house on Eastern Parkway, Mr. Kaminsky dropped Mr. Cats at an Italian restaurant in East Flatbush frequented by persons associated with organized crime. The San Marco. Are you familiar with this restaurant?”

  “No,” I said. “Yeah, so?”

  “Within minutes Mr. Cats was seen entering an automobile with four such persons.”

  “How does that—”

  “The automobile was found the next morning parked with its lights flashing and its radio going on a heavily trafficked approach road to Newark Airport. Its location and the fact lights and radio were on are indications it was meant to be found. The car was of course stolen.”

  “Of course.”

  “Fresh bloodstains were found on the front passenger seat, along with two bullet holes in the seat itself. The bullets entered from the rear.”

  I tried to imagine Shushan dead. I could barely imagine him alive. “And you’re saying it was Shushan’s—Mr. Cats’—blood?”

  “We don’t know that, at least not yet,” Grady said. “For one-hundred-percent certainty we’d need an actual sample of Mr. Cats’ blood. Given his disappearance, that may be difficult. However we do know two things. One, the blood on the seat is type AB. We know from Mr. Cats’ military records that this matches your friend’s blood type. Number two, when Mr. Cats got into the car outside the restaurant in East Flatbush he was seated in the front passenger seat.”

  As if to give me time to consider this fully, the phone rang on Grady’s desk. “Excuse me,” she said flatly, quite as though my not excusing her would make a difference. She nodded into the phone. “Send him up.”

  I saw the cops look at each other. Why was it everyone knew more than I did?

  “You know who that is?” she asked, back in her armchair with her yellow pad on her knee. “Downstairs?”

  “Shushan Cats?”

  “Russell,” Grady said. “Shushan Cats is, as they say in the movies, sleeping with the fishes.” She looked at me with a form of drab pity, probably the best she could do. “Or in some shallow hole in the Pine Barrens. Russell, you can forget about Shushan Cats.”

  “I’d like to, Dolores, but you’re not letting me, are you?”

  She smiled again, but it was not pity. This smile said, I am a fucking Assistant District Attorney, and if I wish I can crush you like a bug. “Mr. Newhouse—”

  “I thought we were Russell and Dolores.”

  “Mr. Newhouse, don’t be insulted, but it appears you are either one of the stupidest persons on this planet or one of the cleverest. Because you are an honor student—one of your professors, a Eugene del Vecchio, went so far as to call you ‘a kind of genius’—and because Mr. Cats, despite your denials, did indeed choose you as his successor, I am compelled to believe you are not stupid.”

  “You couldn’t be more mistaken,” I said.

  A knock at the door interrupted what I had hoped might be a credible claim on stupidity so profound it bordered on diagnosable mental retardation. Kennedy opened it slowly, as though unsure of what might issue forth and then, satisfied, kept opening it. Cohen stepped back. Immediately I could see why.

  Our visitor filled the doorway—and more, way more. Whoever it was, he was as bizarre a creature as I had ever seen, but somehow familiar, from the long, slicked-back pale hair that ended in what appeared to be a short pony tail down to his yellow crocodile shoes. In between was a mauve three-piece suit that I understood had to be hand-made, because something that size and color did not appear on the racks at Gimbels, so beautifully cut it almost did not appear some three hundred pounds of human was tucked into it. I had read the term “Savile Row,” and from books was familiar with the word “bespoke,” but I had never seen such tailoring in and on the flesh. The closest I had come was the televised wardrobe of John F. Kennedy, who was regularly criticized for having his suits made abroad.

  “Good evening, detecti
ves,” the visitor said in a hoarse but plummy voice that obviously had been tuned in England but originated elsewhere. A certain Germanic glottal persevered—evenink—in a kind of oral palimpsest, the one accent tinting the preceding. “I see they have you working late”—it came out laid—“and I trust you will be compensated accordingly. Otherwise come to me and we shall sue for redress, no?”

  With that he marched into the room, took Grady’s gray talon in a paw the size of a catcher’s mitt, and planted upon it a wet kiss. Grady did not look pleased. I must have looked merely puzzled. The visitor turned to me. “So this is the famous Mr. Russell Newhouse,” he said, and sat down next to me on the black Naugahyde so heavily that my sofa cushion rose up like a see-saw, levitating me with it. “Fritz von Zeppelin,” he said, taking my hand. “You didn’t know? I have the honor to represent you.” He examined me carefully for signs of rudimentary intelligence. “Mr. Newhouse, I am your attorney.”

  16.

  Of course I knew him then. It was just that in the papers his picture was black-and-white. In the flesh his face was so florid it could have been a de Kooning canvas in dozens of shades of pink, fuchsia and red—Willem de Kooning was big then—and his eyes were a startling blue. Added to these colors his white hair gave the man an oddly patriotic look, as though made up for some pageant on the Fourth of July. Of course I knew him, but I’d hardly expected Fritz von Zeppelin to walk in the door. This was New York’s premier criminal attorney—the mob’s mouthpiece, as the tabloids had it. He must have seen me about to say something, because he put his spatulate fingers to his curiously thin lips—his mouth appeared in his face with no introduction, just a slit in the flesh with no transitional pink membrane—and said, “Not a word, Mr. Newhouse.” Then he turned to Grady. “Dolores, darling, why do you have my client in your lovely clutches? Are you planning perhaps to charge him with a crime?” He smiled: the slit became vee-shaped. “Jay-walking, perhaps?” He said it jay-vawking, just as Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state, might a decade later. They had the same background, except that Fritz von Zeppelin, descended from a long line of Prussian aristocrats, had left Germany of his own volition—Kissinger, descended from a long line of yids, had been forced to flee. How the disenfranchised Jew had become a Harvard professor and then secretary of state and the blueblood a mob lawyer was a mystery. Any novelist worth his salt would have had it the other way. But this was no novel. This was my life. “Hmmm...?”

  I had never before known this sound to be composed of syllables. “Mr. von Zeppelin,” I said. “I don’t need a lawyer.”

  He looked at me with bemused exasperation. “Young man, do you know what they say about someone who is his own lawyer? That his client will get twelve to twenty.” He winked so hard I could feel the couch shift. “Quietly now. And patiently, no?” He turned back to Grady. “Unless it is the will of this distinguished office to charge Mr. Newhouse, I am afraid he is late for dinner.” He turned back to me. “Let me guess. These fine detectives last fed you—pizza, no doubt—some hours ago. No wonder you are feeling peckish.” He turned back to Grady. “So, Dolores? Charge or no charge? I can hear the poor boy’s stomach rumbling.” His lips became vee-shaped again. “Or maybe that is my own. Good gracious, I have not eaten since dinner.”

  Grady did not seem to be surprised by this display. Apparently they were old adversaries. She appeared to consider, taking off her glasses and chewing on an earpiece as though weighing the issue. “We’ll let him go, Fritz, on condition we have his word, and your word, that he stays in the five boroughs.”

  The vee deepened. Von Zeppelin’s tongue—it was so dark it could have been chocolate—peeped out to say hello, as though tasting the air, as though absent dinner he might suck up all the oxygen in the room and leave us all gasping. “Do you mean, Dolores, forever?”

  “For the next ten days.”

  “The next ten days,” Von Zeppelin said. “Ach, but the dear boy has plans—do you not have plans, Mr. Newhouse? Do not answer—to be out of town in that period of time. Mr. Newhouse, not a word, please. So, Dolores, if that is your wish I am afraid you will have to charge Mr. Newhouse with a crime. Because he does not stipulate to this condition.” He turned to me. “Or to any other.” Back to Grady. “Dolores, how do you remain so fresh after such a long day? I must say you are ever more beautiful.”

  “Fritz,” she said. “You know I can charge him.”

  “Can you? What did you have in mind?”

  “Intimidation, reckless endangerment, interfering with a criminal investigation.” She paused. “How about murder?”

  “Murder?!” I must have leaped into the air, because I felt von Zeppelin pulling me down. “What the fuck are you talking about, lady?”

  She shrugged. “Complicity in murder then. How do we know Mr. Newhouse here is not somehow involved in the death of Shushan Cats?” She seemed satisfied.

  “How do we know, darling Dolores, that Mr. Shushan Cats is dead?” von Zeppelin said calmly.

  “I need a commitment your client won’t travel.”

  “I need a commitment there is an Easter Bunny,” von Zeppelin said. “But no one in his right mind will give me one.” The lips went to their vee again. “So we are both moderately disappointed, no?” With that he tugged at my elbow and stood, pulling me up with him while at the same time, because he had risen off the couch, my body was going in the other direction. For a fat man he was strong. Or maybe merely convincing. “Okay, now, Dolores—please ask your question.”

  “How did you know?” she said, curiously unperturbed. For both this was a game of chess. It was clearly not personal.

  “Please, Dolores. You insult my intelligence.”

  She turned to me. “Russell...”

  “Russell?” von Zeppelin said. “Such intimacy.”

  “Mr. Newhouse,” Grady said, grimacing and returning her glasses to her nose—chess might be impersonal, but it could also be unpleasant. “Do you know who killed Shushan Cats?”

  “I—”

  “Be quiet, Mr. Newhouse,” the lawyer said. “Dolores, speaking for my client, I wholeheartedly assure you, in confidence and in no uncertain terms, that when Mr. Newhouse wishes to communicate further on this subject you will be amongst the first persons with whom he will do so.”

  17.

  Though I had seen many limousines, and once had an interesting conversation with a limo driver—a Jamaican; I spotted him reading William Carlos Williams leaning against a long gray Cadillac; turns out he had been a teacher in Kingston—I had never before been inside one. It was easy to understand why Fritz von Zeppelin—“You must call me Fritzi”—required this kind of ride. Aside from the pleasure of having transportation waiting at all times, his posterior amplitude required most of the back seat. New York taxis simply could not accommodate this whale. Directly in front of where he sat was a miniature Louis-the-something desk, and on the walls to either side deep gray suede pockets for files. I sat facing him precisely like a worried client in a law office, except this one was traveling uptown.

  “I need to get home,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” Fritzi said. “Marveloso. Russ—may I call you Russ?”

  “After getting me out of the lair of the evil witch Dolores, you can call me anything. Though you might remember I didn’t call you. Who did?”

  “Mr. Ocero, Mr. Cats’ factotum, informed me of your predicament. As you know, I am Mr. Cats’ attorney. Or was.”

  “It’s sure then?”

  “Forty to one against, dear boy. If Dolores Grady uses terms like sleeping with the fishes, this is a longshot against which I would not wager. Typically denizens of the office of the district attorney know more than they let on. I wouldn’t doubt there exists a complete photographic record of Mr. Cats entering the unfortunate vehicle.”

  “But none of him exiting.”

  “That would be... difficult,” Fritz said. “I think though we can proceed on the assumption that two things are about to occur. The firs
t is that you will have to come to terms with your organization—”

  “My what?”

  Fritz peered at me over his half-glasses. “Come, come,” he said, as though I had declined to row for Cambridge. “I am after all your legal counsel. You needn’t be coy with me, lad. Aside from having a long history with Mr. Cats, an individual whose charm was exceeded only by his integrity, there is also the matter of attorney-client privilege. You may be candid.”

  “Come, come yourself. I don’t have any legal counsel, nor do I need one. I appreciate Justo’s helping me by bringing you in. I don’t know what you cost—I probably can’t even guess—but I’ll figure out how to pay you. Over time. Otherwise, aside from services rendered, let’s stop the clock right here.”

  “Your clock, so-called, is stopped, if that is what you wish,” Fritz said with some amusement. “Regarding services rendered, as you put it, that is taken care of.”

  I didn’t exactly get it, but—given that we were traveling in the wrong direction, however luxuriously—preferred just to get out. “There’s a subway on the corner. I have a train to catch.”

  Fritz pulled a small phone off the wall and whispered into it. The limo pulled hard to the right and stopped. But when I moved to open the door it was locked.

  “Patience, young man,” Fritzi said. “Patience.”

  I settled back in my seat, more soft gray suede. So long as we weren’t moving further uptown and away from Brooklyn I could be patient, though not forever: I was getting hungry. “I’m about to receive a lecture, is that it?”

  “Heavens no,” Fritz said. “It’s just that it appears we may be working to cross-purposes here. Let me summarize and then I should like you to pick those elements of what I have had to say that seem to you mistaken.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Mr. Cats is probably no longer with us. That is to say, the likelihood that he is amongst the living is not great. On that assumption we can say of the late Mr. Cats that he was a prominent businessman in the City of New York whose ventures, which we need not enumerate, are at the moment leaderless. Wait, please, until I conclude. Being leaderless, these business ventures are likely to become the target of what may best be termed a hostile takeover by competing interests of a Neapolitan temperament.”