Genuine Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  “You gotta answer my question first, Cantor. You gonna let Eddie get away with throwing his fists on Lilah? That’s why she came here last night, y’know. For protection.”

  “Yeah, from the guy who searched Lilah’s bungalow and the tattoo shop,” I say, “and I bet that guy was Eddie. He probably wanted to find the goods on Mickey’s scams, something to hold over you, Lilah, to pry the business from you.”

  Lilah, putting it together, lowers her head in her hands.

  “Sure,” Mona says, with flashing eyes and a nod that sends a wisp of her stringy hair across her cheek. “I wouldn’t put it past that slimy little arcade toot. Anyway, that’s why the boys were outside watchin’ my place. With Mickey gone, they were protecting her from Eddie. You just got in the way, Cantor.”

  “It seems I’ve been making a habit of that lately. Look, Mona, let me worry about Eddie. Right now, tell me what I want to know. What did you do for Mickey?”

  With a tsk and an impatient breath that Mona can’t stop from turning into a little smile of professional pride, she says, “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you. I was the shillaber for a Look See.”

  It takes me a second to clue into shillaber, a word I haven’t heard since my early days in the rackets, when I was learning a thing or two from Mom Sheinbaum, and from Sig. It’s an old-fashioned word for decoy. But Mona’s an old-fashioned girl. And the Look See racket’s been around probably since the first Dutchman hit these shores and had himself a look around an Iroquois wigwam.

  Mona says, “Mickey would arrange a setup down the way in Manhattan Beach, where all those new people with a coupla bucks since the war are building fancy houses and buying new cars in all kinds of crazy colors and with lotsa chrome all over ’em. I swear, them cars look like they’re all going to a whore’s wedding.”

  Lilah’s head comes up from her hands. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at Mona like her own mother stabbed her in the back.

  But Mona doesn’t even notice. Just goes on with her story. “Mickey also got us setups on the other side of Brooklyn, y’know, near the bridge, where people live in fancy old-timey row houses with fancy old-timey furniture.”

  “Brooklyn Heights?” I say.

  “Yeah, that’s the place. Anyway, Mickey ran a business supplying entertainment when the money crowd had parties. He’d set us up to play those places. I was all dolled up in my old gypsy fortune-teller outfit. Big earrings, scarf on my head, noisy bracelets to distract the suckers. Y’know, the whole picture. I was Madame Mona again, just like I used to be in my stall on Jones Walk.” A little nostalgia creeps into her story, slowing her down.

  “Go on,” I say, pulling her into the here and now.

  “Sure, yeah,” she says, getting back to it. “So two of Mickey’s boys would be on the bartending crew. Durin’ my show, when the lights were low except over my table, and everyone was payin’ attention to me—”

  I finish for her, speed things up. “The boys would have themselves a little look-see around the place, see what was worth heisting. But they didn’t take the stuff that night. They just reported back to Mickey, told him about the stuff they saw.”

  Mona picks it up again. “Right. You know your rackets, Cantor.”

  “Uh-huh. If you lifted stuff the same night, it would be too suspicious. The cops could tie the thefts to that fortune-teller and her bartender friends. So the boys would come back maybe a week later, maybe two, after they’d case the place and know when the family was out. Then they’d pick the locks and get in, and haul the stuff Mickey told ’em to get.”

  Mona says, “Yeah, but nothin’ too fancy. Mickey didn’t handle the high-end stuff. Didn’t have the clientele for it. He was more or less in the trinkets business, sold his stuff by the bagful to gift shops and cheap jewelry joints, places like that. From what I hear, he had knickknacks brought in from all over the place, even Europe. Seems he had connections over there from his army days durin’ the war.”

  “Yeah, so he told me,” I say, my delivery dry as dust.

  “Probably bragged about it,” Mona says, taking the wrong meaning from my annoyance.

  I let it go, don’t bother to tell her that with Sig dragging his feet on his promise to me, I’d hoped Mickey might use his overseas connections to help me get a line on the boat that stole Sophie. But I’m not about to share that bruised part of my heart with Mona. I don’t know if she’d get all sentimental and cry over it or try to tell its fortune. Either way, it would be baloney. Instead, I just stub out my smoke and say, “Here’s the second question in your quiz, Mona. Besides Eddie, you have any idea who might’ve killed Mickey?”

  She shakes her head. Her stringy black hair sways like snakes.

  “Lilah, what about you? Did you and the boys come up with any ideas about who might’ve shivved Mickey?”

  “Uh-uh. Pike even wondered if maybe Loreale had Esposito take Mickey out, but Pike would say that, the stupid fool.” She says it with more than just dislike for the guy, she says it with revulsion. Can’t blame her; Pike’s that least attractive of human combinations: brainless and vicious.

  So it keeps coming back to Eddie, but it’s not a perfect fit.

  I feel like I’m looking through a window full of cracks. Light comes through, but the view is broken into pieces, angles going every which way, making what’s out there impossible to put together. It’s a mixed-up view of Coney Island, its past in the sharp, jagged cracks, its present spread across the angles. I catch glimpses of all the players in the crazy sideshow of Mickey’s murder, everyone trying to crawl from one angle to another, trying not to cut themselves on the sharp edges of the past, where everything in this Coney Island spook ride of murder was set in motion. I see Solly Schwartz, his wife and kids strolling on the boardwalk. I see those kids, Mickey and Lilah, all grown up and bitter at their fate, taking up with the likes of Pointy Chin Al Berg and Pulpy Nose Frank O’Byrne. I see Sig Loreale, and Eddie Janko, and me. But I can’t smooth out the picture, can’t figure the angles, or where any of us belongs on them.

  And then one of those angles suddenly sticks out, nearly pokes me in the eye. “Lilah, you came here last night to feel safe, right?”

  “Yes, I told you.”

  “And the boys were outside to protect you.”

  “Yes, Cantor. You already know that.”

  “Al Berg was out there.”

  “Yes,” she says, antsy at being questioned without a letup. “What’s this about? What are you getting at?”

  “What I asked you earlier: Why didn’t you just go to Berg’s in the first place? You probably would’ve been safer there than here. But you came here. Why?”

  The two women sit stone still on the couch: Mona, like an aqua-wrapped gnome; Lilah, in my black coat, like an angel of death frozen in time.

  Getting the truth from these two has been like trying to pull screws from a wall. My patience, stretched as far as it will go, finally snaps. I pull my .38, get up and walk around the coffee table, point it at the women staring up at me from the couch. “I don’t give a damn about whatever it is you’ve got cooked up between you. Make your money any way you want. But I’m going to get to the bottom of Mickey’s murder, or die trying. Sig will see to that. So unless you want me to use this, someone better start talking.”

  Lilah, skittish as a nerve end, says, “You wouldn’t shoot us, Cantor.”

  “Well, I won’t kill you. But I can make you bleed unless you tell me what’s going on.” I make my point by cocking the gun’s hammer.

  I can’t tell if Lilah’s really found some courage or just figures she has nothing to lose, but she drops the skittish bit, stands up from the couch, and moves close to me. She lets the front of my coat drop open, lets the barrel of my gun come up against her body. With a hand on her hip and a smoldering look that could set the winter ocean to a boil, she slides her other hand up my gun arm, along my shoulder, and to my neck. Her fingertips know what they’re doing. “No, Cantor,” she says, “I don’t bel
ieve you. You won’t harm me. You can’t.”

  But I’m not playing. Not this time. I say, “Don’t bet on it.” Sticking with my boast not to kill her but not shying away from letting the gun do its work, I slide the gun’s nose to her shoulder.

  The look in her eyes cools a little but doesn’t go away as she sits back down on the couch. She’s back to being the sultry little vixen that she was in that crummy bedroom in Berg’s bungalow, the pro who knows how to rouse heat in my loins. I guess it’s the strongest card in her deck, the one she always relies on. Another night, another place, I might even let her play it. But not tonight, not while the Dead Man’s Hand is still in the deck.

  I say, “Why did you come here, Lilah, instead of going to Berg’s?”

  It’s Mona who answers, suddenly sitting up straight, her jaw out, her mouth tight, her tough attitude finally fracturing. “I told her to come here. I told her. I said to come because she owed me money.”

  One of those angles in the cracked window smooths out a bit, clarifying a tiny corner of the view. Art lover that I am, I like it when things come into focus, when the picture—even the most abstract—clears up. I smile at such moments. I smile now.

  “Come on, Lilah,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  “I’ll let you know when we get there.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I drive around, past the shuttered mom-and-pop grocery stores, shoe stores, butcher shops, and delicatessens on Neptune Avenue, past the car repair places, clam and pasta joints, and the train station on Stillwell, past the bumper-car rides, arcades, shooting galleries, and the carousel on Surf Avenue, all boarded up until the sun and the heat and the hordes arrive for the summer. I drive under Coney’s streetlights and neon signs that brush Lilah’s blond hair and pale skin with the glow of night. The drive lets me think, lets my mind work through a knot that’s starting to untie.

  Lilah’s smart enough to catch on that I’m not taking her anywhere in particular, that this ride isn’t a pleasure cruise or a quick trip out of town. It’s a ride through the streets, a ride through my mind. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t question me, doesn’t pump me to start chatter. She’s retreated into that easy breathing silence that comes when you know there’s nothing you can do about anything for the moment, so you might as well just roll along.

  When things are a little clearer inside my head, it’s me who finally talks. “How much did Mickey owe Mona? That’s why you went over there last night, right? She called you to pay off her cut of her last job for Mickey?”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s it. And it was two hundred bucks, if you must know. So what?”

  “Two hundred? That’s it?”

  “Well, excuse me, Big Shot Cantor Gold, but that’s a lot of cash around here.”

  Either Mickey was stingy as Scrooge, or his operation was even less than small potatoes. “Mona seemed pretty sure you had the money to give.”

  “Listen, I’ll say it again: So what?”

  “Well, it could mean one of two things,” I say. “Maybe you had the dough socked away from your little side business, or maybe you figured why bother spending your own when you suddenly had access to Mickey’s money. I’m guessing the latter.”

  Her breathing is a little less easy. There’s an edge to it now, a quickness. “Well, why not? He was family, after all. His money would come to me.”

  “Suddenly you’re an heiress? Try again.”

  “Cantor, honestly,” she says with enough sugar behind it to supply the cotton-candy spinners for a lifetime, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t act coy,” I say, tired of her giving me the runaround. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Mickey didn’t have a fortune for you to inherit. He had a business. A two-bit operation of knickknacks and selling your flesh.” I hurt her. I catch her wince out of the corner of my eye, but getting to the truth can be like surgery without the gas, knife sharp and plenty painful. “But a cash business is a cash business. You know that as well as anybody, Lilah. You fine-tuned your own cash operation right under Mickey’s nose. And when you found him dead, you made your move to take over his rackets and get your hands on his cash, such as it was. But it was enough to pay off Mona. Maybe you called the boys from the tattoo shop, told them what’s what and won their loyalty, yeah, before you screamed.” I don’t ease up on her, but I save a smile for this last bit. “After all, you’re still Solly Schwartz’s kid, and their fathers were loyal to Solly. Or maybe you called from Mona’s after I brought you there last night. Either way, you didn’t waste any time.”

  “Look, I don’t know what you think I am—”

  “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know if you really are Coney’s newest rackets boss, or a scared rabbit in over her head. But as soon as Mona blabbed that you owed her money, it’s like the lights came on. I saw the game you tried so hard to play, may still be playing.”

  “There’s no game, Cantor. I promise, there’s no game.”

  “Sure there is, so stop trying to throw me curves. Mona Carlotti’s no fool, Lilah. She’s been around since your father’s day, seen Solly’s gangland reign end and Loreale’s reign of terror begin, and she’s survived it all. She knows who’s who and what’s what in Coney the minute she sees or hears it, and she realized you’re the new who’s who. Mona called you for her dough because she figured she was dealing with the new boss. And she was right.”

  “Until tonight,” she says at the end of a sigh. “Look, like I told you, after tonight, after skipping out with you from Al Berg’s place, I doubt the boys will be taking any more orders from me. I made a lousy rackets boss, all one day of it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You’re doing all right.”

  It’s as if the air around her freezes.

  I hack my way through the ice. “What did you tell the boys, Lilah, when everyone realized Esposito and I were at Berg’s door? Did you tell them that no matter what happens, just stay put? Isn’t that why they didn’t show up at Mona’s just now? We were yakking in there for a good half hour, plenty of time to get there from Berg’s bungalow. Mona’s would have been first on their list of places to look for us. If they’d been looking.”

  She doesn’t answer me, just stays still inside her chamber of ice.

  I keep chopping away at it. “Listen, I don’t know what your endgame is, but I can pretty much figure your current play. You want to keep an eye on me, see what I’ve got, and what I’ll do with it. But there’s a part that you didn’t figure. You didn’t figure on Pike torturing Esposito.”

  The frozen air around her finally cracks open. “Pike’s a monster. I—I can’t control him. I thought I could, but I can’t.”

  “Guys like him are beyond control.”

  “Yeah, but I can usually—” She buries the rest.

  “You can usually what? Control men? Yeah, I bet you can.”

  “If they’re sweet on me, sure. And that lug Pike is as sweet on me as a guy can get. Wants to marry me.”

  It’s funny to imagine Lilah in the kitchen, puttering around like a suburban housewife, dolled up in high heels and an apron over a shirtwaist dress like the fantasy wives in those new television commercials, whipping up steak and potatoes for her big bear Pike to come home to. “Frankly, I don’t see you as the kitchen apron type,” I say. The idea would make me laugh, except Pike’s probably the kind of guy who’d bring his fists to the marriage if he didn’t like the way Lilah cooked the steak.

  I’ve turned onto the Bowery, a short stretch of rides and fun houses a block from the boardwalk and beach. They’re all dark now, boarded up and empty for the off-season. Only their signs, their colors sliding through my car’s headlights, hint at the fantasies inside: the Tunnel of Laffs, Fun in the Dark, The World in Wax. We’re passing Pleasureland Arcade when Lilah says, “What type do you see me as, Cantor?” There’s that sugar again, only now, with her hand on my leg, it’s the heated variety, melting all
over me like syrup in the sun.

  Lilah’s temptations are the type I like giving in to, the type which blinds me to everything except my rutting urges. But blindness isn’t a good idea when Sig Loreale is watching my every move, and I’ve got to watch my step, and my driving.

  Keeping my hands on the steering wheel, I nod down to Lilah’s hand on my leg, say, “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Then maybe here’s a better one.” I nearly crash into a game stall when Lilah leans over, takes my face in her hands, and kisses me. With my hands still on the wheel, I can’t get out from her, so I stop the car.

  But I don’t stop the kiss.

  I don’t stop it because it’s everything I need in a woman’s kiss. It’s soft, and warm. It’s hungry for me while feeding me, too. It’s the taste of life through flesh. Lilah Schwartz Day, whose eyes promise danger, whose short blond hair gives her the look of a Valkyrie riding the wind, is the woman I always take to my bed, but not to my heart, not as long as there’s hope that Sophie is alive.

  The thought of Sophie breaks the spell Lilah’s cast with her kiss. I pull away, but gently.

  I’m about to tell her that I can’t do what she wants me to do, but she gets in ahead of me, whispers, “I’ve really loused everything up, Cantor. I need you. I need you to find Mickey’s killer.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

  “I know, but I need you to find the killer before the boys do.”

  “Sure, I would, too, but why would it matter?”

  “So they don’t kill you, too. And they will, unless you find Mickey’s killer, and hand him—”

  “Or her.”

  “Her? Who—?” But she doesn’t finish. Maybe she’s afraid of barking up the wrong tree. Maybe she’s afraid I still think she is the tree.

  I start the car.

  “Where are we going?” she says. “Not just driving around again. Please, no more of that.”

  “No, no more of that,” I say, and drive off the Bowery and back toward the root of all the evil that’s called me home and ambushed me in Coney Island.