by Ann Aptaker
It’s a dream I can’t share, even if I wanted to, because as I drive toward the towers of Manhattan looming ahead in the morning sun, the wild neon razzmatazz, the sleight-of-hand, the thrills and chills of Coney Island aren’t entirely behind me. They are all inside me, whether I want them there or not. I always figured I wanted to be rid of them, now I’m not so sure. I brought them with me a long time ago. They’ll always be with me.
I turn on the radio, and have to laugh: Patti Page, a pretty blonde whose short-haired look is a little like Lilah’s, is singing, “Back in Your Own Backyard.”
Chapter Twenty-one
When I wake up, it’s almost ten in the morning. But it’s another morning. I’ve slept nearly twenty-four hours.
I had all the best intentions when I got back to my apartment from Coney: call Judson at the office, catch up on what’s going on with any clients; call Rosie, make things right with her. Things have to be right with Rosie.
But my good intentions, like my exhausted mind and body, collapsed with me into my bed. I was asleep in seconds, a sleep so deep and thick it had no room for dreams.
And now it’s the next day. I put up a pot of coffee, let it perc while I take a long, hot shower, as hot as I can stand it, let the needles of water soak through remnants of Coney Island still taking up space in my mind: Mona Carlotti’s duplicity, Eddie Janko’s cruelty, Lilah’s sadness. That last bit lingers. Lilah wanted me to take her sadness away. I couldn’t. I didn’t even try.
I can live with that.
The coffee, and spiffing up in fresh duds—dove-gray suit, a crisp white shirt, blue and buttery yellow striped tie, yellow pocket square—help bring me back into the here and now, back to the life I made and risk everything to keep.
Even a glance out the window fortifies me. From my roost on the tenth floor, I can see people walking along the street in quick New York rhythm, bundled up in overcoats, men holding on to their hats in a wind. The roofs of cabs, some bright red, some green, some yellow, and the silver painted roofs of buses, all catch sunlight, sending up a colorful gleam. All together, the cabs, the buses, the people are like some great abstract painting, but better, because its parts keep moving and the picture never stays the same.
Through the windows of the apartment house across the street, I watch folks having their coffee, or doing some dusting, vacuuming the carpet, reading the paper, or catching the trials and tribulations of the poor souls in all those new soap operas on television. New York is living its life, enjoying all its new money since the end of the war, all the new gadgets that come with it, all its new hopes and dreams. The smart guys say that New York’s—and America’s—best days are just ahead, that this second half of the twentieth century will see wonders the likes of which the world has never seen before. Could be, I guess, but so far, all they’ve given us are televisions and washing machines, soap operas and the soap to wash our troubles away, the American Dream powered by the gadgetry of schlock.
I’m about to grab a coat from the closet, looking forward to a second cup of coffee, a bagel and lox breakfast, and homey conversation with Doris down at Pete’s luncheonette, when the buzzer sounds at my apartment door.
There’s that pounding of my heart again, the way it always does when there’s a buzz at my door. It pounds with the hope and prayer that when I open the door, I’ll see Sophie, Sophie finding her way home.
It’s Mom Sheinbaum.
My heart slows down, slinks back into my chest, my bones again my heart’s protective cage until the next knock at my door.
Mom’s dressed like she’s going to the opera, her short, hefty body wrapped in a mink coat even though it’s only a little past ten thirty in the morning.
“What’s the matter,” she says, “you don’t answer your phone? All day long I called you yesterday. Okay, so maybe you’re not around during the daytime, but what about night? You don’t come home to sleep? Wait, maybe this I don’t want to know.” This speech accompanies her through the door, and she’s now in my living room, unwrapping from the mink. She’s no longer dressed for the opera, but in a blue cotton dress and sensible shoes. The dress fits her like a belted tent; the shoes barely contain her pudgy feet. But the dress and the shoes don’t matter. Only the mink matters. Mom uses it to announce herself on the street, an I’m as good as any of you attitude that she wields against a world which might have preferred her tribe stayed in the shtetl.
I guess it wasn’t only dreams which found no room in my sleep. Evidently no sound got through to me either, not even the phone.
“Here,” Mom says, handing me the mink, “hang this up. And be careful. Those are good pelts. Delicate.”
“And good morning to you, too.” I hang up the precious coat, then say, “What’s going on? You rarely venture away from the Lower East Side. The only time I remember you and me together above Fourteenth Street was when I was a little kid and you ferried me to the Metropolitan Museum. But that was a lifetime ago, so what’s so important that you traipse all the way to Midtown to see me?”
“And it wasn’t easy, I tell you. You try getting a cab in my neighborhood this time of day.”
“You could take the subway.”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot from Stupidville as she sits down in one of my living room chairs, her handbag in her lap, the chair’s red upholstery surrounding her like a cape that’s too small. “You think I schlepped across an ocean with nothing but the rags on my back, worked hard all my life, built a good business in America, in this golden land of opportunity, just so I could take a dirty subway?”
“You’ve robbed this golden land blind,” I say with a low laugh. “I don’t think it owes you a steady stream of taxicabs.”
“Huh. A lot you know.”
“I know where the subways go,” I say, and sit down in an opposite chair. “Look, what do you want? You didn’t drop in for a social call.”
Her smile, imperious, sly, speaks of her place in the hierarchy of New York’s underworld: the Empress of Crime, with the goods on everyone from the gutter all the way up to the crooks in the penthouses. She may not have the power of a Sig Loreale, but even he won’t cross her. He could get away with it, but he’d lose the respect of everyone on our dark side of the Law. Even the light side. “You keep any money here?” she says.
The safe in my bedroom holds extra supplies of the requirements of my life: spare guns, ammunition, a knife or two, extra lock picks, and plenty of cash. But all I say to Mom is, “Some. Why?”
“Whatever you got, you’ll need it.” There’s a gleam in her little button eyes.
“I always need it. Want some coffee?” I say.
“No thanks. Let’s get down to business. I am not happy with you, Cantor.”
“That’s nothing new. You haven’t been happy with me in years.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’ve wounded her, judging by the puzzled look on her face. But I do know better. Mom made her feelings for me very clear the night her daughter died; she didn’t want her precious girl anywhere near that deviant outlaw in a suit, me.
I say, “So why aren’t you happy with me this time?”
She folds her arms across her ample chest, changes her mind, uncrosses them, and leans forward in her chair, gripping the armrests with her chubby, ringed fingers. “You cheated me out of my ten thousand dollars, Cantor.”
“Is that so? And just how do you figure that?”
“A man came to see me yesterday,” she says, leaning back again, owning her place in the chair with the confidence of someone who assumes they may even have helped pay for it. “A man in a uniform, a chauffeur’s uniform. This man, a servant no less, a pisher, a nobody, says to me that my services are no longer needed, but his employer thanks me for my time. And then this—this pisher hands me a check for a measly thousand dollars. And you know who signed that check, Cantor? Your society missy, Miranda van Zell.”
“Easiest grand you ever made, Mom.”
“You think s
o? You think I’d take nishtik money like that? And a check yet? A piece of paper? And all the time, I was tapping my sources all over the place for information about that pixie—”
“Pyxis.” I’m actually enjoying this. It’s a rare moment to see Mom Sheinbaum sidelined by the very people she’s been catering to for decades. She’s bought their diamonds, sold their diamonds, even stolen their diamonds then sold them back to their pretty necks. She had the goods on them, their secrets, their scandals, and I guess she figured they’d dance to her tune. What she didn’t understand, despite the mink whose pelts could compete with anything on Fifth and Park Avenues, is that the rich and powerful have their own instruments and their own tunes. Hell, they own the orchestra. They do business with Mom Sheinbaum, but they’ll never hear the music she makes. They don’t hear my song, either, but I never figured they did. I just take their dough, and go dance to the tunes at the Green Door Club.
Mom says, “Pyxis, shmixis,” waving the pesky word away. “Or whatever you call it. And then I see in last night’s paper that this Mrs. van Zell is having a wing named after her at the museum, and there was a picture of her with that pixie.”
“Pyxis.”
“So I figure you must’ve found the damn thing without me. Where was it?”
“In a bathhouse in Coney Island.”
I haven’t seen Mom laugh, really and heartily laugh, in a long time. Our warped friendship, if you can call it that, made me forget how much she enjoys laughing, and she’s enjoying the hell out of it now. Every wrinkle in her face wriggles, every pound of her fleshy body shakes, the blue dress rippling like a stormy sea. “That must’ve been something for you, Cantor, schlepping back to Coney Island!”
“Yeah, lucky me.”
Her laughter winds down, she wipes her face with her hand. “Well, your luck cost me ten thousand dollars.”
“Come on, Mom,” I say, with an easygoing shrug, “you know as well as I do, you win some, you lose some.”
“Sure, but it depends who you win or lose with.” The humor’s gone. The tough Empress of the Underworld is back in business. “I know you since you still had baby fat, and this is how you treat me? After everything I taught you? Listen, mommaleh, it wasn’t nice, going behind my back like that. What? You couldn’t pick up a phone and tell me you found your—your whatchamacallit? I was scratching a lot of backs to get information for you, but who knew I was wasting my time?”
I hate to admit it, but she has a point. I probably should’ve told her I’d found my Dancing Goddesses. But there are a lot of things in life I should have done. And I bet there’s a lot Mom should have done, too, like not make me believe, when I was a kid, that she gave a damn about me.
But spilled milk is spilled milk, and the best I can do is mop up this latest spill from under our feet. “All right,” I say, “it was crummy. My apologies. When another deal comes my way, I’ll make it up to you.”
The little gleam is back in her tiny dark eyes. A smile spreads from one flabby cheek to the other. There’s a lot of pleasure in that smile. There’s plenty of greed in it, sure, but something else, too, some secret Mom’s enjoying.
“You know,” she says, “someone’s been stringing you along.”
“Yeah? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. Who’s the latest guilty party?”
“Sig.”
His name drops like a sandbag thudding to the floor. There’s only one issue between me and Sig that could qualify as stringing me along.
A million questions rise inside me, get bottlenecked in my throat. I can’t even speak, can barely breathe.
Mom, sensing my ordeal, says, “Don’t you know him by now, Cantor? Whatever he does, he always has his reasons. Maybe he just wants to keep you in line. Maybe he thinks you’ll get too independent if you get what you want. Who knows how that murderous momzer thinks.”
I finally manage, “How do you know he’s been holding out?” more a desperate grunt than a question.
Mom says, “Of course I know,” as if I’ve committed the sin of doubt. “So all right, maybe I didn’t really know, but I suspected plenty. Sig is always so proud of his contacts—all over the world, he says—so he should’ve had your information a long time ago. So I figured something wasn’t quite kosher. Well, let me tell you something else, mommaleh, I had contacts when the high and mighty Mr. Loreale still had Coney Island sand in his underwear.”
Now it’s me who leans forward. I grip the arms of my chair until my fingers hurt. My throat’s gotten so tight, it even hurts to speak. “Where—? How long have you—?”
“You think I held out on you, too? I wouldn’t do such a thing. Didn’t I train you right? Okay, maybe I didn’t teach you so good, since you didn’t tell me you’d found your tchotchke.”
“Damn you! Where. Is. She?”
I’ve annoyed the empress, pressed Her Majesty too hard. With a glare that has the force of a strong hand pushing me back into my chair, back into my place, she says, “Don’t get all upset. I only found out last night. After I saw that business in the paper about that van Zell woman and the museum, I needed a way to get my money from you. So I ask around. I make calls. I got friends all over the place, Cantor. More places even than you, or that clever kid you’ve got working for you—”
“Judson.”
“Yeah, Judson. What kinda name is that for a person? It sounds like a telephone exchange. Anyhow, it will do you good to remember that I got deep connections. Got ’em on the docks, in City Hall, in little huts across the ocean, everywhere. Sig says he couldn’t find things out for you in all this time? Hah! It took me maybe three, four hours to get the goods on that boat you’ve been looking for. Yeah, I know where your girl is, your Sophie de Whatsis. But it’ll cost you.”
I feel my lips part, my teeth bare, but there’s a howling in my ears, a storm of rage and need, and I barely hear myself growl, “How much?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions. I want my ten thousand.”
Time seems to slow to a crawl as I get up from the chair, walk out of the living room and into my bedroom. The three and a half years since Sophie was stolen feel like a fast blink compared to the sludge of time and space I’m trying to walk through now. When did my bedroom get so far away? When did the Picasso hiding my wall safe get so distant and small?
But time picks up speed again as I turn the dial of the safe, my fingers suddenly so alert and sensitive I could swear they feel the dust motes in the air.
Next to the guns and the ammo in the safe, under the spare lock picks, is a stack of cash. I count out the thick wad of bills—just making it to ten grand with little to spare—with the speed and precision of a bank teller making change.
Mom’s putting a handkerchief back into her handbag as I walk into the living room. Seeing the cash, she gives me a hungry smile, extends her hand, and when I give her the money, she palms it and puts it into her handbag in one flowing movement, then snaps the bag shut.
“Where is she?” I say. It comes out as a whisper, or maybe a shout. I don’t know. I can’t even feel my throat, my tongue, or any part of me. “Where is Sophie?”
Mom’s smile isn’t greedy now. It’s triumphant, sure in the knowledge she’s about to secure my loyalty for the rest of our lives. She says, “Pack a white linen suit. You’re going to the tropics.”
About the Author
Ann Aptaker’s debut novel, Criminal Gold was a 2014 Goldie Award finalist. Her second book, Tarnished Gold, was a 2015 Lambda Literary Award and Goldie Award winner. Both books have earned excellent reviews from Curve magazine, Crimepieces, Rainbow Reads, and other print and Internet venues. Her Cantor Gold crime series celebrates her favorite themes: dangerous women, crime and mystery fiction, and New York City history. Like her protagonist, Cantor Gold, Ann resides in her beloved hometown, New York, where she is an adjunct professor of art and art history at New York Institute of Technology.
Facebook: Ann Aptaker, Author
Books Available from Bold Stroke
s Books
A Quiet Death by Cari Hunter. When the body of a young Pakistani girl is found out on the moors, the investigation leaves Detective Sanne Jensen facing an ordeal she may not survive. (978-1-62639-815-3)
Buried Heart by Laydin Michaels. When Drew Chambliss meets Cicely Jones, her buried past finds its way to the surface—will they survive its discovery or will their chance at love turn to dust? (978-1-62639-801-6)
Escape: Exodus Book Three by Gun Brooke. Aboard the Exodus ship Pathfinder, President Thea Tylio still holds Caya Lindemay, a clairvoyant changer, in protective custody, which has devastating consequences endangering their relationship and the entire Exodus mission. (978-1-62639-635-7)
Genuine Gold by Ann Aptaker. New York, 1952. Outlaw Cantor Gold is thrown back into her honky-tonk Coney Island past, where crime and passion simmer in a neon glare. (978-1-62639-730-9)
Into Thin Air by Jeannie Levig. When her girlfriend disappears, Hannah Lewis discovers her world isn’t as orderly as she thought it was. (978-1-62639-722-4)
Night Voice by CF Frizzell. When talk show host Sable finally acknowledges her risqué radio relationship with a mysterious caller, she welcomes a real relationship with local tradeswoman Riley Burke. (978-1-62639-813-9)
Raging at the Stars by Lesley Davis. When the unbelievable theories start revealing themselves as truths, can you trust in the ones who have conspired against you from the start? (978-1-62639-720-0)
