Izzy's head snapped left and then right. “What can I tell you?” he whined. He glanced at Piker, then at McCreary, and back at Piker again. The brim of his cap bobbed from side to side like the beak of a bird pecking at one seed and then another. “I can tell you that Mr. Victor Navinsky was an anarchist, an all-around, big-time ladies’ man and troublemaker."
"So? Tell me something I don't know."
Izzy shrugged and fingered his face. “He boarded with Jake Leitner and his family. Jake is a dressmaker who thinks he can squeeze a little more out of that shnorer of a boss by going on strike."
"This is all?” Piker's eyes became two slits in his face as he peered at the skinny man. “You better give me something more than that."
"And,” Izzy hurried on, “I was at a demonstration on Rivington Street where I heard Finestein the Boss ranting and raving at Navinsky that he would see them all in hell first before he'd allow a bunch of revolutionaries to tell him what he could and couldn't pay his workers.” He smiled weakly. Sweat stood out on his face like the beads of liquid on the glasses of beer. It was sweltering in the crowded saloon.
Piker sat back. With evident relief Izzy collected the coins the detective tossed him and hurried out the door.
Piker rubbed the palm of his hand for a minute and turned to McCreary. “Well, let's go pay a visit to Mr. Finestein."
* * * *
The tenement in which Finestein both lived and ran his sweatshop was on the third floor of a rear building, which meant that it had no direct access to the street. Piker and McCreary had to walk through another sour-smelling tenement and past the reeking outhouse that served both buildings. The apartment door opened into a stifling, windowless kitchen where a young boy who looked to be about eight or nine was struggling to remove a heavy black iron from the top of a fiery-hot, coal-burning stove. Stretched out on a long table was the completed bodice and skirt of an evening dress. The rest of the apartment was in semidarkness, and McCreary could just make out the double line of silent sewing machines that filled what he knew to be two long, narrow rooms. A woman with a coil of red hair wound around her head was seated on a chair in the corner nursing a baby. She looked up when Piker and McCreary entered but made no effort to cover herself. Her sweat-lined face, which might have once been pretty, was pinched with exhaustion.
"They live like vermin,” Piker said to McCreary in a voice loud enough to be heard by the woman. “No morals, no decency. Nothing.” To the woman he said, “You speak English?"
"I do,” said the boy, dropping the iron with a loud clang back onto the stove.
"We're looking for Leo Finestein. Is he your father?"
The boy shot a quick glance at the woman, who made no answering motion. So he shrugged and nodded. “In there.” He pointed to a door in the wall behind him.
Piker opened the door into a windowless room that was barely bigger than the iron-framed bed it contained. A heavyset man in his underwear was lying on the sweat-soaked sheets. One of his legs was secured between two narrow wooden planks by several windings of dirty white material. Finestein looked up at the two men. Then he said something to his son in Yiddish, a language which always sounded to McCreary as though the speaker was clearing his throat.
"He wants to know if you are here about Navinsky,” the boy said.
McCreary nodded. Evidently, word of the anarchist's death had already gotten around the neighborhood.
"My papa has been like this, on the bed, for two days now. One of those no-goodniks, those strikers who want to take the bread out of our mouths,” the boy spit three times on the floor beside him, “threw a rock and broke it."
Piker reached over, picked up the man's encased leg, and shook it before dropping it heavily back onto the bed. Finestein screamed in pain. “You sure it's two days since this happened,” he said to the boy, who pressed his lips together and nodded wordlessly. “We'll know if it's not true, and things will go worse for him."
"If Finestein has really been in bed for two days with a broken leg,” McCreary said as they walked down the creaking stairs, “he couldn't be out murdering Navinsky. That leaves us right back where we started."
"Don't you worry, Johnny,” Piker answered. “With all the people crammed into this neighborhood, we'll find someone else to fill the bill."
* * * *
The next day was another hot one. Mendy was sitting at the end of Knuckle Annie's long bar, drinking the dregs of a beer left by a departed patron and hoping that nobody would notice him. Izzy the Doper was sitting at a table with Piker Farrell and John McCreary. It made Mendy's stomach hurt to watch what Mr. Farrell was doing to the man, but nothing short of a raging fire would have made him get up and leave.
"Okay, okay,” the man whined as he wiped the blood off his nose with a dirty sleeve. “Finestein isn't the only potato in the pot. Just last week I heard Navinsky, may he rest in peace,” Izzy lifted his eyes piously toward the heavens, “having an argument with Jake Leitner."
"An argument between two Jews?” Piker said contemptuously, raising his fist again. “That's like telling me the sun comes up in the morning."
"No, no,” the man cried, thrusting his hands between his face and Piker's fist. “It was about a woman."
"The daughter, Rachel Leitner!” Piker asserted with satisfaction.
Izzy raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
"What was it about?"
"Jake caught them together.” He ducked his head down and said slyly, “Well, I don't have to say more, do I?"
The ache in Mendy's stomach became a stabbing pain. He had seen the way Navinsky looked at his cousin Rachel—and at most of the other young women in the neighborhood, if it came to that. But those other women were not his cousin, and their fathers were not his Uncle Jake. Mr. Farrell stood up and said loudly to McCreary, “Let's go, Johnny boy. We'll have this settled before lunch."
The sniveling little doper fink rubbed his fingers together and said, “What about my..."
The big detective cut him off. “No dreamland for you until Leitner is safely locked up. You steered me wrong once already. This time you better be on the money."
* * * *
That day was one of the worst in Mendy's memory—almost as bad as the night his beloved mama died; almost as bad as the day his father, who had come over to America a year before the rest of the Leitners to find a home for them all, never showed up to meet them—lost, some said, to the depraved dives of the Lower East Side. And now, the sight of that Cossack of a detective slapping handcuffs onto his Uncle Jake and pushing him down the stairs ... and then the sound of Aunt Tsipi weeping and wailing—he'd never heard her cry before and never wanted to again—while his cousin Rachel, her face as white as a freshly washed sheet, tried, without success, to comfort her. And poor little Sorele, whimpering under the table as she watched the whole thing out of eyes that looked as scared as Mendy felt. And, worse yet, it was all his, Mendy's, fault.
Mendy slipped out of the apartment as soon as he could and made his way through the crowded streets to his little hiding place on Stanton Street, under the shed behind Henty's bakery. He had furnished it with a candle, a wooden box where he hid the Racker Coyle penny detective stories he read avidly, and a piece of an old, burnt mattress onto which he now threw himself. Why couldn't he have just left Navinsky's body where it was? Why had he gone to that big Irishman for help and brought the wrath of the Cossacks down on their heads? And now his Uncle Jake was in jail, accused of stabbing Navinsky!
He blinked away the tears that were threatening to spill out and thought about his uncle. He loved the little man like a father, but Uncle Jake was as close to being a squeaking mouse as any human could be. Could such a man actually stab Navinsky? Navinsky, who took on gangs of policemen with their billy clubs and coshes as if they were so many insects to be squashed? Mendy couldn't even imagine it!
By the time he crawled out of his hiding place, righteous anger had replaced self-recrimination. It was in this state t
hat he made his way back to Knuckle Annie's, where he hid behind a dray cart until he saw John McCreary leaving the bar.
* * * *
McCreary was thinking that an hour or two in the shapely arms of Owl Meg might cheer him up a bit when he felt a hand pulling at his jacket.
"Mister, mister.” A shrill, indignant voice. “There's been an injustice done.” Those words came straight from Mendy's favorite detective, Racker Coyle. “You can't let this happen."
McCreary looked down and sighed. “And what are you thinking I should be doing about it, boyo?"
"I think you should be finding the real culprit."
McCreary was touched by the boy's faith in him. Actually, he didn't believe that Jacob Leitner was the killer. From what he knew about Victor Navinsky, he couldn't see the anarchist allowing an angry father, or any angry man for that matter, to come close enough to him to stab him in the chest without fighting back. And Navinsky's hands, as McCreary had noticed, showed no signs of any recent fisticuffs. Nor did Jacob Leitner display any evidence that he had been hit recently by anyone other than Piker. But what could he do? He had no official standing, and Piker was crowing about the arrest.
No, McCreary thought, this was a woman's crime, for certain. He thought of Rachel Leitner, whom he'd known from the days when he patrolled the area. She'd often acted as interpreter for him when he'd had to question a witness or evacuate those stinking tenements during one of the many epidemics—cholera, whooping cough, pneumonia—that routinely swept through those crowded, airless buildings. Tall for a Jewish woman, she could do with a few more curves—but then there was that mass of auburn hair the color of glowing embers, the slightly crooked smile that lit up her face at odd moments...
He glanced down at Mendy again. The boy wouldn't be any happier if his cousin Rachel turned out to be the culprit. But Mendy was right—there had been an injustice done—and at that moment, McCreary was as sensitive to injustices as Mendy himself. As much as McCreary didn't want to do it, he'd have to speak to Rachel Leitner, if she'd talk to him. But first he'd have another conversation with Izzy the Doper. Piker had heard what he wanted to hear. McCreary, though, was certain the little hophead wasn't telling all he knew. He wanted to have as many of the facts nailed down as he could before confronting Miss Leitner. He knew the opium den where Izzy went to smoke his dope, and hoped that he wouldn't be so far into dreamland as to not be able to talk.
* * * *
Several hours later, McCreary returned to Knuckle Annie's where Mendy was waiting. Mendy's eager anticipation turned to dread when he saw the expression on the big Irishman's face. But McCreary would say nothing, and man and boy made their way south, across Houston Street, and then east to the Ludlow Street building where the Leitners lived.
McCreary sent Mendy on up to tell Miss Leitner that he, McCreary, didn't believe her father had murdered the anarchist and to convince her that she must come down and talk to him. There was no way, he knew as he settled himself on the stoop to wait, that he would be welcome in that apartment.
About ten minutes later, the boy and his cousin came out of the building. McCreary rose to his feet, touched his hat, and said, “Thank you for coming down and speaking with me, Miss Leitner."
Her eyes, as blue-green as the river on a cloudy day, met his. “I'm here to listen,” she said, with a slight curl of her lip. “Not to speak."
Noticing the attention they were getting from the people around them, McCreary said in a formal voice, “Miss Leitner, would you be joining me in a little walk?” He looked at Mendy and, correctly interpreting the expression the boy's face, added: “I wish to talk with your cousin privately. Which means, boyo, that you're not to follow us."
"Go upstairs and do some work for a change,” Rachel said severely. “Your aunt can barely get out of bed. Someone has to earn a little money around here."
Mendy gave them both an aggrieved look, but for once did as he was told.
McCreary and Rachel Leitner walked east toward the river, away from prying neighbors. “Miss Leitner,” he said after several blocks of silence, “I had a another talk with Izzy the Doper."
"Did you?” she asked, her whole body stiffening.
"And I believe I know the truth about Victor Navinsky's murder."
"My father confessed, you know."
"It would take a man much stronger than your father to withstand Piker when he's out to get a confession. But I know it wasn't him."
When he didn't say anything further, she collapsed down onto a stoop and asked in a voice tight with tension, “What are you going to do?"
"A lot of that will depend on you, on what you want me to do,” he said.
"What I want you to do?” She dragged the “I” over several syllables. “What I want you to do is to disappear, to go back to whatever low saloon Mendy dug you out of, and leave us alone."
"And what about your father?"
Tears started down her face. Silently he handed her his handkerchief. She wept then as he sat in misery, wishing he could make it better for her, knowing he couldn't.
"I'm thinking it's a terrible choice to have to make,” he said. “But in the long run, the law is easier on a woman than a man."
She fought for control of herself, angrily blotting her reddened lids. “What makes you think a woman did this?"
"First of all, Navinsky was stabbed in the chest, through an open vest, and there was no sign that he had fought to defend himself. So he must have been taken by surprise by someone he knew very well, which wouldn't have happened if he'd been facing an angry man."
"That doesn't prove it was a woman,” Rachel said scornfully. “It could have been a man he thought was a friend."
"Secondly,” McCreary went on doggedly, “the landing where Mendy found him was so clean when I saw it that you could have eaten off it. What man, friend or otherwise, would have done that?” Rachel stiffened again. “And, more to the point, why? Whoever cleaned up that landing also dragged the corpus up onto the roof and threw it over the parapet so that it would be found in the alleyway, far away from your apartment.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “No, Miss Leitner. Unless you can prove to me that one of the other tenants on your floor stabbed Mr. Navinsky—” Silently, almost imperceptibly, she shook her head. “—it had to be done by one of you. And not by your father."
She examined his face as if she was seeing him for the first time. “I wouldn't think that you'd believe that a woman could have carried him up that flight of stairs and thrown him off the roof."
"Miss Leitner, I grew up in a tenement not too different from yours. And my mother was strong as an ox from carrying gallons of water and scuttle after scuttle of coal and pails of ashes, and bundles of wash, and sacks of flour, up and down the stairs, all day, every day."
"So you believe it was me who killed him,” she said, clenching her hands.
Once more he shook his head. “As I said, I had a talk with Izzy the Doper, and he told me the name of the woman your uncle and that rabble-rouser were arguing about."
A gang of street urchins ran by, the sounds of their shrill, high-pitched laughter echoing in the air behind them. “He was a terrible man, Mr. McCreary,” she said in a low, bitter voice. “He made eyes at every woman he met. He tried it with me, and I told him what I thought of him. But her...” Tears welled up again and a small vein on the side of her forehead began to throb. “How could she do it?” she burst out. Then, as if answering her own question, she said, “You can't—Well, maybe you can imagine what life is like for us. It's work, work, all the time work. Papa wouldn't let me get a job in the sweatshops; he said in America I could study, become a teacher, be more than he was. I told him I could go to night school, but he said the sweatshops would kill me, would kill my spirit, like they were killing him.” She closed her eyes. “If my papa and myself together came home with eight, nine dollars at the end of the week, it was a good week for us. And all the time worried about how you're going to pay the rent and feed the famil
y and what happens if, God forbid, you get sick and can't work. And my father is a cougher, you know."
McCreary was all too aware of what that meant. Tuberculosis—called the Jewish asthma—was rampant in the tenements of the Lower East Side.
"For me, I'm young yet and Papa wouldn't let my dreams die. But for her...” Her shoulders sagged, as if she couldn't bear the weight of talking about it. Yet she couldn't stop either, he realized. She needed to explain it, more to herself than to him, he thought. “Mama was sixteen when she married Papa, seventeen when I was born. She had three more children, two who died and another, my little sister Sorele, who was barely out of my mother's arms when we came over.
"I love my father dearly, but between working and coughing he probably wasn't much of a husband to her. So maybe Navinsky offered a little ... pleasure for a while.” Her whole body shuddered. “I don't know. He was there in the house, all day, alone with her. Until the strike."
McCreary thought of Tsipi Leitner, not much older than himself, pedaling her life away in front of a sewing machine. Was it so hard to imagine that she would long for a little love or passion? Had his own mother ever longed for love or passion? He recoiled at the thought. At that moment he realized how little he knew about women.
"So when my father caught them, Navinsky promised he would stop. Which he did, but then he started running around with other women. She couldn't stand it. She was like a crazy woman. Jealous, possessed, enraged. I was so worried about her that I came home early that day, and there they both were, in the kitchen, only he was on the floor dead and she was staring at the bloody knife in her hands as if she didn't know what it was.” Her eyes looked sick with the memory. “How could I not help her? I'm her daughter.” She bit her lip and looked up at him, her sea-green eyes scornful again. “Are you sure you weren't hidden there watching us? You seem to know exactly what happened."
AHMM, September 2008 Page 2
