Flesh and Blood

by Thomas H. Cook

  Frank wrote it down in his notebook, then glanced back up at Riviera. “You said that Bornstein called Hannah ‘the rabbi’s daughter’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he have a synagogue in New York?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t remember the name of the synagogue,” Riviera said. “But it was on the east side. Down on Fifth Street someplace, I believe.” He thought a moment. “Somewhere around the Bowery. That’s where she came from.”

  “How did you know about her father? Did she ever mention him?”

  “No. She didn’t talk much about the old days,” Riviera answered. “Only old fools sit around doing that. But she did mention that she’d grown up on Fifth Street, and from what Bornstein said that day, I knew she had been a rabbi’s daughter.”

  “What about relatives?” Frank asked. “Did she ever mention any?”

  “She had two sisters,” Riviera said. “That’s all I know.”

  Frank felt his fingers tighten around his pencil. “Two sisters?” he asked immediately.

  “Yeah,” Riviera told him. “You didn’t know that?”

  “No.”

  Riviera shrugged. “Well, now that I think about it, I’m not surprised,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Hannah put all that behind her,” Riviera said.

  “Her sisters?”

  “That’s right,” Riviera said bluntly.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’d moved up in life, you know what I mean?” Riviera said. “Who knows what she’d left behind? Who wants to be reminded of some little hovel off the Bowery?” He smiled knowingly. “Sometimes it’s not enough to have come up in the world, made a different future for yourself. Sometimes that’s not enough, you know what I mean? Sometimes you want a different past. Of course, that’s the one thing you can never get.”

  “Was Hannah like that?”

  “A little, maybe,” Riviera said. “A lot of people are. But some aren’t. Miss Covallo goes the other way. Did she take you on her little tour of Prince Street?”

  “Yes.”

  “She likes to do that,” Riviera said. “Remind people where she came from. Hannah didn’t. I don’t know why.”

  “What do you know about her sisters?”

  “Nothing really,” Riviera said. “I don’t think they were in very close contact.”

  “How did you know about them?”

  “From Bornstein.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, as Hannah was walking away, Bornstein smiled that shitty little smile of his. Then he looked at me, and he said something like, ‘All three of them need work. What you bet I shtup them all?’”

  Frank looked at him, puzzled. “Shtup?”

  “That’s Yiddish,” Riviera explained. “It means ‘fuck.’”

  Frank felt a wave of contempt roll over him like a line of fire.

  Riviera looked at Frank curiously. “Is this all for history?” he asked.

  “Well, no one has claimed Hannah’s body,” Frank told him. “It’s still at the morgue.” He glanced down at his notebook. “I was thinking that maybe some relative would—”

  “Claim it?” Riviera interrupted. “Give it a nice Jewish plot in a nice Jewish boneyard?”

  “Something like that,” Frank said. He glanced down at his notebook. “Did Hannah ever mention her sisters?”

  “Not after she came to work here,” Riviera said. “Maybe they moved away. Maybe she broke off with them. Maybe they died.” He shrugged. “I mean, who knows what goes on between sisters?”

  Frank wrote it down quickly, then looked back up at Riviera. “And that was all you heard?” he asked. “What this Bornstein said?”

  “That’s the first and last I ever heard about the Karlsberg sisters.”

  “How about a brother?” Frank asked.

  “Never heard of one.”

  “Nephews? Nieces?”

  “Nobody.”

  Frank turned to the next page of his notebook and changed the subject.

  “Did Hannah have a regular schedule?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Riviera said. “The fashion business is a tight ship.”

  “Do you have a record of it?”

  “Absolutely,” Riviera said. “I kept her itinerary myself. It was one of the jobs Hannah gave me.”

  “What was her job, exactly?” Frank asked immediately.

  “She was Imalia’s right-hand woman,” Riviera said. “She handled a little bit of everything. She even did some of her own designs. They always came out under Imalia’s name, but they were Hannah’s.” He pointed to a square of cloth which had been framed and hung on the office wall. “She did that one, as a matter of fact.”

  It was a swirl of eerily darkening reds, and as Frank looked at it, he realized that it had the effect of drawing you steadily down into its deep ebony center.

  “It’s very nice,” he said.

  “Sold very well last season,” Riviera said appreciatively. “One of the most successful designs we’ve had.”

  Frank glanced back down at his notebook. “So Hannah did most of her work in this office?”

  “That’s right,” Riviera told him.

  “So she must have known everyone who worked here?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you know of anyone she was particularly close to?”

  “You mean, someone who might know more about her private life?”

  “Yeah.”

  Riviera shook his head. “I’m not sure she had much of a private life,” he said. “I think she was one of those people who put everything into their work. She was always here. All hours.” He pulled out a drawer, removed a large gray ledger and slid it across the table. “Here’s her office log. You can see for yourself.”

  Frank took the book and opened it. A maze of lines and figures swept up toward him.

  “It may take you a while to figure it out, Mr. Clemons,” Riviera said, “so I’ll give you the bottom line.”

  Frank looked up from the ledger.

  “Hannah worked a full day, every day,” Riviera said with an odd weariness. His eyes glanced down toward the book and lingered there. “She had a nice apartment, I understand.”

  “Yes, she did,” Frank told him.

  Riviera looked up, surprised. “You’ve been there?”

  “Yes, with the police.”

  “Nice, I hear.”

  “Very nice.”

  Riviera looked at Frank determinedly. “Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Clemons. She deserved it.” He turned slightly, and glanced out one of the enormous windows. “In the business, you hear a lot of bullshit about this person being self-made and that person being self-made. Then, later you hear that Papa floated them a loan of maybe a million or two. Or maybe some uncle did it. You know, from the ready cash.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter where they got it, because you know that if things had gotten tight, no palooka loanshark would have come around to rearrange anybody’s knees.” He turned back toward Frank. “You call that self-made?”

  “No.”

  Riviera smiled, but his eyes remained deadly cold. “I like my knuckles, Mr. Clemons. I respect them.” He lifted his hands up into the soft evening light. “I look at these hands, and I think, ‘Well, Tony, no bullshit here.’” He lowered them slowly back down on the table. “And that’s the way it was with Hannah, too,” he said. “She crawled out from under that synagogue using nothing but her bare hands. Everything she had, she got for herself.” A strange fierceness swept into his face. “Who’s to say that that’s not beautiful, hm?”

  Frank said nothing.

  Riviera massaged his hands gently. “There’s only one goddamn thing Hannah didn’t deserve,” he said, “and that’s the way she died.”

  Frank saw her face again, first in the photographs in the small wooden chest, th
en bathed in the hard light of the morgue.

  “Where did she work before she came here?” he asked.

  “Before here?” Riviera asked hesitantly. “What difference would that make? She’s been with Imalia for over twenty years.”

  “I’m running a few things down,” Frank told him.

  “You’re reaching way back.”

  “Sometimes you have to.”

  “Well, I can’t be of much help on that,” Riviera said. “All I know is that one day Hannah showed up here.”

  “How about a personnel folder?” Frank said insistently.

  “Imalia wants you to have that?” Riviera asked, surprised.

  “Yes.”

  For an instant, he hesitated once again. Then he turned quickly, walked to a file cabinet, and pulled out a dark blue folder.

  “This is all I have,” he said as he handed it to Frank. “It’s Hannah’s original application. I noticed it a few days ago when I was cleaning out her desk. To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised by it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s not much on it,” Riviera said.

  Frank opened the folder and glanced down at the nearly empty page.

  “She didn’t list any employment between 1936 and 1955,” he said.

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Or references.”

  “That’s right,” Riviera said.

  “You mentioned this man, Bornstein,” he said. “Is he still alive?”

  Riviera waved his hand. “No. He died years ago. He was a legend in the trade. They gave him a big send-off. Lots of flowers. Fancy hearse.”

  “Did you go to the funeral?”

  “Sure, I did,” Riviera said. “He gave me my first steady work.”

  “Did Hannah go?”

  “If she did, I didn’t notice her,” Riviera told him. “But there was a big crowd for Bornstein’s funeral. He was ruthless. And in this business, that gets you a lot of respect.”

  Frank wrote it down. “Do you know of anyone else who might have known Hannah in the thirties?”

  “Well, you could always check out that synagogue I told you about.”

  “I will.”

  Riviera thought for a moment. “But maybe I have a better idea,” he said. “Especially if you feel like a little schmoozing.” He smiled. “There’s this housing project down in Chelsea. People down there will talk your head off.”

  “What housing project?”

  “It’s called Consolidated Housing,” Riviera said. “It’s on the West Side. Ninth Avenue at 23rd Street. There’re a lot of old needle-trade survivors around there. They sit around the social room and bullshit about the old days.” He shrugged. “Some of them might have known Hannah back when she was a working girl.”

  Frank wrote down the address.

  “As far as anybody around here,” Riviera added, “I don’t think you’d find much. I mean, the police have tried, but I don’t think they came up with anything.”

  “Did you tell them about the housing project?”

  Riviera shook his head. “No. But I don’t think they’d have been interested in going that far back. I mean, they figure Hannah’s death for some kind of psycho thing. At least that’s what they told me.”

  “Or something to do with her business,” Frank added.

  “There’s always that possibility.”

  “Did they question many people around here?” Frank asked.

  “Quite a few,” Riviera said. “And just like you said, they were looking for some sort of beef at work. Somebody Hannah had fired, something like that.” He nodded toward Frank’s notebook. “But if you’re working a different angle, you ought to check out those old farts in Chelsea before you do anything else.” He laughed. “You won’t have any trouble getting them to talk. All they’ve got left is memory, and, believe me, they work that pushcart up the whole street.” He stood up, as if dismissing Frank authoritatively.

  Frank remained seated, his notebook still open.

  Riviera looked at him curiously. “Is there anything else? I mean, are you through?”

  Frank nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess I am,” he said.

  Riviera swept his arm toward the door. “Come, then,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the elevator.”

  “Thanks.”

  Within a few seconds, the two of them were back in the lobby.

  “We do nice work here,” Riviera said, as he pointed to the graceful waves of strangely radiant cloth that swept along the walls.

  “Yes, you do,” Frank said.

  “It’s a rough business, no doubt about it,” Riviera added. He smiled. “But what comes out of it is good.”

  10

  The large square building on 23rd Street was constructed of plain red brick and surrounded by long stretches of corroding storm fence. A cracked cement walkway led to the entrance.

  An old woman stood at the front door, her body wrapped in a large cloth coat, her head covered with a thick scarf which she gathered at the neck and held with a gloved hand. She shrank back slightly as Frank approached, and he nodded to her quickly, then stopped before he came too close.

  “Is this Consolidated Housing?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the old woman told him.

  “I’m looking for the social room.”

  “Inside and to the right,” the woman said. She continued to eye Frank suspiciously. “You looking for someone in particular?”

  “No,” Frank said. “Just anybody who lives in the building.”

  The old woman turned and pointed through the glass doors to a wide tiled corridor. “There are always a few people in the common room,” she said. “First door on the right.”

  There was a small cluster of people near the back of the room, all of them sitting around a long rectangular table. Several of them watched Frank curiously as he approached.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Frank said as he stepped up to the table. He took out his identification. “I’m a private investigator, and I’m trying to find out a few things about a woman some of you might have known.”

  A large woman with brightly painted lips turned toward him. “So what do we look like, Information Please?”

  “It would help me to find out a few things,” Frank said. “She’s dead.”

  An old man jerked his head up quickly. “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed. “In that case, I probably know her.” He looked at the others and smiled. “It’s the live ones, I got no connection.”

  The woman poked him lightly in the ribs. “You know why, Izzy? Your connection is too short.”

  The others laughed, and Frank laughed with them.

  “Sit down,” the old man said. “We’ll talk. We love to talk.”

  Frank sat down.

  “I’m Izzy Berman,” the old man said. He nodded one by one to the two other people at the table. “This is Clara Zametkin, and this guy with the little Irish cap, he’s Benny Shein.”

  “Glad to meet you,” Frank said.

  Berman leaned forward slightly, cocking his ear. “Now who was this woman you’re talking about?”

  “Her name was Hannah,” Frank said. “Hannah Karlsberg.”

  The three people exchanged glances, then shook their heads slowly.

  “She worked in a sweatshop on Orchard Street,” Frank said.

  “When did she do that?” Benny asked.

  “Early thirties.”

  Benny looked at Clara. “You should know her,” he said. “You were down there.”

  Clara thought about it. “Karlsberg,” she repeated softly, “Hannah Karlsberg.” She looked at Frank. “I don’t think so.”

  “She was a rabbi’s daughter,” Frank added. “Someone told me that he had a synagogue around Fifth Street and the Bowery.”

  Suddenly the old woman’s face seemed to grow softly illuminated. “Hannah Karlsberg?” she asked again.

  “The rabbi died,” Frank said. “And that’s when she came
to Orchard Street. She had a couple—”

  “Kovatnik,” the old woman blurted. “Her name was Kovatnik, Hannah Kovatnik.”

  The two old men exchanged glances.

  “Hannah Kovatnik?” Benny said. “You’re talking about Hannah Kovatnik?”

  Clara looked at him determinedly. “Got to be, Benny. Who else?” She turned to Frank. “Oh, yes, I remember Hannah. Everyone remembers Hannah.” She glanced at the others. “Remember that time in the meeting hall? That night Schreiber was going on about a strike, and all the girls were there? All of them crowded together. What a noise. Remember that?”

  Benny nodded. “Who could forget?”

  “Oh yes,” Berman said. “Oh God, yes.”

  “And Schreiber was going on about the defeats,” Clara continued, “the weakness.”

  Benny shivered slightly. “Putting us to sleep, that one. Always whining. I used to say to Leon Jaffe, ‘Leon, how come they don’t send a big strong man to talk to us? How come always this Schreiber?’ Such a sniveler. Always picking at himself. Tics, so many tics.” His lips curled down disgustedly. “And I’m supposed to listen to such a person, maybe risk my neck for such a person?” He waved his hand. “Forget it.”

  Clara seemed not to hear him. “And still, while Schreiber is going on, comes up from nowhere, this girl. What was she? Nineteen? Twenty?” Her eyes darted over to Frank. “Comes up this girl to the platform, and she starts to talking in Yiddish, starts to talking about what’s going on in her shop.” She shook her head. “Such a speech she made, you wouldn’t believe it. Such a speech, without a paper in her hand. Coming from her heart.” She looked intently at Berman. “Am I right?”

  “Absolutely,” Berman said. He looked at Frank pointedly. “You listen to Clara. She knows.”

  “She was speaking maybe ten minutes,” Clara went on, “but it didn’t matter. Could have been an hour, no one would have moved. But it was maybe ten minutes, and when it was over, there was such a commotion, you couldn’t believe it.”

  Benny laughed. “And Schreiber didn’t know what to do. He looked ridiculous. Like a clown, a fool. This girl had made him look like that.”

  “But there was nothing for him to do,” Clara told him vehemently. “Hannah was doing everything.” Her eyes swept back to Frank. “And then, at the end of it, she says, now this was in Yiddish, she says, ‘You got to strike. You got to strike. So, tell me, you will strike?’ And all the girls, they yell back, yes, they will strike. And Hannah, she puts her hand above her head, and she says, in Yiddish she says, ‘Then give me the Jewish pledge.’” Her eyes grew fiery as she repeated it. “‘If I betray you, may my hand wither and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.’” Her eyes widened. “That’s what she said. And—boom—that’s what they did.”