Flesh and Blood

by Thomas H. Cook

  Frank could feel a terrible tension growing in his body, pressing outward, as if trying to explode.

  “Her name was Marta,” Stern said. “She was only fifteen.” His eyes returned to Frank. “She worshipped Feig. And after this came out—on Christmas day, as a matter of fact, 1935—she hanged herself in her bedroom closet.”

  Frank’s eyes swept out toward the looming towers which rose on the other side of the reservoir.

  Stern watched him closely. “Can you imagine what that did to Feig?” he asked. “The suicide of his only daughter?”

  Frank kept his eyes on the twin gray towers. “Yes.”

  For a time, they sat in silence, then Stern shifted slightly in his seat, massaging his knees rhythmically. “Circulation problems,” he explained.

  Frank turned toward him. “How did you find out about what Hannah and Bornstein did?” he asked.

  “The oldest way in the world.”

  “What way is that?”

  “Someone told me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this person thought that Hannah had gone too far, that she’d compromised the struggle, that if it was ever discovered that some union-planted lie, some vicious slander, had ended up causing a young girl to kill herself—that if that ever became known, it would be the end of the union.”

  “So he told you about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that you could bring the charge.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t he bring it himself?”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because blood is thicker than water, Mr. Clemons,” Stern said bluntly. “It’s thicker than almost anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hannah had only one real friend in the world,” Stern said. “One person she could tell everything to.”

  Frank waited, his pen bearing down on the pad.

  “Her sister,” Stern said finally. “Naomi.”

  “And Naomi told you?” Frank asked immediately.

  “No,” Stern answered quickly. “Naomi’s husband. He’d overheard it all.”

  “This husband, what was his name?”

  “Fischelson. Joseph Fischelson.”

  Suddenly, Frank saw the name as it appeared on the request for death benefits for Gilda, little amber letters on a dead black screen.

  “So it was Fischelson who came to you?”

  “Yes,” Stern said, “because he couldn’t bring the charge himself. He gave me all the information I needed to pursue it. I started with the actress. She was a rummy. She broke fast. Then Bornstein tumbled. I had all the facts. And so I brought the charge.”

  “And that’s when they had the hearing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Hannah defend herself?”

  “Not really,” Stern said. “She sat at the end of the table. She was staring straight ahead. She looked different, like something had been drained away from her, some kind of moisture. She looked hard. She looked like she’d never care about anything again.”

  “Where was this hearing?”

  “A small room in the back of the union meeting hall,” Stern said. “It was off Delancey Street. It’s all been knocked down for high-rises.”

  “Who was there?”

  Stern thought for a moment. “Beidelbaum was there. Sidney Beidelbaum, the head of the local. I was there, with all my information. Karl Fisk. Norman Vladeck.” He shook his head. “They’re all dead.”

  “When it was over, what happened?”

  “They swore her to secrecy,” Stern said. “Then they told her to withdraw from all union activity.”

  “And she agreed to do that?”

  “With a little nod,” Stern said.

  “Did she say anything?”

  “Not until it was over,” Stern said. “Then she stood up. She’d been sitting at the end of the table. It was a real inquisition type of setup. Hannah alone at one end of the table, all these bearded men at the other end.” He frowned harshly. “It was an awful thing. Even the way it looked was awful.”

  “But when it was over, she said something.”

  “Yeah,” Stern said. “She stood up. Very stiff. Full of pride. She stood up and she said the old words they use when they issue the final divorce decree in Orthodox Jewish marriages. She stood up and she said—and this was in Hebrew—she said, ‘I cast you out. I cast you out. I cast you out.’ Three times, just like that. According to the rules of Jewish law.”

  Frank wrote it down. “Then she left?”

  “That’s right,” Stern told him. “She turned on her heels, and walked out the door. None of us heard from her again.”

  22

  For a long time after he returned to his office on 49th Street, Frank simply sat at his desk, smoking one cigarette after another until the ashtray was overflowing and the air had become so thick and rancid that he could barely stand it. He thought of Karen, and he realized that he would not be able to go home at all tonight, that there were too many sleepless things shuffling about inside him. He could hear Sheila’s voice, reminding him of the twenty-first birthday their daughter would never have, and he thought of Feig’s daughter, her body swaying in the closet, and then the old man himself, hunched over and wheezing, living in the utter isolation a single lie had brought him.

  It was past midnight by the time he finally walked out onto the street, turned left and headed toward Tenth Avenue. The late afternoon cold had deepened with the night, and as he strolled down 49th Street, Frank thought of the snows of 1935, of Hannah’s sign flapping loudly in the wind off the river, of the lines of pickets who huddled along Orchard Street while Feig stared down at them from his office high above. He heard the ringing speeches, felt the ground tremble as the horses charged down the uneven brick streets, sensed the greed and sacrifice, all the frozen hopes and fatal fire of those tumultuous wintry days.

  Farouk was already seated at his usual table when Frank walked into Toby’s. He nodded silently as Frank came through the door, then motioned him over to the one empty seat at the other end of his table. He looked more weary than he had before, a hunched, gigantic figure, his enormous hands wrapped around a small glass, his large round eyes staring off into the distance as if he were peering out across desert reaches, or back into his hidden youth.

  “Good evening, Frank,” he said quietly.

  Frank nodded.

  “What would you like?”

  “An Irish.”

  “Fine,” Farouk said. He made some sort of hand signal to his wife, and she immediately deposited a full fifth of Bushmills on the table.

  “This will do?” Farouk said as he opened it.

  “Fine.”

  Farouk poured each of them a shot, then lifted his in toast. “To whatever,” he said softly.

  Frank touched his glass to Farouk’s. “Right.”

  Farouk’s dark eyes seemed to glow out of the shadowy light that surrounded him. For a moment, he watched the others in the bar as if he were guarding them in some distant way, or simply taking down their stories in his mind.

  “Well,” he said at last, as he returned his glass to the table, “did you find a relative?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But something?”

  “There’s a brother-in-law,” Frank told him. “A man named Joseph Fischelson.”

  “A brother-in-law to Hannah?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the sister is living?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Farouk nodded. “And this brother-in-law, he lives where?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Frank said. “But he should be easy enough to find.”

  “If he wishes to be found.”

  “No reason why he shouldn’t,” Frank said. “At least as far as I know.”

  “Some people prefer the shadows,” Farouk said.

  “Like you?”

  Farouk smiled. “It is possible to know too mu
ch, to divulge too much,” he said. “Perhaps that is why I live alone.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

  “The other way tires me more,” Farouk said bluntly. Then he shrugged. “One begins everything with a great passion, then it fades away. That is what breaks the heart, Frank, the way time wears everything down.” He took another drink. “You think you can outrun it. You take the caravan to the port city, then a steamer across the sea. In a strange land, you ride the trains until you know where you are by the way the boxcars shift around the curves. Even the rails become familiar.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  “For many years.”

  “Why not forever?”

  “Because the drifters do not hold the secret,” Farouk said with a slight smile.

  “Who does?”

  “The ones who most believe in what they’ve done,” Farouk said matter-of-factly. He eyed Frank pointedly. “Was Hannah one of those?”

  “For a while she was.”

  Farouk nodded quickly, then took another sip from the glass. “And have you learned anything new about her?”

  “Maybe.”

  Farouk’s eyes widened, but he did not speak.

  “You remember that she was kicked out of the union in January of 1936,” Frank said.

  “Yes.”

  “I found out why.”

  Farouk continued to stare at Frank silently.

  “She was in a conspiracy, you might say. With a guy named Bornstein,” Frank told him.

  “Bornstein?”

  “He was a labor broker, among other things,” Frank said. “He was interested in taking over Feig’s shop.”

  “The Feig of Orchard Street.”

  “Yes,” Frank said. “They cooked up a story about him trying to rape a woman. Bornstein had an actress who was willing to back them up.”

  “But this rape was a lie?”

  “Yes,” Frank said. “It was all a lie, but Feig’s daughter believed it, along with everybody else.”

  Farouk took a sip from his glass.

  “She killed herself,” Frank added. “She was fifteen.”

  “Ihr Herz war schwarz,” Farouk said, almost to himself.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s what Feig said,” Farouk told him. “Her heart was black.” He looked down at his glass. “He meant Hannah’s heart.”

  “It was a bad time,” Frank said. “Bad things happened.”

  Farouk nodded quickly. “And this lie,” he asked, “it was discovered?”

  “Discovered, then hushed up. By the union, I mean.”

  “Of course,” Farouk said.

  “Anyway, Hannah was brought before some kind of committee. It wasn’t exactly a trial, but it ended up with her being bounced from the union.”

  “And Bornstein?”

  “He’d already bought Feig out,” Frank said. “A real fire sale.”

  Farouk stared at his glass thoughtfully. “And this was in January, 1936.”

  “Yes.”

  Farouk took a quick drink, then returned the glass firmly to the table. “Hannah’s passport,” he said, “was stamped in Bogotá on February seventh, 1936.”

  “Just a few weeks later.”

  Farouk nodded. “I am thinking of money.”

  “To get to Colombia, you mean?”

  “I am wondering where it came from.”

  “Yes.”

  “And for what reason she would go there.”

  “That, too,” Frank said.

  Farouk’s eyes slid over to Frank. “To bury her is not enough.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Frank said.

  Farouk smiled. “But to discover her, to do it for the thing itself,” he said, “this is what matters, is it not?”

  “I think so,” Frank said.

  Farouk poured Frank another drink. “This Bornstein is alive?”

  “No,” Frank said. “He died in 1959. But before that, he brought Hannah over to work for a guy named Constanza.”

  Farouk pretended to shiver. “El ojo malo,” he said at the mention of Constanza. “The evil eye.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Now dead.”

  “Murdered.”

  “The air is cleaner,” Farouk said, “much cleaner since that day.” He finished his drink, then poured himself another. “We must see the brother-in-law.”

  “He tried to get a death benefit to help bury Gilda,” Frank said. “That was in 1954.”

  “She was only in her thirties, Gilda,” Farouk said. “This is young for death.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Why did she die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can find that out,” Farouk assured him. “But I think we must see the brother-in-law. What do you know about him?”

  “Nothing more than what I’ve told you,” Frank admitted. “And the fact that it was Fischelson who turned Hannah in.”

  “Turned her in?” Farouk asked.

  “For the plot against Feig.”

  “That’s odd, don’t you think?” Farouk asked. “That he would do such a thing.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you know only that he did it?”

  “Nothing else.”

  Farouk thought about things for a moment. “Did Hannah not return with her sister’s body?” he asked finally.

  “No.”

  “And the reason?”

  “I guess you’d have to say that she stayed behind to get married.”

  “To Pérez.”

  “Yes.”

  Farouk’s eyes narrowed somewhat. “A quick marriage, would you not say?”

  “It has that look.”

  “And then a quick return to New York,” Farouk added immediately.

  Frank nodded.

  Farouk leaned back heavily in his chair. “Perhaps she did not mourn her sister?”

  “It’s possible that she didn’t,” Frank said.

  “Possible, yes,” Farouk said in a slow, calculating voice, “if, as Feig would have it, ‘Irh Herz war schwarz.’”

  For a while they sat together in silence. Across the room, Toby paced back and forth from one side of the bar to the other, wiping a wet cloth along its surface with each pass. She had the look of someone immensely strong and self-reliant, and as Frank watched her, he could feel a strange admiration sweep out to her, to Farouk, to all the strange, indecipherable rogues who gathered in such places during the gray after-hours of the world.

  “Maybe she changed,” he said finally. “Hannah, I mean.”

  Farouk took a toothpick from his jacket pocket and slid it into the corner of his mouth. “What she had was good.”

  “What do you mean, her life?”

  “Her belief,” Farouk explained. He picked at the large gap between his two front teeth. “Love? A man can live without it. And money? Most people do.” He withdrew the toothpick from his mouth and stared dully at its frayed point. “But belief? This you cannot live without.” He shrugged lightly as he watched Toby pocket the night’s receipts and lumber toward him, the barcloth hung loosely around her neck. “You can go on, this is true. Like a plant. But live?” He shook his head. “No, you cannot truly live.”

  Toby nodded tersely as she passed, and Farouk immediately got to his feet. “Closing time,” he said, as he turned his hand gently under Frank’s shoulder. “Come, we will walk you home.”

  Frank got to his feet, and the two of them followed Toby to the door, waited as she locked it, then walked downstairs and turned to the left, heading slowly southward down Tenth Avenue for a while, then east, toward midtown.

  “You should sleep, Frank,” Farouk said as they came to the corner of 49th Street.

  Frank glanced toward the little iron gate which fronted his office. “Yeah.”

  Farouk looked at him pointedly. “You are sleeping there?”

  “I think so.”

  “From now on?”

  He saw Karen cocooned in he
r ice-blue silk sheets, saw the pink room and the deep, lush carpet, and realized with a sudden anguished recognition that he would never be with her again.

  “From now on,” he said as the first light broke along the avenue.

  23

  Farouk was waiting for him when Frank came out of the offices of the American Garment Workers and bolted across 16th Street and into the newly renovated elegance of Union Square Park.

  “This place was once a shooting gallery,” Farouk said as Frank sat down on the bench beside him. “To walk through here was a dangerous undertaking.”

  Frank saw the park differently, through a grainy photograph of a freezing crowd huddled beneath the bare limbs of winter trees. “This is where Hannah made her speech,” he said. His eyes perused the oddly domesticated landscape, the gently rounded knoll, the small, compact playground of swings, slides and sandboxes. “I guess it was her last one.”

  Farouk nodded. “Yes.” He drew his eyes over to Frank. “What did you find out?”

  “I talked to Silverman,” Frank said. “We looked up a Naomi Fischelson in the union files. She was there. She’d been a member in good standing since 1935.”

  Farouk smiled delightedly. “Hannah’s sister. She is still alive?”

  “No,” Frank said. “She died last year.”

  “And the husband?”

  “Still alive as far as anybody knows,” Frank said. “At least he’s still drawing on his wife’s union pension.”

  “Which means they have his address?”

  “Yes,” Frank said. “Some place in Brooklyn. The Heights. Heard of it?”

  Farouk nodded vigorously. “Yes, I know it,” he said as he rose quickly and headed toward the subway. “Come, I will take you there.”

  The building in which Joseph Fischelson lived was one of the few on the street that still seemed somewhat run-down. Everywhere else, the brownstone facades had either been restored or were in the process of restoration. Metal scaffolding dotted the long, tree-lined street, and the sound of hammers and drills rang continually in the early morning air.

  “Four-C,” Frank said as he pressed the buzzer in the building’s foyer.

  A harsh crackling sound came from the wall speaker, but the voice could still be heard above it.

  “Who is it?”

  “Frank Clemons,” Frank said loudly. “I think Mr. Silverman called you this morning.”