Tarnished Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  As we get closer to the dining room, Mom’s uneasy smile explains itself by the sound of a spoon stirring in a glass and the sight of the jowly middle-aged man in a dark suit who’s doing the stirring as we walk in. Sitting at the lace-covered dining table, stirring the lemon in his tea, the remaining half of a golden loaf of honey cake in front of him, is the most powerful man in New York, and it’s not the mayor; the mayor isn’t dangerous. The man stirring his tea is very dangerous. He’s Sig Loreale.

  Sig is everybody’s boss, even the mayor’s, even Jimmy Shea’s, and when you get right down to it, even Mom’s and mine. He doesn’t run our rackets, has no involvement in my business at all, except as an occasional client in the market for a painting or antique. But from the kickbacks I give to Jimmy’s dock mobs, to the money Mom uses to buy judges and City Hall pols, and all the other money—legit or dirty—that changes hands in New York, a percentage of every dollar finds its way into Sig’s pockets. If you hold back even a nickel, you’re dead. Sig’s assassins will find you in your candy store in the Bronx, your rag-trade factory in Midtown, or your bagel joint in Brooklyn. They’ll shoot you or knife you, dismember you and scatter you.

  Sig’s presence in Mom’s dining room doesn’t bode well for my current troubles. It also doesn’t bode well for my memories: Mom’s daughter Opal, whose killing last year was the cause of the breakup of our happy history, was also Sig’s fiancée. He was crazy about Opal. Mom, though, was not so crazy about her American-born bundle of joy marrying a mobster, even if he’s the most powerful mobster in the country. She wanted better for her pampered daughter, preferably a square-jawed icon of the American Dream. But Mom and Sig agreed on one thing, revenge, and I was the jerk who gave them the opportunity to exact it. Without realizing it, I handed over on a silver platter the woman who was responsible for Opal’s death. She’s dead now, too, gunned down right in front of me. Sig saw to that.

  He stops stirring his tea when he sees me, his heavy-lidded, gray-eyed stare coming at me with the force of a train about to run me down. “Have a seat, Cantor,” he says in that slow, precise way that’s been giving me the creeps since I was a little kid making mischief in Coney Island and he was a young operator muscling in on the neighborhood’s amusement park action. Sig’s old-time, carefully learned English gives every word equal power, all of them threatening. “Have some tea,” he says. “And honey cake. It is very good cake. It might make you feel better. You look terrible, all banged up.”

  “Hello, Sig,” I say and sit down at the table, though I don’t bother with tea or cake. “I assume Mom called you.”

  “You assume wrong.”

  Before I have a chance to ask what he’s doing here, Mom snipes at me, “And take your coat and cap off in my dining room, Cantor. What, you think my house is a stable?” Raising one flabby arm and pointing around the room, she adds, “You see any horses in here?” When I was a kid, she used to call me her little American savage. I guess her opinion of me hasn’t changed.

  Mom’s scolding strikes Sig funny, and his head tilts back, mouth open, in that weird, silent laugh of his that makes my skin crawl. Escaping that laugh is a good excuse for me to get up from the table to take my coat and cap off and lay them over the back of a chair.

  His laugh finished, Sig motions me to sit back down. He says, “Mrs. Sheinbaum did not call me. She did not need to call me. A great many people have kept me informed of your activities. You are causing trouble, Cantor. That is why Jimmy Shea let that goon of his give you a going over outside his bar in the middle of the night.”

  I’ve known Sig for a long time, watched him carefully construct his web through the city, enlarging it year by year until it reached every corner of every borough, and it still amazes me that whenever any string of that web quivers, even a little, he knows who’s disturbed it. This time it’s me. I’m the one dancing along a thread, causing vibrations through his web, disturbing Sig’s contentment at its center.

  He gives me a smile that makes me wince. Satisfied that I get the picture, he says, “It was brought to my attention that Mrs. Sheinbaum was asking around on your behalf, calling in favors, even. Now, you know Mrs. Sheinbaum has my full admiration and respect, and if she’s trading inquiries for favors, then I know that whatever is going on is serious business. You understand me, Cantor?” It isn’t a question he wants answered. It isn’t really a question at all. It’s a warning. “That is why I arranged this meeting, to see if we can get to the bottom of your trouble, and make it go away for everyone concerned.”

  Against my better judgment, but maybe it’ll lighten the mood, I say, “Are you offering to help me, Sig?”

  He lifts his glass and takes a sip of his tea, looking at me over the rim. The bags under his cold eyes are magnified by the glass, making his stare grotesque, intensifying his evil.

  So it’s a relief when he puts the glass down and his eyes resume their merely hard-as-stone stare. “Let us just say I am offering to keep you alive.”

  I’m tempted to say, I didn’t know you cared, but figure it’s better to keep my humor to myself. I’ve already tried the mood-lightening gambit once, and it’s not a good idea to press Sig’s sense of humor too far. I’ve never been sure if he even has one.

  He says, “There has been too much bloodshed in this situation already. That poor old woman, Mrs. Jacobson, cut up like that. A terrible thing. I understand she survived Hitler.”

  Just hearing the monster’s name makes Mom shift in her chair and mutter, “Mamzer,” cursing him as a bastard in Yiddish.

  The sudden tenderness on Sig’s face surprises me down to my socks. I’ve never known him to have a tender moment in his life, though maybe his dear, departed Opal did. I’ve never been at the receiving end, though. Probably never will be. “Forgive me, Esther,” he says, patting Mom’s hand. “I did not mean to upset you.”

  Mom gives him a nod, but that’s all. She doesn’t like Sig. She never did. But she’s smart enough to let him think otherwise.

  Sig’s tenderness is short-lived, and the hard stare is back when he turns his attention again to me. His quick change from predator to humanitarian to predator again is terrifying. “And then her brother, Marcus Stern,” he says, giving his tea another slow stir. Only Sig Loreale can make the scrape of a spoon against a glass sound sinister. “Mr. Stern was a scholar, a scientist, I understand, before he was a successful businessman. Very sad, the way he died. And his death was rather dramatic, from what I hear.” He stops stirring his tea. The sudden silence is even scarier than the scrape of the spoon. I swear the air in the room actually cracks when he says, “Far too dramatic, Cantor. I am having to twist a lot of arms to keep it out of the newspapers and not attract the wrong attention. And another death, your death, would complicate matters further.”

  “Yeah, it would be a tragedy,” I say, more or less muttering it.

  Sig ignores my little joke. He just takes a cigar and clippers from his inside pocket, but before he clips the end of the cigar, he leans toward Mom and says, “May I, Esther?”

  “Sure, go ahead. Wait, I’ll get you an ashtray, you shouldn’t make a mess on my table.”

  “No, please, sit,” he says. “Cantor will get it for me.”

  I’m never sure if Sig treats me like a kid because he’s known me since I was one, or it’s just another way of expressing his power. But I get the ashtray.

  After I sit down again, Sig clips his cigar, lights it, and puffs it a few times to get it going. The red tip burns like a warning from the devil, the glow crawling up the heavy flesh of his face, ringing his eyes. He eventually takes the cigar from his mouth, and when he speaks, his words ride on puffs of smoke, just like Satan’s. “Your death would bring more attention from the police.”

  “Cheering all the way,” I say.

  He gives me a quick version of his grisly silent laugh, then says, “Yes, they might be very happy about that. But they are police, after all, Cantor. They would have to make a dumb show of pursuing
justice, looking for your killer, or they risk losing face, and losing face is something policemen will not tolerate. They would be forced to start one of their troublesome crackdowns on crime.”

  Mom, more curious than alarmed, says, “And since when is that a problem? You have every precinct captain in the city on your payroll, no?”

  “I can only restrain the police just so far, Esther, as long as it suits their interests. But this current situation does not suit their interests.” He puffs his cigar and shakes his head with the concentration of an Einstein tackling a knotty problem. At the end of this line of thought, he turns to me. “And did you know, Cantor, that you are a hot gossip item? Oh yes, you are. You and your fancy suits and women on your arm. The Law might hate you for it, but you are a reporter’s meal ticket.”

  “Lucky me,” I say. “You think my funeral would draw a crowd as big as Al Capone’s?”

  “Go ahead, go think it’s funny,” Sig says. “But you will not be laughing when some eager policeman hauls you in and you wind up dead in a jail cell. Or Jimmy Shea puts a gun to your head and pulls the trigger. Your death or even just your arrest would be far too juicy for the news people to resist. They’d pry into everything in your life, Cantor. The girlie stuff,” he says with a dismissive wave, “I don’t care about, but there are places in your life where I don’t want them to go. And I’m sure you don’t either.”

  “All right, Sig, you’ve made your point.”

  “I hope so,” he says, “because let me tell you, controlling those press people is no easy business these days. It used to be just the newspaper scribblers, then they added the radio yakkers, but now they’re even showing up with bulletins on the television. A person can’t relax with a cuppa coffee anymore without gruesome pictures showing up in their living room. Disgusting.”

  He puffs on his cigar again, fast and with deep inhales this time, the cigar’s red tip a beacon of his anger, his exhaled smoke carrying that anger into his words. “What is worse,” he says, “the politicians are even more untrustworthy than the police. If they smell an election issue—and crime is their favorite election issue—they will unleash the full force of a City Hall investigation, maybe even a state investigation.” He leans across the table, his eyes boring into me, forcing me to feel the weight of his displeasure at his predicament. “I will not fight a battle on so many fronts, Cantor. It costs too much money, and the outcome is not guaranteed. You know I do not care for outcomes which are not guaranteed.”

  I’m about to ask him just what he expects me to do about it when Mom says, “Calm yourself, Sig. You’ll give yourself a heart attack. Maybe even a stroke. I don’t need such aggravation in my dining room. Calling the ambulance for you would attract as much attention from those Cossack police as this business Cantor’s got us into.”

  If I’d challenged Sig that way, I’d be marked for dead. But Sig’s an Old World kind of guy, and Mom is an Old World grand dame, and underworld royalty to boot. But most of all, she’s the mother of Sig’s beloved dead fiancée.

  Now I know: Mom Sheinbaum is Sig’s tender spot. That might come in handy someday.

  But Mom’s little interruption broke Sig’s rant and lets me into the conversation on firmer footing. “Look, Sig,” I say, “the last thing I need is you breathing down my neck, so let’s get down to exactly what you have in mind about getting rid of my trouble.”

  “What do I have in mind, Cantor? Money is what I have in mind.”

  “I’m not sure I understand. You want me to give you money?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Cantor,” he says, his head going back into that silent laugh again. That’s three times in this conversation. I’m not sure I can take another without screaming in horror. When he’s done with the laugh, he says, “I can already buy and sell you. What would I do with your piddling few thousand dollars? No, what I want is for you to help me make money.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Well, I know that you are looking for a famous picture by a Mr. Dürer, yes?”

  Like I said, there’s nothing in this town Sig Loreale doesn’t know.

  Giving me the full force of his will, he says, “When you find it, I want you to give it to me. I have plans for it. Profitable plans.”

  “Give it to you? If I want to make a charitable donation, Sig, I can always write a check to the War Widows and Orphans Relief. And besides, I can get good money elsewhere.”

  “I am not speaking of charity, Cantor. I am speaking of business. Consider it my fee for cleaning up the mess you’ve made—”

  “Hold it. I’m not the one who’s made the mess. There’s a killer on the loose, and a thief. It’s their mess I’m caught in.”

  That gets his attention. For the first time in this conversation, he looks at me like I might have a brain in my head. “You are telling me that you think the killer and the thief are two different people?” he says.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. I think Mrs. Jacobson was killed because the Dürer was already gone. And I think her brother was killed because he didn’t have it either, and the killer thought maybe Stern was falling in with me to find it.”

  Sig takes a deep pull on his cigar, lets the smoke out slowly, giving him time to sort out what I said.

  Mom, meantime, pours herself a glass of tea and cuts herself a slice of honey cake. The tap of the knife rouses Sig from his thoughts, irritating him. But when he realizes it’s Mom who’s disturbed his thinking, his attitude softens. The guy’s really mush in her hands. Sooner or later, Mom’s gonna play him again, just like she did last year in the hunt for her daughter’s killer. Just like she played me.

  Sig doesn’t bring his tender attitude with him when he turns his attention back to me. With me, he’s all hard business. “What about this fellow from Pauling-Barnett Mrs. Sheinbaum’s been looking into, this Max Hagen. You think he may have killed for the picture?”

  “He’s certainly cold enough,” I say. “And he’s supposedly good with a gun, at least, according to him. He’s on his way upstate to shoot a bunch of little animals this weekend.”

  “No, not animals. Birds. It is grouse-hunting season.”

  Well, well. Sig Loreale, gentleman sportsman. This jowly man with heavy shoulders and thick flesh must be quite a sight in tweeds. I wonder if he feels the same thrill hunting birds as he does hunting people.

  “Fine, have it your way,” I say, “birds. But I doubt Hagen killed Hannah Jacobson or Marcus Stern.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s possible the killer is a woman.”

  By the surprise on Sig’s face, you’d think I told him the killer was a kangaroo. Funny, a lot of people can’t imagine the fair sex as murderers. But I can run you a list a mile long of women who kill, from ancient queens who stabbed or poisoned their way to the throne, right up to a crafty dame who goes by the name of Miss Martha Beck, currently on death row for the brutal murders of a bunch of lonely women she and her boyfriend swindled. She did it for love, she said, and oh yeah, the women’s life insurance money.

  Mom, though, doesn’t look surprised at all. And soon, neither does Sig. Instead, his hard eyes register a memory, the memory of his beloved Opal’s death by the woman who was supposed to be her best friend.

  Sig’s figuring another angle, too, turning his cigar in his fingers while he thinks. He says, “Well then, what about this fancy curator you’ve been seen with? Is she a killer?”

  There it is, the question I’ve been tiptoeing around almost since this whole thing started, the question whose answer could eat me alive. Vivienne may be at the side of the road, but she’s not out of sight, the lust we shared certainly not out of mind. But the time’s come to face some truths about Vivienne, like the truth that she wants the Dürer, and the truth that there’s a crazy streak in her family, a madness she may have inherited from her mother, who’s currently marinating in a sanitarium. The murder of Hannah Jacobson was certainly an act of raging
madness. If Vivienne inherited her mother’s wild mind and the violence of the rough-and-tumble slum Trents, that combination could be lethal. And according to Hagen’s boy Vern, Vivienne is as good at those country sports as they are, a crack shot in her own right. And the last truth, about those warm feelings Vivienne said she had for Mrs. Jacobson: she should’ve been at her funeral, but wasn’t.

  Or was she? Not as a mourner, but as the mysterious woman in a black veiled hat who scared Marcus Stern out of his wits and later killed him.

  Mom’s voice cuts through my miserable musings. “Well, Cantor? Sig asked you a question. What about this woman, this—what’s her name? Park? Park something?”

  “Parkhurst Trent,” I say. “Vivienne Parkhurst Trent. A killer?” I don’t dare let on what I’ve been thinking about Vivienne. Sig might decide she’s good for the murders, guilty or not, just to get the heat off. He might hand her over to the cops, as a gift that will end their disruption of the rackets. Or maybe he’ll kill her himself just to get rid of the problem, save the cops the trouble of an arrest and trial. I’ve already done that dance of death with him, last year. I won’t do it again. So I just answer Sig’s question with, “I doubt it.”

  “What about the thief?” he says. “Any ideas?”

  “Not yet. I’d hoped Mom could come up with something. She has ways of hearing about any goods that move through town.”

  Sig asks, “Esther?”

  Mom gives him a shrug that wiggles those pink and green stripes of her housedress, a sight which could give the whole neighborhood a headache. “Nah. Except for this Hagen person’s interest,” she says, “I haven’t heard a word, not a whisper, except everyone telling me that this Hagen is a faygeleh with fancy tastes.”

  “So we are nowhere,” Sig says, articulating each word as if they smell bad.

  Resuming his habitual courtesy toward Mom, he says, “My dear Esther, Cantor is correct about your knowledge of goods moving through town. Please continue your efforts to track this Dürer picture. In the meantime, I will see what I can do to restrain the police. Cantor, I understand you have had difficulty with a Lieutenant Huber?”