by Ann Aptaker
Before I have a chance to answer, he gets rid of the subject as efficiently as he gets rid of a corpse and brings everything back to business. “Listen, you will find out who killed Opal. You will do this job for me, Cantor.”
If I keep saying no, he’ll only press me harder. But I can’t say yes, I don’t dare just say yes. “What’s in it for me?”
“You know I always pay my debts. Listen, you will start on this right away. Opal’s mother is waiting to talk to you. She can help you. She wants to help you. She trusts you, Cantor.”
“Trusts me? She doesn’t even know me.”
“Yes, she does, and you know her, too, only you never knew her whole story. The old lady is very good at keeping secrets, let me tell you. You know what? Even I never knew she was Opal’s mother until we decided to get married. Cantor, Opal’s mother is Esther Sheinbaum.”
I almost swallow my cigarette, and if I did the burn in my gullet wouldn’t jolt me as much as what Sig just said. Esther “Mom” Sheinbaum: for over fifty years the most successful fence in New York.
When I was a kid, Mom was one of the peddlers of secondhand goods who bought my Coney Island loot. She took a liking to me, called me her little American savage. Later on, when I was in my teens, she taught me the fine points of the treasure racket, told me to get educated about the authentic stuff, the real McCoy items that the big shots pay fistfuls of cash for. But she kept her private life to herself. I knew she had a husband—Isaac Sheinbaum, the guy died years ago—but I had no idea she had any kids. I wonder if Opal’s the only one.
So, Sheinbaum to Shaw—Opal’s grab for the American Dream. Well, we all have our ways.
“Mrs. Sheinbaum is waiting for you, Cantor.”
I can’t tell if the night air is getting colder or if this dance of death I’m being invited to join with Sig and Mom and Opal is what’s chilling me through to the bone. Either way, I pull up the collar of my overcoat, try to find refuge inside my clothes again. “What’s the deal if I fail, Sig?”
“You will not fail. Good night, Cantor.” He lights another cigar. The flame illuminates his eyes again, more tired and more bloodshot now, red as Satan’s. He turns around toward the lights of Broadway. The conversation’s over.
There’s nothing I can do except walk back along the terrace to the living room. The walk feels like a forced march into a nightmare.
The smell of all those flowers almost smothers me when I step inside. The aroma cloys now, the way joy and sadness cloy when they start to rot. Joy, sadness, and the memory of Opal Shaw all hang in this room, rotting together.
*
The ride down in the elevator feels claustrophobic, my world wrapping around me too tight, releasing chaos in my brain. I’ve got to put some sense back into things.
Mom Sheinbaum is a sensible woman. I’ve got to make her see how crazy Sig’s idea is. He obviously respects her, he’ll listen to her. That’s the line I’ve got to follow.
Boy, do I need that drink. And I want my gun back from Pep Green. Maybe I’ll use the gun to shoot Green, get rid of one murderer in the world. Then maybe I’ll go back upstairs and shoot Sig. I’d do it if I thought I could get out of this lousy squeeze. But all I’d get is dead. Sig’s goons would track me down, scatter my hacked-up remains from here to Canarsie. Then they’d kill Rosie, too, for insurance. She deserves better than that from me.
Pep’s standing near the door to the street when I walk out of the elevator. He’s smiling that too friendly salesman’s smile.
“My gun, Green,” I say. My words echo around the lobby.
“As soon as we’re outside,” he says, giving me his grin. He even opens the door, ushers me through to the street.
I’m anxious to get back into Rosie’s cab. I hear the purr of its engine. I bet Rosie’s kept it idling all this time, ready for a fast break the minute my foot’s in the door. “Okay, Pep, we’re outside,” I say. “Hand it over.”
“What’s your hurry?”
But I’m not looking at Pep Green. I’m looking at a guy in a black coat and gray fedora suddenly sitting up in the backseat of Rosie’s cab, the barrel of the gun in his hand moving to the back of Rosie’s head.
I know I’m running to the curb, stretching myself forward, the soles of my shoes coming down hard on the pavement, but time itself seems to be made of goo that slows me to a crawl even as I hear the squeal of tires, see the cab pull away from the curb and disappear down Fortieth Street. Rosie’s gone.
I barely hear Pep say, “You can have your gun now, Cantor,” but when he slaps my .38 into my hand, I snap back to the here and now.
I grab the lapel of his jacket, pull it so hard I nearly rip the seams. “What’s going on, Green? She’s not involved in anything!”
Pep’s doing his best to pull my hand from his lapel. He’s angry because he can’t pry me off and he doesn’t understand why he can’t, why a tough guy like him can’t overpower a dame, even a dame like me. He doesn’t get it that my rage is stronger than his biceps.
He squeals like a scared pig. “Loreale phoned down, says to tell you that you’ll see your cabbie again after you’ve completed his business. For cryin’ out loud, Cantor, get off me! Just do what Loreale says, okay? Have a heart, will ya? The guy just lost his chippie!”
Chippie? I feel my mouth move, feel my lips and tongue say, “Shut up, Green,” but I don’t hear those words in my head. I hear Loreale saying, You will do this job for me, Cantor.
Chapter Six
I run up the stoop of Mom’s Second Avenue brownstone two steps at a time, then press my finger against the doorbell, press hard again and again, impatient for her to answer the goddamn door. The doorbell isn’t getting me anywhere, so I quit its irritatingly cheery ding-dong and pound on the door instead. I don’t care if it’s almost two in the morning. I don’t care if the old lady’s gathered up her sorrow and taken it to bed. My rage against Loreale and fear for Rosie’s life rush through my arm and push into my fist until my hand opens into a hard and insistent slap against the front door.
The door finally opens, but I’m stopped cold by the unexpected presence of a pasty-faced kid in a blue uniform standing in the doorway. A cop. A young cop I don’t recognize. A rookie by the look of him, peach faced and jittery.
I’ve been so tied up worrying about Rosie and trying to figure what to do about Sig that I forgot to figure the cops into the picture. And now it sticks in my craw that the cops knew to come here, they knew but I didn’t that Opal Shaw is connected to Mom Sheinbaum.
I wonder how the hell they found out. Cops have been buzzing like gnats around Mom for years, but they’ve never been able to get a bite, never been able to penetrate her inner circle or catch her fencing goods. She’s too clever, and she has friends and customers in very high places. Since the days when electric streetcars and crank-start autos terrified the last of the city’s horse-and-carriage trade, some of the highest hats in New York have made their way to the parlor of Mom’s brownstone for a cup of tea, a piece of honey cake, and to buy a diamond bracelet or some other jeweled trinket as a discreetly purchased present for the gent’s wife as an apology for having a mistress, or for the mistress as an apology for having a wife. These well-connected gentlemen—and now their sons—have been more than happy to swat away any nosy officers of the Law who ask questions about Mom Sheinbaum’s doings. So if the cops think Mom’s grief will weaken her play tonight, they are badly mistaken.
The rookie looks me over. The lad’s peachy cheeks turn red and his pale eyebrows rise almost into the brim of his cap. I guess his studies at the Police Academy didn’t cover the likes of me. He stammers, “Um, what’s…what’s your business here?”
“I’m paying a condolence call.”
“You sayin’ you’re family?”
In this house I’m family, ever since I was a kid and Mom used to pinch my cheek and give me honey cake. Eat, she’d say, you shouldn’t be so skinny, and give me a smile as sweet as a Mother’s Day card.
>
So I give the rookie the song and dance that’ll get me past him. “You think a stranger would pay a condolence call in the middle of the night, kid? Listen, in the end you can only rely on family. So thanks for asking, and keep up the good work of keeping the riffraff out.” I walk by him into the vestibule before he has a chance to think things over.
The aroma of honey cake welcomes me into the house, rouses memories of afternoons at the dining room table, my Coney Island loot laid out on a piece of black velvet spread across the lace tablecloth. Mom would look over my goods, separate the good stuff from the junk, then we’d talk price, and Mom would seal the deal by pouring tea from a pink floral teapot and slice us each a slab of warm cake from the loaf on a silver tray.
My nostalgia’s invaded by a wrong note, a man’s raspy, insistent voice drifting from the dining room. The voice belongs to a plainclothes cop who doesn’t see or hear me when I walk in, my footsteps silenced by the thick Chinese silk carpet.
The dining room’s a cozy, old-fashioned place where amber light through silk lampshades mingles with shadows tinted a rich brown by fussy mahogany furniture polished to a luster. The room’s looked like this as long as I can remember. The only addition is the cop, a stick of a guy whose brown fedora is grease stained at the pinches, his brown overcoat hanging on him like dead leaves. He’s eating a slice of honey cake, his hat pushed back on his long, skinny head as he looks down at Mom through hooded eyes that long ago stopped believing anything anyone told him. His sharp cheekbones and long nose keep bobbing in and out of a shadow while he eats the cake, pushing forkfuls into his mouth between his questions. “So, why was your daughter on the bridge at that hour?” And, “C’mon, Mrs. Sheinbaum, was she on her way to do business for you?” Another piece of cake goes into his mouth, then, “Or for Sig Loreale?” His fork scrapes the plate. My teeth grind.
Mom’s sitting at the dining table, silent, stout, immobile in a frilly black lace robe, her fleshy body as upright as a national monument. Her wavy silver hair catches the room’s soft patina, creates a lustrous aura of grandeur around her broad, wrinkled face.
The cop keeps grilling her. “Why the hell does everyone call you Mom when no one even knew you had a kid?” But he’s not getting anywhere. He’s no match for her. And I certainly won’t do him the honor of letting him in on the story of how Mom got her nickname, which—except for me—has nothing to do with motherly affection but was a corruption of ma’am by her original gang, a bunch of lantzmen immigrant toughs who mangled English.
When the cop doesn’t get an answer, he slams his plate and fork onto the dining table. “Wise up, Mrs. Sheinbaum! Your daughter’s dive from the bridge is police business, which makes you police business. How long do you think you can stonewall us?” The guy’s an ignoramus who can’t see what’s inside the stare coming at him from Mom’s small green eyes. But I can see she’s marshaling every ounce of her strength to hold back tears. Mom Sheinbaum has never—will never—let a cop see her cry, not even tonight, when she’s grieving.
I say, “Hey, watch your tone there, bucko. The woman’s just lost her daughter. Show a little respect. Or isn’t that written into the police manual?”
The guy turns his bony face to me. There’s no humanity in that face, just the dry stare of a career cop whose emotions have been pummeled to dust. “And who are you?”
“Cantor Gold.”
“Well now, how about that. So you’re the character whose boat caught the Shaw dame. I got the report from Feek over in Harbor Division. He says we should keep an eye on you.” He gives me the once-over, takes a good look at my getup from my cap to my shoes. It’s clear he’s annoyed by what he sees, but I can’t tell if he’s annoyed because my suit and overcoat are better tailored than his or because I’m dressed this way in the first place. His annoyance curls into a sneer, the cop sneer, the kind I saw that night in the city lockup, the kind I got tonight from Feek. I’m beginning to wonder if all cops have dirty minds. If people could get arrested for what they’re thinking, the whole damn police force might wind up in jail. Fine by me.
Mom turns to me now, too. The grief in her eyes is so bleak it could snuff out the light in the room. She extends her arm, a silent request for me to take her hand. When I do, she’s able to face the cop again despite the misery eating through every wrinkle on her old face.
I say to the cop, “You have a name, Detective?”
“Huber, Lieutenant Huber.”
“What’s the Law’s interest in Mrs. Sheinbaum, Lieutenant Huber? Can’t you let her grieve in peace?”
“Funny you should ask,” he says, without any humor at all. “The woman has been holding the best kept secret in town—that Opal Shaw, sweetheart of Sig Loreale, was her kid—and then whaddya know: the girl takes a dive just as you show up on the river. Now here you are again, showing up on the mother’s doorstep. Is this just a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence or are you simply a pest, Gold?”
“It couldn’t have been such a hot secret if the cops knew Miss Shaw was Mrs. Sheinbaum’s daughter,” I say, playing Huber to take the bait.
“Oh, the old lady can keep a secret, all right. We didn’t know she was Shaw’s momma until the coroner was strong-armed by Mrs. Sheinbaum’s friends at City Hall to release the girl’s body to Gottlieb’s Funeral Parlor over on Delancey. When we staked out the funeral parlor, who shows up but New York’s most famous mover of stolen goods, Esther Mom Sheinbaum.”
“But why are you grilling Mrs. Sheinbaum like she’s a suspect, Huber? Or is that the way you generally talk to grieving mothers?”
Huber gives me a smirk so sour I can almost smell it. He says, “I talk to you bums like the lowlifes you are, grieving or not. And I have my doubts that criminals even bother to grieve, anyway. You need a conscience for that. Ever grieve for anyone, Gold? Do you feel it like regular people?”
My right hand’s twitching inside Mom’s, ready to slip from her grip and put my knuckles into Huber’s face. The pleasure of blackening his eyes and bloodying his mouth would be worth whatever crap I’d have to endure in the city lockup. But Mom’s hold on my hand tightens. The wisdom conveyed in her grip calms me down.
I say, “Why don’t you leave us alone, Lieutenant, so I can help Mrs. Sheinbaum arrange for her daughter’s funeral. Show a little heart, if you’ve got one left.”
The nastiness in those hooded eyes boils up from where Huber’s soul might’ve been before it rotted away. “Go ahead,” he says, “plan your funeral.” He can’t resist sneering at me again as he walks out of the dining room, passing so close to me his bared teeth nearly scrape my face.
Mom and I don’t move a muscle until we hear Huber say to the rookie, “We’re finished here,” followed by the slam of the front door.
Mom takes both my hands between hers. She lowers her head, her silver hair tumbles forward, her shoulders fall slowly as if she’s exhaling a lifetime’s worth of breath. A thin wail seeps out of her.
She’s still holding my hands when I sit down at the table, but I slip my left hand away to stroke her cheek. The muscles in her face feel loose, exhausted, her flesh clammy and limp. But its Mom’s tears sliding down her cheek and seeping between my fingers that get me, warning me of her breaking spirit.
“Cantor…” She struggles to raise her head. “Cantor, how could this happen? Tell me.” Mom’s singsong English of the old-time Lower East Side is the music of heartbreak, every word a note from an aching soul. “My Opal was…so…so full of life. And she grew up so beautiful. And smart! She was so smart! She had the high life of New York at her feet. She—” Making a fist of her right hand, Mom presses it between her teeth to stop from choking on her despair.
I’m scared she’ll bite down so hard she’ll make her knuckles bleed, so I try to take her fist from her mouth. She fights me, but I hold on until she finally lets go. “Cantor,” she says between sobs as heavy as boulders, “Opal was my precious girl.”
“I never knew you even had a daughter, Mo
m. I never saw her around the house. Where was she? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“What, so she could be a target for the cops, those Cossacks? Harassing a little girl just so they could get to me? Or maybe she’d be picked off by one of my bloodthirsty competitors so I’d give up my business? No, we wanted Opal safe, we wanted her to get an education, so we sent her away to a fancy school upstate. A first-rate establishment. My sister and her husband looked in on her. They have a place a few towns over, in Kerhonkson. They moved up there to open a little tourist business in the mountains, Blick’s Cottages. A kochalain. You know such places?”
“Sure. One of those cheap vacation joints where guests cook their own meals in the hotel’s kitchen.”
“Yop, that’s it. My sister Ida looked in on Opal while she was at that fancy-shmancy school. We had to enroll her as Opal Shaw. Somethin’, huh, this country? A child grows up with a name that’s not hers just so she can get ahead in life.” Mom punctuates her resentment of this arrangement by yanking her hands from mine and wiping her tears with her knuckles, digging deep.
I take my cap off, start to put it on the table, but remember Mom never allows anyone the bad manners of putting a hat on the dining table, not even the mayor. I shove my cap into my coat pocket.
Mom takes a handkerchief from a pocket of her robe, wipes her eyes, then winces when she looks at me. “That hair of yours,” she says. “Like an old broom. You’re still a savage, Cantor, an American-born savage. Even Isaac thought so. My Isaac,” she sighs, looking idly at the hankie. “He died of the pneumonia when Opal was maybe nine years old, away at school already. You were a kid yourself, a teenager. Thank God Isaac didn’t live to see this night. He only wanted Opal should grow up and be happy!”