Hot Poppies

by Reggie Nadelson

  We stopped at a café near the boardwalk and sat in the window. From the other tables came the chatter of Russian. Outside, a few passers-by cruised the boardwalk. I watched intently. I don’t know what I expected to find. Did I expect to see Mr Snap wander by, a Chinese girl in tow?

  Lily ate a bowl of borscht. Then she ordered cherry strudel.

  “Do you want to tell me what we’re doing here, Artie? It’s the thing with Hillel, isn’t it? It’s the dead woman from Hillel’s.” Lily was no dope.

  “You know me pretty well.” I lit a cigarette. “You know I hate this place. You must have known. I thought you were feeling better. You turn everything into some kind of mortal combat. This is who I am, OK? What is it with you?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask about my hormones?”

  “For God’s sake, give me some credit. When do I ever lay that kind of Mickey Mouse macho trip on you? When? I need you is all.”

  For a few seconds we were both silent, then Lily said softly, “Tell me how I can help you.”

  Lily helped. I showed her the photograph. We poked around Brighton Beach for a couple of hours, then she spotted the sign in the picture. The sign on the window was in Russian, but it had been partly rubbed out and replaced by a sign in Chinese. The woman inside didn’t know about any photographer. I leaned on her. It was getting cold. The sun was going down. A pair of old men passed, heading for synagogue. Friday night. Friday night! It gave me an idea, or maybe I just wanted to get out of Brighton Beach.

  “Let’s go home.”

  “Artie?”

  “What?”

  “Can I stay over at your place tomorrow night?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  The mugshot of Mr Snap was on my fax machine when I got home and I snatched it, took Lily home, and drove to the restaurant. All I needed was confirmation. All I needed was for Pansy to ID Mr Snap. My scalp tingled I was so close.

  In the restaurant, one table was occupied by customers scarfing up their food. At another Pansy sat reading a book. I pushed the mugshot across the table. “Is it him?”

  “It’s him. He takes the photographs.”

  “Mr Snap?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know his real name?”

  “Did you find him?” She was agitated. “Do you know who he is?”

  “I think so. Was he Rose’s special friend?”

  “I don’t know. Rose never told me. Will you arrest him? Soon?”

  “Yes. I swear to God. And if it’s him, if he’s Rose’s killer, you’ll be safe. He’ll be off the streets.”

  Pansy removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. I saw a mix of disbelief and hope in them. “Then hurry,” she said urgently. “Hurry.”

  I was back in Mike’s station wagon when the cellphone rang. The guy I know at Motor Vehicles was on the line. “I got a registration for you on the white Caddy.”

  “Go on.”

  “Do you know a guy name of, uh, Abramsky?”

  My stomach flipped over. “First name? Is there a first name?”

  “Yeah. Hillel. Something like that. Hope that helps, pal.”

  Christ, I thought. Jesus fucking Christ. If the car was registered in Hillel’s name, he knew. All along he knew. I spun the car towards Brooklyn. Hillel would be in synagogue on a Friday evening. Then I slammed on the brakes. I called Jerry Chen and told him where to meet me. I needed someone official. This time, I planned on doing more than breaking into a car.

  “Personally, I think it’s another fucking waste of time. Art, but I’m on your side so I’ll be there for you. Too right! I mean it’s my fucking case. Isn’t it?”

  The sun was almost gone. Most of the shops on 47th Street had already shut. Chen was waiting for me in front of Hillel Abramsky’s building and we went up the stairs. I banged on the door. Chen pulled off the remains of the yellow police tape and shouldered the door. He didn’t have to bother. All we found inside, in the dark, were two frightened men.

  Back against the wall, Hillel was smoking a cigarette. Near him, cowering on the cot, was the man Pansy had identified as Mr Snap, Hillel’s only brother, Sherm Abramsky. The floor was still stained with Rose’s blood.

  15

  It wasn’t Sherm or even the stained floor that shocked me most when I turned on the light in Hillel’s office. It was Hilly himself. The black clothes were gone, so was the beard. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans. He dealt with his grief by throwing away religious habits he loved. I realized he was a young, handsome man, but his face looked naked. I always wondered if there was anything that could make Hillel give up his faith; his own brother had finally done it. I never saw a sadder face.

  Chen put handcuffs on Sherm. Hillel stayed where he was, smoking.

  “You called me in because you hoped I’d find someone else to pin the murder on, didn’t you?”

  “No. Not at first. Not Monday morning when I called you. Monday night I found this.” He held out a camera. “That’s why I was running around Chinatown. But I still hoped. Forgive me, Artie. Forgive me.”

  “You found the camera here?”

  “No. In my house. He left this in my basement. He left the camera, he left dirty pictures. For my kids to find. For my kids!”

  While we talked, Chen kept Sherm at bay. I was beginning to acquire a little respect for Jerry Chen.

  “A car he uses is registered in your name, Hillel. Did you know that?”

  “I didn’t, God help me. I swear.”

  “How’d you know he would be here, at your office?”

  Hillel laughed despairingly. “I figured out he would come here to hide, it being Friday night and everything on 47th Street shut early. I got a call from a cop in Israel checking on Sherm, I knew you must be closing in. He assumed he was safe here. He depended on my faith for it.” Hillel raised his hands in sorrow. “My good faith.”

  Jerry Chen pulled me aside. “It’s getting late. I can give you ten, fifteen minutes, if you want. After that, he’s mine. OK?”

  “OK. And Jerry?”

  “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out in case we get any company.” Jerry turned to Sherm. “I’ll be listening, asshole, you understand? Then I’m taking you in.” Chen pulled a chair into the hall. He left the door ajar. Hillel remained standing.

  There was a stool and I put it near the cot so I could look Sherm in the face. He was a large flabby man with dark glasses and a Stetson on his head. I removed the glasses. His eyes welled up.

  “How about a cigarette?” he sniveled.

  “Then talk to me, putz. Talk to me.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. Artie, you got to believe me. For my brother’s sake.” He was shameless.

  “Why didn’t you kill Hillel while you were at it? Why didn’t you put a gun in his mouth instead of killing him slowly, like this? And the car, Sherm. Even that.”

  He wiped his mouth with his hand. “It was a joke.”

  “Shut up. You want to talk. Tell me about Mr Snap. How he made a living. Who paid him to take pictures. This picture, for instance.” I put the photograph of Rose and the white Caddy on the table. “Whose car is it? Who do you work for? What’s in Brighton Beach?”

  “It’s my car.”

  I got up.

  “Artie, don’t go. Can you get me something to eat? Huh, Artie? I’m hungry, man.”

  “Talk. Then you eat.”

  “It’s no big deal. I ran a little business. I offered a package deal. I could do some Polaroids. Plus a three-minute call home on the cellphone, if they wanted. For fifty bucks. I could also take portraits. I was good.” He glanced over his shoulder at his brother. “You think I’m just a fat scumbag that can’t do anything, don’t you?”

  To me he said, “Our father wouldn’t let me be a photographer. It wasn’t right, taking pictures of women, he said.”

  “You took some of these, too?” Jerry had given me the nudie shots from the lab. I tossed them on the cot nex
t to Sherm.

  “Some.” He barely glanced at them. “I smell pizza.” He looked at his hands, then at me. His eyes were round, damp and cunning.

  Sherm was always crap. But until now I’d have cast him as black comedy instead of criminal, a pimp at worst. Now I saw there was also something inhuman about him. The animal desire to feed himself, the brutal disengagement with everything except his own appetites, the self-obsession, they made me believe he could have killed Rose. I looked at the stained floor. His eyes followed mine but his were blank as holes. No one human lived there.

  “Tell me who really owns the white Cadillac.”

  “It’s mine.” The soft white face beckoned. I could happily sink my fist in it, I thought. I wouldn’t even bruise my fingers.

  “You never earned enough money to buy a car like that and you’re too stupid to steal one.”

  “Gimme a smoke.”

  “I have other things to do. I’m sure Detective Chen will be happy to talk to you instead.”

  “Wait.” The voice quavered.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “OK, I knew the dead girl.”

  I sat down again. “What was her name?”

  “She said her name was Rose. She was nice. I met a lot of nice girls.”

  “Whores?”

  “Rose wasn’t a whore. She wasn’t pretty enough.” For girls like Rose, ugly could be the same as dead.

  “You took pity on her, is that it, Sherm? You helped her out.”

  “Yeah. She was my friend. She was nice. I showed her a good time.”

  “In Brighton Beach?”

  “That’s right. What’s wrong with that? She liked the ocean.”

  I showed him Pansy’s picture. “Was she nicer than this one?”

  “They were friends, Rose and Pansy.”

  “Did Pansy know your name? Who you were?”

  “No. I saw her once when I took her picture. She was very stuck up. Not like the others,” Sherm went on. Hillel chainsmoked.

  I leaned into Sherm’s face. “Who owns the fucking car? Who set you up in business?”

  “One of the Chinese guys. He said I could use it if I gave him a percentage from the pictures. Also he wanted copies. He got me a fancy new camera.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know. Everything was done by beeper or fax, except once in a while the errand boy came and got pictures from me.”

  “The errand boy who tried to shake down your brother? A guy with a line in toilet paper? A guy with red hair and a quiff? Or a crewcut?”

  “I don’t know. Both.”

  “Both. Jesus, Sherm. I’m getting tired of this shit.”

  “Maybe he changes his hair style.”

  “The girls came to you?”

  “Sometimes. At first it was girls who wanted the pictures. To send home, you know? Then they started telling me to find this girl or that.”

  “They as in who? Give me names.”

  “I told you, some Chink guys. I don’t got names.”

  “Which was Rose?”

  “She was on a list. She owed money. It wasn’t fun any more. They were always on me. More pictures. It wasn’t fun after a while.”

  “By then you owed them money.” It was a stab in the dark.

  “Yeah. I borrowed.”

  “How did Rosie end up here in Hillel’s office?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then I can assume you brought her here and whacked her yourself.”

  “That’s not how it was.”

  Jerry Chen put his head through the door. “I got to take him in,” he said. “I’m calling for back-up, Artie. It’s time.”

  “Five minutes, Jerry. How the fuck was it, Sherm? How?”

  Hillel walked towards his brother and stood over him. Voice cold as ice, he said, “Tell him what happened. Or I will tell our father.”

  Sherm seemed to shrivel. His face caved in. His voice dropped. “A while back, four months, or five, I don’t remember, Rosie disappeared. Someone beat her up bad. I took care of her and . . .”

  “And? And fucking what, Sherm?”

  “There wasn’t a lot of nice places we could go, you know? I brought her here. Who would notice? I was Hillel’s brother.”

  “You brought her here to play hide the salami, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I didn’t kill her, I told you. We came here. It was Sunday night. We fooled around. I went to the toilet down the hall. Maybe I left the door to the office unlocked, I don’t remember. On my way back in here, I heard their voices, they were already in here, in this office, you understand? Maybe they followed her, or me. I owed them. She owed them.”

  “Is there another way out of this building?”

  Sherm nodded. “I got scared, Artie. I just got scared.”

  “So you left her alone with them and they ripped up her face, strangled her and stuck a knife in her gut. You ran and Rose died.”

  It didn’t take Sherm long to figure it: better to admit he abandoned his girlfriend to some goons than he killed her himself.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s how it was. Can I eat now?”

  Without looking at his brother, Hillel crept out of the room.

  “You knew your Rosie was pregnant.”

  He was silent.

  “Do you think it was your kid? You’ll never know if that was your baby all over this floor, will you?” I was ready to get the hell out. I had one more question. “How did you get your brother’s keys?”

  A smile flickered around Sherm’s mouth. “Hillel gave them to me. My brother gave me his keys.”

  “I wish my brother was dead, you know. It would be better if my brother was dead like the girl he killed,” Hillel said. “I don’t know if he left her to die like he said or cut her up himself, but he killed her. Also the baby. Any distinction is splitting hairs.”

  We were at a pizza parlor near Hillel’s. A cold pie sat on the table between us. A cup of black coffee was in front of Hillel, a beer bottle in his hand.

  “Look, I have to ask. I didn’t say anything to Chen before he took Sherm downtown, but I need to know.”

  “He told you I gave him the keys?”

  “Yes.”

  “I gave him the keys.” Hillel finished the beer, then leaned forward on the table and picked up the glass jar of red pepper flakes. He poured some in his palm and looked at them as if they were tea leaves and he could read them. Then he tasted his hand. “So many things I never tried,” he said, and I thought he might be cracking up.

  “I gave him the keys, Artie, because my little girl was sick. Sarah was sick and Judith had to go to her mother’s because she also had the flu bad. I was home alone with the children. I left Sarah’s medicine in the office. All the sickness, I was distracted. It was late. Sherm came by, he wanted a handout, as usual, so I said, ‘Do something useful for a change.’ I gave him the keys. He must have made copies somewhere, because it took him a while. The only time in my life.” Hillel lit one cigarette with the butt of the other.

  “Take it easy, Hil.”

  “In this way, with the keys, it was me also that killed her.” He smashed his hand on his face. “I can never go home.”

  I took Hillel home with me. The tape on my answering machine had been consumed by Dawn’s fury. She had discovered the locks on Ricky’s apartment had been changed. I jammed my finger on the stop button as the tape screeched to an end. She didn’t leave a number. She wasn’t in Riverdale. I didn’t know where she was.

  On the beanbag chair in the corner, Hillel sat, staring out the window at the dirty snow. I poured him a shot of Scotch and told him to call Judith. He wasn’t ready, he said. I called her and said Hillel was with me.

  He tossed the Scotch back, then held out the glass for more.

  “Do you think your brother is a killer? That he was there when they did it? That he could stick a knife in that girl?”

  “I don’t know what he is. Yes, I believe it. My G
od, Artie. What kind of country are we living in?”

  “America good,” was the first thing Pansy’s friend said when she introduced us in the kitchen of his restaurant. His name was Albert Huang, he said. Face dripping steam, he was standing over his stove. Deftly, he chopped vegetables and dropped them into the wok where they hissed. He was a handsome man, still young, but losing his hair. Wiping his hand on his apron, he held it out to me. “Everyone calls me Al,” he said and pumped my hand.

  “I’ve got him. We picked up Mr Snap.”

  Pansy smiled and went on washing glasses.

  “You like Fujianese food?” Al asked. I nodded. “Please, go sit down.”

  Out front, I sat at a table. It was very late and, except for one delivery guy, the place was empty. Al appeared with two plates, followed by Pansy with two more. There were spicy lobster chunks in their shell, squishy rice cakes, liver and two mussels, each one the size of an egg. Then Al produced beer, poured it into three plastic cups and raised one of them to me.

  “Cops good here. Not corrupt. In China, cops corrupt. Everything corrupt. No work, either. If work in China, no one come.” He sipped some beer and served me more lobster. Shyly, he showed me pictures of his kids.

  Then Pansy got up. “I have to go to work now.”

  “At this hour?”

  “I have another job also.” She was evasive.

  “Jerry Chen is going to lean on you to testify.”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  “I really want to help,” I said.

  Pansy took her down vest off the back of the chair and pulled it on. “I don’t know how he keeps going.” She indicated Al. “He’s seen his community destroyed by kidnapping, murder, extortion, he hears how the Fujianese are all gangsters. But he works all day and night, he keeps his word, he watches over his children. He cooks, he smiles,” she said.

  “You know, I thought I was smarter. I thought I was different from the others. Better. I thought I could come to New York and earn some money and buy a Green Card. I would have a proper job. I was very arrogant.” As she opened the door to go, she tilted her head sadly. “I thought I would become an American.”

  All the desire to be someone else, someone new, all the longing to dump a past and adopt New York. America good. The Golden Mountain. Suddenly I knew why Pansy got under my skin: she reminded me of myself. She reminded me of myself twenty years earlier and dying to belong.