Israel

by Fred Lawrence Feldman

  “And you did?” When Becky nodded, he winced. “That was a terrible mistake.”

  “No,” she insisted, “really, it wasn’t. You’ve got the wrong idea about my father. That night he comforted me, and when we got back together he said nothing at all about it to me. He is not the type to hold you accountable for your father’s—” she hesitated.

  “My father’s what?” he demanded sharply. He scowled up at the rainy night sky. “Come on, it’s getting cold.”

  “Want your jacket back?”

  “No. And stop pouting.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said reproachfully.

  “I know.” He shivered. “Let’s get to the car.”

  “Then stop acting like there’s been some kind of tragedy,” she scolded, standing right where she was.

  “We can talk about it in the car, in private. Not out here on the sidewalk, for crissakes.”

  Something’s very wrong, her intuition told her. Suddenly she was very sorry indeed that she had brought up the whole topic, but now she had to follow it through to the end. “Benny? It’s not like you don’t already know my father. I’m really confused, Benny. It’s not like you to act so . . . well, frightened!”

  “It’s a mess, honey,” he said listlessly.

  “Why can’t you look at me?”

  He turned and squarely confronted her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “All right. You’re gonna find out real soon anyway. I don’t know why you haven’t already. Oh, God, Becky, I do love you. It’s a goddamn shame—”

  “Benny, what?” Becky stared at him. “You’re scaring the hell out of—”

  “I’m engaged, Becky.”

  The rain tapered off to a light mist and the people who’d been bunched up under the awnings began brushing past as Becky stood paralyzed with shock. “A joke, right?” she smiled tentatively, ready to laugh. All around her Times Square was vibrant with life and color, the people and the hum and purr of the cars cruising along the drenched asphalt. A score of thousand-bulbed theater marquees cast glistening reflections on the wet sidewalks, while swirling nimbuses wreathed the traffic lights.

  “I was engaged the day I laid eyes on you.”

  “You bastard.”

  “The wedding is June sixteenth, in five weeks.”

  “You bastard!” Becky cried, twisting free of his grasp. She ran as fast as she could, bumping into people and not caring, until she reached the end of the block. At the curb she hesitated and hated herself for doing it, even as she looked back at him over her shoulder.

  Benny’s rain-soaked shirt clung to his torso. His curly black hair was plastered to his scalp. He was standing just where she’d left him.

  He’s not going to chase me, she realized. Engaged all this time—She wanted to weep, to clutch at her belly and double over from heartache.

  A yellow Checker taxi, turned the corner and slowed. The driver stretched across his front seat to roll down the window and peer out at her. “You okay, miss? Need a cab?”

  Becky nodded and got in.

  * * *

  Abe Herodetzky and his son Daniel were in the parlor, reading and listening to the radio when Becky got home. Seated in his armchair in a pool of lamplight, Abe looked up from his newspaper as he heard his daughter’s tread on the stairs. He folded away the news of the Nazi blitzkriegs and of the exasperating bellicosity of the Japanese in the Pacific. Becky looked exceedingly bedraggled as she came in carrying her purse and a man’s damp, wrinkled grey tweed herringbone jacket. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face was more streaked with tears than rain.

  “You were with Ben Talkin this evening?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Abe eyed her. “I gather that you quarreled?”

  Becky hurried across the parlor toward her bedroom. “It’s too terrible to talk about.”

  “I gather that he told you about his commitment.”

  Becky froze and stared incredulously at her father, then crumpled into a straightbacked chair. “You knew?” she gasped. “You knew and didn’t tell me?”

  “What’s goin’ on?” Danny demanded from his place on the sofa. “Hey, Becky, that’s a sharp jacket.” His voice was changing and every sentence ran the octaves from reed-thin tenor to a bulldog’s husky growl. “Where’d you get it, sis? Can I have it?”

  “Never fit you, shrimp.”

  “Hey! Anyhow, I could grow into it,” he suggested hopefully. “I’m not gonna be a shrimp forever, I hope.”

  “Danny, I want to talk to your sister,” Abe interrupted. “Go for a walk, all right?”

  “Pop, it’s late, and raining to boot.”

  “Then go downstairs and take inventory.”

  “Of what?”

  “Danny—”

  “I’m goin’.” He got up, tucking Tailspin Tommy under his arm. “I’ll read downstairs.”

  “He calls those funny books reading,” Abe grumbled after Danny left. He took his son’s place on the sofa. “He’s almost fourteen and still he’s with those funny books. He got his report card today. All failures he got, except for two A’s, in you know what? Machine shop and woodworking.”

  “He’s who he is,” Becky said, “and he’s a good boy.”

  “Yeah,” Abe admitted, “but now I’m worried more about my good girl.” He patted the sofa cushion beside him. “Come, talk to me.”

  “I’m too angry—with Benny and now with you.” She sat beside him anyway. “How did you know about his being engaged and why didn’t you tell me?”

  Abe put his arm around her. “I didn’t know until two days ago, when I went to see Stefano—”

  “You went to de Fazio, Father? Why?”

  “Stop asking so many questions and let me tell you. It’s not easy for me. New Year’s Eve, when you were so unhappy and confessed to me that you’d been seeing Ben Talkin but thought it was over, I was sympathetic, but secretly I thanked God he’d given you up. His father was a gangster, and the son is no better, you can believe me.”

  “That’s not true. I don’t care who Benny’s father was. It’s Benny I love—” She paused, embarrassed. “Anyway, how he’s treated me is terrible, but that doesn’t make him a gangster. He’s in the trucking business—”

  “Bah! He delivers from racketeers to other racketeers—”

  “He delivers to you.”

  Abe shrugged. “Baked goods, meat and produce his trucks bring me.” He smiled at Becky. “That’s legitimate. Even a gangster has some business that’s not crooked, I guess.”

  “What I can’t understand is why Benny came to see you,” Becky mused. “It’s the wholesalers who contract with a trucking concern to make their deliveries to their customers, not the other way around.”

  “I never met Ben Talkin,” Abe hotly declared.

  “Benny said that you did.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m certain, Father,” Becky replied, bewildered by his vehemence. “He said you two did business together, and more than once as I recall.”

  Abe scowled. “Oh, yes, of course,” he blurted, brightening. “Yes, that’s true, we did—but just a few times.”

  “What about?”

  “It’s not important,” Abe said. “When you got back together after New Year’s, I was upset, but I didn’t say anything. It took you so long to tell me about him, I figured that if I nagged you you’d never tell me anything again.”

  “I’d still tell you everything.” Becky kissed his cheek. “I would have told you about Benny sooner, but he didn’t want me to—”

  “Yeah. So I kept my mouth shut and hoped that your feelings toward him would cool. Finally I couldn’t stand it. I was afraid that—well, I had a father’s fears about his daughter in the hands of a—a sharpie.” Abe blushed. “Let’s leave it at that. So a couple of days ago I went to see Stefano at his office.”

  “Why him? What does he have to do with anything?”

  Abe waved that aside. “Stefano is powerf
ul, and a powerful man can have to do with what he wants. Besides, once he was a trusted friend. I was going to appeal to him to protect my daughter.”

  “Oh, Father . . .” Becky, her head resting on Abe’s shoulder, began to weep. “I love him so much, and now he’s gone forever.”

  “You’ll get over this.”

  “I don’t want to,” she sobbed. “I don’t want my life to go back to the way it was before I met him.” She pushed away from Abe. “Father, look at me,” she commanded, wiping her eyes. “I’m begging you. Sell the store.”

  “What?” Abe nervously laughed.

  “I can’t spend my life here, Father.”

  “Becky, please,” he snapped, “we’ve been over this too many times, and tonight you’re hysterical. Get some sleep.”

  “Just sell it, Father,” she persisted. “Find somebody to take it over. With the money they’d pay you and the rents you collect we’d be fine—”

  “I can’t sell.”

  “Why not?” she cried in frustration. “It’s yours, after all. Father, listen, I’m doing so well at Malden’s, really I am. They want me full time”

  “Out of the question. Danny’s no good as it is.”

  “They want me to train as an assistant supervisor. We’d probably end up with more cash in our pockets—”

  “I don’t care about the money. Tell them you can’t do it.”

  “I’m warning you, Father,” Becky said evenly.

  Abe glowered. “This is how you talk to your father? Thank God your mother can’t hear you—”

  Becky sagged. “I guess I am pretty tired. I’m going to bed now.”

  “That’s a good girl.” Abe knew a surrender when he heard it.

  Becky trudged toward her bedroom, still clutching the jacket. She reminded Abe of the days following his wife’s death, when Becky, still a chubby little girl, took to dragging around a tattered scrap of blanket for comfort and security.

  At her door she held the jacket aloft for Abe to see. “I was going to throw it in the gutter, and then I was going to leave it in the cab. I checked the pockets. No wallet or keys. Just a solid gold cigarette lighter.” She laughed wearily. “But each time I got ready to throw it away, I found myself thinking, such a waste, a nice jacket like this. That’s what you would think, yes, Father?”

  “Becky, I love you very much.”

  “I know you do,” she sighed, “but you don’t know what’s best for me. Only I know that. Good night.”

  The door closed. Abe sat, his mind a blank, his brain and emotions exhausted by the strain of telling lies to his daughter. He could not bear to have sweet Becky know the extent of her father’s involvement with Ben Talkin nor the fact that the store and the building that housed it belonged not to him but to Stefano de Fazio. Becky had grown up thinking her father owned property. Always it had been later, when she was older and could understand, that Abe was going to tell her the truth, and now it was too late. Abe could never tell her without looking like a liar as well as a failure.

  And so I am Stefano de Fazio’s dog, Abe brooded. I am his pet, and well provided for, but I must do as he tells me or else lose my business and my home.

  Six months after Leah’s death Stefano’s attorney had come around with papers for Abe to sign. Ownership of the Cherry Street building was transferred to Stefano’s business associate Antonio Bucci. Occasionally sums of money were “invested in improvements” to the Cherry Street property. The cash was delivered to Abe and it was his job to pay out specified sums to the various contractors who came by the store. In exchange for this service and for continuing as landlord, collecting rents and watching over the building, he continued to pay no rent for his store or apartment.

  Becky, wrapped in her robe, returned to the parlor. “One thing I forgot to ask. How did Stefano know Benny was engaged?”

  Abe couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “He’s promised to Stefano’s youngest daughter.”

  Chapter 33

  Brooklyn

  Benny Talkin punished the Cadillac on the way out to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. By driving hard he hoped to work some of the anger out of his system. He chafed at the way he’d been summarily summoned to the home of the de Fazios.

  He received the note from Stefano the morning after his disastrous blow-up with Becky. Abe had evidently gone to Stefano some time ago, and that visit had resulted in the note that “strongly suggested” that Benny come to Sheepshead Bay this Saturday afternoon to discuss his “serious breach of faith.”

  Benny savagely pounded the horn as he passed a battered Plymouth Road King, almost forcing it onto the shoulder. The driver swore at him, and Benny had a fleeting but intensely vivid image of pounding the offending driver’s head against the dented, rusted fender of his crummy Plymouth.

  Benny had waited twice for Becky at Malden’s, hoping for a chance to apologize, to confess how the thought of never seeing her again made him yearn for her.

  On both occasions Becky had either stayed late in the store or left by some other entrance. He could have seen her easily enough at home, but Benny had no stomach for that.

  Unfortunately, this afternoon it was he who would be cornered. Benny frowned as he drove past the piers lining Gravesend Bay. How it galled to be lectured to about matters of honor and morality by someone like Stefano de Fazio.

  And to make matters worse, I deserve it, Benny told himself. The fact that he loved Becky counted for nothing when his own self-interest had kept him from breaking off with Dolores de Fazio.

  He’d met Dolores eighteen months before at one of her father’s parties. She was in her early twenties, a lanky brunette wtih alluring blue eyes and a tomboyish way. She still lived at home. Benny asked her out a couple of times, but there were no sparks and the relationship languished.

  Then there was another party, which led to a dinner date in Manhattan, which led to Dolores’ long colt’s legs wrapped around Benny’s hips as they rutted on his double bed. He had not been the first, Dolores informed him as she reapplied lipstick to her wide, sensual mouth. She’d run with a succession of willing males from the time she was fifteen. Her father knew about none of them, of course.

  Benny was a good lover, Dolores informed him. If he was willing, they could get together on a regular basis. Benny needn’t fear getting involved too deeply with her, Dolores assured him. After all, he was Jewish.

  Benny began calling for her at Sheepshead Bay on a regular basis. He took her to dinner the first few times, but when Dolores confessed that it made no difference to her, they soon dispensed with the restaurant and went directly from Brooklyn to Benny’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

  She was a sophisticated woman with a quick sense of humor, easy to like, and at some point, mixed in with the laughs, the champagne and the silken texture of her thighs as they tussled on the double bed, Benny decided he loved her. Dolores admitted that she’d begun to feel the same way about him.

  Of course that was before he met Becky, before he learned what love could be. He felt more passion holding Becky’s hand than he ever had in bed with Dolores.

  But eight months ago, when Stefano de Fazio asked Benny to come into his study for a little talk while he waited for Dolores to finish primping upstairs, Rebecca Herodetzky was just some girl from around the old neighborhood.

  “Look, I ain’t gonna beat around the bush with you,” Stefano began as he moved to pour Benny a Scotch. The Italian was wearing shabby work pants and a cardigan sweater with a hole in one elbow. The old clothes, combined with his thick grey hair, mustache and accent, made him seem totally out of place in the ostentatious luxury of his home. “This kind of thing ain’t easy for a father, but on the other hand, I kinda like the fact that she came to me in the first place.”

  “What’s this about, Stefano?”

  “Hah! And me saying I wasn’t gonna beat around the bush, right?” de Fazio laughed. “Well, Dolores has told me how fond of each other you two are. I think my
daughter has her sights set on you, Benny. I think she wants to marry you.”

  “Dolores told you that?” Benny asked in disbelief.

  “Hold on. She don’t know about this conversation,” Stefano warned. “She’d be furious with me if she ever found out about it. All I’m saying is that if you asked her, she’d say yes, okay? And if you’re the man to make my daughter happy, well . . . I’m not one to let religion mess things up. Get me?”

  After the initial shock of Stefano’s suggestion had worn off, Benny did understand. Like any father, Stefano was anxious to see his daughter happy, but it was Benny’s trucking business that had prompted Stefano’s suggestion.

  All Benny told Becky about his father was true, but he’d left some gaping holes.

  For instance, the friends who set Mendy Talkin up with his profitable delivery routes were Benjamin Siegel and Meyer Lansky. In those days there was plenty of territory, and these same men, along with some others, felt sanguine enough about the future to form a crime confederation or syndicate, that alloted each boss his own territory. The Jews were given the job of enforcing the peace, and to do it they formed Murder, Inc.

  That was during the thirties. To Lansky, Benny Talkin had always seemed like a good kid. While Benny’s father was ailing, young Benny moved to curry favor with Lansky. When Mendy Talkin died, Benny was quick to assure Lansky that his trucks and union contacts would continue to be at Lansky’s disposal.

  Lansky could easily have prospered without small potatoes like Benny, but Lansky appreciated the fact that Benny was eager to ingratiate himself. Since Benny was useful as a buffer between Lansky and the unions and industries, since he was Mendy’s kid and a fellow Jew, he found himself under Lansky’s protection.

  It was this protection that allowed Benny to hold on to his father’s business. No other racketeer, no matter how hungry for trucks and power over the transport unions, would dare to try and muscle in on a protege of Meyer Lansky.

  That included Stefano de Fazio, who hungered mightily for wheels. He had to move restaurant and building supplies, and of course there were his bakeries, meatpacking and warehouse holdings. Stefano had trucks of his own and some union connections from his old days as treasurer of the ILGWU, but nothing that approached Benny Talkin’s fleet.