Closing Time

by Fusilli, Jim;

I nodded, and told him about the conversation at the hospital, omitting the part where she said Beck had suspected him as well. “I told her I didn’t think he did it.”

  “No? Why?”

  I said, “Sol, do you think your father would try to disrupt your opening?”

  “My father believes he doesn’t have a son,” Beck said, peering into the blackness.

  I nodded again. “All right. So …?”

  Beck toyed with an apple slice. Finally, he said, “He hates Lin-Lin.” Then he added, “She would do anything for me, so…You know how it is.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “You talked to him?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He’s … very difficult.”

  “Sol, there’s a huge gap between being an irascible old man and a bomber who may have assaulted your wife. Your father is bitter, but this vindictive? I can’t believe that.”

  Beck shrugged.

  “And I don’t think he knows how to make a bomb like the one that exploded at Judy’s, unless you can show me he learned to do it after he was discharged.”

  He said nothing.

  “And you know he can’t really do much with his left arm. So, no, I don’t think he planted the bomb or attacked Lin-Lin.”

  “Maybe you made him angry.” He said it without conviction, as if it had popped into his mind and then out of his mouth.

  “Yeah, but what: He comes out tonight and assaults your wife? Come on, Sol. Your father spends his evenings at home with a friend, drinking jug wine, staring at the TV.”

  He nodded. “I know Sid.”

  “Actually, I think he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Beck replied. “He did when my mother was alive.”

  I kept still. I knew he would tell it.

  And he did, softly, haltingly, but with surprising strength and conviction; and if not linearly, then with much detail, as if he had spent long, agonizing hours organizing his jagged memories, reliving painful moments to know which were worse than the others, what had led to what else, how he had gone from a bright, hopeful boy to an apprehensive and abstracted young man, perpetually in doubt, incapable of self-direction. I would have wagered that he didn’t speak as many words in a month as he did when he told his tale. Maybe it was the wine on an empty stomach—or simply an outpouring in the aftermath of the adrenal rush from the evening’s frightening excitement. Whatever the reason for his opening up to me, it was clear he knew what had made him the man he was today.

  Rosenzweig, according to his only child, had not returned from the war with a sense of heroic accomplishment—or if he had, it did not ennoble him. He was arrogant, petty, intolerant, dictatorial, railing at every perceived injustice; a bully, especially with his wife and, eventually, their young son.

  His rants served to confirm the low opinion that Beck and his mother had of themselves, an opinion introduced by Rosenzweig.

  “We knew it was our fault that he didn’t succeed.”

  “Succeed at what?”

  “At things. At life,” Beck said, shrugging. “If my mother had been as supportive as that one, or clever as that one…She was quiet by nature; shy, really. The things he said…” He paused, searching. “They affected her.” He reached for the wineglass and took another long, deliberate drink.

  “And you?”

  “And me, I was nothing. A stain. I was never going to be a man.”

  He returned the empty glass to the table, and I prodded him for pleasant memories, recollections of special occasions.

  “You mean, like vacations? A nice trip to the Poconos, maybe? Atlantic City?”

  “Sure.”

  “In the summer, my mother and I took the subway to Coney Island.” With a cheerless snicker, he added, “My mother got an iron for her birthday.”

  “A tool.”

  Beck said, “He knew what he was doing.”

  He could afford more, Beck added. Rosenzweig made a decent living, first handling odd jobs, then joining the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, where he was hired on for a number of large-scale projects in lower Manhattan in the ’60s and ’70s, including the construction of the World Trade Center. There was money for nights at Monahan’s, the local gin mill: Schaefer on tap, Bushmill’s on the side, Sinatra on the jukebox, Phil Rizzuto and the Yankees on TV; a modest indulgence, in some contexts, but not to Beck. And Rosenzweig liked the ponies, a more costly pastime: Aqueduct, Roosevelt, Monmouth Park; the neighborhood bookie, a trip over to OTB.

  “Meanwhile, he had an angel at home.”

  “Your mom.”

  “That’s right.”

  Then he went on, describing the heart-numbing routine of his youth. His lean face betrayed the pain of his memories: He grimaced, squinted, pursed his lips, sealed his eyes as they became red and moist. Across from me, a man was a boy again, flinching in fear, scowling in anger.

  In time, the father turned on the son.

  Beck’s mother stood by her child, defending him always, however meekly, which led to Rosenzweig calling him “a schmo, a mama’s boy, a little faygeleh.”

  Beck said now, “That got to me. I don’t know why. I should’ve been used to his insults.” The son considered that maybe it was so: He was a loner, quiet. And growing into his teens, he didn’t share with the other boys their obsession with the girls from St. Theresa’s in their hiked plaid skirts and blouses that seemed ready to burst at the chest; dimples gone from their knees, their necks suddenly inviting, if not to him. Confused, perhaps granting some authority to his father’s invective, he withdrew from his mother’s affections, preferring instead his solitary pursuits, particularly drawing, charcoal on coarse paper, simple wax crayons on notepads. His mother, alone now, withdrew from everything.

  “She’d stand on the fire escape, staring at the Hudson, at Jersey, at the rest of America like she wished she could fly away and be free.”

  “You lived on Worth then?” I asked.

  “Yes. How—”

  ‘“D. Rich Co.,”’ I replied, citing the one work I’d studied at his opening. “Is that woman in the painting your mother?”

  “In spirit,” he said, “but she was small, too fragile.”

  “So, what happened next? Your father lost his work? His injury began to act up?”

  “He was fired,” Beck said. His face was red from storytelling, from too much wine. “It had to happen someday.”

  Chick Rosenzweig had managed the rare feat of getting canned from a cushy union job in New York City. According to Beck, he was on a crew wiring an office building down near Wall Street when he kicked over a bucket of cold rivets that’d been left behind. They dropped 35 floors like deadly rain and landed on a new, black Cadillac that belonged to an upstairs guy from the Teamsters who was checking on his drivers. “I knew he was drunk when he told us he wasn’t,” Beck added.

  Today, a guy like Rosenzweig might wind up in a rehab center, and his outlook might change and maybe his family would survive. But, back then, they probably picked him up and threw him off the site, flinging his lunchbox at him as he hit the pavement. Given that he damaged a Teamster’s new Caddy, he’s lucky they didn’t break his elbows.

  “The union got him some sort of severance,” Beck said, “but he went through that. We couldn’t afford the rent and had to move from Worth: My mother was humiliated, I guess; no, she was, for certain. All her friends lived there. She used to sit on the stoop and listen to the neighbors kvetching.

  “That’s how he ended up in the basement on Grove Street,” he continued. “He got a job as the janitor in that building and the one next door. He did some odd jobs too, until his shoulder started acting up. Home all day, he was even more unbearable.”

  “And your mother?” I asked. Then I stopped, deciding to come at it another way. “Anyone would crack under that kind of abuse.”

  “People don’t crack, Terry,” Beck said. “They lose their spirit, their—You’re a writer; what’s the word
? Their essence. They fade away, like my mother faded away. Can you give yourself cancer? Can you will it to come and take you?”

  “I don’t know, Sol.”

  “I do. The answer is yes.”

  “You left when she died?”

  “No, I was out of there long before that, in school in Rhode Island. I came back to help her die. You know, the bastard found reason to criticize me over that, too.”

  Meanwhile, Beck said, Rosenzweig just walked away from his dying wife, hiding in Monahan’s, drinking his beer, chasing women, betting his VA check on slow horses.

  “You took your mother’s name.”

  “It drove him nuts. My one act of defiance.”

  He chuckled. Then he shook his head and drained the wineglass. “My father thought he was the smartest man in the world,” he said, “and he was too stupid to hold on to the one thing that matters.”

  And with that Sol Beck ended his tale, and he instantly withdrew, falling into himself. Something had shaken him, something he hadn’t considered before. In the sudden silence, I knew exactly what he was thinking. I’d been listening; there was only one place his thoughts could go.

  “Terry, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Lin-Lin,” he said. “I don’t have anybody else. No one.”

  He wiped his eyes. He looked at his damp thumb and forefinger.

  I suggested he call the hospital. To give him privacy, I walked him back to my study, snapped on the desk lamp and showed him to the phone. I slid the envelope from Sharon Knight into a drawer and pulled the top sheet off the legal pad on the desk, crumpling the doodles. Then I retreated to the living room and dropped onto the sofa. As I reached for the table lamp, I remembered I hadn’t yet changed the broken bulb. I sat in darkness, my head against the back cushion.

  A minute later, I heard Beck drop the handset onto the receiver. He cut the light and came to me.

  “She’s better. Stable,” he said.

  I rose and tapped him on the arm. “That’s good news, Sol.”

  “She might come home Saturday.”

  He followed me into the kitchen. I looked at the clock. It was past two.

  “Maybe it’s better if you stay here,” I offered.

  He shook his head. “I want to go home.”

  “It’s not going to be easy to get a cab.” I dug into my pocket. “Go over by the Sporting Club on Hudson, or up by the TriBeCa Grill.” I handed him the $40 I had on me.

  I led him to the front door. Greenwich Street was quiet in the long, soft shadows cast by the streetlights. In another two hours, delivery trucks would be grinding along the battered cobblestone, and after that, yet another day.

  He said, “Thanks, Terry.”

  As he went down the front steps, I said, “Sol, your father didn’t plant that bomb.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “You ought to think about who did. Maybe that’ll tell us who attacked your wife tonight.”

  He nodded and walked off down the dark, silent street.

  SEVEN

  I worked on the heavy bag, banging away hard and fast until my wrists were as sore as my knuckles under the Everlast bag gloves. Afterward, as I soaked my hands in ice in the kitchen sink, I finished the Conrad. I showered, and then just puttered around for the rest of a wet Friday morning. Finally I got dressed and went out the door. The rain, which had been more of a mist, let up. I threw my baseball cap back inside and redid the security code.

  An hour later, I set up on the corner of 125th and Amsterdam and waited. A crosstown wind barreled along the wide street, and I buried my hands in my leather jacket. The only white man in view, I imagined I was as conspicuous as I could be, yet the old women who passed by, pushing their empty shopping baskets toward the market, and the young mothers who chased their laughing children toward the park at the brick projects all ignored me.

  As I watched one child in a heavy, oversized coat waddle ahead of his mother, I thought of Bella. She awoke bright-eyed and full of enthusiasm. She sang in the shower. She’d been to a genuine rock show, and her friends would envy her. So there.

  “I went to the Beacon with Diddio,” she hummed, as she finished the crunchy yogurt-and-Grape Nuts combination she liked. “Everybody wishes they knew Diddio like I do.”

  In the past year or so, we’d seen Patti Smith window-shopping at American Leather, Billy Corgan sharing lobster tartine with Jonathan Demme at Sanzin, and, of course, Ron Wood at Judy’s. Several rock stars had shot their videos near here: Cock Michaels, up the block on Vestry; Eagle-Eye Cherry at the Independence School; and Ben Harper in the funky alley off Hubert known as Collister Street. (I suppose that’s who they were; Bella said so.) But, since Bella knew him, liked him, and knew he cared for her, in her mind Diddio was as big as the acts he covered.

  “And I’m going to tell Little Mango all about Beck and his wife. He won’t know about that.” She wiped her mouth on the dishrag and tossed it toward the sink. It landed on the floor. “Whoops. Sorry.”

  “I’ll get it. Go, get your backpack. And wear a hat. It’s raining.”

  She returned with her heavy pack, wearing her beanbag, Yes patch pinned to its floppy front above the narrow brim. She caught me staring at the uneven patch.“I’ll sew it later.” She stopped. “After we get back from Dr. Harteveld’s.”

  I slipped into a hooded sweatshirt. “Is that today?”

  “Dad—”

  “I’m only kidding. Yes, today. Three o’clock. Sixty-second and First. And, Bella, be discreet with Mango, okay? Stick to the facts.”

  As she wriggled into her denim jacket, she said, “I need money for the cab.”

  I handed her the folded $10 bill I stored in my wallet. We both knew the drill: Always immediately reimburse Mrs. Maoli when she puts out money for us.

  “Now I’m broke,” I said as we went outside.

  “There’s $140 in the trunk of my Barbie car. You can borrow it.” She walked on, crossing Harrison. As I caught up, she added, “At prime, I mean. I expect to find, let’s see, $154 when I get home tonight.”

  “Is that with the vig?”

  We stepped into the gray light on Greenwich, and passed a bald man in a brown suit struggling to tie his Welsh corgi’s red leash to a parking-meter post. Up ahead, the uniformed driver of a boxy bread truck delivered a plastic pallet filled with English muffins to Gristede’s, and two Koreans hustled fresh vegetables into a restaurant on the east side of the street. Uptown, on Sixth, Fifth or Madison, at this time of the morning they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder; down here, fewer than six people could be seen on a broad city block of weatherbeaten asphalt and cement.

  “You need money to make money,” Bella said. “My $140 isn’t so bad, since I started with the $50 I won in the American-Italian Society essay competition.”

  “Yes, ‘Travels of Donatello.’ For an eight-year-old, that was quality work.”

  “As opposed to my essay on Paine? Thanks, Dad. Really.”

  “Your essay on Paine is very good now.”

  ‘“Now,”’ she muttered under her breath.

  I came back to the present when I saw him. He headed east and I crossed 125th to catch up.

  When he was about to reach the Popeye’s near the corner, I called his name. He turned and seemed surprised to see me.

  I pulled my hands from my pockets and held up open palms. He wasn’t wearing the Beretta, but he still had the nightstick on his belt.

  Reynolds’s clean-shaven head shone in the dull light.

  “She tell you why I came?” I asked.

  The security guard said no.

  “I’m working,” I said as I drew closer. “Aubrey Brown. The cabdriver who was killed.”

  It didn’t register, but I could see he was curious. He hadn’t entirely let down his guard, but he was ready to listen.

  I stopped near him and I told him about Brown. “You had a student with a scar.”

  “Montana,” Reynolds said.

  I nodded.

 
; “What about him?”

  A blue-and-white patrol car rolled by, heading coolly toward Hamilton Heights. Neither cop gave us much of a look.

  “He’s been following the body.”

  “Don’t mean much,” he said with a shrug.

  A crisp breeze snuck up from behind. “You kill a stranger you don’t go to the funeral.”

  He shifted, then said, “All right.”

  “But I doubt he knew Brown,” I said. “If he was checking it out for somebody else, who would that be?” I asked.

  He thought for a moment. “Big city.”

  “No doubt.” A Postal Service truck passed us. I turned to see it stop in front of Hurston Elementary. “You don’t have to spend your lunch hour on it,” I added.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Fair enough.” I handed him my card. He stuck it in the breast pocket of his blue shirt.

  In mid-October, there is a certain clash of monochrome and brilliant color to Fifth Avenue high on the Upper East Side. Many of the once-green leaves of the robust trees that stretch over the avenue have turned from astonishing yellows and reds to a musty brown, but they’re still thick enough to prevent the bleached mid-autumn sun from arriving unfiltered. Endless rows of sturdy apartment buildings on the east side of the avenue seem taciturn and miserly as they refuse to surrender the dying light. On the street, buses plod along, wheezing, straining almost, spewing gray fumes with little enthusiasm. On the west side, behind the stone wall, Central Park is quiet: Children are back in school; sunbathers have completed their summer-long ritual and stashed away their lawn chairs for the winter, leaving the vast expanses of grass empty and silent; the men and women who walk under the withering leaves seem old, tired, without destinations, and there is a shallow look to their eyes, as if they know what it means when something is gone.

  I entered the Guggenheim a little before two o’clock. As I started the long walk up Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral, I remembered how Bella had once decided to see if Davy’s stroller would roll all the way down to the lobby from up near the glass dome if she positioned it just right, if she let it go at the right moment. Something to do with gravity and motion: She figured Davy and his bottles and sundries, packed in a woven basket hung between the handles, would give the stroller the extra weight it needed to stay grounded as it raced down the corkscrew; the subtle slope from the concrete walls, she deduced, would keep the stroller from flying over the edge. “Hey, Dad. Watch this.” Scurrying, I grabbed the stroller’s curved handle. I told her, “You know, Bella, maybe it’s not such a good idea to let your baby brother, you know, go zooming all the way down there. It’s a little too far, don’t you think?” Wright’s “constant ramp,” if unwound, would extend for several hundred yards.