Elsinore

by Jerome Charyn

  “But if I move this many coats around, word will leak. I can’t afford that to happen.”

  “I’ll warehouse the coats for you,” Holden said. “Take as many or as little as you like.”

  “What kind of sum did you have in mind?”

  “Two million a month. But it has to be liquid. I won’t take checks.”

  “And no one, absolutely no one, will have access to Aladdin’s label?”

  “I’m giving you an exclusive. What else do you want?”

  “My partner to call me Sol.”

  “Bronshtein, you would have had me killed if you could.”

  “You were dangerous, Holden. I was doing my job.”

  The furrier left without a single coat. No lawyer knocked on Holden’s door. Holden had nothing to sign. Six messenger boys arrived that afternoon with six enormous hatboxes. Holden didn’t look inside. He marched the messenger boys across town to Phipps’ private kingdom, piled the hatboxes on Phipps’ desk, and handed each of the boys a hundred-dollar bill.

  The old man was gloomy. “What’s that?”

  “Profits from Aladdin.”

  “Then it ought to go into Aladdin’s till.”

  “Phippsy, Aladdin has no till. I brought you all the liquid I could lay my hands on.”

  “This isn’t a charity ward.”

  “Who’s talking charity? I danced with Solomon Bronshtein. He’s distributing the Aladdin label.”

  “That crook? He’s been trying to steal Aladdin for years. You’re naive, Sid. I don’t think you have the stuff to be president. It was a mistake. Give Bronshtein back his money.”

  “Naive, huh? Scratch yourself, old man. I made a deal. You’re getting six hatboxes a month, like it or not.”

  And Holden walked out of the office. That old man knew nothing about the homicidal quicksand of the fur market. Frog had Bronshtein and no one else.

  Someone stood in Holden’s way. He could sniff perfume. But he had hatboxes in his head. “How are you, Mrs. Vanderwelle?”

  “You could have made an appointment instead of barging in like that.”

  “But I didn’t want an appointment. I found a buyer for all the coats.”

  “Would you like to have dinner, Mr. Holden?”

  He couldn’t say yes. He couldn’t say no. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Say seven o’clock. At my apartment. I believe you know where I live.”

  He returned to Aladdin. He considered ordering a turkey sandwich. He wasn’t going to eat with little Judith. She’d engineered that Elsinore at College Point. She was the queen of installations with her own mama as headmistress. And Frog was their clown. He wasn’t going to eat with little Judith.

  He arrived with six pink roses and one of his Windsor suits, forged by his very own tailor.

  She didn’t have her bow tonight. Her hair lay on her shoulders like magical silk. He wanted to press his teeth against her mouth, give little Judith a love bite. He didn’t dare. They had dinner at her apartment. Her kitchen was as tiny as a water closet. Her windows faced a wall. She lived in some kind of cozy dead end.

  “Who was Mr. Vanderwelle?” he asked over his spaghetti, from a cushion on the floor. The roses sat in a vase on one of her raw windows. Holden enjoyed the desolation.

  “A boy I loved from college.”

  Her whole history could have been inside the string of that sentence. He was reluctant to ask her anything more.

  “His name was Charles.”

  Holden ate his salad and listened.

  “He killed himself.”

  Little Judith had baked a pear pie. Holden kept worrying about Charles. The pie crumbled in his mouth as little Judith reached across the cushions. Their noses bumped. “I’ve never been with another man.” Holden couldn’t tell if it was one more isolated island of words … or a declaration of love.

  She started to bite his mouth. She undressed Sidney Holden. He was utterly naked without Windsor’s wool. He couldn’t remember being so passive around a woman. What did it mean? He was like some helpless animal in her touch. Then it was Holden who started to bite.

  They woke like a married couple. She’d already squeezed some orange juice. They drank it together in that apartment without a view. Holden didn’t mind the brick wall. He had little Judith. She was wearing a flannel robe. He didn’t question her about the fall of Phippsy’s empire. He wasn’t S. Holden, president of Aladdin Furs. He wasn’t Phipps’ companion. He was the boy who’d traveled out of Queens and landed in the country of Manhattan, with excursions to Paris, Rio, Rome, London, Madrid, and Pescadores. He was comfortable in their morning silence.

  He watched her dress, arrange the bow in her hair. She handed him a key. Holden bathed and put on his billionaire’s suit. He locked little Judith’s apartment with his key. A sadness fell over him. He knew he’d never use that key again.

  He took a cab to the Flatiron Building. It looked like a building that belonged in Cairo. Holden had never been to Cairo. The Flatiron Building had Egyptian columns and rippled stone that could have been rubbed by a lion’s paw. There were hieroglyphics in the walls, stone faces that must have told a story. But Holden didn’t have the right key.

  He rode up to the fifth floor and searched for a particular suite: THE JUPITER COMPANY. Holden waited until five after ten. Then he opened Jupiter’s door. He passed the receptionist and entered the inner office. He saw Herbert Garden. He saw big Judith, wearing the cape of a corporate queen. He saw half a dozen other Manhattan Mimes, in the costume of young execs. He saw an older man, Herman Branley, the bauxite baron, one of the last allies Howard Phipps had left. Holden recognized him from a portrait in Manhattan, inc.

  “Mr. Branley, whatever they’re peddling, don’t believe it. They want you to hate Howard Phipps.”

  Branley tightened his silver eyebrows. “Do I know you, sir?”

  “I’m Sidney Holden, president of Aladdin Furs. We’re specialists in sable and mink.”

  “I have nothing to do with sable,” Branley said. But while he moved his lips, the Mimes closed their little shop, stuffing all the contents on their desks into briefcases, and disappeared.

  “I don’t understand,” Branley muttered. “I don’t understand. I thought I was …”

  The entire suite had been picked clean. Could Frog tell Branley that he’d broken up one of big Judith’s installations? That Herbert Garden had become his own little spy? It would have taken a month, and Branley would never believe him.

  “Who are these people?”

  “Swindlers, Mr. Branley. They’re employed by Howard Phipps’ competitors.”

  “And you, sir. You’re president of …”

  “Nothing really. I’m just a Pinkerton man.”

  “I thought so,” Branley said.

  The Kronstadt

  Case

  12

  He felt orphaned, sitting alone at Aladdin Furs. Then his bumper’s intuition came back. Mrs. Vanderwelle had given Holden her key a little too fast. He hadn’t met any bauxite barons. “Branley” was one of the Mimes. The installation he’d broken up had been staged for Frog. Another Elsinore. He returned to little Judith’s flat, convinced the key he had would no longer fit the lock.

  He opened the door. Little Judith was inside.

  “What took you so long?” she said. Her mouth was red as midnight. She didn’t look like a foundation lawyer. She was some kind of sweetheart. But Holden couldn’t tell. He was never wise around women.

  “You stuck Herbert Garden in front of my nose, didn’t you? He led me to the Flatiron Building like a dog.”

  “But you wanted to be led. It’s part of your nature. How did you ever survive so long?”

  “I’m bulletproof.… Was it much of a burden, Mrs. Vanderwelle, making love to Phipps’ chauffeur?”

  “You’re not a chauffeur,” she said.

  “And I suppose you’re not little Judith Church.”

  “Yes, I am Judith.”

  “Then wh
y do you go around calling yourself Gloria Vanderwelle?”

  “That’s my privilege, isn’t it, Holden?… Gloria’s my middle name. And it wasn’t a burden making love to you. I rather liked it.”

  “I’m glad,” Frog said, growing very bitter. “What was that nonsense at the Flatiron Building all about?”

  “We were testing you. My mother said you’d never wake up. But she was wrong.”

  “And were you testing me when you staged that scene at College Point?”

  “No. That was Howard’s idea. He likes to manipulate people. My mother works for him. Or haven’t you figured that out? It was Howard who financed her acting company. Should I tell you how many people we’ve ruined for Howard—with Mother’s installations?”

  “And now you’re ruining him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m speechless,” Holden said. “You can’t have much respect for me if you don’t even deny it.”

  “We’re ruining him, bit by bit.”

  “But he’s your dad.”

  “Would you like to guess where I was born?”

  “What difference would that make?”

  “I was born in a madhouse where Howard put my mom.”

  “Elsinore … in Vermont.”

  “He would visit her regularly once a week and make love to her while she was out of her mind.”

  “But the doctors wouldn’t have allowed it.”

  “It was his asylum. Howard owned it. He had it built for my mom. A fortress without high walls.”

  “And you lived there … in the woods with big Judith. Until she recovered her senses. Then she became a drama coach. You go to law school. She has the Mimes. Was it Howard’s idea to start the installations?”

  “It doesn’t matter whose idea it was. We needed an instrument. Howard provided the cash. I waited. I studied Howard Phipps. And then I turned the installations against him.”

  “Just like that. Wait and wait until you could deliver. But you might have miscalculated … about me. I’m a loyal son of a bitch. What Phippsy did to your mom was unforgivable. I still wouldn’t betray him.”

  “Not even for what he did to your own father?”

  “Change the subject.”

  “Turned him into a zombie.”

  “Change the subject, I said. That’s between Phipps and me.”

  “Holden, there’s a man I’d like you to meet.”

  “Who? Another renegade from arts and archives?”

  “I don’t think Morton Katz ever served in the army. He’s president of Hester Street Hungarian.”

  “Is that a country club?” Holden asked. “Like the one you built at College Point?”

  “It’s a synagogue that’s gone out of business.”

  And suddenly Holden was caught in little Judith’s web. Because there had to be a cantor in this story. And the cantor wasn’t little Sid.

  It was one more ruin in a street of ruins. There was garbage behind the gates. Hester Street Hungarian had huge red blisters along its walls. The windows had begun to rot.

  Holden was suspicious. He wasn’t a connoisseur of synagogues, even though the fur market had its own particular shul. But he had to wonder if this bit of Hester Street was only another installation of the Manhattan Mimes. Little Judith’s truckers might have put up those rotting windows and walls.

  He entered the shul, avoiding huge chips of stained glass that must have fallen from some window near the roof. He followed Judith down a long corridor that had the contours of a cave. And then the cave turned into a tiny office, with a lamp, a desk, and a tiny man. Morton Katz, president of the shul. Holden cursed the place. Katz had a childish beauty, but he couldn’t have been much younger than Phipps. And he had an extraordinary tailor, because the one thing Holden knew was the cut of a man’s clothes.

  “I hear you work for the philanthropist,” Katz said.

  Frog liked this little man who didn’t bother with hellos. The two of them were presidents, after all. And a dead synagogue wasn’t so different from a fur shop that had no nailers.

  “I’d ask you to sit, but I can’t remember where I put my other chair.”

  Holden looked around. Little Judith was gone. She’d left him alone with Morton Katz.

  “I don’t get this operation,” Holden said. “If the shul is closed, why do you come here?”

  “It’s a question of real estate. As long as I’m president, we exist, with or without a congregation … otherwise we’d lose our tax advantage. So I come here every day, Mr. Holden, even on the Sabbath, and sit for an hour.”

  “And the rest of the time?”

  “Oh, I’m never bored. I fool around with stocks and bonds. I reminisce.”

  “About what?”

  “The Kronstadt case.”

  “I don’t get it. Was Kronstadt a firebug? Did he torch a couple of shuls?”

  “Kronstadt was the daughter of a rich American merchant. Park Avenue people. She was strangled in a cold-water flat, a few blocks from the synagogue. But it was before your time, Mr. Holden. Nineteen twenty-seven.”

  “Then why does it keep tickling your head?”

  “The case was never solved. And think of the commotion. An heiress found dead. Almost on our doorstep. I felt responsible. The whole congregation did.”

  “But you’re not the police.”

  “Still, we had to do something. We hired a detective. A Pinkerton man.”

  “Howard Phipps.”

  “Yes. He was highly recommended. He’d solved a similar case in Seattle. We had him brought in. Our very first interview was in this office. He was standing where you are now. The same spot. But I noticed something. I was dreaming of a man with a beard.”

  “Morton,” Holden said, suddenly familiar with a fellow president. “I don’t get your drift.”

  “Pinkertons didn’t wear whiskers in nineteen twenty-seven. But I saw another face. Hirschele, our Hirsch. It was the same man. I knew it in a second … after I imagined the beard. I said nothing, of course. I wouldn’t accuse a Pinkerton of having once been the great Hirsch. I’d have made a fool of myself, Mr. Holden.”

  “I’m nobody’s ‘Mister.’ Just Holden. But who was Hirsch?”

  “The cantor, Hirschele Feldstein. Our golden boy.”

  Boy cantors. Boy generals. Frog felt he was being sold a song.

  “Holden,” Katz said, “he could break your heart with the simplest melody. You couldn’t get a seat at the Hungarian when Hirschele was in town. Millionaires knocked on our door. Gentiles, Holden. Not Jews. They were dying to hear Hirschele sing. Hester Street became their opera house … and Hirschele had a child’s beard. He was maybe fifteen. And already he had managers and booking agents. Every synagogue in America wanted the great Hirsch. And those that couldn’t afford him would have killed to have Hirschele for the High Holy Days. Women fainted when he sang the Kol Nidre. We had to mortgage our lives to bring him here. The gentile banks took our blood. But we always got Hirsch. Hirschele was ours. I was a boy when he was a boy. I sang in the choir. He couldn’t read music. Hirschele was illiterate. He made up songs in his head. And we followed him as much as we could. We were the children of that child. He made fun of us, mocked our stupidity. But we had Hirsch. And how could I have forgotten his face, with or without a beard? He had a nerve, the Pinkerton. To come here, stand in front of his own choirboy, and pretend he was Howard Phipps.”

  “What happened to the great Hirsch?”

  Morton Katz started to cry. It troubled Frog to see Katz’s shoulders shake. A handkerchief materialized from beneath the desk. Katz blew his nose. “He became a pariah. No synagogue would have him.”

  “Was it women problems?”

  “Women chased him. We knew that. You couldn’t have imagined his celebrity. He wouldn’t sing on the radio, like other cantors. If you didn’t catch Hirsch in a synagogue, you didn’t catch him at all. Oh, the ladies lined up for him at Grand Central, begging for autographs and a touch of his sleeve. But Hirs
ch never sang at any stations.”

  “You still haven’t told me what happened.”

  “An heiress jumped out of his window at a Chicago hotel. A Jewish girl from a good Chicago family. There was talk that she hadn’t jumped … that she’d been pushed. Hirschele was arrested. They had to release him. There was no evidence. But the Jewish press hounded the great Hirsch. The satyr of the synagogues, they called him. The monster with honey in his mouth. He disappears …”

  “And shows up at your shul.”

  “But can you appreciate how daring he was? He must have known I would recognize him, even without the whiskers. After all, Holden, he sang here ten, twenty times. He still had that crazy fever, a cantor’s eyes.”

  “Did Kronstadt also have cantor’s eyes? What the hell was her first name?”

  “She didn’t have a first name. Or even if she did, we called her Kronstadt. Because the family was so powerful. Her father could have crushed our synagogue.”

  “How did the cantor react to the case?”

  “He was brilliant, Holden. He didn’t ask one question. He brought me to dives I would never have known about. We talked to prostitutes, gamblers, pimps. Holden, I’d never heard of a Jewish pimp. That’s how insulated we were at the Hungarian. We thought we lived in a world of pious men and women. But our golden boy solved the riddle. Kronstadt had been a prostitute on the Lower East Side. It wasn’t money, Holden. The woman was worth a fortune. Call it bitterness, or some dark revenge on the Kronstadt name. She’d been among us six or seven years … even before Hirschele fell. And then I understood the itinerary. He was taking me on an autobiographical trip. He was familiar with every prostitute on Hester Street. The great Hirsch must have sang in a whore’s tub many times. He must have known Kronstadt herself. Can’t you see? Hirschele broke the case.”

  “I’m a mule,” Holden said. “My mind’s not as fast as yours.”

  “He led me to Kronstadt’s killer … Holden, it was Hirschele himself.”

  “You’re speculating, Morton. That isn’t nice.”

  “Holden, it’s ABC. Hirsch was the delinquent he always was. Taking me step by step into his own black corner, while he laughed in my face. I had no proof. I had nothing. Even if I’d exposed his past, it’s not a crime for a cantor to become a Pinkerton. He walked away. And Kronstadt lies in her grave.”