Genuine Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  She doesn’t answer right away, just keeps walking beside me, but stiffly, like she’s walking to a funeral. She finally says, “Maybe I’d better let her tell you.”

  “Yeah. Maybe you’d better.”

  *

  Mona’s bungalow’s dark when we’re finally on her doorstep, but that’s no surprise. She’ll be in bed at two thirty in the morning. It takes several knocks for a light to come on, and for Mona’s sleep-graveled, wary, “Who’s there?” to come through the door.

  Figuring I’m the last person Mona wants on her doorstep again, I squeeze Lilah’s arm and motion with my head that she should do the talking.

  “It’s Lilah. Open up, Mona.”

  The door opens. Mona stands in the doorway, silhouetted against the parlor light. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, doesn’t let us in. I’m pretty sure it’s not Lilah she’s worried about, it’s me, the bad penny that keeps showing up at her door. With her face in shadow, I can’t tell if she’s surprised to see me, or just annoyed. Or maybe she’s scared.

  Still holding Lilah’s arm, I don’t wait for an invitation, just walk past Mona and bring Lilah inside and into the parlor.

  I say, “Sit down on the couch, next to each other. That way I can keep an eye on both of you.”

  They sit down, grudgingly, Mona’s attitude bitter, Lilah’s resigned. It’s sort of fun watching both women treat what their wearing as if it might protect them from whatever I’m going to throw: Mona wraps her aqua robe tighter; Lilah pulls my coat more securely around her. I understand the age-old cunning relationship between the female of the species and clothing, sometimes dressing for protection, sometimes as lure, and sometimes, like me, to proclaim a life.

  Mona says, “I don’t understand. Why do you come around here again, Cantor? What do you want from me?”

  I sit down in a chair opposite the couch, open my suit jacket, let it slide back just enough to reveal the butt of my gun in my shoulder rig. I have no plans to use it on either of the women, but it makes a dandy crowbar when people try to keep their mouths shut. A little fear goes a long way in prying loose information people don’t want to tell you. “Right now, I just want you to listen, Mona. But be a good student and listen hard, because there’ll be a little quiz when I’m done.”

  “Hah, funny,” she says, without a trace of laughter in it.

  I light a smoke, offer one to both women. Mona says no, Lilah says yes, and as I lean across the coffee table to light it for her, the way she looks up at me begs me to be kind. But there’s a lot more going on in those green eyes, too. There’s heat, and there’s cold, and both reach deep inside me and grab on tight.

  When I sit back down, I need a deep drag on my smoke to smother that feeling of connection to Lilah. It’s not easy. That her heat rouses my passion doesn’t surprise me. It’s the chill inside her that worries me, a chill that dares me to fess up to a deep, dark, cold place of my own, the place Sophie used to fill with love and warmth. It worries me that maybe Lilah wants to merge her chill with mine, create a partnership of icy power whose only heat is in our loins. It worries me that I’m tempted to let her.

  My criminal life began here in Coney Island, but I don’t want it to end here. Lilah’s doesn’t have to, either.

  But I can’t go down that road, at least not now. I have to take back possession of my skin and my senses, and behind a cloud of exhaled smoke, I do, and start my spiel. “Last night, Mickey Schwartz Day sent his thugs to steal something from me. Then he sent his beautiful sister to lure me back home to Coney Island. It worked, too, because I followed her skirt all the way to Mickey’s tattoo parlor. It seems all I had to do to get my property back was set him up with a meeting with Sig Loreale. Well, I never got the chance to set it up—not that Sig would’ve met with a gutter operator like Mickey—because the next thing I know, Mickey’s dead, knifed in the back. Gus, his ink man, was dead, too, his throat slashed. Nice way to keep the poor schnook from talking.”

  Mona, her heavy face pinking up, says, “Why you telling us this now? You told me all this last night, when you helped me with my sweet—” She chokes up, wipes an eye with the back of her hand. I’m thinking it’s quite a show, but the tear running down her puffy cheek is real enough. “My sweet Miss Theresa,” she finally says.

  “Yeah. Miss Theresa,” I say. “This is where the story gets interesting. Funny, how coincidence brought me here last night—”

  Mona snaps, “No. Not coincidence. It was your fate, Cantor. The cards told you so. The cards—”

  “Forget about the cards. You make them say what you want them to say, Mona. I remember you in your fortune-teller’s stall telling the marks whatever they needed to hear for them to fork over their dough. Only you weren’t trying to make me fork over cash. My being here might’ve been coincidence, the odd result of a little nostalgia I should have been smart enough to resist, but a sharp operator like you saw a way to use me. And I don’t mean just helping you bury your poor pooch.”

  “The cards told me you’d be here. I know it. The cards knew…” Her voice trails off, her face drooping in a trance I don’t believe anymore.

  Lilah’s evidently had enough of Mona’s show, too, giving her trance act a sharp elbow and a tsk, and says, “Get off it, Mona. Cantor’s on to you. At least, mostly on to you.”

  Mona’s trance melts fast as cotton candy on a hot summer tongue, replaced by a huffy, pursed-lip silence.

  “Yeah,” I say, “mostly. And the mostly part has to do with you setting me up, Mona, not during my first visit, when you thought maybe you’d never see me again, but my second visit, when I came here with Lilah after Mickey’s death. I was inside the situation now. You could use that.”

  She makes a sound somewhere between a hiss and a swallow, something between annoyed and cornered.

  I say, “So, now, here’s the little quiz, Mona. It’s a short quiz, only a few questions. First question: What’s your part in Mickey’s operation? Aw, c’mon, Mona, don’t give me that look, that I’m just an innocent old lady look. You gave up your innocence when you read your first palm.”

  “You were always the smart one,” she says. “Smart enough to get yourself a fancy racket and leave us small-time carny folk behind. So what’s it to you what I do to make a living? Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Because I’m the only one who can untie the knots in this mess and keep Sig Loreale out of it.”

  It seems every time I mention Sig’s name, people go pale, but their mouths open.

  Mona’s gone pale as a spook-house ghost. It’s time for her to open her mouth, time for me to take my shot. “You know a Sergeant Pike, Mona?” She goes from pale to ashy to a kind of sickly gray and finally to a fear-induced pink. “I guess you do,” I say. “Just like you, he was part of Mickey’s cut-rate scheme of things. Well, Pike’s just killed a cop. Killed Lieutenant Esposito. Yup, crossed that line, the one that brings hellfire from the blue boys and gold shields.”

  Lilah says, quick and sharp, “But you said Al and Frankie will just bury him where he can’t be found, and the precinct cops would eventually stop looking for him!”

  “That’s true,” I say. “That’s what will happen. But you were so scared, I left out the part about what the cops will do in the meantime. They’ll roust everyone in Coney, every operator, big time and small potatoes. They’ll twist arms and fill their lockups until someone points a finger at some patsy who’s marked to take the fall. They’ll never look at Pike, a brother cop, unless someone tells them to, but no one will tell them to. So,” I say, turning to Mona, “that’s what you set me up for, isn’t it, Mona? To keep the cops from looking where you didn’t want them to look.”

  “You saying I killed Mickey and tried to hang you for it? You are pazzo, a crazy person, Cantor.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mona,” I say. “You didn’t kill anybody. I was here with you, burying Miss Theresa when Mickey took it in the back. But you didn’t want the cops, or me, or
anyone, looking under your robe, and when coincidence sent me your way, a finagler like you knew an opportunity when you saw one. You found a handy mark in me.”

  Mona’s crinkling eyes and tight lips make it clear she hates every word I’m saying, and probably hates me, too. I’m not a mark now, I’m a threat she can’t hide from anymore. She pulls her aqua robe tighter, like a schoolmarm desperate to cover her prim goods.

  But I’ll keep going until I expose those goods. “You told me just enough to keep me interested,” I say, “and keep me curious about the wrong people. So what is it you’re not saying, Mona? And who’d you rather tell it to? Me? The cops? Or worst of all, Sig?”

  Mona, an old-line Coney operator who knows how to keep secrets, hangs tight, doesn’t give an inch, doesn’t say a word. But her sigh is so heavy, the breath she takes so deep, I worry she’ll blow up and burst like a balloon.

  I need to seep the air out of that balloon. “You know how Esposito died, Mona?”

  I hear Lilah’s sharp breath. She bends her head and shields her eyes, protecting herself from the remembered horror in that shed.

  I keep pressing Mona. “Pike set rats on Esposito, and the rats were hungry.” There’s a flush rising in Mona’s neck, and a tension in her eyes. I don’t let up the pressure. “Esposito was Loreale’s man in the Coney Island precinct, and Sig doesn’t like having his operatives murdered. He’ll punish not just the killer, but anyone associated with the killer, anyone in the whole damn outfit. You understand what I’m telling you, Mona? So, if you want me to keep your name out of Sig’s ear, you’ll do me a little quid pro quo. You answer my questions, I keep Sig’s attention elsewhere.”

  Mona finally looks at me, her baggy eyes full of anger, but also begging for mercy. “You got to promise to keep Loreale away from me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Yeah? And with just a snap of your fingers, I should trust you?”

  There’s only one way to convince her, and that’s with the truth. “I may have left Coney Island, but as I’m finding out, Coney never left me. You know the code of the place, Mona, right?” She gives me a nod, a grudging one but with a little satisfaction in it, too, the satisfaction that comes from sharing a language with someone, and the world that language comes from. So I ease up a bit, talk to her more gently. “That code is part of me, Mona, always will be. Coney people make a promise to each other, we keep it, right? Deception is what we give the marks and suckers. So yeah, Mona, you can trust me.”

  She actually smiles, not a big one, just a small pleasure she finally allows herself to share with me. “So okay,” she says, nodding. “I believe you.”

  “Good. Then tell me what you did for Mickey.”

  Her sigh this time isn’t fearful, just resigned and a little sad, weighted with regret. “When my Vito died, and all those thugs come around demanding a bigger cut off the top, I couldn’t handle it no more. I lost the fortune-telling stall and moved into this place. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Listen to the radio all day? Watch the television? How many times could I hear the same Hit Parade song, or watch the same commercials on the television over and over again? Lemme tell you, Cantor, I could hear that damn shampoo jingle in my sleep! Halo everybody, Halo…”

  She sings it like she’s trying to spit the soapy words out of her mouth, even wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Then she says, “So I went to Mickey, see if he had anything for me to do. I hated the stupid buffone, but who else was I gonna ask? Hell, I know how to work a racket with the best of ’em.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But why Mickey? Sig still has the biggest piece of what goes on in Coney. Why didn’t you go to him?”

  “Mr. Invisible?” she says, eyes wide with as much fear as annoyance. “The only part of Loreale that’s still in Coney is his fist. The rest of him is in some fancy place in the city. And anyway, such a big shot, he’d never talk to me. Probably forgot my name.”

  “Not likely,” I say. “Sig didn’t become the most powerful guy in town by forgetting anyone’s name, or anything they did. I bet he even remembers the guy who sold him his first subway token when he was a kid in knickers. Anyway, Sig has people here in Coney who handle his local business. Why didn’t you talk to one of them?”

  “You mean like that louse, Eddie Janko? Hah, don’t make me laugh. Eddie would just as soon cut your heart out as give you a hand.” She gives Lilah a nudge, says, “Tell her, Lilah, tell Cantor what that slime Janko did.”

  Lilah, who’d retreated into a wound-licking silence, suddenly sits up as if Mona just woke her from the dead and wishes she hadn’t. Whatever Mona was talking about, whatever Eddie did, the memory of it shakes Lilah to the core. Her hand trembles as she stubs out her smoke, then runs her fingers through her hair like she’s trying to put out a fire of memories inside her head.

  She finally says, “About a year ago,” her whisper so raw, her words seem to scratch at the air, “Eddie came to the tattoo shop and told Mickey he wanted to buy him out, take over the tattoo front and my action in back. Everyone knew Eddie was one of Loreale’s mouthpieces, so Mickey figured Loreale sent him. Eddie said he was moving on Mickey on his own, but with Loreale’s okay.”

  Sure, that sounds like Sig. Having one of his own people in place, Sig could squeeze Mickey out and take over the operation from Eddie later, or get rid of the whole setup when he’s good and ready. Then he could either put Eddie out to pasture or decide he’s outlived his usefulness. And as always, Sig wins.

  Lilah keeps talking. “But Mickey just laughed at him. Told Eddie he was a has-been geezer, a loser backing the wrong horse. Eddie didn’t like it. Walked out of the tattoo shop real mad. He came to see me later at the bungalow, when Mickey was out. I’d just finished up with a client—”

  “Hold on,” I say. “I thought you only did business at the tattoo joint.”

  She doesn’t answer me. She doesn’t have to. Her guilty shrug and cat-that-ate-the-canary smirk says it all.

  “And none of the johns snitched back to Mickey?” I say.

  “Why would they? I gave them a better price. And besides, they figured Mickey would kill them, and maybe me, too, for cheating him out of his profit.”

  So little sister had her own racket on the side. A dangerous one. A single unsatisfied john might be stupid enough to tattle back to Mickey, and Lilah would’ve been a goner. But I can’t see that happening. I doubt Lilah’s left any client unsatisfied.

  I say, “All right, let’s get back to Eddie. What did he do?”

  But it’s Mona who speaks up. “He beat the daylights outta her, that’s what he did.”

  Lilah picks it up, tries to sound steady, but barely makes it. “He slapped me around so bad, I was bruised all over. He said I should’ve squared his deal with Mickey. So he slammed me black-and-blue. Bloodied me, too. I couldn’t work for days.”

  Every bone in my body scrapes against the next one, every nerve in my flesh burns. Of all the violence I accept in my life, violence I’ve dished out, or received—from thugs, cops, rivals for my business, even from exes who think I’ve done them wrong and slap me silly—guys beating up women rouses my avenging demon. Eddie never liked me. He’s about to like me even less.

  But that’s later. Right now, there’s more immediate business right in front of me. “And you couldn’t tell Mickey who battered you,” I say to Lilah, “or he’d know about your side business. So what did you tell him?”

  She almost laughs, says, “That an unhappy john from the tattoo shop found me,” the vague laugh a tiny triumph over the brother who used her like a rag. “Mickey threatened to hurt the guy, even kill him, but I told him he’d never find him. I told him the guy left town, disappeared, he was just a passing john from I don’t know where, I didn’t even know his name.”

  Mona says, “So there’s your Eddie Janko, Cantor. There’s the guy you let into Lilah’s life again and into my house last night. When he came by for Lilah this morning, I was scared
he’d finally finish her off. Just for spite. And you sent him!”

  Mona’s accusation cuts to the bone, but I let it go. I have to. If I’m going to be any use to Lilah, or even to Sig, I have to keep to business. “Lilah, when you came back to the tattoo parlor after your walk last night and saw Mickey and Gus dead, was Eddie already there?”

  Mona jumps all over it before Lilah can say anything. “You say Eddie killed Mickey? Sure. Sure, he’s an animal. He could do it!”

  Lilah, shaking her head, says, “But Eddie came in after,” putting the kibosh on Mona’s hopes to pin all the world’s troubles on Eddie Janko. “He said he heard me scream.”

  “Uh-huh,” is all I say, looking at the idea that Eddie might’ve come and gone earlier, killed Mickey and Gus while Lilah was on the beach, walking off her humiliation by her brother.

  But Eddie is Sig’s man, and Sig doesn’t hire stupid people. Putting a hit on Mickey without Sig’s okay would be a stupid move. Eddie might have slipped up when he beat up Lilah, but he knew better than to take things all the way to stupid. And I believe Sig when he told me he didn’t order Mickey’s murder. Sig knows better than anyone that murders can bring the wrong attention, disrupt the quiet flow of business. So when Sig wants someone gone, it’s done with care and planning, everything sewn up tight. And the job’s done neat and tidy, not the sloppy scene of carnage I saw at the tattoo shop.

  But I’m not ready to take Eddie off my list, because I’m not stupid, either.

  I don’t linger in what might be a dead end and get back on the main road. “Okay, Mona, it’s still quiz time, and you haven’t answered my question. What was your part in Mickey’s racket?”