Roger tapped a finger on his watch crystal. “Marian, you have a meeting with the Lake County Republicans in ten minutes.”
“We can be late,” she said.
Mac pulled two chairs into a corner and wheeled over a VCR and monitor on a metal stand. Marian sat down. “The date says March 1942,” I said, showing her the cassette label. I fed the tape into the VCR and hit Play.
A slew of disclaimers and warnings assured unauthorized users of a spot on the Ten Most Wanted List if the footage was used without permission. Then the swell of a patriotic march broke over the sound track, and the screen faded from black to a grainy black-and-white montage. Soldiers marched in formation, flags fluttered in the breeze. A voice that sounded a lot like Walter Winchell declared that the week just past would prove to be the major turning point in the battle for freedom and democracy against the forces of evil.
According to the narrator, thousands of draftees now in training camps around the country would, in short order, prove to be the undoing of the Axis. We watched as soldiers aimed rifles at targets, squirmed under barbed wire, and scaled chain-link fences. The announcer exhorted us to remember that despite our grief at being separated from our loved ones, their leaders were proud of them. We should be too.
Marian and I exchanged glances.
The music segued to a lighter tune, and the announcer proclaimed that on the home front too, the war effort was quickly taking hold. Women in record numbers were filling the shoes of men, working in factories and mills.
The camera cut to a new scene, and we were looking at a sign that read Iverson Steel Works. Marian leaned forward, her elbows on the arms of her chair. A throng of men and women with cheerful smiles and greetings pushed through a turnstile. Some tipped their hardhats to the camera. Most carried lunch boxes and thermos bottles. In the background, ribbons of white steam curled out of tall, skinny smokestacks.
The newsreel cut to interiors of the plant. Machines belched, wheels revolved, belts moved. The camera dollied smoothly from one station to the next, showing the raw power of manufacturing, finally stopping in front of a woman in bib overalls. Although it was a long shot, I could see a face with chiseled features and a mass of blond hair arranged on top. The camera cut to a medium shot. My mouth dropped open.
“My God,” I said. “I think that’s Lisle Gottlieb.”
Marian glanced at me. Then she looked back at the screen. The woman on the screen had the same eyes, the same mouth, the same face I’d seen in Dad’s snapshot. But here, in motion, she filled the frame with youth and beauty. Even in overalls, an aura of glamour surrounded her. When she looked into the camera, her shy sensuality lit up the screen.
The camera pushed into a close-up of her work. She was operating some kind of riveting device, making sure rivets were punched into sheets of steel. It was hard to tell what was actually being riveted: a truck door, a tank, possibly the side of an airplane. Once in a while, she’d turn her head, as if responding to someone off camera. I squinted at the screen. The camera pulled back, revealing a man in suit and tie behind her, smiling broadly.
The camera panned over, and the narrator introduced Paul Iverson. The stills I’d seen didn’t do him justice. Taller and slimmer than in the photos, he was elegantly dressed and carried himself with the authority of someone used to issuing orders. His nose was more prominent here, his eyes darker. Despite a head of thick white hair, he looked to be in his forties. A younger version of David.
As if cued by the Movietone director, Iverson stepped forward and stood next to Lisle. Both of them smiled into the camera while the narrator delivered some pronouncement about the war effort. Iverson draped his arm around Lisle.
I froze.
It was the way he put his arm around her. It wasn’t a comradely gesture, the boss clapping a worker on the back. It was a protective, intimate act, as if he was trying to shield her from the outside world. Lisle’s body language confirmed it. Her arm disappeared behind his waist, her chin dropped, and she shifted closer to him, as if deferring to his wishes. The wishes of her man. The wishes of her lover.
I looked over at Marian, who was studying the screen. She stole a glance at me. But when she caught me looking at her, she flicked her eyes back to the screen. The newsreel moved on to the latest tally of war bonds. I hit Stop. For just the briefest moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she nodded, more to herself, it seemed, than to me.
“Fascinating, Ellie. That was fascinating.” Something in her manner was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. “What do you think?” she asked.
It’s always cold in TV studios to compensate for the lights and equipment, and I rubbed my hands up and down my arms to warm myself. I knew exactly what I thought, but I answered carefully. “I’m sure we can get a few seconds out of it.”
“I suppose.” She tapped a finger against her chin. “But, you know, I wonder if Roger may be right after all. Perhaps we ought to focus on the present rather than the past. I don’t want people to think I’m riding on my father’s legacy. Can I think about it?”
“Of course.” Was she trying to tell me something?
She gathered her purse and stood up, opening the clasp to rummage inside. With her eyes on her bag, she said casually, “You say you knew that woman?”
I stood up too. “I think my father knew her. A long time ago. During the war.”
“Good heavens. What a small world.” Her shoulders were hunched, her muscles tense. Her casual air had vanished. Even the air in the room seemed stiff.
The nerves under my skin jangled, like the discordant notes of a Schoenberg piece. “How did that happen?”
I answered cautiously. “Oh, it was a family matter.”
“I see.” She snapped her purse shut and patted my hand, her composure suddenly restored. “Well, thank you for doing such fine research. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen film of my father before.”
The chill I felt had nothing to do with the studio air.
I was trying to figure out how to avoid cooking dinner that evening when the phone rang, and a clipped female voice asked, “Is this the residence of Ellie Foreman?”
“Yes.”
“This is Iris Spencer, the librarian from the Rogers Park branch.”
Miss Finkel redux. “Yes. I remember.” I looked out the window. The late afternoon sun shimmered through the locust tree, its fronds swaying gently in the breeze.
“I found your number behind the counter. You wanted to talk to Clarence Ramsey.”
Boo Boo. “That’s right. It was thoughtful of you to remember. But I did—”
She cut me off, her voice quavering. “We got some bad news today. Clarence was shot. About three blocks from here. He’s…he’s in critical condition.”
The afternoon sun suddenly turned garish and hard.
“The police believe it was gang related.”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I forced out words. “Boo Boo wasn’t in a gang.”
“It was a drive-by.”
Black rimmed the edges of my vision. Through the window I was dimly aware of a small child racing around on a tricycle, followed by another hauling a red wagon. The librarian went on. “I have such little time with them, you see. There’s only so much I can do.”
I heard the pain in her voice. “You did more for him than you know.”
“It’s never enough.” She drew in a breath. I asked what hospital he was in.
“Do you expect you’ll come for a visit?”
“I…I don’t know.” My head felt light and spongy, too big for my body. I rubbed the back of my neck. I pictured Boo Boo on the computers at the library, tapping into virtual worlds of knowledge. I’d assumed words and books and ideas would somehow gild him, protect him from the life in the ‘hood. The roar of an airplane droned overhead. “But when you hear something, could you let me know?”
“Of course.”
There was a moment of silence. I broke it with a question. “Do they know
who did it? Were there any witnesses?”
“A couple across the street apparently saw a beige or tan car. The police are looking for it.”
I gripped the phone so hard that a sharp pain shot through my fingers. “A Cutlass?”
“I’m not sure of the model.” There was another moment of silence. “Well, I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thank you.”
Hanging up, I wrapped my arms around my knees. Ever since I’d taken Skull’s cartons, bad things were happening. Ruth Fleishman was dead. My house had been robbed. Now Boo Boo was fighting for his life. And the one link among them was a tan car.
Chapter Twenty-six
I stopped by the village florist and sent flowers to the hospital, then went to shul to say a Misheberach, a blessing. When I got home, there was a message from David Linden, wanting to know whether my father was better and when they could meet. I wasn’t much in the mood, but I called Dad, who declared he still wasn’t interested.
“Dad, he didn’t know that Kurt died in Douglas Park. His mother told him his father was killed on some mission in Europe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“David said that according to Lisle, Kurt came home in June of forty-five but left again a short time later. To take a final OSS assignment, she said. Surveillance on some Nazis escaping to South America. It got all screwed up, and Kurt was killed.”
“No way. He came back in late July, just a week or so before Hiroshima. Why would she tell him something different?”
I had my suspicions. “I don’t know, but he called again today.” I looked through the window at the deepening dusk. “Dad, he needs to hear it from you. It would mean a lot.”
I heard him sigh through the phone “Thank you. I won’t forget this.”
“What have you gotten me into, Ellie?”
I ignored the question. “Just to give you a heads-up, Dad, I don’t think he knows about you and Lisle. If you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too.”
I heard the click as he disconnected. Then I heard another click.
“Dad?” Silence. “You still there?” More silence. First my E-mail. Now the phone. Had I suddenly been sentenced to technology hell? Or was it something else? Frowning, I put the receiver back in the cradle.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I introduced David to my father in the lobby of The Ritz. I knew Dad would be polite, but it had to be an emotional moment for him. Subdued, almost solemn, he stood at military attention. When he saw David, he took his hand and gazed at him, as if comparing the features on the son’s face to his memory of the mother’s. Discomfited, I played with my hair. If things had been different, Dad might have been David’s stepfather, and I wouldn’t even be on the scene. Just as I thought this, Dad gave me a tender smile and brushed his hand across my hair.
David was in khakis today, with a light blue shirt that picked up the contrast between his eyes and white hair. Something stirred inside me. Had Paul Iverson been this handsome? If so, I could understand Lisle’s attraction. We sat down in a grouping of upholstered chairs on a Chinese silk carpet. From our angle off the lobby, we had an excellent view of the fountain. Though it was still morning, soft piano music tinkled nearby.
“So.” Dad shifted toward David. “Ellie says you trade foreign currency. That must be a lucrative line of work.”
“Not as lucrative as you might imagine, sir.”
“No?”
Nice touch, Dad, I thought.
“Back in the Eighties, the spreads were so wide you could make good money. If you knew what you were doing. But that’s all changed.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Like everything else, as information has become more available, people see opportunities where they didn’t before. There’s a lot more competition today.” He smiled. “More global players too. Spreads are tighter and profit margins are thinner.”
My father nodded. He understood. I didn’t.
“Don’t get me wrong,” David said. “Foreign currencies will always be part of our portfolio. But if a banker’s being really honest, he’ll tell you the only reason we trade is to service our customers. To help them hedge or finance new ventures.”
“I thought the objective was to play the market.”
“Not anymore. That’s what I’m saying.” David leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Let’s say you’re Toyota USA, and you know you’re going to buy a thousand cars from Toyota Japan six months from now. And let’s say the dollar is stronger than the yen.”
“Meaning…”
“Meaning your dollars will buy more yen than they might six months from now.”
“Okay.”
“In that case, it would make sense to hedge your yen obligation and lock in the cost of those cars now, rather than waiting six months. That way, you know today the actual cost of your cars out then.”
“So I would buy the yen now?”
“Not exactly. You’d contract to take delivery of the yen six months from now, but the price would be fixed today.”
“Okay.” I sounded tentative.
“See, companies want the security of knowing their actual cost in advance—their cost of goods sold.”
“But what if the yen drops six months from now?” I said, thinking about Barry’s stocks. “Things can go the other way, can’t they?”
“Of course.”
“So,” I said, “in a sense, you’re still gambling that the price of yen will go the way you want it to.”
He shook his head. “No. We aren’t speculators. Our clients understand that. What’s important to them is knowing the cost of what they’ve contracted for, before they take possession of it. Foreign currency trading gives them a tool to do that. They’re able to lock in the cost—no matter which way the yen goes.”
“Sounds simple when you put it that way.” David shrugged.
“But what about that guy in Baltimore—the one who worked for the Irish bank—who lost almost a billion dollars? He was a currency trader, wasn’t he?”
“He was trading the bank’s money. He made a bad trade and then made it worse by hiding what he did. Then he tried to make it all back before anyone discovered his losses, but it blew up in his face, as it always will, when people fall into that trap.”
“So he was speculating.”
“That’s what got him in trouble.”
“I don’t get it. You just said you don’t speculate.”
“I don’t. What I do is help the bank’s customers hedge their foreign currency risks. I’m more of an advisor, in that respect. I don’t trade the bank’s money.”
“But others do.”
“That’s right.”
“Who?”
“My colleagues in the trading group.”
I hoped they were better at it than Barry.
A waiter carrying a silver tray drifted over toward us, a question on his face. David waved him away.
“I graduated from the Wharton School, but I learned most of it on the job.”
“Philadelphia, you say?”
“And London, Geneva, Tokyo.”
Dad notched his eyebrows. “You speak all those languages?”
“God no. I don’t even speak German. My mother always talked to me in English.”
“That sounds like Lisle.” Dad smiled.
David’s expression suddenly grew serious. “Mr. Foreman—”
“Call me Jake.”
“Is it true what Ellie told me? That my father died here in Chicago?”
Dad’s face softened. “In Lawndale,” he said gently. “Douglas Park. I was there.”
“Jake?” His tongue seemed to trip over the word. “Would you take me there…to the place where it happened?”
Chapter Twenty-seven
By the time we got off the Eisenhower on the West Side, Dad and David were chatting like old friends. As we tu
rned south, Dad rubbed his hands together. He hadn’t been this animated in years.
“This is Lawndale, son,” he said. “Used to be the heart of Jewish life in Chicago.”
We passed scorched buildings and abandoned lots filled with trash, rusty barrels, and in one case, a cardboard appliance box. Lawndale had been ground zero during the riots; forty years later, the scars were still palpable.
“Would you look at that?” Dad cranked down the window as we cruised past a McDonald’s. Its sanitized cheerfulness clashed with the detritus of the community. “Miller’s pool hall used to be right there.” He pointed to the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. “This is where I first met your mother, David. Roosevelt and Kedzie. On a Sunday afternoon.”
I slowed so David could take a look. “You met my mother at a pool hall?”
“She was just passing by,” Dad said hastily.
I stole a glance in the rearview mirror. David’s mirrored shades hid his expression. We continued south on Kedzie to Ogden, where a sign on a large shabby building said it was the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Once upon a time it must have been an elegant addition to the neighborhood, but its cornices and grillwork were now crumbling, and initials in loopy iridescent letters covered the walls.
“This was the Douglas Park Auditorium. Home of the Yiddish Theater. I knew an actress who worked here.”
“Skull’s girlfriend?” I asked. “The one who was killed by the Nazi Bund officer?”
Dad nodded. I shaded my eyes. The inside walls had collapsed, leaving wooden studs with exposed pipes and wires. Sunbeams danced off shards of glass where windows should have been.
Dad grew more subdued as he directed me to Albany Avenue. We stopped in front of a long brown brick building with a cross on the front. The sign above said it was the Sacred Heart Home. “It’s still here,” Dad breathed. “This used to be the Jewish Orphans Home. Your mother lived here, David, before she moved into Teitelman’s.”
David leaned his head out the window.
We headed back up to Douglas Boulevard, a broad fourlane street separated by an island and flanked by leafy, graceful trees. I imagined couples sauntering down the sidewalks years ago, the women in dresses with parasols, children scampering behind.
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