Boca Mournings

by Steven M. Forman

  I had subconsciously categorized the rich people living in South Florida’s more affluent communities as “The Chosen.” The people in the Bagel Bush were “The Others.”

  If The Chosen lived in a land of plenty . . . The Others lived in a world of paltry. If The Chosen asked, “Why not?” The Others most probably asked, “Why me?” The Chosen dressed well. The Others . . . just dressed. The Chosen had more money than they needed and The Others did not.

  The difference between being one of The Chosen or one of The Others can be a matter of merit or simply the luck of the genetic draw: lucky sperm or scrambled eggs. But this group was special. They had chosen to help a stranger.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said sincerely.

  “Who me?” the fat Heimlich lady asked, pointing to herself.

  “All of you,” I said.

  After washing my face and hands I got in my MINI and drove to Delray Vista thinking how lucky I was to have chosen to eat with The Others.

  I looked around the card room filled with the malcontents of Delray Vista, Building 550. According to Lou’s research, not one person in the building was less than seventy-eight years old and most of them were over eighty. Remarkably all the original couples were intact; no divorces and no deaths. Unfortunately, they seemed to have outlived their friendships, forgotten their beginnings, and become fixated on the end. They had developed collective Alzheimer’s . . . forgetting everything but the most recent grudge.

  They sat on uncomfortable folding chairs, looking dubiously at me and ignoring each other. On one side of the room were the twelve residents of the six apartments on the first floor, and on the other side sat the dozen from the second floor. A ten-foot-wide aisle and a brick wall of resentment separated them.

  I walked to a portable podium at the front of the room and put down my notes. Lou Dewey was standing in the center aisle with his computer set on a small table, aimed at a screen next to me. He gave me a thumbs-up and I nodded. There was no turning back now.

  “Can I have your attention, please,” I said authoritatively. “I’m Eddie Perlmutter, a private investigator. I was hired by Izzy Fryberg to investigate your faulty elevator. I’ve called this meeting to give you the results.”

  “Did you find the problem?” an impatient male voice demanded.

  “Yes, I did,” I said. “The elevator malfunctioned due to a stress fracture between the first and second floor.”

  The cross talk that followed was loud and incomprehensible.

  “There’s something wrong with the building?” a single male voice boomed above the babble.

  “No, there’s something wrong with the residents,” I answered.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?” an angry woman shouted at me.

  “No, it’s no joke,” I said. “There is so much stress between the people on the first and second floor that this whole place is falling apart.”

  I was surprised by the silence that followed. I walked to the wall and dimmed the lights. “I have a presentation I want you to see.”

  “What’s the presentation about?” a woman asked civilly.

  “It’s about all of you,” I said, and if I dropped a pin at that moment, you could have heard it hit the floor. I nodded to Lou Dewey who punched some buttons on his computer.

  A blurred group picture appeared on the screen and the hauntingly beautiful melody of Pachelbel’s Canon in D embraced the room. When the photo came into focus I heard a collective gasp as everyone in the audience saw themselves on the screen, the way they were . . . fifty years ago.

  In the photo, twelve wives sat on beach blankets and twelve husbands stood behind them by the shoreline of a lake.

  “Look at you in that bathing suit,” Izzy Fryberg said to his wife Emma. “You were a babe.”

  “Frankie, you were so thin,” Zoe Mendlebaum said to her husband.

  “Lucky, what a head of hair you had,” Alice Freedlander said to her bald husband.

  Bennett and Bertha Paretsky sat in silence, recognizing the photograph.

  The canon gave way to a bouncy tune with lyrics that assured the listeners that everything old was new again.

  “That’s Mo and Maxine,” Bunny Shpielman said when the new picture on the screen came into focus.

  “That’s us,” Biggie Small said to his wife Ida when their images replaced Mo and Maxine’s.

  The photos included every resident of Building 550 in different venues at different times. They were in the snow of winter, the lakes of summer, the arcades of youth, the nightclubs of maturity, and the twilight of long lives.

  “Wow,” I heard from one corner of the card room.

  “Ahhh,” was heard from another direction.

  “Oh, my God, look at that.”

  “Look at me.”

  “Look at him.”

  “Look at her.”

  “I can’t believe you let me wear that dress.”

  “I can’t believe you made me buy that suit.”

  The bouncy music faded to a romantic ballad sung by a man with a gravely voice who kept telling some lucky person, over and over again, “You are so beautiful.” It was the perfect song to accompany photos and old movies of the descendants of Delray Vista, Building 550. Noah had done a great job matching the music to the mood, and the audience was mesmerized.

  When that song ended a new one began, explaining what friends are for . . . in good times or bad.

  The last picture remained on screen the longest. It was a photo of twenty-four dear friends standing in front of a construction site next to a sign that read:

  DELRAY VISTA – BUILDING 550 – AVAILABLE SOON

  When the music and the picture faded, the lights came on.

  “This completes our presentation,” I announced.

  No one said a word. No one moved.

  First-floor Mo Myerson stood up, walked across the new room, and embraced Izzy Fryberg.

  “Izzy, I apologize,” Mo said. “I forgot how much we all meant to each other.”

  A hugfest followed. Everyone apologized to everyone else. It was beautiful. Lou Dewey approached me smiling broadly.

  “Great job, Lou,” I congratulated him.

  “I can’t believe no one even asked who screwed up the elevator,” he commented.

  “That’s not important now,” I said. “I just hope it lasts,”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  I shrugged and watched the happy exchanges in the room.

  “Izzy,” Mo Myerson’s voice boomed louder than all the others, “I’m going downstairs to write you a check for my share of the elevator.”

  “No, no, Mo,” Izzy waved away his offer. “I want you to be my guest.”

  “Hear, hear,” said another second-floor resident. “The money isn’t important.”

  “We should have participated in the first place,” Lucky Freedlander, of the first-floor Freedlanders, said. “I’m going to pay my fair share, too.”

  “It’s not necessary,” second-floor Frankie Mendlebaum said good-naturedly. “Our friendships are more important.”

  “We insist,” Bunny Shpielman said.

  “Forget about it,” Biggie Small said.

  “I don’t want to forget about it,” Walter Hopfenberg, of the first-floor Hopfenbergs, declared. “I want to pay.”

  “We don’t want your money,” second-floor Helen Cohen said, hoping to end the conversation.

  “Oh, excuse me, Ms. Money Bags,” Alice Freedlander said. “So now you’re too good to take our money.”

  “That’s no way to talk,” Ira Cohen said sharply to Mrs. Freedlander, defending his wife.

  “Don’t talk to my wife in that tone of voice,” Lucky Freedlander said to Ira Cohen.

  “Stop arguing,” Izzy Fryberg said plaintively.

  “Mind your own business,” Lucky told Izzy.

  “You sons of bitches should have paid your own way in the first place,” said second-floor man Jimmy Boorstein. “Then we wouldn’t have had any of
this bullshit.”

  “Don’t use that fuckin’ language in front of my wife,” an offended husband shouted.

  “Oh yeah!”

  “Yeah!”

  A shoving match ensued as the residents of Delray Vista Building 550 lost that loving feeling.

  “I don’t believe it,” Lou said.

  “I know,” I said stuffing my hands dejectedly into my pants pockets where I felt my PAL referee’s whistle. Impulsively I removed the plastic whistle, took a deep breath, and blew it as loud as I could. It sounded like a police raid. Everyone froze in place.

  Izzy Fryberg had Mo Myerson by the collar and looked as if he was about to punch him.

  Biggie Small had Arnie Litwack in a headlock.

  Willa Hopfenberg was pulling Zoe Mendlebaum’s hair.

  It was comical but it wasn’t funny.

  All eyes turned to me but I had nothing to say. I started walking for the door.

  “Wait, Eddie,” Izzy Fryberg called. “Where are you going?”

  “To the elevator,” I told him. “It’s the safest place in this building.”

  When I told Claudette I was going to take Valentine’s Day off and spend it with her she got unbelievably romantic and took me to bed at nine o’clock the night of the thirteenth. It was Valentine’s Day by the time I fell asleep.

  VALENTINE’S DAY DREAM:

  I dreamed I was seated across the bar from Edik at Tropics. We were alone.

  Okay, Meester Eddie, Edik said in a high-pitched voice, What can I get you?

  Why are you wearing a woman’s wig? I asked him.

  What wig? He shrugged.

  Why are you talking like a woman?

  Don’t be silly, he said in a woman’s voice, and I watched his boobs inflate and deflate like silicon accordions.

  What’s with your boobs? I asked.

  You tell me. It’s your fahking dream.

  There it was again. That fahking word that voice, that accent; where had I heard it before? Suddenly I remembered it all. I knew everything about the missing Dietrichs, Edik’s changing voice, his wig, his inflatable boobs, and why Irene Kostanski was stranger than a bar mitzvah in Hitler’s bunker. I tried to get up but I felt like I was up to my neck in quicksand. I thrashed my arms, kicked my feet, and screamed for help.

  Then I heard someone else scream, “Eddie, stop it.”

  I know that voice, too.

  Suddenly my whole body was shaking and I felt myself falling backward until I landed hard on my back. The impact knocked the wind out of me and popped open my eyes. I saw my bedroom ceiling, and then Claudette’s beautiful face looking down at me.

  “Hi, Halle,” I said with a stupid smile.

  “Idiot,” she replied as she knelt down next to me and pressed her lips to my cheek. “You were having a nightmare and I couldn’t wake you. Are you alright?”

  “I’m fantastic,” I said sitting up then scrambling to my feet. “See.”

  “Sit down,” she reached for me. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “No, I gotta go,” I told her.

  “Where are you going at one thirty in the morning on Valentine’s Day? You were supposed to spend the day with me.”

  “I’m going to visit my two favorite homosexuals in Wilton Manors.”

  I got dressed and called Lou Dewey.

  “What time is it?” he groaned into the phone.

  “It’s very late or very early depending how you look at it,” I said. “I’m sorry to wake you Lou but I need some information right away,” I explained.

  “Who is that, Louie?” I heard Joy Feely ask, sounding annoyed.

  “It’s Eddie,” he told her. “He needs me to do some research for him right away.”

  “You do whatever that man says,” she replied.

  “What do you need?” he asked wearily.

  I told him.

  “When do you need it?”

  “Before the sun comes up.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m conducting a predawn raid in Wilton Manors,” I explained.

  “Of course, you are,” Lou Dewey said and hung up the phone.

  An hour and a half later, I met Lou in the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts on Yamato, near I-95. He handed me a pile of computer printouts. I scanned a few pages.

  “How did you get all this so fast?” I asked appreciatively.

  “Dishonestly,” he told me honestly.

  We reviewed the notes by the map lights in his dented Cadillac.

  “So, Edik is Natasha’s brother,” I said, referring to the counterfieter I had arrested last year. “I should have noticed the resemblance sooner.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Lou said. “You busted her a year ago, then she escaped. You probably didn’t get a good look at her.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I moaned. “I knocked her out at close range. I’m just getting old.”

  I resumed reading. “The guy I set on fire and the guy I shot in the knee that day were Boris and Yuri Kuznetsov, brothers from the Russian Mafia. It says here they’re from Ekaterinburg. Where’s that?”

  Lou checked his notes. “Eight hundred and thirty miles northwest of Moscow.”

  “The middle of nowhere,” I said.

  “Actually, it’s one of the top five largest cities in Russia and the crime capital of the country,” Lou told me. “Tsar Nicholas was killed there and the Mafia has been big there since 1992.”

  “Is their Mafia powerful?”

  “From what I read, the Russian Mafia is not one big happy family. There are thousands of loosely affiliated gangs,” Lou said. “Ekaterinburg has at least fifteen. The Kuznetsov Kremlin Klan is one of them.”

  “The KKK?”

  “Yes, and from what I read they’re a lot like our own KKK,” Lou said. “They hate the government and exclude Jews and gays. Then right across town is the Gulag Gang, made up mostly of Jews and gays. They’re descendants of former Soviet prison camp inmates.”

  “My kind of guys,” I said.

  We continued reading. Natasha’s last name was Davidavitch, not Dubov, the name I remembered from her arrest. Her father was dead and her mother was living in a nursing home in Russia. Her brother Edik was mentioned but not identified as a gang member.

  I looked at my watch. It was a little after four in the morning. I stuffed the papers into a leather satchel I brought.

  “You want me to come with you?” Lou asked.

  “No. I want you to go home to Joy,” I said.

  “I’m in love with her, Eddie,” Lou blurted out.

  “Hey, that’s great. Have you told her?”

  “I’m afraid to,” he said. “What if she doesn’t love me?”

  “How could she not love you?”

  I patted Lou on the shoulder and headed for my MINI.

  Early-morning surprise raids were never a favorite activity of mine, and I was particularly apprehensive about this one. I didn’t have the security of a legal search warrant or police authority. If I was wrong, my reputation would change from Boca Knight to Boca Nightmare in a New York–snowbird minute. My head was spinning.

  I had phoned the boys in the gayborhood while driving to my meeting with Lou.

  “Howard, it’s Eddie,” I told him while roaring through the deserted streets of Boca. “I need your help. I’m picking you up in about an hour.”

  “Your brain damage is worse than I thought,” Howard had said and hung up.

  I hit redial.

  “Have I won a contest?” he asked this time.

  “You could say that,” I told him.

  “I never win contests,” he said, making dry noises with his mouth, “except once I was selected queen of the New Jersey Turnpike Gay Pageant.”

  “Who is that on the phone at this hour?” I heard Derek ask. “Did someone die?”

  “It’s the man who was shot in the head the other night,” Howard told Derek. “And no one died. Or did they?”

  “I don’t think so,” I
confirmed.

  “He doesn’t think anyone died,” Howard said, yawning.

  “Why is he calling at this hour?”

  “I don’t know. Why are you calling at this hour?”

  “I think I know what happened to the Dietrichs,” I told him. “And they didn’t go on any vacation.”

  “I knew it,” Howard said, suddenly fully awake. “Hold on a sec.”

  I heard him moving.

  “Put the light out,” I heard Derek protest.

  “The Boca Knight thinks he knows what happened to the Dietrichs.”

  “Can’t you listen in the dark?” Derek whined.

  “So, what happened to them?” Howard asked, ignoring Derek.

  “I’ll tell you when I see you,” I said.

  “If you’re going on a stakeout, I’m not going with you,” he said emphatically. “I hate stakeouts.”

  “When were you on a stakeout?”

  “In the early seventies,” he said. “A cross-country truck driver bound me hand and foot to pegs in the ground and left me there.”

  “That’s being staked out,” I told him.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “A stakeout is when you watch people who don’t know you’re watching them.”

  “That’s voyeurism,” Howard interjected.

  “I like that. Can I go?” Derek asked in the background.

  “I’m talking about breaking into someone’s house,” I told him.

  “That sounds so bizarre,” Howard said.

  “Can I go?” Derek persisted.

  “Not so fast, sweetheart,” Howard told Derek. “The Boca Knight wants to break into someone’s house.”

  “Forget I asked,” Derek decided.

  “We’re not interested,” Howard said. “We wouldn’t do well in prison.”

  “It might be fun for a short sentence,” Derek suggested.

  “You’re a hopeless jailhouse romantic,” Howard scolded him. “Can I ask you why you’re planning to break into someone’s house?”

  “To help your friends,” I told him.

  “Derek, the Knight says we can help the Dietrichs by breaking and entering.”

  “What does one wear to break and enter?” Derek asked.