"When did we stop going to synagogue?" I asked.
"All of a sudden you care?"
"I"m just asking."
"It was your mother who kept that stuff going. She wanted to belong to the fancy place with all the rich dressers. She thought belonging there would give her cla.s.s. She could have married the Queen of England she still wouldn"t have had no cla.s.s, and believe me, I ain"t the Queen of England. The dues were killing us but that"s what she wanted so that"s what we did. When she left I didn"t see any point."
"I should have been bar mitzvahed," I said, and I don"t know why I said it because I had never thought it before in my entire life.
"And I should have been rich. So what"s life but regrets."
"If Grandpop had still been alive, he would have made sure I got bar mitzvahed," I said. My voice seemed to fill with a great bitterness whenever I came home and it did again just then.
"You always were a whiner, you know that," said my father. "It was always "I hate this" and "I hate that," I just wanted to smack you all the time. Two people in the world knew how to get at me and they got to be my wife and kid. Well, quit being such a little whining snotnose already and grow up. Everything doesn"t got to be done for you, you can do it yourself if you want. There ain"t no age limit. Do it, I don"t care, just quit whining about it. Look, I did it and believe me, you didn"t miss nothing."
"I didn"t know you were bar mitzvahed."
"Yeah, well, there"s a h.e.l.l of a lot you don"t know," he said.
"Did you have a big party?"
"It wasn"t like that then. My mother made a brisket and we had a cousin or two over, that"s all. Nowadays, s.h.i.t, they set up tents and serve lobster Newburg. Lobster Newburg, clams casino, a band with a colored singer. How do you figure that?"
"I would have liked a party."
"You didn"t have no friends. Who would we have invited, the President?"
After golf there was 60 Minutes, the little ticking clock, the talking head, the reporter with his incredulous tone as though the scam he discovered was anything but expected. I am shocked, shocked, he seemed to say, that there are companies out there defrauding the government. It was dark now, the shadows had spread to cover everything. My father"s face, slack in its thralldom of the television, was illuminated in a shifting light.
"I have a problem I need to talk to you about," I said.
"How much do you need now?"
"It"s not like that."
"This time, maybe," he said.
"I have to make a decision about something. I have this case, the one I"ve been on television with."
"You been on television?"
"Don"t act like that, you"ve seen me. I know you have."
"I thought it was you but I wasn"t sure. You look better on TV."
"So I should have been a television star, then?"
"You"d be better than that Bryant Gumbel, I"ll tell you that," he said. "There"s a b.u.m if ever I saw one."
"In this case I have a client who"s in serious trouble. It"s a criminal case and it looks like he is going to lose, but he doesn"t want me to do anything about it. Now I think I know who did what he is supposed to have done, and I think I know how to prove it, but it would cost me."
"Cost you? How much?"
"I"ve been offered a job, a really good job, a job like I"ve always wanted, but the job will come through only if I don"t rock the boat. And I"ve been offered a lot of money for another case, enough money that I could pay you back with interest, but again only if I let my client go down. There are deals that I"m on that I won"t be on if I do it. And the group who is paying me to represent this guy probably won"t pay me if I cause trouble, or that"s just the way it seems. So the whole thing could mean a lot to me, the money and the job. But on the other side of the ledger, I"m like a lawyer and my client is going down and I feel that I have to do something about it, anything, even if it costs me. So I"m not sure what to do."
There was a long silence between us, ably filled by the television set, an interview with an old entertainer, Morley Safer shaking his head over and over in amazement. Then, without turning from the television, my father spoke.
"Take the money," he said.
He coughed loudly, hacking something big and weighty into the paper towel.
"Take the money," he said. "It don"t come around that often."
There was another long pause as a string of commercials played out and then the annoying skirl of Andy Rooney. My father switched the channel, surfing to find something, ending back in failure with Andy Rooney. Rooney had a pile of products before him and he was reading the labels.
"That"s what you could do on television," he said. "You could whine as good as him."
"You ever have a chance for real money?" I asked.
There was a long pause before he said, "Marty Sokowsky."
"I don"t know him."
"Sokowsky Chevrolet and Subaru out on 611. I grew up with Sokowsky in Logan. Right out of high school he had a proposition for me. Meat. He was going into the meat business, you know, not growing meat or chopping meat but selling meat. He wanted to be a salesman."
"What kind of meat?"
"Pigs, cows, chicken, meat. The whole thing was a little shady, you know, selling second quality as first, bait and switch, it wasn"t nothing about meat, really, it was about sucking out the money. I wasn"t sure about it and the idea of telling your grandfather that I was selling pork was too much. I had decided on the army anyway, so I said no. Well, Sokowsky just misses getting indicted but he makes a ton, goes on to buy a car dealership where he is minting money, just minting money, and I come back from the army and start cutting lawns for that schmuck Aaronson. I missed out. It could have been Sokowsky-Carl Chevrolet and Subaru, that could have been me. Everything would have been different had I had a car dealership. I been waiting here for another chance ever since, but nothing never came. So what I learned is that with screwups like us it only comes around once and when it comes take it. No matter who you have to f.u.c.k."
When the slangy little music for Murder She Wrote came on I told my father I had to leave. He followed me to the door.
"Take the money," he said.
"Yes, I heard you."
"You ever hear from her?" he asked quietly.
"Now and then. She"s taken up golf."
"I"m not surprised," he said bitterly. "I think her whole life she aspired to golf. She wanted me to join Philmont Country Club, the ritzy Jewish place down Huntingdon Pike. You know what that f.u.c.king place costs? Sokowsky belongs there."
"She tells me to say h.e.l.lo."
"I don"t want to hear it."
"I know."
"The b.u.ms are in Dallas next week. They"re going to get killed in Dallas."
"Are you inviting me?"
"No, I was just saying."
""Cause if you"re inviting me."
"I"m not inviting you. Shut up. I"ll be busy anyway."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I got a tee-off time at Merion. Tell the b.i.t.c.h I"m taking it up too."
It was a sad drive out of Hollywood and the suburbs and back into the city. My father was dying but that wasn"t what was sad. I drove right up Broad Street, through the worst parts of North Philadelphia, bombed-out moviehouses, boarded-up stores, congregants of the homeless under elevated train bridges. I drove through Temple University and past the Philadelphia Inquirer building and then right around City Hall, past that building that had been decimated by fire but was still standing, a high-rise sh.e.l.l with plywood for windows, and I felt sad the whole way. It wasn"t my father"s certain future that was upsetting me so, it was the uncertainty of his past. But it had been a good visit; it had clarified things. My father had always been a barometer for me, the rebellions of my youth only mattered in relation to him. He was quiet, so I talked too d.a.m.n much. He was uncomplaining, so I complained. He wore his hair in a crew cut, mine flowed past my shoulders all through high school. He was a laborer, I became a lawyer. He was poor, I would be rich. But I wouldn"t be rich his way. "Take the money," he had said, and in those three swift words he had pointed out my direction as clear as a road sign. "Take the money," he had said, and I would, but not his way. I wanted nothing of my life to be his way.
Jimmy Moore had killed Zack Bissonette. I knew that with as much certainty as my father knew the Eagles were b.u.ms. Jimmy had gone to that club looking for Zack Bissonette and when he found him he grabbed a baseball bat from a display on the wall and with it he beat Bissonette senseless, faceless, comatose, beat him to death. Even as I cleaned up the dachshund mess, scrubbed the bloodstains from Tony Baloney"s wooden desktop and leather blotter with Murphy"s Oil, even then I could see it all, the flashing bat, the fury in Jimmy Moore"s face, the blood bubbling as Bissonette breathed through it. And with a little luck I could prove it all happened just like that, too. I knew what it would cost me. Blaine, c.o.x, Amber and c.o.x would not be calling. The Bishop brothers would not be calling. My sweet forty-thousand-dollar cut of the Saltz settlement would not be resting gently in my bank account. From affluence to poverty in the blink of an eye.
But all my life I had resented the fact that what I had wished for had not been bestowed upon me. My father had not been rich, the law firms had not been hiring, that slam-bam-in-your-face case had never come walking in my door. I had been waiting too long for someone to give me my share. Enough already of waiting. Jimmy Moore had said America was not about what was bestowed but about what was grabbed, and now I was grabbing. Make no mistake, I still wanted it all, the money, the prestige, the best tables, the best cars, the youngest and prettiest women. But I wouldn"t end up like my father, embittered because the myth of opportunity had not come knocking on my door. By going up against Jimmy Moore I would surely be losing that which was being bestowed upon me by William Prescott, but I didn"t want to be given anything by anybody anymore. What would Clarence Darrow, the greatest trial lawyer of all time, what would Darrow have done in my situation? What would Lincoln have done, or Daniel Webster, or Andrew Hamilton, the first of the great Philadelphia lawyers? They each would have spit in Prescott"s eye and then gone out and taken what was rightfully theirs. They didn"t rely on gifts bestowed, and no longer would I.
So this is what I would do. I would s.h.i.t on Blaine, c.o.x, Amber and c.o.x. I would s.h.i.t on the Bishop brothers, on CUP, on the G.o.dd.a.m.n defendants in Saltz v. Metropolitan Investors, on Norvel Goodwin and his b.l.o.o.d.y calling cards. I would convince Chester Concannon to let me fight for his freedom and then I would take down Jimmy Moore. And in taking down Jimmy Moore I would make a name for myself. I would win the case for Chester Concannon, I"d save his life, I would, and when I did I"d shout it to the press and watch the clients come roaring in. I would seize opportunity by the neck and wring it, oh yes. I would make a name for myself and from my name, and no one else"s, would flow my power and my wealth and all my worldly success. I would make a name for myself, dammit, and in so doing I alone would make my dreams come true.
43.
"HOW"S YOUR PASTRAMI, Morris?" I asked.
"Goot," he mumbled through a mouth full of meat.
"Not too lean, I hope."
"No, goot," he said, fighting to swallow so he could s.n.a.t.c.h another bite.
"You want more coleslaw, maybe?"
With his mouth again full he nodded his head and lifted the top piece of rye bread off his sandwich. I placed a layer of coleslaw over the thickly sliced spiced meat.
"And more Russian dressing?"
He shrugged, but with the top of his sandwich still off I took a knife and slathered the coleslaw with Russian dressing from the little bowl in front of us.
"I hope it"s not too lean," I said as Morris was in the middle of taking a bite. "I told the lady not too lean."
Morris nodded at me, his eyes wide in satisfaction, the sandwich still at his mouth.
"Oh, look," I said. "This is great. Here come our French fries."
We were in Ben"s Deli, Ben"s Kosher Deli, a block away from Jewelers" Row in Philadelphia. Ben"s was a long, low restaurant with one aisle down the middle flanked by booths. The walls were painted white and the floor was white linoleum and the leatherette on the booths was dark green and in the back of the store, on two large planks of plywood, like the tablets from Mt. Sinai, was the menu, writ in dark blue on white. Hot pastrami was a specialty, thick slices of meat with dark peppered crusts and veins of fat that melted on the tongue as you chewed. There was also corned beef, roast beef, tuna fish, chicken salad, egg salad, though no cheese or yogurt or ice cream. Ben"s was a flayshig place, which meant that the cholesterol that oozed out on their platters and into your heart came directly from the very muscles of the twice blessed then slaughtered animals as opposed to indirectly, from their milk. Old Ha.s.sids sat at the booths yelling at each other in Yiddish, slick young diamond sellers talked out the sides of their mouths as they snapped the complimentary pickles in their teeth, young boys in yarmulkes sat morosely over their egg salad sandwiches and c.o.kes. Two nuns squinted at the menu on the wall, searching for the toasted cheese sandwiches they had mistakenly stopped in for.
We were in Ben"s because I had a favor to ask Morris and I astutely figured the best time to ask Morris for a favor was when his mouth was full. "Ketchup?" I asked as the waitress spun the plate of thick-cut fries in front of him.
He shook his head no.
"Beer, how about a beer? A beer would go great with this, wouldn"t it?"
Morris, his mouth once again joyously filled with pastrami and coleslaw and rye bread, shook his head vigorously but then stopped all that shaking and shrugged.
"Miss, could we have two beers? Is Heineken all right, Morris?"
He nodded.
"Two Heinekens."
When the beers came I poured Morris"s into the little water gla.s.s she brought with the bottles, making sure the head was a perfect inch thick.
"How"s your lunch, Morris?"
His gla.s.s to his lips, he nodded again.
"Take another bite."
He took another bite.
"I"ve got a favor to ask."
He fought to finish swallowing what was in his mouth, took a long drink from his beer, and said, "Tell me, Victor, why am I not surprised by this?"
"Because you"re a wise man, Morris."
"Wise to you, mine freint, and your obvious attempt at bribery. But Morris Kapustin is a righteous man, he cannot be bought by a simple pastrami sandwich on rye. I am not so easily taken as you think, Victor. Please pa.s.s the coleslaw. Sometimes when I take a bite it slips right out of the sandwich and pffft, onto mine lap. These paper napkins they give you now, such schlock. They do nothing to protect you from coleslaw. So tell me what you want from Morris."
"I need to break into an office."
He stared at me and shook his head. "I am an investigator, not a thief. You want to find a thief, that"s very simple. Go to a prison, any prison, and you will find many thieves. And the funny thing, even in those prisons there are some thieves who are lawyers, do you understand what I am saying, mine freint? But not here will you find a thief, not at this table at Ben"s. Now you"re insulting me now. All of a sudden I don"t want no more your sandwich. Take it away. Take it. It"s like trayf to me now."
He pushed his plate away from him. There was still almost a quarter of a sandwich left. He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at the plate and then pulled it back.
"Give me the coleslaw, please," he said. "Just a pitsel more is all it is needing."
I refilled his beer gla.s.s.
"Thank you," he said. "Careful there is not too much head. Who wants to be drinking all that shum? It gives gas."
"I need to break into an office."
"Again with the office?"