The Yiddish Gangster's Daughter (A Becks Ruchinsky Mystery Book 1) by Joan Lipinsky Cochran

Author:Joan Lipinsky Cochran [Lipinsky Cochran, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pericott Publishing
Published: 2018-09-09T22:00:00+00:00

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21

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Tootsie

Becks is unusually quiet on the drive home tonight and, when we turn off the I-95 ramp for downtown Miami, I ask if I’ve said something to upset her.

She shakes her head. “I’m down. I saw Daniel this morning at Zach Birnbaum’s bar mitzvah.”

“And?”

“And we had a fight.”

“About what?”

“Everything. Nothing. Moving back in together.”

She looks at me from the corner of her eye, daring me to comment. I’d like to press her, to find out if there’s anything I can do to help. But I keep my mouth shut. I don’t need her telling me again that it’s none of my business.

When I get upstairs to my apartment, I go to the sliding glass doors and stare into the Schmuel Bernstein’s garden. It’s dark and the palm trees are scarcely visible. Across the lawn, lights flicker on in one of the upstairs windows of the nursing home. The grounds are deserted except for a raccoon trying to upend a garbage can.

I’m down tonight too, sad and disappointed. The actors put on a terrific show and it brought back great memories. Afterward, at dinner, I enjoyed sharing them with Becks. But as I spoke, I realized I was trying to convince her that the gangsters I knew weren’t the monsters she paints them to be. Lansky and his cronies did a lot of good, helping the Israeli underground fighters acquire weapons. Becks seemed unimpressed.

She didn’t say anything tonight, but she’s made no secret of her contempt for these men. I can understand it. They were criminals. I suppose I was too and regret some of the things I did. But whether she likes it or not, a lot of those men are friends I grew up with, people I admired as a kid. It seemed natural to follow in their footsteps. Although I knew what they did wasn’t kosher, it was the best option for a kid from our neighborhood who wanted to make it in the world. It didn’t occur to me until I was married with a child that I had another choice.

And now Schatzi is dead. Moe too. They had good lives. Truth be told, most of us did pretty well for ourselves. Even if our jobs weren’t entirely straight, we married and had kids who went on to legitimate careers. Some of my friends even went to college. I thought about going before the war. But that was craziness. My father didn’t have the money to send me. And by the time the GI bill came along, I’d lost interest.

Back then, the neighborhood men Ma called nogoodniks were the ones who made real money. Drove big cars like Schatzi’s, went out with good-looking dames, and dressed sharp. The guys who left the Lower East Side for Brooklyn and points north helped those left behind when they could. If Schatzi hadn’t put Moe in touch with Landauer, neither of us would’ve come out of the army with a job.

You had to be tough to survive back then. I needed it on the streets of New York, where I had to fight Irish and Italian kids almost every day.

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