Searches & Seizures (32 page)

“He was tired out, Joe. The road exhausted him.”

“He could have worked in the office. He could have written his own ticket.”

“He was a salesman.”

“He could have sold from the office. The costume jewelry business isn’t what it was, but buyers still come to Chicago. He could have hired college boys to work his territory and seen the buyers here. He could have used the telephone more. Lots of men do it.”

“I don’t know.”

“It was jealousy. He didn’t want anybody to think he was working for me. He couldn’t stand me. I loved Phil, but he always had a resentment against me.”

“That’s silly. Why would he be jealous? He was a very dynamic man.”

“He was the Wabash Cannonball, but he was jealous. Always. I was an executive and he was a salesman. I didn’t make more money. He made more money, though I got more benefits. As an executive I was entitled to extra stock options. He resented that.”

“He loved being a salesman.”

“He hated it. He wanted his own desk in his own office and his own secretary, not somebody from the typing pool. He wanted ceremony. When the firm took over the seventh floor of the Great Northern Building I worked my can off to get him that office. New York wanted the space for a showroom. He thought it was me blocking him.”

“Jesus, Joe, please don’t talk this way about him. You make him sound small.”

“Small? He was Yellowstone National Park. Only pipsqueaks like me have decorum and character. Men like Phil are mad and petty and great.”

“He was fond of you.”

“No. I was fond of him, but he always bad-mouthed me to the New York people. He despised me. May he rest.”

“Stick with me, please, Joe. Don’t go home early. Get me over the hurdles tonight when his friends show up. Some of them will be people from the South Side and I won’t know them anymore. The rest I won’t ever have seen. It’s going to be rough.”

But there were no hurdles. It was not rough, not at least in the sense he’d anticipated. If he felt no grief, then neither did anyone else. They came to the chapel—not a big crowd, but respectable—stood shyly at the coffin for a few moments and then went back to the outer rooms. He recognized many of them, men and women his parents had played cards with when he was a child, and was surprised at his ability to recall their names. When they offered their condolences he offered their names. “Thanks, Rose. Thank you, Jerry. It was good of you to come, Maxine. I was very sorry to hear about Arnold.” Their first names odd in his mouth and vaguely forbidden (he’d known them as a child), granting him—Ph.D. manqué, ex-lecturer from the ex-lecture circuit, a man with a large scrapbook almost filled, a man with clippings—a sense of graciousness, a snug sensation of being their host.

The new people, friends his father had made at the condominium, moved with a sort of nervous bustle, more distraught then the others because they had known him less long and more recently. They were the ones who told him that they’d seen him only last Tuesday or Thursday and that he’d seemed fine, tiptop, that he’d done five laps of the pool and hadn’t been a bit winded, that they were supposed to play bridge together next week, that they had had a date to go to a restaurant, that he was talking about a trip to Europe, that he was thinking about getting a part-time job. But even these neighbors could register only surprise at sudden, generalized death, their anecdotes about his last days and last plans unremarkable, borrowing their importance from the irony built into all death. He realized that no one was very unhappy, and indeed it developed that several of them—from both camps—had come merely to explain that they would not be able to attend the funeral. His earlier sense of being their host deserted him, and he began to feel that had he been more impressive as a survivor he would somehow have focused their grief. His use of their names was lost on them, and even this, his single resource, was unavailable to him with the new people. He explained a little of this to Joe Cane, thanking him for coming and telling him he could leave now if he wanted. “Don’t think I want to steal my father’s show,” he said, “but it’s getting trivial. Nobody’s upset, just glum.”

Then the big shots came and the chapel cheered up. These were the officials from the condominium: the sales manager, Joe Colper; Shirley Fanon, the corporation’s lawyer; Sid Harris, the president himself. They had come together, three wide men in beautiful business suits and sharp shoes. They wore blocky paper yarmulkes which stood high on their heads and somehow gave them the appearance of cantors. They moved vigorous as a backfield in some subtle choreographed way that made it impossible to tell which was the leader. They came down the center aisle and took up positions at the coffin: Colper at the head, Fanon at the foot and Harris in the middle. They looked down on his father like fairies at cribside, and for a moment Marshall thought they would sing. No one approached them, though their celebrity had sparked something in the room, even among his father’s old friends. Even Preminger was excited. One of the neighbors told him who they were, but by then he knew; he’d heard his comforters’ murmurs, picked up their pleased, congratulatory whispers. “Wasn’t that nice?” one said, and his friend had answered, “Gentlemen.” It was a word others used too, the presence of the three bringing it out almost reflexively. Preminger wasn’t sold yet—he resented this queer gratitude, ubiquitous as pollen—but then they were upon him and he understood.

“Sid Harris,” Sid Harris said, and shoved a hard hand at him. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Preminger said, returning the pressure as best he could.

Harris frowned disapprovingly. “Not under these circumstances,” he said and dropped Preminger’s hand. “My associates,” he said, naming them.

“Sorry for your trouble,” Colper said.

“Condolences,” said Shirley Fanon and winked.

“Ditto, ditto. We’re all shook,” Harris said. “These things happen. What can I say? Terrible shock, et cetera, et cetera. Look, Marshall—it’s Marshall, right?—I’m not small-timing Pop’s death. He was a gentleman. Mike’s dead, I’m alive, you got me? Life goes on. You know what my rabbi says? ‘Fuck death. Live as if it don’t exist because it does.’”

“That’s some rabbi,” Preminger said.

“You’d love him. The Miracle Rabbi of the Chicago Condominiums. Sleeps in a little
sukkah
behind the swimming pool with the inner tubes, water toys and chlorine. Got himself a nice little setup in the filtration
butke
with the towels and the first-aid kit. What the fuck am I talking about? Fanon, you know?” Shirley Fanon shrugged. “Joe Colper?”

“What’s that, Boss?”

“What’s on my mind?”

“I just got here, Boss,” Colper said.

“Must be my grief. Hangs on like a summer cold.” He shook his head. “Got to pull myself together. Fanon, help me up off the floor. Colper, take one arm. Marshall, kid, grab another.” He sat down at the front of the chief mourners’ bench and patted it, inviting Preminger to join him. When he held back, the other two moved in, hustling him toward Harris.

“Hey,” he protested, “what is this? This is a memorial chapel. Will you have some respect?” Even to him it sounded as if he were offering them refreshment.

“Fellows, the game’s up,” Harris said. “He knows who we are.”

“The Jewish Mafia,” Shirley Fanon said.

“The Kosher Nostra,” said Joe Colper.

Preminger looked around desperately. They weren’t bothering to keep their voices down. His father’s old friends and the people from the condominium were taking it all in. Incredibly, they seemed to approve. He appealed to one man who earlier had claimed to have been very close to his father. The man shrugged. “The owners are clowns,” he said.

“Lehrman’s got our number,” Harris said. “Listen to Lehrman.”

“They’re
tummlers.
”

“A barrel of monkeys?” Harris asked.

“Sure,” Lehrman said, “you ought to be on the stage.”

“
We’re better off,
” Harris, Fanon and Colper all said together.

“Come on,” Preminger said, “what right have you got to behave like this? You don’t know me. You think this shit is charming? That nerve and craziness makes you lovable? What an incredible slant you three have on yourselves. I haven’t been in my father’s life for years, but that’s him dead up there. He grew long hair and bought new clothes and I didn’t know about it. We told each other old stuff on the long distance and sent each other shirts on our birthdays. He changed his furniture and went Swedish modern and I sat like a schmuck in a rooming house and lived like a recessive gene, but—”

“That’s right,” Harris said cheerfully, “let it all out. Cry.”

“Go to hell,” Preminger said.

“But?” Shirley Fanon reminded him.

“But it’s a death. I’m not going to stand by while you turn it into the cheap heroics of personality.” He stared at Harris. “Are you married?” he asked.

“Who ain’t married?”

Preminger closed his eyes. “Your wife is growing cancer,” he said. “She’s a cancer garden. I give her eight months.”

“Hey, that’s pretty outrageous,” one of the neighbors said.

“Name of the game,” Preminger said calmly. “That’s what this gangster is up to. It’s grandstanding from Rod Steiger pictures, it’s ethnic crap art.”

“Go, go,” Harris said.

“Go, go screw yourself.” He turned to the people from the condominium who had pressed forward to hear. “What, you think it’s hard? This kind of talk? You think it’s hard to do? It’s
easy.
It makes itself up as you go along. You think it’s conversation? It’s dialogue. Conversation is hard. I don’t do conversation. Like him”—he jerked his thumb toward Harris—“I don’t even feel much of this.”

“Please,” Harris said, rising, “please, neighbors, give us some room. The man’s right. Say your last goodbyes to Phil while I apologize to his son.” They drifted off, dissolving like extras in movies told to move on by a cop. He sat down wearily and turned to Preminger. “Will you take back what you said about my wife?” he asked softly.

“Oh, please,” Preminger said.

“Will you take back what you said about my wife? She ain’t in it.”

“All right,” Preminger told him, sitting down. “I take it back.”

“You hit the nail on the head,” Harris said. “Didn’t he hit the nail on the head, Joe? Shirley, don’t you think he…Gee, there I go again. But you know something? I’m sick and tired of showing off for these people. The bastards ain’t ever satisfied. I put in a shuffleboard, a pool, a solarium. I gave them a party room. They wanted a sauna and I got it for them. They walk around with my hot splinters in their ass. There’s a master antenna on the roof you can pull in Milwaukee it looks like a picture in
National Geographic.
Energy, energy—they worship it in other people.
Momzers.
And me, I’ve got no character. I give ’em what they want. I’m sorry I leaned on you.”

“We were both at fault.”

Harris sighed. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Forget it.”

“No. There’s such a thing as a coffin courtesy. I’m a grown man. I haven’t even said basic stuff like if there’s anything I can do, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you,” Preminger said, “it’s kind of you to offer, but really there’s nothing.”

“That’s it, that’s it,” Harris said. “Will you pray with me?” he asked suddenly.

“Pray?” Startled, Marshall started to rise but Harris restrained him.

“No, no,” he said, “We don’t have to get on our knees. We’ll do it right here on the bench. Everything dignified and comfortable, everything easy.”

“Hey, listen—”

“Hey, listen,” Harris prayed. “Your servants may not always understand Your timing, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Sometimes it might seem unfortunate, even perverse. Was there a real need, for example, to take Philly Preminger, a guy in the prime? How old could the man have been? Fifty-eight, fifty-nine? With penicillin and wonder drugs that’s a kid, a babe. Was there any call to strike down such a guy? You, who gave him sleek hair, who grew his sideburns and encouraged his mustache, who blessed him with taste in shirts, shoes, bellbottoms and turtlenecks, you couldn’t also have given him a stronger heart? Why did you make the chosen people so frail, oh God, give them Achilles heels in their chromosomes, set them up as patsies for cholesterol and Buerger’s disease, hit them with bad circulation and a sweet tooth for lox? You could have made us hard blond goyim, but no, not You.”

“Look here—”

“Look here, oh Lord,” Harris prayed, “the bereaved kid here wants to know. Didn’t you owe his daddy the courtesy of a tiny warning attack, a mild stroke, say, just enough to cut down on the grease and kiss off the cigarettes? Here’s a man not sixty years old and retired three years and in his condominium it couldn’t be two—I can get the exact figures for You when I get back to the office—
a guy who put his deposit down months before we dug the first spadeful for the foundation,
and got his apartment fixed up nice, just the way he wanted it, proud as a bride when the deliveries came, the American of Martinsville, the Swedish of Malmö, who made new friends, the life of the party poolside, a cynosure of the sauna and a gift to the dollies, the widows of Chicago’s North Side—
who’ll have plenty to say to You themselves, I’ll bet, once their eyes are dry and they make sense of what’s hit them
—and You knock him down like a tenpin, You make him like a difficult spare. Lead kindly light, amen.” He turned, beaming, to Preminger. “Gimme that old time religion,” he said. “We got business. You got the will, Shirley?”