The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats (33 page)

Or heard. “On the radio as I was parking,” Feivel (Franklin) said, sweat beading on his brow and dripping into his big eyes so that he had to remove his rimless glasses and mop them with the white handkerchief that always stood like a ready flag of surrender in his breast pocket. Probably he had never thought of it as anything other than decoration, as though any of us was immune to tears. “There’s parking on the street. Sunday. The only day, aside from holidays, you can park free. I’m just backing in, I heard it. The man who killed the president is killed.”

“A tragedy,” I said.

“A big mess,” he said. He sat where I pointed, on the green couch whose back was to the door, his long frame folding in slow-motion like a mournful concertina. He wore a brown suit, a figured tan tie of some sort of artificial silk, and between his brown shoes and the one-inch cuff of his trousers thin brown socks with white clocks embossed on them.

After Darcie, dressed only in a shimmering silver robe—apparently compensated companions traveled prepared—served him a cup of coffee, I signaled her to join Terri in the bedroom. I could still hear sobbing through the door. Certainly Feivel (Franklin) could as well. He had the good sense not to ask. Maybe he thought I was twice the man I was. One bedroom, two women. I caught him peering at the other doors—who knew how many women I had in the place? “Nice digs,” he said.

“Digs?”

“You know—”

“Yeah, dat’s da way gangstahs tawk, eh?”

“I mean no disrespect.”

“None taken,” I said. “Coffee just right?”

He probably would have nodded in satisfaction to a cup full of hot piss. He sipped. “This Jack Ruby, you don’t think he’s...”

“Oh, he is.”

“He doesn’t have to be. What kind of name is Ruby?”

“Made up,” I said.

“Made up?”

“Shortened from Rubinstein probably,” I said. “That’s just a guess.”

“I was thinking the same, Mr. Newhouse.”

“I was Russell two weeks ago.”

“Time changes people.”

“So which is it, Feivel or Franklin?”

“Whatever you like.”

“Rubashkin or Robinson?”

“It’s legally changed,” he said, still sweating. He must have had glands like sacks. “Cost three hundred and seventy-five smackers.” He reconsidered. “Dollars. People call me what they like. I can’t get a court order against that. Legally is one thing.” He sipped again. There couldn’t be much left in the cup. “So you think, you’re sure—”

“He’s a Jew, Feivel.”

“He doesn’t have to be.”

“Did you see his face?”

“I heard it on the radio.”

“I could turn on the television,” I said with no such intention. If I never saw Jack Ruby’s face again I would be content. All I could do was see it, without a television. “He’s a Jew, trust me.”

“What do you think? It’s bad, right?”

“For the Jews?”

“For the Jews.”

“It was pretty bad for Lee Harvey Oswald.” My visitor didn’t react. “That was a joke.”

He nodded avidly. “I get it.”

“You worry about bad for the Jews, good for the Jews?”

“Doesn’t everyone? I mean, every Jew?”

“I don’t know, Feivel. But I know why you’re here.”

“You said to come. If it’s the wrong time—my God it’s probably the wrong time.” His eyes went to the bedroom door. “I mean, with the killing, and the president, and...”

“Feivel, stop sweating,” I said. “You’re among friends. I’m a paid up member of the Bhotke Society, isn’t that right?”

“Absolutely. Mr. Shushan Cats too.”

“Be that as it may, Feivel, you have nothing to fear. You brought out half the society to Mulberry Street on Friday. You did good.”

“The others, some of them had to work. And some are religious—on a Friday, before the Sabbath. It’s hard for them.”

“You did good. Don’t worry about it.”

“The important thing is we demonstrated our support for a fellow member.”

“Believe me, Feivel, if Shushan himself had been there he would have been impressed.”

“Any time,” he said. “Any place. Whatever you need, the Bhotke Young Men’s Society is with you. Like we say, from birth to death.” His face dropped. “Not that I’m suggesting...”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said.

“It’s a chronic condition, Mr. Newhouse. In the summer I’m like a bathhouse. Even in November I can’t stop my body from—”

I left him to go into the bedroom to get my wallet. Both women were stretched out on the sheets I had so recently stained with Darcie. Now the big blonde held Terri in her arms as she continued to sob, softly now, almost beyond hearing, her chest heaving but making little sound. I left the wallet and came back to see Feivel standing, looking at the Jimmy Ernst on the wall.

“It’s a black painting,” he said. “All in black. Different colors of black.”

“We pride ourselves on the appropriate art for every occasion,” I said. “Feival, on your way out, I want you to have this check.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that. I did what I could. As president of the society that’s my job.”

“It’s not for you, dummy. It’s for the society. I want you to arrange a memorial for Shushan.”

“He’s dead then?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, but since we may never know it seemed to me only right that we should somehow mark his presence among us with a stone. I checked—there’s nothing in Jewish law that says we can’t. We just shouldn’t carve on it
in memorium
or put on a date of death, because maybe he’s not.”

“Maybe he’s not?”

“Nobody knows,” I said.

Feival unfolded the check. “This is one big stone. I don’t know if they have a stone this big, or if Beth David would allow it.”

“Feivel, remind me not to let you work on my teeth. Twenty-five thousand dollars is not what I want you to spend on the stone. I don’t know. Spend five hundred. The rest I want you and the Bhotke Society to find a charity, something worthwhile, where it will do good. Tell whoever it is if they use it well there will be more every year on the anniversary of Shushan’s disappearance. Plenty more. But it has to be a good cause.”

“A yeshiva?”

“What else you got?”

“Hospitals, libraries.”

“More personal.”

“I’d have to think,” he said, looking again down at the check. As with the check for Dr. King, it was a serious sum of money in 1963. “Maybe we could plant a grove in Israel. For those from Bhotke who died in the camps.”

“They’re dead.”

“They should be remembered. It could be a whole forest. Something substantial.”

I’d hoped the dentist would bring it up, so I wouldn’t have to reveal an emotion I took care to conceal. “An orphanage,” I said. “Something for kids who are alone.”

“An orphanage.”

“That’s a good idea, Feivel. I’m glad you thought of it.”

After pushing him out the door I went through the bedroom—both women were sleeping now, Darcie snoring softly like a slipper dragged rhythmically across a sandy floor—and climbed to the silence of Shushan’s penthouse, then entered his office. I opened the file cabinet where I had discovered my father’s employment record, the drawer containing Shushan’s arsenal of Louisville Sluggers. They seemed to be dozing there, waiting for their owner to take them out. In the toilet I opened my red robe and pissed for what seemed like an eternity into the spotless black porcelain bowl as I re-examined the brightly lit painting opposite that I had seen—whether copy or original—so many times at the Frick down the street. I flushed and left Georges de la Tour to return downstairs. Exhausted, I lay beside the two women, Terri again the meat in a human sandwich, and joined them in the surcease of sleep.

At some point—it was dark—I woke to the sound of subtle activity beside me, and opened my eyes. I had always been curious about what lesbians did. It was beautiful in its way, lyrical almost, a velvety sliding, totally muliebricious, uncompromised by the requirements of an architecture God or nature had designed. It seemed so much more intimate than anything I had ever done with a woman, trust replacing thrust, a purity of endless moaning. Though I understood I might be more than a spectator—Darcie proffered a smiling glance of welcome while Terri’s face was hidden between her thighs—I was emotionally unable. Having dreamed of Terri Cats for two weeks, shuddered at her touch, I could not bring myself to make a move in her direction: circumstance had knocked the testosterone clear out of me.

When the phone rang I grabbed at it, the two women ignoring the interruption as they were content to ignore me.

It was Fritzi. “Russell?”

“The same.”

“What are you doing tomorrow morning, my boy?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Depends who gets killed next.”

“What?”

“Kennedy, Oswald. Maybe they’ll take out Jack Ruby. Who knows?”

“Who cares? Tomorrow Shushan’s trial opens.”

“Shushan who?”

“Don’t play with me, Russell.”

“How can they have a trial if he’s... gone?”

“They can’t,” Fritzi said with some finality. “That’s why I need you there.”

The women were writhing beside me like fecund snakes, the high smell of female lust filling the room like an acidulous cloud. “Fritzi, I have to take Shushan’s place in jail as well—is that what you’re telling me?”

He laughed. “Russell, listen to me. Are you alone?”

“More than I’ve ever been.”

“What am I hearing?”

“Hamsters,” I said. “I always wanted some as a kid.”

“Good, good,” Fritzi said. “I’ll pick you up, tomorrow morning at eight. Wear a dark suit, dark tie, white shirt. Shave.”

“I don’t have to be there.”

“My boy, listen. The judge will note there is no defendant. She—”

“It’s a lady judge?”

“It’s 1963. They can vote too.”

“Hell of a year so far. Go on.”

“Her honor will note there is no defendant, and may make any number of decisions. She can vacate the indictment. I’ll motion for that.
Hopt v. Utah 110 US 574, 28 L Ed 262, 4 S Ct 202 (1884)
. She may go for it. There is such a thing as the Fourteenth Amendment. No defendant, no due process. But considering the newspaper interest—there will be reporters, a lot of them—it’s likely she’ll adjourn for a month, two if we’re lucky. She can’t adjourn indefinitely, of course. But that will take the pressure off for a while.”

“What pressure, Fritzi? The man is either dead or disappeared.”

“Listen to me, legal eagle. Assume that some time in the future Shushan
re
-appears. Should this trial be concluded it can not be reopened.”

The thought chilled me. I had handed out Shushan’s money like sticks of gum, sat in his place with Auro Sfangiullo, fucked his mistress—and almost fucked his sister. “You’re telling me Shushan is alive?”

Silence. “My boy, I honestly don’t know. My job, one way or another, is to defend my client. I’m on retainer. If Shushan should come back some time in the future he will have beaten the district attorney. The feds may go after him, of course, but we’ll blow up that bridge when we come to it. Of course, if he never comes back, nothing is lost but my fees which, considerable as they are, are not much to a man of Shushan’s wealth—of your wealth, Russell.”

“Tell me again why I have to show up at the courthouse?”

“It looks better. Here before the judge is the very man who as Shushan’s designated heir is already running the family business, as it were. I can call you to the stand and ask you to state if you have spent Shushan’s money, if you have taken steps—we need not specify—to run his business. If the judge asks if you consider Shushan to be alive, what will you say?”

“That I don’t know one way or the other.”

“But that you are working on the assumption he is not among the living.”

“I just paid for a monument at Beth David.”

“Beth David?”

“It’s a cemetery. Just a monument, no date of death.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Fritzi said. It was as though he had just bit into an especially tender and flavorful piece of meat.

I could almost hear him salivate. “And if I don’t come? If I don’t want to be in the papers more than I have to? Fritzi, believe it or not, some of us don’t want to be on the front page of the
Daily Mirror
. You know what, I’ve been called Maniac Brainiac once too often.”

“Believe me, the reporters
will
be there, because that’s what they do. But the timing couldn’t be more favorable. It couldn’t be better if we’d planned it. Lad, this whole week every paper in New York, hell, in the world, will be exclusively devoted to Kennedy, Johnson, Oswald and what’s-his-face.”

“Jack Ruby,” I said.

Terri had zero interest in being in court; Darcie less. I felt the same, but considering that Fritzi had been there for me, springing me from the clutches of an assistant district attorney who did not have my best interests at heart, I would be there for him. And perhaps for Shushan. Dead, alive or simply unclassifiable, Shushan Cats had changed my life. Terri was right: books, which had been all, were now merely a pleasant memory, a backdrop, a frame of reference. My adventures in literature could not hold a candle to my adventures in Little Italy, in Chinatown, at the Westbury. Whether purposely or not, I had read to experience the world through the eyes of others. I was now experiencing it through my own, to say nothing of other parts of my anatomy. Thus it was with some reluctance that I rose from what had become a triple bed, washed, shaved, put on a fresh white shirt still in its wrapper—monogrammed at the right cuff
RN
—a dark tie, and a charcoal-gray cashmere suit from Shushan’s closet that Miguel has magically altered to fit. I could not however walk even a yard in Shushan’s shoes. I had my own, a full complement of them, in black and russet and gray suede. Thus attired for court I slipped a brown crocodile wallet filled with cash—there was a mountain of it in the safe upstairs—into the inside breast pocket of my suit, picked up my key and—for the first time unaccompanied by either Justo or Ira, whose day off it was, stepped into the brass-lined elevator, greeted the two desk clerks and burst from my cocoon onto East Sixty-Third Street. Alone.

Though I had been on my own all my life, being alone was something else. After being accompanied, protected, part of something, solitude was a heady experience. The day was clear, but not this clear: I had never seen so clearly. Every dot of color, every freshet of aroma, every note of traffic came to me as a gift.