The Yiddish Gangster's Daughter (A Becks Ruchinsky Mystery Book 1) by Joan Cochran (popular books of all time .txt) 📗

provoke such hatred? My image of Tootsie, already shaken, is teetering on the brink of disbelief. What is he hiding? Did my mother know? I keep getting hit with these bombshells. First, Daniel cheats on me, which is the last thing I’d expect. Then Tootsie turns out to be a gangster with a past that’s so horrendous he can’t discuss it. It undermines me, makes me fearful about what my friends, even Josh and Gabe, may be hiding. Who else is lying to me?

I sit in the car, engine off, in the dark garage. What should I do next? My first instinct is to call Tootsie and tell him about my meeting with Abe. But that conversation is better held face-to-face. On the phone, it’ll be easy for him to blow off my questions and claim Abe is demented. He tried that with Mrs. Karpowsky. I need to take him by surprise in a relaxed setting when he’s in the mood to talk. I leave the car and let myself into the kitchen. The answering machine blinks; another call from Daniel. I ignore it. I resolve to question my dad. Really question him.

And hope he’ll tell me the truth.

----

10

----

My kitchen looks like a farmers’ market, the counters heaped with red bell peppers, carrots, scallions, potatoes, garlic, and mahi-mahi. The water’s just reached a boil and I’m about to throw everything into the stockpot when the phone rings. It’s my father, insisting I drive him to the mall to buy white trousers. It’s the Sunday morning after my meeting with Abe and I’m in no mood to take Tootsie shopping. Especially since he wants to be there when the stores open at noon.

I try to put him off. “Can’t it wait? I need to test a recipe for my Rosh Hashanah article while everything’s fresh. Let’s go next weekend.”

“You have all day tomorrow to cook,” he says, generously rearranging my schedule. “I want the pants for a party Tuesday night and I might need to get them altered. If you can’t take me, I’ll drive myself.”

I take that for what it is—a threat. The last thing I need is Tootsie careening down Dixie Highway in his ancient Lincoln Town Car. The last time he did that, he took the rear fender off a Maserati. I agree to pick him up in an hour and start shoving food into the refrigerator. My stew will have to wait.

The old man makes no secret about considering me his chauffeur and valet. In the last few years in particular, as his driving has worsened, I’ve put up with it. My sister, Esther, says I’m a doormat for squiring him around. Then again, she won’t even talk to him. She says it’s because he treated my mother badly and made no effort to hide his affairs. I explain to Esther that, sure I resent Dad, but he’s still our father. The only parent we have. He’s not an easy person to love and there are times I’m tempted to cut him off. But he has moments of charm and humor and I treasure those.

What I haven’t spelled out to Esther is that, more than anything else, I don’t want to live with regret. After he’s gone, I want to know I’ve been the best daughter I could be. Even if that means overlooking his faults.

I throw on the same jeans and shirt I wore Saturday and head down to Miami to pick up Tootsie. He chatters the entire drive to the mall. The Schmuel Bernstein is having a dinner dance at the Eden Roc Tuesday night, he says, and it’s hosted by the Karpowsky Family Foundation.

I’d Googled the Karpowsky Foundation a few weeks earlier after noticing the name on at least half the buildings on the Schmuel Bernstein campus. Mrs. Karpowsky’s late husband, Ira, made his fortune manufacturing Sheetrock and set up an endowment to build and maintain housing and medical facilities at the home. He also left a substantial fund for entertaining residents that stipulated a dinner dance be held in his memory every other year. It’s ironic that the family of the woman who accused my father of murder is hosting him for an expensive dinner. I don’t mention that. Tootsie’s revved about the affair and determined to show up in new white trousers.

“Maybe we should look at rental tuxedos,” I suggest as I pull into a parking spot.

“When did you become Miss Emily Post?”

“I’m just saying. People will dress up.”

“I happen to have good fashion sense,” he says, unbuckling his seat belt. “I bought a beautiful shirt from Costco that’ll be perfect with white pants and the white loafers your mother got me.”

I don’t know which dismays me more, the fact that he’s hanging on to shoes my mother bought fifteen years earlier, before she left him, or that he’s turning into a caricature of an elderly Florida tourist—white shoes, white pants and, no doubt, a white belt.

There’s no point arguing so I step out of the car and follow him into Macy’s. The heady scent of expensive perfume puts me in a spending mood as we walk past the glittering glass makeup counters to reach the men’s department. I need a dress for a bar mitzvah in two weeks, but resist the urge to take a side trip to the women’s department.

Maybe it’s because a cool breeze is replacing the oppressive heat of the past month and everyone wants to be outside, but the men’s department is deserted except for the saleslady folding shirts at the checkout counter. My father pulls five pairs of white pants off the first rack we come to without gazing at the tags. “Size don’t mean nothing no more,” he says when I object. “I’ll try them on until something fits.”

Daniel does most of his shopping at Costco so I don’t know my way around Macy’s men’s department. My husband’s no clotheshorse, but he looked particularly shabby when he stopped by Wednesday night for