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

with ugly broads,” he tells me. “Especially on my birthday. Pull over and put on some lipstick. And do something with that mop.”

I haven’t bothered with my appearance—jeans and a tee are good enough for breakfast at Rascal House—but I brush my hair and swab on a smear of lipstick to please the birthday boy.

Tootsie’s making this weird buzzing at the back of his throat and, after listening a few minutes, I realize he’s humming. I can’t name the song, but recognize it as one of the Barry Sisters’ tunes he’d play on the hi-fi every Sunday morning of my childhood. The sisters sang jazzed up, schmaltzy renditions of Yiddish songs, with plenty of harmony, quite peppy in an Old World East European fashion. My father’s in fine form. Why not? It’s his birthday. He’s having breakfast at Rascal House. And he’s outlived this Schatzi fellow.

We land a booth, thanks to my father’s status as a fifty-year regular. I slow down on the way to our table to examine the strawberry and pineapple cheesecakes that glisten inside the glass pastry case. After checking out the Formica tables and red leatherette booths for familiar faces, Tootsie stops at the lunch counter to shmooze with an elderly man I don’t recognize. I leave him behind and trail the waitress to our table. She hands me a menu the size of a Buick and leaves another behind for Tootsie.

Five minutes later, Tootsie joins me. He tosses the newspaper section he’s been clasping on the table and taps his finger on a two-inch obituary. “Schatzi Lipschutz.”

I pull the article over and look at a photo of a young man with a 1940s-era pompadour. I read the usual: ninety-year-old retired businessman dies, survived by two sons, donations should be sent and so on.

“Who is he?” I ask.

“Oy, Becks,” he says. “The stories I could tell if you weren’t my daughter.”

I roll my eyes, which should be paralyzed in an upward position from the number of times I’ve reacted to that line.

“You know Meyer Lansky?” he asks.

“We were never properly introduced, but I remember the name. He got thrown out of Israel in the nineteen seventies. Something about being a crook?”

“A crook, my ass. Lansky was a gangster, a big shot in the underworld. Ran most of Vegas, Miami, and Havana before you were born. By the time he was thrown out of Israel, he was worth millions. He went there to avoid charges of tax evasion.” Tootsie snorts. “That’s the best the feds could do. Taxes.”

He squints at me like I’m supposed to challenge him. Which I don’t.

“So what’s the story with Schatzi Lipschutz?” I ask again.

“Schatzi.” He rolls the name around his tongue, slowly, appreciatively, nodding his head. “He used to live on the Lower East Side of New York, near where your Uncle Moe and I grew up. Lot of tough kids in that neighborhood. We’d fight for the hell of it. The Italian boys would come into the neighborhood and try to make it with Jewish girls. Schatzi and Moe would stop them, wait on corners on Saturday nights and pick fights when the boys came to pick up their dates.

“Your grandmother hated Schatzi, called him a hoodlum, but all the kids in the neighborhood thought he was something else. Here’s this big tough Jewish boy, six feet, and he’s ready to beat the crap out of any schmuck stupid enough to challenge him. Hoods from outside the neighborhood would try to rob and push around the old guys who ran newsstands, tobacco shops, places like that. You think anyone called the cops? No way. They called Schatzi, or your Uncle Moe if Schatzi wasn’t around. The creeps never showed their faces again.”

The waitress returns with metal buckets brimming with kosher pickles and coleslaw and we place our order. I wait as Tootsie clasps a pickle between his thumb and forefinger, studies it for a few seconds, and takes a bite. He chews with a lot more noise than is altogether necessary.

I wait until he pauses to make myself heard above his eating. “So what about the Nazis?”

“Hold on. I’m getting there.” He swallows. “This all happened in nineteen thirty seven, thirty-eight when things were looking bad. We’re still in the Depression and the Nazis are holding rallies around the country. Everyone’s worried about anti-Semitism but afraid to do anything about it. Like maybe we’re asking for trouble by bringing attention to ourselves.

“Not everyone saw it that way. Including Lansky. From what I heard, some big judge calls him, knows Lansky and his pals don’t give a shit what the gentiles think. I don’t hear the whole story until years later, but this judge asks Lansky to round up some muscle and break arms at Nazi rallies.

“I’m not going to kid you, Doll. I was no Boy Scout. I wasn’t as tough as Schatzi or Moe but I could hold my own with anyone else in the neighborhood. Schatzi’s already running numbers for some outfit by this time, and Moe—well, I don’t know what Moe was into. But when Schatzi tells Moe he volunteered to take the moxie out of these Nazi bastards, Moe says he’ll join up. Moe tells me what’s going on and there’s no way I’m missing out on this action.”

My father takes another pickle, examines it, and takes a bite. He raises one finger, a signal I should wait for him to chew and swallow.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“What do you mean, what’d I do?”

“Did you beat up the Nazis?”

“Sure I did. We went to the big hall where they were meeting. When the bastards came out, we attacked them. Surprise.” He raises both hands, fingers outspread.

“Were you hurt?”

He shrugs. “Not much.”

I’m getting frustrated. He starts these stories, then cuts them off as they’re getting interesting. I try another tack.

“Where were the police?”

My father laughs. “I read in the news that the cops were called in to break up the fight, but it took them a couple