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

we’d heard from the building moments earlier were replaced by the grunt of fist meeting gut and the heavy breathing of men in combat. Blood trickled down my cheek and my knuckles burned, but I kept swinging and connecting.

Stopping for a brief moment to catch my breath, I saw Schatzi slam his fist into a heavily-muscled man in a brown shirt guarding a short, plump character with a Hitler-style moustache. Maybe it was the mustachioed man’s look of contempt for the fighters as he approached the stairs, or the fact that two hoodlums in brown shirts lunged at Schatzi as he neared the plump man, but it was obvious the fellow at the center of the goons was big in the Nazi organization.

I was stunned by the rage on Schatzi’s face as he attacked the bodyguards, splitting the lip of one with his right fist, then using his left to send the other plummeting down the stairs. When he reached the fat man, Schatzi went berserk, slamming his fist into the man’s nose and sending blood splattering over both of their shirts. Then he landed his fist in the man’s gut, sending him sprawling to the ground before kicking him in the ribs. When I heard the crack of bone breaking and the man’s screams, I ran to stop Schatzi. Moe was behind me as I tore him off the blood-soaked man.

Seconds later, the grunts and curses that had pierced the night stopped. The only people left in front of the auditorium were me, Schatzi, Moe and a few disheveled men in brown shirts who looked too broken to do any damage. The scream of a siren grew louder as I raced behind Moe and Schatzi down the cold deserted street.

I rise from my couch and walk to the sliding glass doors. It’s almost dark. The purple-edged storm clouds that hover over Miami remind me of the cold, dank winters I hated in New York. I turned eighty-six today and I feel old. For fifty years, I played it straight. So did most of the guys I knew then. But Landauer’s back and that doesn’t bode well. Schatzi’s funeral and Landauer’s appearance are frightening reminders of my own mortality. I need to prepare myself and my girls for the worst. I pick up the phone and dial Becks. She answers on the third ring.

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16

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Monday morning, I wake up in a miserable mood. Tootsie called last night and wouldn’t hang up until I agreed to handle arrangements for his funeral. Everything’s got to be just so. He’s selected the caterer (me) and location (my house) for his shiva reception and insists on mailing me the list of people to invite. Schatzi Lipchitz’s death, no doubt, brought on all this planning. But it’s hard enough to deal with end of my marriage. I don’t need to think about losing my father.

“I’m not asking that much,” he says. “Someone’s got to do it. Your sister won’t talk to me and the grandchildren don’t know from funerals. What am I supposed to do? Leave instructions with your ferschtunkena cat?”

“How about Daniel?” I offer, joking.

“What about him?”

“You think he’s such a great guy. Ask him to do it.”

He’s silent a moment. “Maybe I will.”

I grit my teeth. I don’t know if he’s kidding. He and Daniel are close. In fact, Daniel felt I was being too hard on my father when I refused to talk to him after my mother died. Back then, when Daniel brought the boys to see their grandfather. Tootsie’d ask him to talk to me about repairing our rift. Daniel tried—unsuccessfully. Now the tables are turned. Two weeks ago, Daniel asked Tootsie to have a word with me. I told my father I could handle my own marriage.

After I agree to my father’s instructions, we chat about Schatzi’s funeral. My father won’t explain why we had to leave so suddenly. He still insists he was tired and needed a bathroom.

Then he gets down to what he’s really calling about.

“I forgot to tell you. I need a ride to the lawyer tomorrow. I’m changing my will.”

This comes as no surprise. Tootsie changes his will every three months depending on who’s ticked him off or pleased him. On our last visit to Solly Horowitz, Tootsie put my son Joshua back in his will after he broke up with the non-Jewish girl he’d been dating.

“What are you changing this time?” I ask.

“What’s it to you?”

“I am driving you down there. Don’t I have a right to know?”

“No, Miss Smarty-Pants. It’s none of your business.”

I beg to differ. But I’m a good daughter and agree to pick him up at ten for his ten thirty appointment. Naturally, he hangs up without a goodbye.

When I was a child and accompanied my father to his attorney’s office, we’d meet Solly’s father in the first-floor luncheonette of the downtown Miami skyscraper where he worked. It wasn’t much, just a few metal tables and a counter that seated four. My father never spelled it out, but I assume he was uncomfortable in the lawyer’s lavish office. The plush navy carpeting and gold-trimmed, Napoleonic desk may have intimidated him or, more likely, reminded him how much he was spending on legal advice. The men got their business done over a cup of coffee and a pastrami sandwich. I’d sit at the counter with an iced tea.

Solly takes a less formal approach with my dad. Always impeccable in his Brooks Brothers suits, he trots out to the waiting area and welcomes Tootsie with a hug. Then he introduces him to the receptionist as his late father’s friend. After instructing her to bring coffee and Danish, we return to the same office his father used. A sleek, beveled-glass desk with polished steel legs has replaced his father’s antique gilded desk. Teak bookcases full of heavy legal texts line three walls of the large office. The most impressive part of the office, though, is the wall of floor-to-ceiling glass that frames a