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

“I don’t know what Abe told you about me. Your father knows what happened. When I went away, I lost everything. My wife left me. She took our kids and let another man raise them as his own. When I got out, I couldn’t contact them. The police could track me down through family. Can you imagine what that was like?”

I nod. Maybe I should feel sympathy, but it’s hard to picture him a husband or a father, let alone a man who’d let his wife betray him with impunity. He’s too forbidding, too cold and distant.

“Years later, I found out where my son and daughter lived and drove by. But I never knocked on their door. I didn’t want to complicate their lives. I hoped that at some point, the little ingrates would track me down. They never did.”

His jowls sway as he shakes his head.

“Your father was lucky, though. He had it all. A legitimate business. A wife who stuck by him. Daughters who knew their dad. It wasn’t right, not after he betrayed me. I tried to leave the bastard alone, let bygones be bygones. But I kept an eye on him. On you girls, too. I knew when each of you got married, had kids.”

Daniel and I exchange glances. If Landauer notices, he doesn’t let on.

“When Abe told me you were snooping around, I took it as my opening. I’m not getting any younger. I waited a long time for your family to catch on to what your father did. I heard through one of my sources that your sister abandoned him a couple of years ago. That left you.”

Landauer’s eyes gleam in the dim light that escapes through the shack’s screen door. The sclera is mapped with veins and the lids are red.

“I thought about killing you or your sister,” he says. “Taking from Tootsie what he took from me. And I came close to murdering him years ago. But the bastard wasn’t worth it. I’d done enough time.”

Hearing him speak so casually about murdering my family jolts me. What kind of brute is so indifferent to taking another human being’s life? My spasm of fear becomes repulsion and I ball my hands into fists. Who does this bully think he is, acting as though our lives have no value beyond the time he’d have to spend in jail. I beat a fist against my thigh. But I keep my mouth shut.

Landauer rises and, turning his back on Daniel and me, trundles into the building. He lets the screen door slam behind him. No goodbye. His fifty-year vendetta is over. I stare at Daniel. This is what five decades of criminal living add up to? A paid bodyguard for companionship and meager vengeance behind a shack in a Miami slum.

I glance around the wooden patio. It smells of newly-cut timber and sawdust. Then it strikes me. This has to be where my father and Moe dumped Fat Louie’s body. Where Landauer brutally beat my uncle to death. I glance at the shack and wonder if the old gangster thinks he won—if living a bitter, lonely life and ensuring my father is miserable count as winning.

Looking at the river, I make out the shapes of the plastic bags, beer cans, and bloated fish that float by on the incoming tide. There’s a certain irony to turning this shack, the scene of who knows how many murders, into a late-night hangout for young men and women. I doubt any realize their Miami—their city of flashy neon nightclubs, marble skyscrapers, and landscaped boulevards—was built with the filthy lucre of violent gangsters. I’ll never come here again. And with a pang, I realize I may not see my father either. I steel myself to accept the truth. He made terrible choices and the blood that flowed from them is embedded in the wood rotting beneath this deck. I’ll miss the old man. But he isn’t the father I thought I knew.

When I return my gaze to the picnic table, Daniel’s leaning against it, his hands in his pockets. “You ready to go?” he asks. I nod and take a step in his direction. He takes my hand and we walk through the dark to our car.

A Note From the Author

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

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Joan Lipinsky Cochran except in the case of brief quotations.

www.joanlipinskycochran.com

Published by Perricot Publishing

Book cover design by: PINTADO

All rights reserved

First printing

Copyright © 2018 Joan Lipinsky Cochran

ISBN: 978-0-9998280-1-4

Printed in the United States of America

About the Author

Joan Lipinsky Cochran was born in Miami, Florida and lives in Boca Raton, Florida. She is an adjunct professor, journalist and food columnist whose short stories have won numerous awards.

Other Books by Joan Lipinsky Cochran

Still Missing Beulah: Stories of Blacks and Jews in Mid-Century Miami

To access a Reader’s Guide, contact Joan

through her website

www.joanlipinskycochran.com

Acknowledgements

Few novels are the work of one person and I’d like to recognize those who helped bring The Yiddish Gangster’s Daughter to fruition. I’d like to acknowledge the guidance provided by my critique group, Prudy Taylor Board, Buck Buchanan, Joe Frarraci, Mary Yuhas and Maria DeSoto as well as Debbie Shlian and Eileen O’Brien, whose editorial