Israel Rostov was a high school dropout who worked as a fur cart pusher in the State and Lake building. Roy was eight years old when he first saw him. Roy often accompanied his grandfather, Jack Colby, whom he called Pops, on Saturdays to the furriers’ office that Pops shared with his brothers, Ike and Nate. Their brother Louie, who was the president of the Chicago Furriers Association, which he had founded, kept his office on the sixth floor of the building. The other Colby brothers’ office was on the eighth floor.
Roy would sit on a high stool and cut up pelts with a stiletto-like knife Pops had taught him to use, while his grandfather and great-uncles sat around a marble-topped table and played cards. When Louie joined them, the game was bridge; otherwise, they played three-handed gin rummy.
Izzy Rostov delivered furs on carts from floor to floor. He was a short kid with thick, curly black hair and bushy eyebrows, small dark brown eyes and a huge hook nose that seemed to be trying to escape from his face. Rostov’s thick red lips curved upwards at the corners so that it looked as if he were always smiling, except that his smile more resembled a sneer. He perpetually had a burning unfiltered Lucky Strike dripping from his mouth. Roy was fascinated by Izzy’s ability to talk while never removing the cigarette from his lips, as if the butt end was glued between them.
Rostov called Roy “my little pal,” and stopped his cart to talk to him whenever he encountered Roy in the hallways or in the freight elevator. This usually occurred when Roy was going to or from the eighth floor and the sixth floor to visit with his Uncle Louie. The delivery boy always had a future plan for himself that he told Roy about. Most of the time it had to do with his moving to Miami Beach to hang out in the luxury hotels so that he could “hook up with rich, lazy broads.”
One afternoon, Rostov told Roy he had something special to show him but he couldn’t do it in the hallway. Roy followed Izzy into the eighth floor men’s room. After making sure that nobody else was in the bathroom, Rostov removed from one of his coat pockets a small, black handgun and held it out for Roy to look at.
“This is a .38 caliber snub-nose revolver,” Rostov said. “A very accurate piece of hardware. I bought it from a spook on Maxwell Street.”
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Roy.
“Stick up a few gas stations, what else? I gotta get a stake together before I travel, buy some slick clothes to impress the broads, you know. I can’t make it on the peanuts these penny-pinchin’ Hebes pay me around here.”
Izzy Rostov tapped the tip of his prodigious nose with the barrel of his revolver, and said, “I might even have enough dough to get my beak fixed.”
Then he laughed and put the gun back into his coat pocket. The ash from Rostov’s cigarette dangled dangerously and Roy was certain it would fall off, but it didn’t. Roy moved further away from him.
“Don’t be frightened, little pal,” said Izzy. “I ain’t gonna shoot anyone. The piece is just to throw a scare into ’em, let the suckers know Israel Rostov means business. I could change my name, too, once I get down South. How does Guy DeMarco sound? Smooth, huh? The broads’ll go for a name like that. Guy DeMarco.”
“You think gas stations keep a lot of cash around?” Roy asked.
“Depends,” said Rostov. “But I got bigger ideas.”
Rostov came close to Roy, mussed up his hair and then walked out of the men’s room. Roy waited for a minute before returning to his grandfather’s office. Jack, Ike and Nate were playing gin.
“Hey, babe,” said Pops, “I thought you were going to see your Uncle Louie.”
“I decided not to. I just went to the washroom.” Roy went over to his stool, climbed on and resumed cutting up pelts.
The next time Roy ran into Izzy Rostov, the delivery boy winked at him but did not stop to talk. His cart was loaded with mink and fox stoles.
“Gotta get these on a truck goin’ to the Merchandise Mart,” Izzy said, and pushed on toward the freight elevator.
A couple of Saturdays after that, all four of the brothers were playing bridge when Louie said, “You hear the Rostov boy got killed?”
“The delivery cart kid?” asked Ike.
“Yes. Apparently he tried to rob a liquor store on Huron the other night and the clerk shot him in the back before he could get away.”
“You know about his parents?” asked Nate.
“What about them?” Jack asked.
“They were survivors of Auschwitz.”
“Horrible,” said Ike. “Imagine how they must feel.”
“What’s Auschwitz?” asked Roy.
The men were silent for a few moments before Nate spoke.
“It was a concentration camp, a prison death camp during the war where the Germans murdered Jews.”
“They also murdered Gypsies and Communists,” said Ike, “but mostly Jews.”
“But Rostov’s parents are still alive,” Roy said.
“Some prisoners were rescued by the Allies before the Nazis could kill them,” said Louie.
“How many people did they kill?” asked Roy.
“Too many to count,” said his grandfather. “The accepted figure is six million.”
“More,” said Louie. “They murdered more.”
“To think that the parents escaped the Holocaust,” Nate said, “they come to America and their child is shot down in the street like a wild animal.”
“He had a gun,” Roy said. “He showed it to me.”
The men all looked at Roy.
“It was a snub-nose .38,” he said. “Izzy told me he was going to stick up a gas station and move to Miami Beach.”
“What kind of home life could the boy have had?” said Nate.
Roy looked out a window onto State Street. The Chicago Theater was showing Alan Ladd in The Badlanders. Clumps of brown dirt the size of pigeons were blowing through the gray air.
“Let’s play cards,” said Ike.