The blonde secretary with the red-hot lipstick who sat at the front desk of Philadelphia’s Blitz Theater on Broad Street thought he was a union man. Otherwise, she would have tossed the middle-aged Jew in the overalls out the moment he walked in. He sat erect in the plush lounge chair of the office waiting room, fingering his hat with thick, calloused fingers. He had to be a union organizer of some kind, she thought, for he was not pleasant. Nonunion workmen were usually smiling and obsequious, happy for the work, impressed by the handsome waiting room, the leather couch, the polished coffee tables. Union organizers, on the other hand, were arrogant men in workmen’s clothing who sat on couch arms, smoking and chatting, rabble-rousers all, too smart for their britches. This man was more that type. He announced his name as Marvin Skrupskelis, then spelled it—as if she couldn’t spell, which was actually true, since she wrote it down as Scoopskalek, until he glanced at her scribbling and corrected her. He said he had no appointment with Mr. Isaac Moskovitz but needed to see him. Only because she assumed he might be a union rep did she buzz Mr. Moskovitz at all. And even then, Isaac didn’t respond but rather clicked off immediately, which meant he was irritated and that she should tell whoever it was to get lost. She took her hand off the buzzer and was about to do just that when Mr. Moskovitz opened the door of his office, walked up to the man, shook his hand, and said, “This way,” motioning him toward the door leading to the elevator.
As he opened the door, he said to his secretary, “I’ll be back in a while.”
Five minutes into the car ride, cruising down Broad Street in Isaac’s heavy black Packard, Marv cast a long glance at Moshe’s cousin, the tall, strident fellow who occasionally showed up in Pottstown to steer his meek cousin through disaster or disorder. He watched Isaac steer his heavy black car through Broad Street with ease. He looked like an older, firmer version of Moshe, without the grin; but unlike Moshe, he was not hospitable, for he wasted no time. “How’d you find my office?” he asked.
“It’s listed. You want I should come to your house?”
“That would have been better.”
“I didn’t know I was welcome there.”
“I didn’t say you were. I said you should have come to the house, not my business.”
“Just to be difficult,” Marv said, “are you one of those crazy Romanian theater owners who knows a lot of useless crap, like butterflies taste with their feet?”
“Just to be difficult, are you?”
“I’m Lithuanian.” Marv snorted, then grew silent, peering out the window as Isaac drove slowly, carefully.
Isaac snatched a glance at Marv. He’d seen Marv at Chona’s shiva. Or was it his twin? He couldn’t tell them apart. Whoever it was, he stayed long and said little. Isaac got to the point. “What did Moshe do wrong this time?”
“He did nothing. He lives right. Which is more than I can say about some of us in this country.”
“So you wanna go back to the old country?”
“I like it here. The politicians try to cut your throat with one hand while saluting the flag with the other. Then they tax you. Saves ’em the trouble of calling you a dirty Jew.”
Isaac chuckled. “You hungry? You wanna eat? You need something? You’ve come a long way.”
Marv looked out the window, his brown eyes peering at the row houses as the sedan spun past. “He’s soft, your cousin.”
“Tell me what I don’t know.”
“I make shoes,” Marvin said.
“I’ll remember that the next time my bunions rise up like yeast to shake my hand.”
“I make ’em for all types,” Marv said. “They come to me from far off. Reading. Baltimore. Even New York.”
“You got a twin, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Were you the one I saw at the shiva? Or was it the other?”
“Probably the other.”
“Where were you?”
Marv bristled. “I don’t remember seeing you the day I came. And I was there all day. Me or my brother. One of us was there every day. You check attendance at shivas, do you?” He rode in silence for a moment as Isaac took the reprimand, then continued.
“A fellow come to me last week. He had a problem with his toe. He needed a shoe made. Doc Roberts sent him over. You remember him?” Marv asked.
“Why should I care about that kucker (defecator)?”
“Because this guy could squeeze Doc.”
“How do you know?”
“Just because a man doesn’t wear shiny shoes and know how to tell fairy tales in pictures doesn’t mean he lacks a ready wit. The guy’s name is Plitzka. Gus Plitzka. He runs things in Pottstown.”
“Like what?”
“Everything. City council, the waterworks, the cops. He’s dealing cards from two decks. He tried to buy a dairy and fell short. He borrowed money from a guy named Nig Rosen. A businessman from here. Maybe you know Rosen?”
Isaac nodded, spinning the big sedan through traffic. “You could call him that, but who are you fooling? He lives on bail bonds and Benzedrine. No one to play with. How do you know about him?”
“Pinochle.”
“What?”
“Not every Jew in Pottstown sits around sucking their thumb waiting for handouts from the German Jewish Society. Pinochle. I play every week in Reading. Heavy-money games. A couple of players from Reading, they work for Rosen.”
“So?”
“They’re in Pottstown every week squeezing Plitzka. He owes Rosen a pile. He borrowed from Rosen to close the deal on his dairy. The dairy gets its water from his old farm, but the farm has no water.”
“So?”
“Our temple on the Hill tapped into a well that pumps water for a public faucet. That well is dry, and I know that for a fact Plitzka’s water is coming from the new reservoir. So he’s not paying for his water. If the state knew he was getting his water for free and was running the town’s water department at the same time, they’d come in and take over. They need water in that town. The factories need it. So he’s vulnerable. Since he runs the town, maybe somebody can put the squeeze on him, so he can put the squeeze on Doc Roberts.”
“That goy won’t ever confess to raping a Jew.”
“He didn’t rape her. He tried to.”
“Doesn’t matter. He ripped her clothes off. That’s close enough. What’s the end run here?”
Marv spoke in Yiddish. “Yoysher.” (Justice.)
“Got any other jokes?”
“I liked Chona.”
Isaac thought it through carefully, then took a deep breath. “Religion and politics. Not good for business.”
“So you’ll do nothing. What’s the life of a Jew worth?”
“Save the lecture, friend.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“If you need Irene Dunne to show up and sing songs for a week, cut-rate, I can do that. If you need Cab Calloway to sing hi de hi de ho at Moshe’s theater, I can arrange that. But cutting deals with dummkopfs who pinch politicians for marshmallows and cigarettes in a town I don’t know, that’s out of my range.”
“So you’ll do nothing.”
Isaac said carefully, “I didn’t say that. Let Rosen have Plitzka. Maybe he’ll be so busy bothering Plitzka he’ll stop leaning on me about putting his ding-dong floozies in my shows. Nobody wants the cops involved. Nobody wants the state or the feds. Nobody wants taxes. Nobody wants problems. Nobody wants to pay. Forget the cowboy nonsense. To make things work in this country, you don’t throw water on a man’s face. You keep it quiet. You cut deals. Leave Rosen and Plitzka alone. Maybe they’ll stumble over a manhole and fall in together. I need help with something else.”
“What kind of help?”
Isaac sighed. He took one more long glance at Marv, spun the wheel, and guided the sedan off the crowded boulevard and pulled into a side street of row houses. He eased the sedan to the curb, pulled the emergency brake, then turned to Marv.
“What Chona wanted,” he said, “was for the shul to survive. Pull back the covers on the water problem with Plitzka and you pull the covers off the shul. No sense squeezing Plitzka about that.”
“So what do we do?”
“Let Plitzka fix his own water problem at the dairy. I’ll get the water problem fixed for the shul. It’s in the works, so the temple won’t be responsible. I just need your help with one thing to make that fix happen. Nothing else.”
“What?”
“I need two men, Jews, to run a train for me. Union men.”
“A union man can’t run a train. The Pennsylvania Railroad runs the trains.”
“I’m not talking about run it. They just need to be on it. Two of them. Working on it.”
“Which train?”
Isaac glanced in his rearview mirror, then out of his window at a car that swooped past, followed by a horse and cart. “The colored boy of Chona’s, the one who saw it all, he’s in Pennhurst. There’s a freight train that delivers coal and flour to Pennhurst every week. I need two men on that train to snatch the kid when he comes out of the nuthouse. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Snatch him from where?”
“Wherever the train drops its load. He’ll be there when it comes.”
“Who’s gonna put him in place?”
“Don’t worry about it. He’ll be there.”
“And where will they take him?”
“Just get him on the train. Everything else I’ll take care of. Can you find two Jews you can trust?”
“Course. There’s probably forty Jews out there in the Reading area working for the railroad.”
“How much you think it’ll cost?”
“For you? Nothing.”
“You kidding?”
Marv shook his head. “The railroad Jews are all union men. They read the papers, they sing the songs, they’re nuts. They’re all swelled up with the whole bit about American justice for one and all. They know about Chona, the letters she wrote, the crazy things she did. The coloreds weren’t the only ones she fed for free. Half her store was railroad workers, especially on weekends. Chona’s was the only store open in Pottstown on Sundays. I can get you ten union Jews from the railroad.”
“Two is all I need. How much will it cost you to get them for me?”
“I said it’s free.”
“Nothing is free.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“How?”
“Everybody needs shoes.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Do I ask you how you run your business? You offer a union man a bribe and he’ll spit in your face. They know I don’t have money like you to throw around. But you offer your trade, your work, they’ll honor that. They honor principle.”
Isaac reddened as a flush of shame washed over him. Principle. In all the years of being a fusgeyer, when he and Moshe were children, running for their lives from the soldiers and starving, that was the one thing that Moshe never gave away. He never hated anyone. He was always kind. He’d give away his last crumb. And here in America, he’d married a woman who was the same way. Kindness. Love. Principle. It runs the world. “No is not a no. It’s just the beginning of a negotiation,” Moshe would say. What a wonderful negotiator Moshe was. He could’ve been rich here in America with all his talents. Instead, he was in a shitbox town with a dead wife care of a . . . Isaac swallowed and bit his lip.
He heard Marv asking something.
“What?”
“The water,” Marv said. “What about the water? Who’s gonna fix the water problem? Are you sure?”
“The water fix is already in the works,” Isaac said. “Just have those men there when the kid comes out of the nuthouse. That’s my end of the deal.”
“What about Plitzka?”
“Maybe he and Nig Rosen will end up in an urn someplace. Who cares?”
“When do you want the men there? Which train?”
“There’s only one Pennhurst train a day, I’m told,” Isaac said. “I’ll send word on the day. Just have your guys ready. And would you do me a favor?”
“Maybe.”
“Next time, come to my house. My secretary’s a goy with a large mouth.”
Marv smirked. “Where you dip your wicker is your business.”
Isaac frowned. “We can’t all be like Moshe,” he said.