Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (34 page)

"On time for the kaddish," he whispered to Nathan.

"I thought you wouldn't make it," said Nathan.

"That's what Harry would have thought. That's why I'm here," Mordy declared.

After the last kaddish, Nathan walked Nusan home. "I have lost my only living relative," Nusan said on the way back to Rivington Street.

Nathan never bothered to correct him. "Are you sleeping, Uncle Nusan? You look like you are not sleeping."

"Sleep? I never sleep. Harry is sleeping."

Nathan inhaled deeply—one last chance—blocked his nasal passages, and opened the door. Nusan took off his slashed jacket and hat and his glowing running shoes. His socks had holes also, but this was probably not for mourning.

Stretching out on the couch in his shredded clothes, Nusan gently laid his head down where there should have been a pillow. Instead it was a brick—not even a new brick, a blackened used brick from the street.

"What are you doing?" said Nathan.

"It's supposed to be a rock. I couldn't find a rock... for mourning."

"But you can't sleep like that."

"How do you know? Have you ever tried to sleep like that? Don't say you can't until you have tried it!"

Nathan didn't argue with Nusan. No one did. An hour after Nathan left, Nusan realized, rubbing his head where the brick had been, that he couldn't sleep once again, and he put on his jacket and hat and scarf and went for a walk in the summer night.

In the dark silence of Third Street, almost unconsciously, Nusan checked his jacket pocket on the left side to see that the two pieces of bread he had taken from his brother's shiva were still there, as though he had gotten away with the sleight of hand.

From the corner, Cabezucha, in darkly soiled blue jeans and a new white T-shirt with a picture of Jamaican singer Bob Marley on the front, had seen the old man checking nervously on what was probably a wad of money in his pocket. He walked directly up to Nusan, pulled out his revolver, and lowered it two feet until it was pointed at Nusan's head. Nusan looked up at him with his ice cold dark eyes and began to laugh. "You want to kill me? Kill me! Do you think you are the first? Kill me! Here I am." He stretched out his arms and closed his eyes.

Cabezucha held the pistol barrel to Nusan's white forehead and pulled back the hammer, but he did not fire.

"What! You don't want to kill me? Why does nobody want to kill me?" Nusan, trying to clear his path, pushed upward at Cabezucha's chest with a stiff arm. The arm could barely reach the larger man's chest but still managed to deliver a hard thump. Cabezucha, caught off balance, clawed at Nusan and ended up grabbing on to his maroon scarf.

"Not that!" shouted Nusan as he struggled furiously to wrest the scarf from Cabezucha's slow but powerful grip. With his other hand, Cabezucha fired the pistol point-blank at Nusan, slowly squeezing the trigger six times, firing six shots—all of which missed.

Cabezucha released the scarf and ran down the street in the opposite direction from a police patrol car that suddenly lit up the buildings' dark windows, carnival-like, with flashing colored lights.

Nusan roared with laughter as he straightened his scarf. The laughter exploded out of his mouth as tears ran down his cheeks. "Not me. Can't kill me. Can't be done." And he laughed some more as salt water flowed like a new rain from his eyes, a long-dammed flood. There Nusan stood on the littered Third Street sidewalk, bathed in the pleasure of at last releasing his tears.

R
UTH FELT THE KICK.
that intrusive stab, that was Harry's foot. She did not have to look at a clock. With eyes closed, she knew that it was between three-thirty and four, the time of night when Harry turned over. He didn't snore. Early in their marriage, that had surprised her. "You look like a snorer," she had said.

"Close," Harry had quipped, and she knew he meant schnorrer, a con artist, which in reality he also wasn't, though he liked to think of himself that way—the slick operator, the impresario.

She would not reach down and remove his leg, the way she always did, because she knew that Harry was gone. She would just go back to sleep, though in the morning he would still be gone. He would not show up on Houston Street. She could never again tell him anything. He no longer existed. And she had not even been able to say good-bye. What would she have said? Something. Something lovely Something funny. Then she realized that she did not want to say good-bye. She just wanted another chance to talk to him. She fell asleep, though she already knew what her first thought would be when she woke in the morning.

For now, Harry was walking on Second Avenue, looking so real, so lifelike, how could he be gone? And he was singing. It was his voice, unmistakably Singing Irving Berlin.

I'm going on a long vacation,
Oh, you railroad station...

After the arrest, everyone but Nusan imagined close calls. That large man they called Cabezucha, who was now suspected in eight neighborhood killings and had already confessed to shooting Eli Rab-binowitz, had gotten a massage from Sonia.

"The most disturbing part to me," Sonia had said, "is my judgment. I thought I could tell who to trust. If you can't tell, this business is much too dangerous. But you know, he was really nice."

"Really?" Nathan had always thought of him as a dangerous drug dealer.

Sonia whispered, "He was nicer to me than Eli Rabbinowitz."

Nathan smiled. "Really?"

Most of the neighborhood was relieved when he was caught, though not Mrs. Skolnik, who came into Nathan's shop dressed in a red-and-white sundress with little scenes of Paris in the pattern, a large-brimmed straw hat with a red-and-white cloth band, and a string of beads, also red and white, around her neck. The beads gave her away Mrs. Skolnik was always color-coordinated, so only a few with experience like Nathan recognized Cristofina's beads. She may have gotten the entire outfit from her. Red and white were the colors of Changó, the powerful lightning orisha. So powerful, Nadian recalled, that Cristofina charged more for this spirit. Mrs. Skolnik's earrings, red lightning bolts, must have been sold to her by Cristofina as well. Nathan strained over the counter to see if she was wearing red-and-white shoes. She was—red-and-white patent-leather polka-dot high heels.

Mrs. Skolnik stared urgently at Nathan through her pearl pixie glasses and fumbled with her beads, as though invoking extra protection as she spoke. "I need twenty copies. Could I post one of them here?"

Nathan looked at the page while he heard the clicking of plastic beads. "Sure. Are you selling all of your furniture?"

"I have to get out of here. That killer is out!"

"No, they caught him."

"They caught that one and they let out the other one. And he knows I identified him. He'll come after me."

"Ruben Garcia?"

"Yes," she whispered, shaking her beads nervously

"But he never killed anyone."

"Did you see his eyes?"

Cristofina was like a lawyer. She won no matter how the case went. She earned money making sweet-faced Ruben scary, and now she earned more protecting Mrs. Skolnik from her best work, his scary eyes.

Mrs. Skolnik, too, thought she was having narrow escapes. As she left, Nathan could hear Carmela above saying,
"'A'ta 'uego, Changó."
See you.

Fearless, Nathan took the F train to Delancey Street and felt no anguish even when the train slowed to a near stop in the tunnel. At Delancey he got out and walked to Rivington Street to see Nusan, once again the survivor.

Nusan scoffed at the suggestion that he had narrowly escaped death. He had his own ideas about narrow escapes. "He tried. He shot at me six times. The police found all the bullet holes."

Nathan and everyone else in the neighborhood had already heard this. "Why do you think he didn't hit you?"

"Exactly. That shlemiel could hit nothing. It was the bystanders who barely survived. They are the survivors." They both laughed together, one of the few real laughs they had ever shared.

"Really, Nusan, how did he miss so many times right up close?"

The smile left Nusan. "I am not so easy to kill. You think this fellow was smarter than Hitler? Do you think he was tougher than the Gestapo? I have more to fear from your friend with the pastry." Then he grew silent and adjusted his scarf. "You know what?" he said in a quiet voice. "He probably would have killed me if it wasn't for the scarf." He pulled his maroon wool scarf tighter around his neck.

"The scarf?"

"Yes, this. He tried to take it and I went crazy, and that scared him. He didn't know what he had. Look, come here." Nusan beckoned Nathan with a conspiratorial gesture. "Feel this," he whispered, holding out his scarf.

Nathan felt the scarf. It felt like wool. But there were some very small, hard bumps. Nusan whispered three inaudible syllables.

"What?"

Nusan tried again, not much louder. "Diamonds."

"How many are in there?" Nathan whispered.

"Twenty-seven." Nusan smiled and continued whispering. "I have been living off of this scarf since 1948.1 bought my trip to New York. I rented this apartment. This is how I live." Still whispering, he added with unconcealed glee, "Guess how many I have already used."

"How many?"

"Guess."

"Twenty"

"Only nine, since 1948. They are good stones."

"Where did you get them?"

Nusan laughed like someone who had just heard a very good joke, loudly, uncontrollably He saw Nathan's surprise. Struggling to regain his voice, he said gravely, "This is really funny" Then he broke into a wheezy, shoulder-heaving laugh. Finally he managed to whisper, "I stole them—from a German—a Nazi. When I was in the DP camp waiting for my visa. He had hid them so carefully Just like his war record. But I found both. I'll get your pastry maker, too."

"He's harmless. Leave him alone."

"Oh? You really think he is innocent?"

"Yes."

"I can tell that you don't. You are keeping something from me."

"I don't know a thing about him. Just that he is from Berlin and changed his name."

"No, there must be something else. If you think he is innocent, tell me. We can clear him."

"He is innocent. He is just a pastry maker who loves children."

"Tell me, then."

Nathan let the scarf drop on Nusan's belly.

"Remember," Nusan said in sudden earnestness, "if something happens to me, get the scarf."

"All right."

Nusan grabbed Nathan's wrist with a surprisingly powerful grip, the grip that must have surprised Cabezucha. "It's important."

"I'll remember."

But Nusan was wrong. Bernhardt Moellen was not Obersturm-führer Reinhardt Müller. He was Schütze Bernhardt Müllen, Private Mullen, a draftee in the Wehrmacht, the German army, just as he had always said. He and his wife did go to Argentina before immigrating to the United States. When he entered the United States, he changed his name to Moellen because he thought the umlaut would be too difficult.

Moellen had always tried to conceal his war record. But now he was forced to tell the truth. He had written it out years ago, so that if he ever had to tell the story, he would have all the facts before him. He used the third person so that it would sound like a document, not a confession— the truth in its proper absurdity.

The
Schütze
Shoots
Ein Geshütz

Bernhardt Mullen had managed to stay in Berlin for most of the war, baking pastries for meetings of chubby mass murderers who plotted death with his powdered sugar still on their lips. He actually did once make a
kugelhopf
for Adolf Hitler, which was when he had learned that the cake was a favorite, though to his great relief, he did not have to actually meet the Führer. He never even heard if Hitler liked his
kugelhopf,
though he supposed it had gone reasonably well, since Mullen did not receive orders to report to the army for some time. And it was the Austrian cake, not at all the Alsatian brioche his daughter liked to make.

Then, in 1945, without having ever been inducted or trained, he was given
ein Geshütz,
a gun. He knew nothing more about the tool. It was a gun. He had no idea how to shoot a
Geshütz,
though to be honest he made no real effort to learn since he had no intention of using it. He was told that he was now a private, a
Schütze.
He was sent out of Berlin to the south along with hundreds of other
Schützen
with a variety of
Geshützen.
Though he was already in his forties, most of the others were about sixteen years old. For two days, he wandered with his
Geshütz
and several armed and terrified children through muddy Prussian fields and woods dampened in spring rain until, half-starving, he found himself behind a thick tree with someone in the distance shooting at him. Hearing the flat, hard
thwack
of bullets hitting the tree, he was afraid to look out, but he finally gained the courage for a quick peek. To his joy, they were Americans and not Russians. He had wandered too far and missed the Red Army, which was probably in Berlin by this time. He looked again. There were three Americans with
Geshützen
far bigger, it seemed, than his.

"Apple pie a la mode!" shouted the cornered, starving Private Mullen, suspecting that this would make little sense to the Americans. But it was the only American phrase he could think of. The shooting stopped, and Mullen threw away his gun and came out from behind the tree with his hands in the air. Suddenly he was rolling in the mud. An American had shot him! He had been shot in the leg. Then Mullen remembered something else. "Strawberry rhubarb! Strawberry rhubarb pie!"

One of the Americans shouted something back about strawberry rhubarb pie. Incredible, Mullen thought, and repeated it again. "Strawberry rhubarb pie!" It turned out the American loved strawberry rhubarb pie, and that was how Mullen convinced him to take him prisoner instead of killing him. And he still had a phrase in reserve,
"Boston creampie,"
to say in the event he was interrogated. Private Mullen's military career was over.

Karoline was relieved to have the truth at last, yet when she had warned her parents of what was about to happen, they had acted as though they had been caught.

"We knew this day would come, Bernsie."

Moellen sighed. "Yes, we knew."

Karoline did not understand. Surely they could prove who they were. He could prove that he was not Reinhardt Müller.

"Yes," said Moellen, "but we will never be accepted in this neighborhood again. The Jews and the Italians and the others, they will never buy pastry from us. They will never let me play with and tease their children. But you will get married and live on the East Side with Dickie and open a better shop in midtown. And we will retire. It's funny when we first came here, we didn't want to live on the Upper East Side because it was full of Germans. We wanted to get away from Germans and be here with the Jews and Italians and Poles."

And now the Edelweiss Pastry Shop was over, too. The Moellens waited for a visitor. One came in only a few days, someone from immigration. They hadn't expected that. They had thought at least FBI. There were so many different kinds of federal agents in the neighborhood. They thought it would have been something rarer than the people who checked the papers on the dishwashers at the restaurants. It was not difficult for Moellen to prove who he was, though, and once that was cleared up, they quietly left the neighborhood.

Karoline had been trying for days not to think about the idea that if she had not become involved with Nathan Seltzer, this might not have happened. Maybe it would have. Her parents thought that it would have happened anyway. That it was predestined.

"But you are innocent," Karoline insisted.

Her father said, "No one is innocent. Babies are innocent."

"Viktor Stein," said her mother. And her father affirmed by repeating the name.

"Who is Viktor Stein?" Karoline shouted in exasperation.

"Shh!" both her parents responded.

"No one is listening," Karoline said.

"Viktor Stein was my oldest friend," said Moellen. "We grew up together. He and his wife and two children lived in our building. They took away his job. Then they made him leave our building. Then they took them all away."

"And killed them," said Karoline's mother.

"And killed them," Moellen confirmed.

"What does that have to do with you?" said Karoline.

"Exactly," said Moellen. "That is what I said, too. Why should I do anything? So my oldest friend and his family are robbed and murdered. What does this have to do with me?"

It was an ordinary summer afternoon at the Casita Meshugaloo. The tomatoes were still coming in. Felix estimated at least three more weeks and then he should have enough capital to buy produce from the Italians in the Bronx. The multieyebrowed Ruben was out, his face still tattooed, the Dominican flag around his head now concealed by dark, thick hair. He was free and futilely brushing up on his Japanese, even though Panista, who had talked to several Japanese restaurant owners, told him, "They are never going to hire a dude with two sets of eyebrows."

Then something happened there that had never happened before. For the first time, Ruth Seltzer came through the gate in the chain-link fence that still had the sign that said "Free Ruben Garcia," through the garden, and into the casita. Was she now going to take Harry's place? Try to promote boogaloo? Eat
cuchifritos?

No, Ruth had come to tell Chow Mein Vega that she was selling the lot that the casita was on. Probably a high-rise luxury apartment would be built there.