Elsinore (14 page)

“I'm bulletproof.… Was it much of a burden, Mrs. Vanderwelle, making love to Phipps' chauffeur?”

“You're not a chauffeur,” she said.

“And I suppose you're not little Judith Church.”

“Yes, I am Judith.”

“Then why do you go around calling yourself Gloria Vanderwelle?”

“That's my privilege, isn't it, Holden?… Gloria's my middle name. And it wasn't a burden making love to you. I rather liked it.”

“I'm glad,” Frog said, growing very bitter. “What was that nonsense at the Flatiron Building all about?”

“We were testing you. My mother said you'd never wake up. But she was wrong.”

“And were you testing me when you staged that scene at College Point?”

“No. That was Howard's idea. He likes to manipulate people. My mother works for him. Or haven't you figured that out? It was Howard who financed her acting company. Should I tell you how many people we've ruined for Howard—with Mother's installations?”

“And now you're ruining him.”

“Yes.”

“I'm speechless,” Holden said. “You can't have much respect for me if you don't even deny it.”

“We're ruining him, bit by bit.”

“But he's your dad.”

“Would you like to guess where I was born?”

“What difference would that make?”

“I was born in a madhouse where Howard put my mom.”

“Elsinore … in Vermont.”

“He would visit her regularly once a week and make love to her while she was out of her mind.”

“But the doctors wouldn't have allowed it.”

“It was his asylum. Howard owned it. He had it built for my mom. A fortress without high walls.”

“And you lived there … in the woods with big Judith. Until she recovered her senses. Then she became a drama coach. You go to law school. She has the Mimes. Was it Howard's idea to start the installations?”

“It doesn't matter whose idea it was. We needed an instrument. Howard provided the cash. I waited. I studied Howard Phipps. And then I turned the installations against him.”

“Just like that. Wait and wait until you could deliver. But you might have miscalculated … about me. I'm a loyal son of a bitch. What Phippsy did to your mom was unforgivable. I still wouldn't betray him.”

“Not even for what he did to your own father?”

“Change the subject.”

“Turned him into a zombie.”

“Change the subject, I said. That's between Phipps and me.”

“Holden, there's a man I'd like you to meet.”

“Who? Another renegade from arts and archives?”

“I don't think Morton Katz ever served in the army. He's president of Hester Street Hungarian.”

“Is that a country club?” Holden asked. “Like the one you built at College Point?”

“It's a synagogue that's gone out of business.”

And suddenly Holden was caught in little Judith's web. Because there had to be a cantor in this story. And the cantor wasn't little Sid.

It was one more ruin in a street of ruins. There was garbage behind the gates. Hester Street Hungarian had huge red blisters along its walls. The windows had begun to rot.

Holden was suspicious. He wasn't a connoisseur of synagogues, even though the fur market had its own particular shul. But he had to wonder if this bit of Hester Street was only another installation of the Manhattan Mimes. Little Judith's truckers might have put up those rotting windows and walls.

He entered the shul, avoiding huge chips of stained glass that must have fallen from some window near the roof. He followed Judith down a long corridor that had the contours of a cave. And then the cave turned into a tiny office, with a lamp, a desk, and a tiny man. Morton Katz, president of the shul. Holden cursed the place. Katz had a childish beauty, but he couldn't have been much younger than Phipps. And he had an extraordinary tailor, because the one thing Holden knew was the cut of a man's clothes.

“I hear you work for the philanthropist,” Katz said.

Frog liked this little man who didn't bother with hellos. The two of them were presidents, after all. And a dead synagogue wasn't so different from a fur shop that had no nailers.

“I'd ask you to sit, but I can't remember where I put my other chair.”

Holden looked around. Little Judith was gone. She'd left him alone with Morton Katz.

“I don't get this operation,” Holden said. “If the shul is closed, why do you come here?”

“It's a question of real estate. As long as I'm president, we exist, with or without a congregation … otherwise we'd lose our tax advantage. So I come here every day, Mr. Holden, even on the Sabbath, and sit for an hour.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“Oh, I'm never bored. I fool around with stocks and bonds. I reminisce.”

“About what?”

“The Kronstadt case.”

“I don't get it. Was Kronstadt a firebug? Did he torch a couple of shuls?”

“Kronstadt was the daughter of a rich American merchant. Park Avenue people. She was strangled in a cold-water flat, a few blocks from the synagogue. But it was before your time, Mr. Holden. Nineteen twenty-seven.”

“Then why does it keep tickling your head?”

“The case was never solved. And think of the commotion. An heiress found dead. Almost on our doorstep. I felt responsible. The whole congregation did.”

“But you're not the police.”

“Still, we had to do something. We hired a detective. A Pinkerton man.”

“Howard Phipps.”

“Yes. He was highly recommended. He'd solved a similar case in Seattle. We had him brought in. Our very first interview was in this office. He was standing where you are now. The same spot. But I noticed something. I was dreaming of a man with a beard.”

“Morton,” Holden said, suddenly familiar with a fellow president. “I don't get your drift.”

“Pinkertons didn't wear whiskers in nineteen twenty-seven. But I saw another face. Hirschele, our Hirsch. It was the same man. I knew it in a second … after I imagined the beard. I said nothing, of course. I wouldn't accuse a Pinkerton of having once been the great Hirsch. I'd have made a fool of myself, Mr. Holden.”

“I'm nobody's ‘Mister.' Just Holden. But who was Hirsch?”

“The cantor, Hirschele Feldstein. Our golden boy.”

Boy cantors. Boy generals. Frog felt he was being sold a song.

“Holden,” Katz said, “he could break your heart with the simplest melody. You couldn't get a seat at the Hungarian when Hirschele was in town. Millionaires knocked on our door. Gentiles, Holden. Not Jews. They were dying to hear Hirschele sing. Hester Street became their opera house … and Hirschele had a child's beard. He was maybe fifteen. And already he had managers and booking agents. Every synagogue in America wanted the great Hirsch. And those that couldn't afford him would have killed to have Hirschele for the High Holy Days. Women fainted when he sang the Kol Nidre. We had to mortgage our lives to bring him here. The gentile banks took our blood. But we always got Hirsch. Hirschele was ours. I was a boy when he was a boy. I sang in the choir. He couldn't read music. Hirschele was illiterate. He made up songs in his head. And we followed him as much as we could. We were the children of that child. He made fun of us, mocked our stupidity. But we had Hirsch. And how could I have forgotten his face, with or without a beard? He had a nerve, the Pinkerton. To come here, stand in front of his own choirboy, and pretend he was Howard Phipps.”

“What happened to the great Hirsch?”

Morton Katz started to cry. It troubled Frog to see Katz's shoulders shake. A handkerchief materialized from beneath the desk. Katz blew his nose. “He became a pariah. No synagogue would have him.”

“Was it women problems?”

“Women chased him. We knew that. You couldn't have imagined his celebrity. He wouldn't sing on the radio, like other cantors. If you didn't catch Hirsch in a synagogue, you didn't catch him at all. Oh, the ladies lined up for him at Grand Central, begging for autographs and a touch of his sleeve. But Hirsch never sang at any stations.”

“You still haven't told me what happened.”

“An heiress jumped out of his window at a Chicago hotel. A Jewish girl from a good Chicago family. There was talk that she hadn't jumped … that she'd been pushed. Hirschele was arrested. They had to release him. There was no evidence. But the Jewish press hounded the great Hirsch. The satyr of the synagogues, they called him. The monster with honey in his mouth. He disappears …”

“And shows up at your shul.”

“But can you appreciate how daring he was? He must have known I would recognize him, even without the whiskers. After all, Holden, he sang here ten, twenty times. He still had that crazy fever, a cantor's eyes.”

“Did Kronstadt also have cantor's eyes? What the hell was her first name?”

“She didn't have a first name. Or even if she did, we called her Kronstadt. Because the family was so powerful. Her father could have crushed our synagogue.”

“How did the cantor react to the case?”

“He was brilliant, Holden. He didn't ask one question. He brought me to dives I would never have known about. We talked to prostitutes, gamblers, pimps. Holden, I'd never heard of a Jewish pimp. That's how insulated we were at the Hungarian. We thought we lived in a world of pious men and women. But our golden boy solved the riddle. Kronstadt had been a prostitute on the Lower East Side. It wasn't money, Holden. The woman was worth a fortune. Call it bitterness, or some dark revenge on the Kronstadt name. She'd been among us six or seven years … even before Hirschele fell. And then I understood the itinerary. He was taking me on an autobiographical trip. He was familiar with every prostitute on Hester Street. The great Hirsch must have sang in a whore's tub many times. He must have known Kronstadt herself. Can't you see? Hirschele broke the case.”

“I'm a mule,” Holden said. “My mind's not as fast as yours.”

“He led me to Kronstadt's killer … Holden, it was Hirschele himself.”

“You're speculating, Morton. That isn't nice.”

“Holden, it's ABC. Hirsch was the delinquent he always was. Taking me step by step into his own black corner, while he laughed in my face. I had no proof. I had nothing. Even if I'd exposed his past, it's not a crime for a cantor to become a Pinkerton. He walked away. And Kronstadt lies in her grave.”

“I don't believe any of it,” Holden said. “I don't believe in this shul. Phippsy was a cantor, but he never sang on Hester Street. Good-bye.”

There was a limo outside Hester Street Hungarian. Holden didn't even have to ask who it was for. He got into the bus. A dark shield of glass separated him from the chauffeur. He was driven uptown to the Manhattan Mimes. He went up the stairs to Judith's loft. They were sitting together, mother and daughter, on two camp chairs, waiting for Sidney Holden. Not even their eyes stirred when he entered the loft, as if he were some petty criminal they had to deal with, one more nuisance in their lives.

“That was a lovely sideshow down on Hester Street. Morton Katz was a little too perfect. The president of a dead shul wearing king's clothes. Talking about Kronstadt, the heiress without a first name. It was cock-and-bull. The murderous cantor … I've seen much better scripts.”

“It's all true,” said little Judith.

“Then I'm the King of Hearts.”

“And who are we?” asked big Judith.

“A mother-daughter team. The best in the business.”

“That's flattering, Mr. Holden.”

“It wasn't meant to be. You lie and lie and lie. The both of you.”

“We've had practice,” said big Judith. “My daughter's first playmates were mad people. And I was her own mad mom. You ought to have asked why Howard never murdered me … he could have, you know.”