Solomon Gursky Was Here (59 page)

“But no more than once a week.”

“And not exclusive of other beaux of good family.”

“Listen here, for shit's sake, I earn more in a week than that fucken Saltzman does in a good year. Excuse me. I'm sorry.”

“Dr. Saltzman's dental practice will undoubtedly grow.”

“And don't take this personal, but he's not shorter than Libby on the dance floor.”

“Neither am I if she isn't wearing those goddamn high heels.”

“You see, Bernard, I'm taking the long view. I am thinking of the Mintzberg grandchildren.”

“God bless them,” Mrs. Mintzberg said.

“In a partnership shared equally among three brothers who are merely mortal the progeny are bound to squabble over their inheritance unless the line of succession is as clear as it is in the House of Windsor.”

 

M
ORRIE WAS
no problem.

“Bernie, if you say I'm entitled to no more than twenty percent it's hunky-dory with me, honest to God.”

“I love you, Morrie, and I'll always take good care of you and yours.”

Bernard waited until Solomon had been back from Detroit for a couple of days before he went to see him in his suite in The Victory Hotel. Noon, and he was still lying in bed that one, reading newspapers. “Marcel Proust died yesterday. He was only fifty-one. What do you think of that?”

Empty champagne bottles drifted upside down in a silver bucket and there came a splashing from the bathroom, a girl in the tub, singing “April Showers”.

“We've got to talk.”

“No, we don't. Shut the door after you and have them send up scrambled eggs for two and another bottle of Pol Roger.”

“Put down that newspaper and listen to me for a change. I pay all your gambling debts.”

“Do you think Boston did the right thing, trading Muddy Ruel like that?”

“You trust me. I trust you. Everybody trusts Morrie. But if any one of us was knocked down by a car, God forbid, nothing is clear, we have no legal partnership papers.”

“So you've got some right there in your briefcase,” Solomon said, reaching for it.

Even as Solomon scanned the documents, Bernard reminded him once more of how he had parlayed one hotel into nine, working eighteen hours a day while Solomon was gallivanting around Europe in an officer's uniform. Furthermore, he pointed out, he was the eldest son with certain traditional rights going back to biblical times.

“Fifty-one percent for you, thirty for me, and nineteen for Morrie.”

“I could get him to settle for fifteen and I'd be satisfied with fifty point five-o, which would boost you to thirty-four and a half points.”

Solomon began to laugh.

“You whoremaster, you gambler, what if I lost my Libby because of you?”

“Then you'd have something else to thank me for.”

“I hate you,” Bernard hollered, scooping up an ashtray and throwing it at him, kicking open the bathroom door, “Give him the syph, he deserves it,” and taking a peek at the alarmed girl in the tub, slapping his cheek, amazed. “Oh, my God,” he said, fleeing the room.

Clara Teitelbaum snatched at the robe that hung from a hook on the door and spun out of the bathroom, wailing. “My father will throw me out in the street now and I don't blame him one bit I'm dying of shame.”

“Don't worry,” Solomon said, his mind elsewhere.

“I'm a respectable girl. I never even let another boy kiss me, but you, you animal, even a nun wouldn't be safe with you.”

“I promise you Bernie won't say a word to anybody.”

“And didn't you promise me if I came here you'd know when to stop this time, you think I don't know what they say about you?”

Solomon waited until her tears had subsided. “You're not only ravishing, Clara, but you are so bright. Now tell me why I'm always so nasty to my brother.”

“He'll blab to Libby and she'll get on the phone to Faigy Rubin and my father, oh my God, you might as well hire me for the bar that's all I'm good for now,” she said, thrusting her head deep into the pillows and beginning to quake with sobs again.

“Clara, please, you're beginning to get on my nerves.”

“At least if I could say, Paw, I know I shouldn't have let him, but we're engaged.”

“If you don't hurry, Clara, you'll be late for your skating lessons. I'll pick you up at eight and we'll go to see
Dream Street
at the Regal.”

“I saw it,” she said, sniffling.

“The new Fairbanks then.”

“Better seven-thirty. But I'll meet you there, I'll say I'm going with a girlfriend, my father could be waiting at the door with a horsewhip. I wish I'd never met you and that's the truth.”

Four o'clock in the afternoon Solomon was wakened by a soft scratching on the door. “Come on in, Morrie, the door's unlocked.”

Morrie was followed by a waiter wheeling a table heaped with bagels and lox and cream cheese and a jug of coffee.

“Morrie, would you do me a favour?”

“Name it.”

“Would you marry the beautiful, but unbelievably dense Clara Teitelbaum for me?”

“Hey, what are you talking? She's some number, Clara, very hoidytoidy too. Have you ever caught a look at her on the rink doing those figure-eights in that little skirt?”

“Unfortunately yes.”

“Her father leans against the fence, making sure nobody even talks to her.”

“What if I could fix you up with Clara tonight?”

“I'm glad to see you're in such a good mood.”

“Oh yeah. Why?”

“Bernie's really, really in love with Libby, but the Mintzbergs are giving him a hard time.”

“If you so much as mention those ridiculous contracts he's drawn up I'll throw you out of here.”

“Hold on. Don't give me that look. But supposing that in order to win Libby's hand he has to show those contracts to Mintzberg, but he also gave you a covering letter, nullifying the contracts, which would be torn up right after the marriage.”

“How could I be a party to deceiving the delightful daughter of such a worthy family of German Jews?”

So Morrie trudged back to the warehouse office and reported to Bernard that Solomon wouldn't budge.

“I should have known better than to trust you with such an important thing, you little
putz,
” Bernard said, punching him in the stomach. Then grabbing his homburg and beaver coat, Bernard went flying out of the office.

Head lowered into the wind, Bernard went striding down Portage Street, cursing at anybody he banged into. Once more, in his mind's eye, he saw Solomon, Ephraim's anointed one, jump down from the fence into the flow of wild nervy horses in the corral. “Follow me, Bernie, and I'll buy you a beer.” Turning a corner, tears freezing on his cheeks, he was confronted again by Lena Green Stockings. “It's the boy with the two belly buttons.” Minnie Pryzack, seeing him reach for the towel, smiled at him, a tubby little man with wet fishy eyes who would have to scratch and bite to get what he wanted out of life, but never cheat, he thought, like Solomon certainly did in that card game, and yet to this day McGraw looks at me like I'm dog shit but would eat out of Solomon's hand.

Bernard sat down in a booth in The Gold Nugget and ordered coffee and blueberry pie with a double helping of vanilla ice cream.

My God Lanksy phones and asks for Mr. Gursky.

Speaking, Bernard says.

I meant Solomon.

Well last time I looked I was Mr. Gursky too I'll have you know.

Tell Solomon I called.

Click.

Hardly anybody in town could even qualify for a date with the unattainable Clara Teitelbaum, but Solomon was screwing her black and blue in the hotel. Yeah, sure. While he could win the Irish Sweepstakes easier than collecting a little good-night kiss from Libby.

“We all have to learn to control our desires,” she said.

“Yeah, well maybe not all. I could tell you something about your friend Clara Teitelbaum guaranteed to turn your hair white.”

“Like what?”

“Somebody is doing it to her.”

“Shame on you for making up such a thing. She isn't even allowed out at night there isn't a chaperone with.”

“So what about before lunch she's supposed to be shopping?”

“You're crazy.”

“About you, yes.”

“Then stop futzing around and get my father's approval for the match.”

“There are problems.”

“Listen, Bernie, I'd marry you if you didn't have even a dime to your name, but I can't go against my father's wishes. So get a move on, please, and you'll see how warmly I can respond to your caresses,” she said, shutting the front door on him.

Goddamn it to hell. Working eighteen hours a day, Morrie more hindrance than help. Keeping the books. Sorting out cashier's cheques drawn on banks in New York and Detroit and Chicago, everybody scared to carry too much cash now because of the hijackers. Checking out the boozatoriums and watching the tills in the hotels, every manager born to steal. Keeping the drivers from Minnesota happy, they got nothing to do all day but wait for dark, so suddenly they've started to rob the small-town banks and the yokels blame the liquor trade in general and the Gurskys in particular for welcoming such lowlifes into town. And meanwhile if Solomon isn't
shtupping
Clara (her father finds out he'll kill him for sure) or putting together a poker game, he's in New York at Texas Guinan's or better yet Mr. La De Da Himself is stuffing his
kishkas
at the Jockey Club with Arnold Rothstein and then wiring me for a hundred thousand here, fifty there, to settle his losses. He's a menace. A
makke
. If I let him he'll destroy everything I worked so hard to build and there will be nothing for my wife and children yet to come.

The following Tuesday night Bernard, wearing his homburg, grey serge suit, spats, and new wingtip shoes with elevator heels,
called for Libby, as arranged, to take her to see
The Kid
at the Regal. A grim Mr. Mintzberg greeted him at the front door. “I'm afraid Miss Mintzberg can't go out with you tonight.”

“She isn't well?”

“God forbid,” Mrs. Mintzberg said.

“So what's the problem?”

“Shame on you,” Mrs. Mintzberg said.

And then Libby appeared behind her parents in the foyer, a wraith, her eyes red, twisting a damp handkerchief in her hands. “Gossips are saying your brother has dishonoured Clara Teitelbaum. I don't believe a word of it.”

“I'm not like him, Mr. Mintzberg.”

“Didn't I tell them you're always the gentleman,” Libby said.

“You give the word, Mr. Mintzberg, I marry Libby tomorrow.”

“Not under the present circumstances,” Mr. Mintzberg said, whacking the front door shut, a tearful Libby calling out, “Do something, sweetheart.”

“I have a hunch,” Bernard said to Solomon a couple of days later, “that you wouldn't mind getting out of town for a while.”

“I appreciate your concern.”

“There are three carloads of whisky arriving at the CPR station at North Portal tomorrow night. Can you handle it?”

“Certainly.”

“Don't accept cashier's cheques from the Nebraska boys, only cash, those crooks they use pads of blank cheques that were stolen from banks here. Can I count on you?”

“You're beginning to irritate me.”

“You have to be at the station by midnight without fail because the drivers start arriving about that time. And you are not to blow the receipts in a card game, if you don't mind.”

On arrival in North Portal the next afternoon, Solomon made directly for the hotel and started to drink with McGraw and the rum-runners. A bunch of them, including Solomon and McGraw, moved on to The Imperial Pool Hall to shoot snooker at a thousand dollars a game. Solomon, who was ahead twelve thousand dollars at a quarter to twelve, didn't feel it would be proper for him to lay
down his cue and retreat to the railroad station, so he sent McGraw in his place.

Solomon was lining up a sharp-angled shot on the pink ball into the side pocket when the game was disrupted by two shotgun blasts that came from the direction of the railroad station. Everybody piled into the darkened street, reaching the station just in time to see a lone figure, shotgun in hand, dashing across the platform and taking off into the night in a Hudson Super-Six. Solomon bent over McGraw, dead on the station floor, shot from the window, once in the head, once through the chest. As the others gathered around, Solomon slipped away, retiring to his suite in the hotel. It was three
A.M.
, and he had consumed half a bottle of cognac to no avail before he phoned Bernard. “McGraw went to the station in my place at midnight and somebody shot him.”

“Oh, no. How is he?”

“Dead is how he is the last time I looked.”

“Did they catch the killers?”

“No.”

Bernard began to curse.

“I didn't want you to worry. I wanted you to know I was safe.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Something else while I'm at it,” Solomon said, remembering to coat the blade with honey. “Mintzberg has been buying the wrong stocks on margin from Duncan, Shire & Hamilton. Considering he has to be managing it on a parochial school principal's salary, I'd say he's heavily over-committed.”

“With God's help he'll lose his shirt, that fucken
yekke
.”

“Possibly he'd be grateful for a loan from an understanding son-in-law.”

Afraid he might doze off in spite of himself, Solomon shoved his bureau against the door to his room and laid his gun on the bedside table, alongside his bottle of cognac and gold pocket watch that was inscribed:

 

From W.N. to E.G.

de bono et malo.

The murderer of Willy McGraw was never caught, but, so far as the RCMP was concerned, the motive was obvious. McGraw had been stripped of his diamond ring and, Solomon estimated, some nine thousand dollars in cash. However, within weeks, more than one cockeyed story about the murder was being floated in speakeasies as far away as Kansas City. McGraw, one theory had it, had been killed by hijackers in reprisal for his informing on a couple of them to the RCMP. Another theory ran that McGraw had been shot by mistake, the intended victim Solomon for having seduced the wife of a politician in Detroit. In support of that farrago there were witnesses who swore that the getaway car had a Michigan licence plate. Still others whispered that it was Solomon himself who had ordered the killing because McGraw had something dirty on him that went back years. Lending credence to that theory was the undeniable fact that it was Solomon who had sent McGraw to the railway station. Finally, some said that the killer had indeed been after Solomon, hired by the father of a girl he had ruined in Winnipeg.