The Sunset Gang (9 page)

"Must I?" Bernice pleaded.

"If you want to get to the bottom of this."

"But I'm afraid to."

"Are we supposed to put up with this forever?" he
reasoned. "It's both morally wrong and financially draining.... "He
wanted to say more, but she had already risen and begun her chores. He let the
matter simmer, although he thought of little else, exploring in his own mind
the possible motives for the theft. Someone obviously wants to live beyond her
means, he concluded, rejecting the theory of kleptomania. A kleptomaniac would
not, he believed, fix upon a single category of item. Other things might have
been missing. No, this is the work of a cunning mind, he was certain.

About a week later she returned from a mah-jongg game at
Harriet Feldman's house. She had barely come into the house when she threw
herself on the couch and dissolved in tears. Seymour rushed out of the bedroom.
Her shoulders shook, her body racked in an agony of despair.

"I told you I didn't want to know," she mumbled
between sobs. Patting her back, he tried to soothe her. But she was
inconsolable and it was some time before she was able to speak.

"I did as you asked."

"It's Harriet Feldman?" He had suspected the
widow. It had always been the most logical conclusion.

"Most of her cans were empty and the milk containers
were filled with water. Even the eggs were empty shells. Here." She
managed to open her purse and take out a small dark jar of baked beans. Taking
it from her, he studied it carefully, then opened it.

"It's filled with sand."

"Such a brilliant detective," she said bitterly.

He could see she was in no state to pursue the subject and
helped her to bed. But his own elation had stimulated his mind and he could not
sleep. He felt great pride in his powers of deduction and--although he had not
caught the woman in the act--he felt that he had manipulated the instrument of
her discovery. She had indeed worn her pose well. Under that bland unconcerned
innocence, she was nothing more than a damned petty thief. When finally he did
get to sleep, it seemed but a few moments before he was startled into
wakefulness by the ring of the doorbell. Looking at the clock, he saw it was
only 6 A.M. Bernice had bounded from bed and, putting on her robe, answered the
door. From the bedroom, he watched as Judy Stein and her husband Jake stormed
in, their faces grim. He put on a bathrobe and joined them in the living room.

"He made me come, Bernice," an agitated Judy
Stein said. Her face was gray in the dim light. She had not put on her make-up
and looked all of her seventy years. Jake's face was twisted in anger.

"I wouldn't have come, Bernice. Really. But he made
me." She pointed to Jake, a thin wiry man. He breathed heavily as he
looked at Seymour.

"Your wife is a goddamned thief," he hissed.

"Bernice?"

"She has been stealing our food for months. It's been
driving us crazy." He looked at Bernice. "I don't understand
it."

"I told him that if you did that you had a good
reason," Judy Stein said.

Seymour felt his wife's
mortification, but, to her credit, she held herself steady.

"Are you crazy?" she said to Judy.

"Bernice, I saw it."

"You saw it?"

"She saw you take the jar from Harriet's house,"
Jake said. "A can of beans. At first we thought maybe we were being
forgetful, a couple of senile alte cockers. But then we began to realize that
one of her friends was actually stealing. Stealing." His voice rose.

Bernice turned to Judy. "And you believe this?"

"I saw it, Bernice," she pleaded. "I didn't
want to tell him, really I didn't."

Seymour walked to the kitchen and
took the jar of baked beans from the trash can, where he had thrown it after first
replacing the top.

"Is this what you saw?" he said, feeling his
superiority.

"That's it," Judy said. She was taking no joy in
the discovery, a whining sound emitting from her mouth. "Oh, this is
terrible."

Jake took it from him and held it up in front of Bernice's
face.

"Is this what you took?" he scolded, as if he
were addressing a young child.

"I took it," Bernice said indignantly, standing
stiffly, flaunting her pride. Seymour smiled, enjoying the spectacle.

"And you feel no shame?" Jake asked. He seemed to
have calmed down, now that the confession had come. Bernice took the jar from
him and handed it to Judy.

"Open it," she commanded.

Judy looked sheepishly at Jake, then at Seymour, whose
smile must have thrown her into confusion. She looked down at the jar in her
hands and twisted the cap.

"It's sand," she whispered, feeling the granules
between shaking fingers.

"Let me see that," Jake said impatiently,
spilling some of the sand in the transfer.

"And I'll thank you not to get sand on my
carpet."

Jake felt it, looked into all of their faces, not
comprehending.

"What does it mean?"

"It means..." Bernice said, "...that you
don't trust your friends."

"Really, Bernice," Seymour said, his smile
broadening. "Don't be too hard on them. It was an obvious conclusion. Judy
did see you take the jar." He turned toward Judy. "It was
Harriet," he said. "She took this from Harriet's larder." He
felt his happiness in the revelation of the secret.

"Oh my God," Judy said, and turning to Bernice
added: "Can you ever forgive me?"

It won't be easy, Bernice thought, agitation beginning as
she contemplated their future together.

"The problem now is what we're all going to do about
Harriet Feldman," Seymour said.

Jake looked at them dumbly, his breath gasping. He brought
a vial of pills from his pocket and popped one into his mouth.

"I told him he shouldn't have done this," Judy
admonished. "I didn't want to come, Bernice. Really I didn't."

The mystery was reaching a climax, Seymour thought. His
mind was calm. He imagined he was Father Brown, philosophically viewing the
follies of others, sensing his calm detachment, the clarity of his private
vision.

"We should now consult Marcia Finkelstein," he
said. "We are in this together." Watching their faces, he knew that
he had transmitted the drama of the occasion.

The Finkelsteins were still in bed when they rang the
buzzer. Phil Finkelstein answered the door, his eyes puffy with sleep, the gray
beard sprouting through his tanned face.

They sat in the living room waiting for Marcia, whom they
could hear running water in the bathroom.

"It's all right, Phil," Bernice said. "She
doesn't have to get all dolled up."

"We have very serious business to discuss," Jake
said.

"You look like a delegation from the Garment Workers
Union," Phil said, his frayed bathrobe stained and belted around his big
belly.

Marcia had put on a little lipstick and brushed her
bleached hair. The smile disappeared as she viewed their serious faces.

"You tell them, Seymour," Jake said.

Seymour stood up and paced the floor,
feeling their eyes on him. He deliberately remained silent as he paced,
stroking his chin in an attitude of contemplation as the wily Maigret might
have done.

"We have discovered a thief in our midst," he
said finally. The people in the room looked at each other. He could see Marcia
Finkelstein's face tighten.

"A thief?" Phil said.

"Someone is deliberately stealing food from all of us.
And tonight we've discovered who it is."

They heard Marcia Finkelstein's long sigh.

"So you've found out," she said quietly.

They all looked at her. Seymour felt his joy drain as he
stopped his pacing and watched her expression, her head shaking. "It had
to come, sooner or later."

"You knew?" Seymour asked, feeling his sense of
power usurped.

"From the moment she took the first box of sugar from
us about six months ago."

"You never told me," her husband stammered.

"What was I to tell you?" she said, patting him
on his fat thigh. "That one of my best friends was stealing?"

"I think you should have," he said. "Food is
expensive."

"You could have at least told us," Judy Stein
said.

"What was I going to say: 'Harriet is a thief'?"

"Something like that," Jake said.

"Don't think I didn't agonize over it," she
continued. "But was I the one that was to take away her pride?"

"But she was stealing," Seymour mumbled.

"At first I thought perhaps she had taken it and
forgotten to tell me that she borrowed it. But then when I discovered the
elaborate way she had devised to do it, I knew that there was something far
more serious afoot. You see..." there was an element of resignation in her
tone, a confession, "...she had a container strapped to her thighs. She
simply pops an item into the container, and carries it out under her
dress."

"You saw this?"

"By accident. They don't build these condominiums too
well and the bathroom door in the bedroom was never a good fit. I was looking
for a pencil and quite by accident I saw her slip the sugar box in the
container while she was in the bathroom."

"The bitch," Jake said.

"It's like one of your mystery stories," Bernice
said, turning to Seymour.

"And the motive?" Seymour said, hoping to win
back his authority over the situation. "There is no crime without a
motive."

"She was starving," Marcia said after a long
pause.

"How could she be starving?" Seymour asked
contemptuously.

"That's what I thought at first," Marcia said.
"But then I began to think about it. Have any of us ever seen her at the
supermarket lately? And notice how much more she eats than the rest of us when
we play. She never talks about money and I've probed her on numerous occasions
about her getting social security. She hardly knew what I was talking about.
And she had no children. Her husband died nearly twenty years ago--which
probably means that most of her insurance is gone."

"But that's only your intuition," Seymour snapped. "You have no proof."

"And if I did?" Marcia asked. She turned to each
person in the room like a flashlight examining every inch of a prison yard.

Seymour looked away. They were not
really unraveling this mystery. They were leaving loose ends. Nothing would be
clearly resolved. The most galling aspect of what was happening was that they
seemed willing to live with this irresolution.

"So what do you all intend to do about it?" he
asked, feeling a mounting irritation.

"I have no idea," Marcia said. She seemed cool
and assured and it was obvious that she had given the matter a great deal of
thought. "Pride." She shrugged.

"She could, you know, get food stamps," Phil
Finkelstein said.

"She should," Jake Stein said. "She should
put her hand in the till like the rest of the freeloaders. I would."

"Don't be so sure," his wife said. "I'd be
so humiliated. You wouldn't catch me dead giving food stamps in payment for
food."

"If you were starving, you would."

"Never."

"Neither would Harriet," Marcia said.

"She would rather steal?" Seymour asked. "Is
that a better alternative?"

"I can't look into her head, but I can
understand," Bernice said.

"So one alternative," Marcia continued,
"might be to confront her quietly. Just one of us suggesting that she seek
help, like food stamps or welfare."

"Welfare?" Bernice asked. "My God, we'll
destroy her."

"It would be better than stealing," Seymour said. "You owe it to each other to confront her. It has got to stop. It has
got to be resolved. It's costing us all money. It's another mouth to
feed." His voice rose: "You can't allow this."

"Why not?" Bernice asked. She watched her
husband, ashamed at his lack of compassion, disgusted with the absence of
empathy.

"This is life. Not your books," Bernice said
quietly.

"What has that got to do with it?" he responded,
annoyed at her criticism.

"Books end. Life doesn't."

He was confused now, a lone voice of reason, he decided.
They had no real understanding, he assured himself, sitting down.

"If we don't tell her," Marcia said, ignoring the
exchange between the Shapiros, "then we simply go on as if nothing is
happening. That's what I've done." She paused and looked at her husband.
"I buy a little extra," she said. "I expect to find things
gone." She paused again and dropped her eyes. "And you know, I feel
good about it. I think of the humiliation that poor Harriet has to live with
and I feel good about it."

For a moment the group was silent, like a tableau in some
French painting, their eyes briefly washing over each other. Only Seymour kept his eyes hidden, looking downward, feeling the weakness of their reasoning.
He longed to leave this place, to go back to reading his mystery books, where
things were more logical, where all clues led to resolution.

The women exchanged kisses and the two couples left the
Finkelsteins' condominium to go home after first confirming the coming
evening's game and where it would take place. Back in his own apartment again, Seymour dressed and while Bernice puttered in the kitchen making them breakfast, he
carefully searched his book collection for the one he would spend the day with.

Now I could swear I had more eggs, Bernice thought, on the
verge of shouting the discovery to Seymour. Then she checked herself and
smiled. I'll have to go shopping later, she decided, feeling happy as she
opened the blinds wider to bring the morning sun into the room.

For forty years Max Bernstein had spent every winter from
November first through March first in Florida. He would return, always deeply
tanned, full of energy and optimism, as if the sun had rejuvenated his spirit.
Not that he had ever been depressed or gloomy. He was a born kibitzer, always
joking with the women at his brother's delicatessen, where he worked behind the
counter during those months when he was back in Brooklyn.

His first and only wife, Milly, divorced him in 1937, after
five years of marriage.

"How can I live with him?" she told her lawyer.
"He's a playboy, a born playboy."

"You have to be a little more specific," the
lawyer had told her as he sat, pencil poised over lined yellow paper.

"Women," she said uncomfortably. "That's his
whole life. That's all he has on his mind. Mrs. Goldberg's daughter was the
last straw."

"Who?"

"My neighbor, Mrs. Goldberg. She has this college girl
daughter, Eileen. It wasn't me that found them. Mr. Goldberg came home early
from work and there they were in bed, the Goldbergs' bed. It was a horrible
scene. Very embarrassing."

"And what did Mr. Bernstein say?"

"What he always says."

"What's that?"

She flushed a deep red. "He said she seduced
him." She paused. "After all, women find him very attractive."

"And you, Mrs. Bernstein. Have you been
cohabiting?" the lawyer asked.

"Cohabiting?" She blushed again thinking that she
had surmised his meaning. "Of course," she said indignantly.
"One thing has nothing to do with another. It's just that I can't stand
the humiliation any more."

"Can I help it?" Max Bernstein had protested to
his wife. But the divorce proceeded and after a few weeks of being terribly
upset he went off to Florida and drowned his sorrows in a Miami Beach hotel.

Max's brother, for whom he worked, had long ago thrown up
his hands about Max, but his job behind the counter was always waiting for him
when he got back. Secretly, he had always yearned to be like Max, who was
always so self-assured and, it seemed, could hypnotize any woman to crawl into
his bed. It was a gift, a talent, he was convinced, wondering how his parents
had spawned brothers who were so different.

It wasn't that Max Bernstein was handsome. He had a big
nose, and curly hair that began a little too low along his forehead. His eyes
were big brown cow's eyes, heavy-lidded, but when he smiled they lit up like
neon signs. He had, some said, good bone structure and when he dressed up in
his snappy sharp clothes, he had the carriage of a big-time gangster. But,
whatever it was he had, it was extraordinarily tangible, and when he walked
into a room, women's eyes automatically turned toward him. It was a fact that
he accepted, nor had the attention left him jaded or bored. He liked it, he
reveled in it, and used it to his full advantage.

He had also discovered that if he used this talent wisely
he could enjoy a wonderful Florida winter vacation. He would drive down in one
swoop, stopping only when absolutely necessary until he reached Miami Beach, where he would check into the least expensive motel he could find. Then he'd
have himself a good sleep, put on his bathing suit and his slacks over that and
proceed to the pool of the swankiest hotel, which he could approach from the
beach side.

At first he would stand surveying the crowd that lay supine
on the hundreds of beach chairs, their oiled bodies turned toward the sun. He
had, he knew, an infallible eye for picking out a woman in just the right
circumstances, preferably a divorcée or a widow. Naturally he preferred them to
be attractive, but availability was always his consideration.

He admitted to himself, during those first moments, that he
was a bit overanxious. The prospect of spending many more nights at a cheap
motel was enough to trigger anyone's anxieties. Calm down, Max, he told himself
during those moments, feeling his self-confidence return.

When he was certain that he had a likely prospect, and he
knew this instinctively, he would simply activate himself, switch himself on,
and proceed directly to his prey.

"You should put it on your back as well," he
would say to the woman he had chosen, having picked the perfect moment to begin
a conversation. Squinting into the sun, the woman would turn, and he would
smile and blink his big brown cow's eyes.

"Would you do the honors?" the woman would say,
handing him the sun oil.

"I can't think of anything else I'd rather do,"
he would respond, sitting down at the end of her chair, pouring the sun oil
into his palms. Then he would gently begin to rub the grease onto her back and
over the backs of her thighs and her knees and calves.

"I hope I'm not making your man jealous," he
would say, bending over so that his breath might create a brief breeze near her
hair.

"What man?"

"I can't believe it," he would say.

"And you?" The question was always put casually,
almost as an afterthought, its motive carefully disguised, the voice tremulous.
The answer was always an improvisation, although the theme was the same,
tragedy, loneliness, near-despair. For openers, he had learned, he could be
most effective when speed was essential. And speed, at these moments, was
always essential.

"I feel I've just come out of a long tunnel," he
would say. "My wife was sick for a year before she died. It drained me. I
thought I was at the end of the rope. I'm trying to reconstruct my life."

"Really?"

He would look deeply into her eyes and hold her hand,
stroking her fingers.

"I'm beginning to feel human again."

But after sketching in his little fictitious biography, he
refused to dwell on it, no matter how much she probed. Having established his
availability, he proceeded to become lighthearted and loquacious, tossing jokes
around so that others in the vicinity could hear him and laugh and he could
strike up conversations with them. The objective now was to make the woman
insecure, jealous, and he would turn his attention on other women in the area,
always controlling the degree of her anxiety. The purpose of his little game,
he knew, was to let himself become the object of competition.

Invariably he would wind up at the poolside bar, sitting
between two of them, his original choice smoldering on one side, while he
directed his attention to the other one, but he was always alert to the degree
of the chosen woman's tension beside him. It was not that he was calculating.
Nor could he articulate his method if asked to do so. It was an instinct, a
sure talent, and he believed implicitly in his irresistibility.

He knew in advance when the woman was hooked. The strategy
at that point was to make it easy for her to find a way to get him into bed,
which, he knew, would seal the bargain. He was always amazed about how
resourceful they could be.

"Dammit, I've torn my slacks," he might say,
testing her.

"I'll sew them."

"You carry around a sewing machine?"

"No. I've got needle and thread in my room."

Usually he would move in within a day or two, but not until
the woman had been totally taken with him and knew that he was broke. Hadn't he
gone through a fortune caring for a sick wife? He considered himself a fair
trade for a few months' companionship. After all he had picked her. And it
wasn't long before she was totally convinced of that. Not that he would confine
his sexual attentions solely to her. The beauty parlor claimed a great deal of
her time, leaving him free to dally a bit, which he always did in other hotels.
Never shit where you eat, he told himself. That was a firm policy.

"How do you do it, Max?" his brother would ask
when he returned to the store after his winter's vacation, tanned and glowing
with health and energy.

"I can't explain it." He shrugged.

"You just snap your fingers and they come."

"I can't explain it."

Nor could he explain the lack of remorse after he had said
good-by, promising to call. He always told them he lived in New Jersey.

He would, of course, vary the hotels from year to year,
working out a rotation that enabled him, miraculously, to avoid the inevitable
confrontations. Although they did occur occasionally.

"I was frantic," a woman from a previous year
might say. He tried to avoid her eyes, knowing that it might start things over
again. "You didn't call. I searched all over New Jersey. You weren't in
the telephone book. I thought I would commit suicide."

At those moments, he would pat her arm, rubbing his hand
lightly over the flesh.

"I had my pride," he would say. "How could I
live off you forever? What kind of a man would that make me? I did it for
you."

Sometimes the woman would overcome her past humiliation,
restrain it, and rub her hand on his thigh, an unmistakable signal that
required a chivalrous and dutiful gesture, and he would provide the woman with
a farewell episode that she would treasure forever.

"It will catch up with you some day, Max," his
brother would say. "Some lady will put a knife in your heart. Find
yourself a good woman and settle down."

Max would look at him, his big cow eyes registering
confusion and hurt.

"Me?" he would protest.

Such a possibility was far beyond his comprehension. I give
them joy, he told himself. I give them pleasure.

"Someday you'll get too old," his brother would
say.

"I'll have to adjust," Max would answer.

What Max knew instinctively was that although chronology
might age the body, it also invested the mind with additional wisdom, a
miraculous compensating factor. Thus, as the years passed, and Max passed
through his fifties and sixties, he kept pace with his modus operandi by
recalibrating the inner clock. He understood his limits, both economically and
chronologically. The big expensive hotels--the Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc, the
Diplomat, all of which had once accepted him as a nonpaying guest in the
company of some pleasant lady--became too formidable, a fact which he knew well
in advance and which spared him any of the sourness of defeat. Times change, he
told himself, knowing that there were still plenty of places available where
Max Bernstein could walk into a room and cause the female eyelids to flutter.

He would acknowledge to himself that there were a few more
difficulties to overcome. The new condominiums that dotted the beaches now,
with their sophisticated security systems and permanent residents, made it more
complicated to present himself--although the permanence of the residents made
the preliminary research easier. He would know the widows without having to
trust his intuition. And it was widows that were his principal concentration in
his later years.

But always he would return to Brooklyn and to his brother's
delicatessen.

"I'm going to sell the store," his brother told
Max one day after he had returned from his annual vacation.

"Sell the store?"

"The neighborhood is changing fast, Max. And we're too
old, too old to run things any more."

"Who's old?"

"You, Max," his brother said. "You were born
in 1902."

"So?"

To Max, age was an odd frame of reference. He didn't feel
old and sometimes, not always, he would look into the mirror and wonder whose
tanned and wrinkled face was staring back at him. Encased inside was a nineteen-year-old,
he was convinced, and occasionally the way his organs reacted to the
blandishments of a woman convinced him that this was true.

You amaze me, he would sometimes say to himself, looking
down at his organ in the shower, appraising it, then patting it proudly. You're
a good old putz, baby, he would say, giggling with the exuberance of the
imprisoned nineteen-year-old embedded in his gnarled body.

Finally the store was sold. Abandoned would be the
appropriate word, since the neighborhood was hardly viable any more for the
likes of a kosher delicatessen. Max's brother was a widower by then and would
be moving out of the neighborhood to live with his daughter in Hempstead.

"And you, Max?"

"I'm going to Florida."

"And money?"

"I have my social security."

"Max," his brother said. There were tears in his
faded myopic eyes. "Find a good woman to take care of you."

"One woman?" he said. "I'm not ready for the
grave yet."

There was, Max admitted to himself, a slight anxiety about
the future, but when he arrived that first night in the clubhouse of Sunset
Village, where he had gone directly from his motel, he knew he had found the
cornucopia for his survival. The place was crawling with widows, thousands of
them, of all shapes and sizes. They were like an occupying army, stationed
everywhere.

He sat on one of the high-backed winged chairs of the
clubhouse lobby, cautioning himself not to be too hasty as he was having
trouble distinguishing between them. Older ladies, like Chinese waiters, were
difficult to individualize. As he watched them, he began to dwell on what his
brother had suggested: "Find a good woman."

A good woman. He chuckled. They were all good women. His
wife, Milly, had been a good woman. The hundreds of women he had bedded, lived
with, lied to, caressed, were all good women. Not a single one could he
remember who treated him badly. Even Milly had been generous, appearing from
time to time over the years to share his bed and cook for him. Can I help it if
they find me irresistible, he told himself, not with any sense of bragging. It
was an unalterable fact.

He sat in the high-backed winged chair, contemplating the
faces of the women, when his attention fell on a plump woman walking up and
back in front of him, stealing an occasional glance when she could. He was used
to this, although he sensed that the woman was vaguely familiar. This was, he
agreed, a common occurrence. So many of them were characteristically familiar,
the color of hair, or eyes, the way of a walk, fingers, legs, haunches. Familiarity
was everywhere, even in bits and pieces.