Flesh and Blood (21 page)

“When did you go to work for Constanza?”

“Time flies,” Molly said. “Can you believe it, I went to work for Nico in 1957.”

“And that's when you saw Hannah again?”

“That's right,” Molly said. “She showed up about three weeks later. She came into the office one day. There was a man with her, and the three of them talked for a while not far from my machine. Hannah did most of the talking, but sometimes the other man would say something to Hannah in Spanish.”

“Spanish?”

“Yeah,” Molly said. She laughed. “It sort of pissed Nico off. the way they'd do that. He was Italian, you know. He didn't speak a word of Spanish.”

“But Hannah did?” Frank asked.

“Oh yeah,” Molly said authoritatively, “and she sounded like she was real good at it.”

“What was she saying to the other man?” Frank asked.

“I don't know,” Molly said with a shrug. She took another quick drink from the glass. “The only thing I recognized was the word for money. I remember that. Lots of talk about money.” She rubbed her fingers together greedily. “
Dinero, dinero, dinero
,” she said with a laugh. “That's the only Spanish word I know.”

“Did you hear anything else?” Frank asked. “I mean, in English.”

The old woman shook her head firmly. “Not that I can remember,” she said. She slapped her ears lightly with the palms of her hands. “The shops are noisy,” she said, “everybody's always bustling around. You get distracted.” She snapped a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it. “That Nico, he was a pig. Everyone thought I was his girl, you know. He had an eye for me. But it didn't work the other way around, no matter what people thought. Never. Not for anything. Not with that pig.”

“Did you talk to Hannah often while you worked for Constanza?” Frank asked.

“She was always in Brooklyn,” Molly said. “Not Manhattan.”

“But when she came to Manhattan.”

“Yeah, we would talk,” Molly said. “But she was shy. Not like when she was a girl.”

“What did you talk about?” Frank asked immediately.

“This and that,” Molly said. “I don't remember much of it. She wasn't a party girl, Hannah. Maybe at one time, maybe she could have been. But when she worked for Nico, her party days were over.” She smiled. “She dressed in these businesssuit dresses. You know what I mean? Little skirt and a plain blouse, and one of those little jackets.” She shook her head. “Definitely not a party type.”

“What type was she?”

“Strictly business, that's what I'd say,” Molly told him. “She looked like she wouldn't take any bullshit.” She smiled. “Even in the old days she was like that. You know, like, ‘Hey, don't fuck with me.' That kind of person.”

Frank nodded.

“Except …” Molly added slowly, “except sometimes …”

“Sometimes what?” Frank asked.

Molly shook her head, then took another drink, her eyes rolling up toward the ceiling as she finished the glass. “Sometimes she didn't seem like that at all. Sometimes she looked completely different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nico would be talking, and it was like she wasn't hearing him at all,” Molly explained. “Maybe the minute before, she was listening real careful, but then, it was like something clicked, and she just tuned out.” She looked at Frank curiously, as if she were trying to solve some infinitely involved mystery. “She was like the song,” she said finally. “She was lost in the stars. Her mind would wander. You'd be talking to her, and her eyes would shift around, you know, over to the machines, the girls. She looked like she was lost in the stars, like she didn't know who or what she was.”

Frank could feel an odd weariness overtaking him as he made his way down the narrow brick corridor to his office. In his mind, he could see Hannah in her sleeping gown as she marked the date of her birthday on the wall calendar, then later, as she had appeared that first day at Sol Feig's shop, dressed in white, and then, still later, wrapped in her thick overcoat, her fist in the air, her voice hanging in the leafless winter trees of Union Square:
Each man lives in his neighbor's debt, and the payment of that debt is justice.

He fumbled for his keys a moment, found them, then opened the door slowly and stepped into the interior darkness. For an instant, it seemed wholly to engulf him, as if he'd stepped off the edge of the world, and he stood rigidly in place until a sound, very slight, drew his attention, and he felt his hand reach for the pistol at his back, then his own body tense as he felt another hand grab his and twist it firmly.

“Do not fear,” a voice said, the mouth so close he could feel its warm breath at his ear. “It is Farouk.”

Instantly the light came on, and Farouk released him.

“How'd you get in here?” Frank demanded as he spun around to face him.

“It is not difficult,” Farouk said. “I was waiting. I fell asleep on your sofa. Then I heard movement, and I saw only a man in the dark. I was not sure that it was you.”

Frank drew in a deep, calming breath. “Well, what do you want?”

Farouk shrugged innocently. “Must there be something?” He smiled. “Perhaps it is only for the companionship.”

Frank walked over to his desk and sat down.

Farouk took the chair in front of it. “So, what have you found out?”

“Not a lot,” Frank admitted. He took out a cigarette and lit it. “Except that she spoke Spanish.”

Farouk's eyes brightened suddenly, as if someone had lit a small candle just behind them. “Spanish?” he asked softly. “She spoke Spanish?”

“Yes.”

“Yiddish, this I would understand,” Farouk said. “Polish, yes. Perhaps even Russian or German. But Spanish?”

“I don't know where she learned it,” Frank told him. “I don't know why she learned it.”

“Sometimes, it's only curiosity,” Farouk said, “sometimes, a way to spend the hours.” He smiled quietly. “Those pictures, the ones in her room. Always alone. This can make you want to fill the time.”

“Learning a language?”

“Perhaps,” Farouk said. He looked pointedly at Frank. “In my case, also.” He lifted his hands helplessly. “For others, it's some other thing. To build a model ship, perhaps. There is sports. There is whiskey.”

Frank said nothing.

“Did she speak it well?” Farouk asked after a moment.

“Evidently.”

“Like it was learned from others who spoke it well?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not from a book.”

Frank shook his head. “She spoke it well, that's all I know.”

Something seemed to crawl slowly into Farouk's mind. “This is something I can help with, this Spanish. I can be of assistance.”

“How?”

Farouk stood up. “It's late,” he said. “And I must help Consuelo.”

“Consuelo?”

“Whom you know as Toby,” Farouk said hurriedly as he stepped toward the door. He stopped for a moment when he reached it, then looked back at Frank. “It really was for the companionship, you know,” he said. Then he turned quickly and walked out the door.

Karen was admiring her new dress in the mirror as Frank walked into the bedroom. She twirled gracefully, and the hem rose in a soft outward wave, then descended.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Very nice.”

“A gift.”

“Nice,” Frank repeated as he slumped down on the bed. “Who gave it to you?”

“Imalia Covallo,” Karen said enthusiastically. “Such beautiful colors.” She shifted lightly on her feet, and the long, billowy skirt rocked left and right. “I was just trying it on. I'm not going to wear it to the theater tonight.”

Frank glanced toward the window. The night air seemed immensely thick and suffocating, and he thought instantly of the black air of the morgue, the way it must feel inside the sealed refrigerated vaults.

Karen turned briskly again, still admiring the skirt. “I must say I'm tempted, though.”

Frank turned back to her. “Tempted to what?”

“To wear it to the theater,” Karen said. “But it's much too formal for that.” She smiled happily. “Besides, Imalia's giving a benefit for the ballet on Sunday, and I thought I might wear it then.”

“Where?”

“At the Museum of American Art,” Karen said. “You know, the new one on Fifth Avenue.”

Frank nodded.

“Imalia's a Sustaining Member,” Karen said.

Frank stretched out on the bed, his long leg dangling awkwardly over the edge. For a moment he closed his eyes, and immediately Hannah Karlsberg's face drifted into his mind, a white oval on a field of black, the blue lips parting slightly, as if she were beginning to stir again, struggling to regain her breath.

“By the way,” Karen asked suddenly, “did you find what you were looking for?”

His eyes opened. No, he thought, have you, has anyone?

“You said you were looking for something on a case,” Karen told him. “On Seventh Avenue.”

“Oh, that,” Frank said. “A few things.”

She turned from the mirror and smiled brightly. “Anything you can talk about?”

“No.”

“You really stick to that, don't you?”

“Stick to what?”

“Confidentiality.”

“Yes.”

“But it must be difficult sometimes,” Karen added. She sat down beside him and ran her fingers across his chest. “Difficult, I mean to keep it all inside.”

He closed his eyes again. “It's just part of the business,” he said.

“I guess,” Karen said.

He could feel her fingers as they lingered on his chest.

“Want to come along with Jeffrey and me?” she asked.

“No.”

“It's supposed to be a very good play.”

“No, thanks,” Frank said, his eyes still closed.

“We haven't been out to the theater in a long time,” Karen added.

“Not tonight,” Frank told her. “I think I'll just catch a little sleep.”

Karen laughed. “Sleep. You'll be back on the streets by midnight.”

Frank rolled away from her slightly. “Maybe.”

He felt her fingers as they left him, but only a small and steadily weakening part of him yearned for their return.

17

Frank was waiting outside the doors of the American Garment Workers Union when they opened at nine o'clock the next morning.

The tall middle-aged man who opened them seemed surprised to see him. “You look like you've been waiting here all night,” he said.

“Just since eight.”

“What's the matter? You couldn't go through the local rep or something?”

“It's not exactly union business,” Frank told him.

“No? What is it then?”

Frank took out his identification.

The man looked at it, unimpressed. “Private dick, huh? What's this about?”

“Hannah Karlsberg.”

“Who's she?”

“A woman who was once associated with the union.”

“Once associated?” the man said suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

“A long time ago.”

The man stared at him silently.

“The '35 strike,” Frank added.

The man faked a shiver. “Oh, that was a bad one. The old-timers still talk about it. What'd she have to do with that?”

“She was one of the shop leaders,” Frank told him.

“Where was her shop?”

“Lower East Side. Orchard Street.”

“Heart of the battle, so they say.”

“That's what I hear.”

“Well, let me see,” the man said as he walked a bit further into the vestibule. “Is this a pension problem, something like that?”

“She's dead.”

“Was she entitled to death benefits?”

“I don't think so,” Frank said, “but that's not what I'm looking into.”

The man turned the corner of the front desk and sat down in the chair behind it. “What's the deal, then?”

“She was murdered,” Frank said. “And the police won't release her body until a relative asks for it.”

“And you're looking for the relative?”

“That's right.”

The man nodded. “Okay,” he said. “First I'll send you up to Records. Third floor. Ask for Benny Pacheco. He's the chief paper-pusher up there. Tell him Chickie Potamkin sent you.”

“Thanks,” Frank said. He walked to the elevator and took it two flights up.

Benny Pacheco glanced away from his computer monitor as Frank entered his office.

“Mr. Potamkin sent me up,” he said. He took out his identification. “Frank Clemons.”

Pacheco looked at the identification for a moment, then glanced back up at Frank.

“What can I do for you?”

“It's about a woman who once belonged to the union.” Frank told him. “Her name was Hannah Kovatnik.”

“When did she join?”

“I don't know for sure. She was in the strike in 1935.”

Pacheco nodded. “That was a long time ago. Is she still alive?”

“No.”

“Do you know how long she was a member?”

“No.”

“Well, all the records are here,” Pacheco said as he turned to the monitor. “Something should come up.” He tapped softly at the keys, his eyes still on the screen. “There it is,” he said after a moment. “Hannah Kovatnik. She worked for Sol Feig Clothing Manufacturers from 1932 to 1936.” He looked at Frank. “Is that the woman you mean?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to know about her?”

“Anything you can tell me.”

“Well, she lived on Orchard Street,” Pacheco said. “Looks like it was in the same building as the factory.” He looked at Frank. “Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

His eyes swept back to the screen. “She had no injuries on the job, as far as I can tell. She didn't file any claims with us.” He hit a key on the computer keyboard. “She didn't hold any union office except shop representative, and of course, there was no pay for that.”