They both looked up. The woman smiled. “Oh! You’re. . Oh, God, I’m so embarrassed, don’t tell me. . for Sophie Leontoff, am I right?”
“Right,” said Marlene. “I think we met at her seventy-fifth birthday party.” She held out her hand. “I’m Marlene Ciampi.” The woman’s hand in hers felt like good-quality kid leather, cool and buttery.
“Oooh! You’re the. .” The woman’s hands made circular motions about their wrists (meaning? The Shiksa? The Infamous Slayer of Men, Film at Eleven? The Nephew’s Wife?), and then she laughed and said, “Selma Lapidus. This is Abe, my husband. We’re in 5-B.”
The man rose and shook hands, mumbling the conventional. He had the sad eyes of the retired.
“Now I remember,” chirped Selma. “What’s wrong with me! Roger, the nephew, no, the grand-nephew.” She pulled Marlene down next to her on the pink vinyl sofa. “It’s so nice of you to come, and you’re not even related. I tell you, these days. . when Abe had his surgery two years ago, I had to practically commit suicide on the phone so my daughter would bestir herself to fly in from L.A. She’s in the industry.”
“Um, Mrs. Lapidus. .”
“Don’t be ridiculous-Selma.”
“Selma. Did they say how it’s going, I mean with the-”
“She’s in very good hands, the best! Dr. Baumholtz is a genius. He did Abe’s hip. Tell her, Abe-you were walking the next day. The next day! And so sweet, a doll! The best orthopedic man in the city, you’ll meet him, you’ll see. I personally am not worried in the least.”
“Of course not, you’re not on the table,” said Abe into his magazine.
Selma rolled her eyes but did not respond to this. “We were the ones who found her. We have a card club in our building, there’s a room downstairs. We play gin, canasta. . So this morning, I ring, there’s no Sophie. So I get the key-we exchange keys, I mean, you never know, God forbid, we’re not so young, something could happen, and I go in, and I’m telling you, my heart almost stopped, there’s Sophie, on the bathroom floor, she says, “Selma, I can’t move, I knew I should’ve bought that thing. You know, that signal machine. Anyway, she says, thank God it was a Thursday-the cards, she meant-because a Friday, she could’ve been there all weekend, we could’ve been at the beach, we have a place in Southampton. . ” She stopped talking and looked up. They all looked up, because someone had come into the room.
“Oh, Jake, you’re here,” said Selma. “Good.”
“How is she?” Jake asked, and Marlene looked at him with interest. A big old guy, maybe seventy-five, massive rather than tall, chest like an oil drum, with a lumpy, large-featured face, and crinkled, close-cut white hair. He wore a double-breasted gray summer suit, old but well cut, a white shirt and bow tie, and brown-and-white shoes with decorative little holes in the toe part, highly polished. He held a straw hat in his hand.
A cop, was Marlene’s first thought, and then she changed her mind. A hard guy, in any case, not a regular citizen. His eyes flicked over Marlene as they were introduced, wary but amused. Jacob Gurvitz. He didn’t offer to shake. Selma Lapidus filled him in on Sophie, and he seemed concerned, perhaps more concerned than a neighbor would be. (He was in 12-D, lived there three years, not rent-controlled, a card player, single, just back from Miami; in Selma Lapidus’s zone of operations, personal information leaped into view unbidden, as on a computer screen.) Marlene wondered, a love interest? Sophie would have a guy like this. Maybe a fellow camp survivor. Yes, that could be it, the look. This guy had seen things other than legal briefs and schmatehs.
They sat. Selma talked, a not unpleasant sound, like the whirring of a refrigerator in an empty apartment. After ten minutes or so, she left for the ladies’. The two men looked at each other and grinned, and then Marlene grinned with them. The look said, Selma! Gotta love her, but. .
“You’re an attorney, too, I understand, Marlene?” said Abe.
“Yes, but I don’t get much practice anymore.”
“Neither do I.” He smiled. “You would think the law was all in the head, but litigation is a physical thing. A big case, when a man’s liberty or even a life, in those days, was at stake, you work your touchis off, believe you me. So, when the body starts to go. .” He waved a hand, as if in farewell. “One of our partners had a heart attack, died right there in the office. Another dear friend, also an attorney, had a cerebral on his way to work. Selma said, Abe, that’s it! I’m not planning on being a rich widow my whole life. Out! So. . my dear wife, once she makes her mind up. .”
“I can imagine,” said Marlene, and they had another smile all around. “You were in criminal law?”
“Mainly, although in my day there wasn’t so much of this specialization.” After that, the usual exchange of stories, the big cases, how the practice of law had changed in Abe’s forty years at the bar, Marlene’s experiences at the D.A. The possibility of mutual acquaintances was explored, and there were, in fact, a number of these, judges, a lawyer or two. Marlene was aware of Jake Gurvitz as an interested presence, but he made no contribution to the conversation.
Curious, Marlene asked, “You’re not a lawyer, too, are you, Mr. Gurvitz?”
“Nah, I always tried to stay away from lawyers. I was with the bakers’ union. Retired.”
Marlene tried to imagine Jake in floury whites popping a tray of danish into an oven, and came up blank. As the daughter of a union plumber, Marlene knew something about the New York unions in the relevant period, and what sort of folks staffed their upper reaches. So, a “union” guy with expensive clothes, living in an uncontrolled apartment off Central Park West. And a lawyer practicing criminal in the same interesting period. It was worth a shot.
She turned back to Lapidus and asked, “I was wondering, speaking of courthouse people, did you ever run into Jerry Fein back then?”
A pause. She could hear the sounds of the hospital clearly, the distant televisions, the clinking of bottles, the muffled noise of rubber heels and rubber-tired carts. Abe’s smile faded and was replaced by a made-up one, and Jake’s face went into neutral. Did they exchange a look? Maybe not.
Abe sighed. “Jerry Fein. That takes you back. Oh, sure, I knew him, to say hi to, yeah, around the courthouse, you know. A real tragedy. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, his name came up in a case I’m working on, and I remembered the, you know, the, um, tragedy. So talking about the old courthouse. .”
“Uh-huh. Well, Jerry was a character, all right. Wore a pearl homburg in the winter, and on Memorial Day he switched to a straw boater. You could set your calendar by him. That was what they said. And then Labor Day, he’d show up with the homburg on again and fly the boater out his office window. Huh! There’s irony for you. The window. . Always beautifully dressed, the rest of it, he had a special way of folding his breast pocket handkerchief, four little points, perfect — ”
“Any truth to the rumor he was mobbed up?” Marlene cut in.
Lapidus frowned, and his voice became more animated. “What’re you talking, ‘mobbed up’? What does that mean? Look, the thirties, the forties, in the city, into the fifties, nearly any legal work you did you had some contact with, let’s say, elements. You work for garment people, furriers, trucking, unions, unions! My God, tell her, Jake! It was pervasive. Pervasive. So, what-we should close down the criminal bar? And the cops, in those days, it was hard to tell them from the crooks, this was before Miranda was even born, forget Escobedo! Rubber hoses and worse. Frame-ups? They didn’t like you-pouf! You’re in Sing-Sing. So it was rougher. And we all, I mean the criminal bar at that time, the counselors, we all did things, let’s say, on the edge. But there were lines. Suborning witnesses, jury tampering, concealing evidence in major felonies: some crossed, some didn’t.”