“Was Fein a line crosser, do you think?”
He shrugged, and then straightened his shoulders and fixed her with an eye, and Marlene understood that he would have been a formidable courtroom presence.
“Marlene, the man is dead twenty-three years, what does it matter what he did and what he didn’t?”
“It could matter to his family, if it had to do with why he killed himself. He was disbarred, wasn’t he, just before? What was that about?”
He waved a hand-New York’s own getouttaheah gesture. “Oh, don’t get me started on that. It’s a long, long story; I’ll give you the short version. Jerry got a royal screwing. His partner set him up, that momser. You know what a momser is?”
“I believe it’s a person whose ethical development leaves something to be desired.”
Lapidus let out a laugh. “Ha! You I like! I’m trying to think of the case it was, that jury. Johnny Gravellotti, yeah, a big hoodlum, they hung him from a meat hook in the old Washington Market. Johnny Shoes they called him, also a sharp dresser. .”
“Johnny Shine,” said Jake Gurvitz.
Lapidus snapped his fingers. “Johnny Shine, right! Don’t listen to a word I say, honey, I’m losing my marbles. Johnny Shine, and they had Big Sally Bollano for it-there’s another sweetheart for you-and it was a tight one: good physical evidence, ballistics, a bloody shoe print, if you can believe it. The D.A., Garrahy at that time, was slavering. And the jury walks him on it. So, of course they figure tampering, intimidation. And Jerry was the lawyer. .”
“Wait a second, Fein was Sally Bollano’s lawyer?”
“Oh, yeah, for years. Him and Heshy Panofsky, the momser, that was his partner. Jerry did the courtroom work, Heshy handled the inside, the deals. They had another partner, Bernie Kusher, also a crook, but that’s another story entirely. So the D.A. investigates, and they find somebody got to a couple of the jurors, money changed hands. Something about an envelope with Jerry’s prints on it, with the money. I can’t recall. In any case they charged him with it, and what happens? Jerry pleads guilty, cops to it for a suspended sentence. Nobody could believe it. I mean, let me tell you, Gerald Fein was a fighter, a tiger in the courtroom, and he rolls over like a poodle. Of course, they disbarred him after that. Oh, it was a complete pile of crap, excuse my French.”
“Why? Because Fein wasn’t the kind to tamper?”
“No, because Heshy was in charge of tampering at that particular firm, and everybody knew it. You want to know the kicker in this? Heshy Panofsky is now the Honorable Herschel B. Paine of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.”
“That’s Judge Paine?”
“You know the man, I see.”
“Of course. They’re touting him for the next opening on the Appellate Division.”
“I don’t doubt it. After Jerry left, Heshy changed his spots, he fixed his name, he went with a white-shoe firm downtown, lots of political connections. . believe me, honey, some things you don’t change so easy. He’s still a momser.”
“So, wait-why do you think he set up Fein to take the fall?”
Lapidus started to answer, but at that moment, in walked Selma Lapidus, beaming, towing a forty-ish man wearing the hospital greens and the confident jock-like air of a surgeon.
“A complete success,” announced Selma, as if she had handled the knife. “And everyone, this is Dr. Baumholtz.”
Selma kvelled, Baumholtz pronounced upon the hip replacement and departed, the visitors all marched off to Sophie’s room. They were shocked at the way she looked, tried not to show it, failed, covered this with jokes, and then Marlene’s beeper sounded and she went off to call in. It was from Osborne, a complicated matter involving security at the Chelsea clinic, and when she returned to Sophie’s room, the old lady was sleeping and the visitors had all gone home.
Leaving, Marlene considered the Abe and Jake show she had just enjoyed. Some information, delivered in a tone meant for casual shopping of secondhand gossip, and there was that maybe look between the two men, and Jake’s silence. Silence while the lawyer talked-it felt to her like something he was used to, professionally. Yeah, she would talk to Abe Lapidus again, for sure, but only after she had accumulated more information on the big questions: Why had Gerald Fein rolled over for a trumped-up charge? Why had Vivian Fein waited over twenty years to try to clear her father’s name? There was no point in talking to someone like Abe unless she knew enough to know if he was lying to her or not.
Chapter 8
Returning home from her hospital visit, Marlene felt emotionally bedraggled and not at all looking forward to family life, especially not to another tense evening with Lucy. But when she arrived at the loft, she found not Sylvia Plath Jr. but Little Mary Sunshine, happily giggling with her brothers in her room, in her room, a treat almost beyond comprehension, Lucy’s room being, for the twins at least, the domestic equivalent of the Forbidden City. Besides that, the loft was tidied and swept, and the table laid for dinner, also Lucy’s work, since the concept of “tidy” had never imposed itself on Posie’s custardlike mind.
“Hi, Mom!” they all chorused when Marlene stuck her head in to view this marvel. Marlene had often noticed the peculiar complementarity of her moods with those of her daughter, as if they were at either end of the same seesaw. Lucy had clearly emerged from her recent private hell; Marlene felt herself descending into her own. She tried to be glad about her daughter’s return to the broad, sunlit uplands, but as the evening passed, she could not help feeling that Lucy’s mood had an aggressive edge to it, as if to say, “You’ve tried to make me miserable, wretched Mom, but I have transcended your wicked designs.” Karp was charmed out of his socks, which didn’t help much either. Marlene retired early with a headache and a pint of plain red wine.
Lucy retired early as well, not to sleep but to finish the last of the Claudine books, Claudine s’en va, which was about (and here she moved the story around in her head, describing it to herself as she would describe it to her pals) this woman Annie, and how she was married to this dork, a real conceited guy, and then she met Claudine, and Claudine had turned into this terrifically cool and sexy woman, yeah, she was still married to that guy, but it was all different somehow, she wasn’t squashed by it anymore, and anyway she shows Annie that Annie doesn’t really love her husband, and he doesn’t love her and they should break up, which was a big deal in those days, but she does anyway, and Claudine thinks about seducing her but doesn’t because she promised her own husband that she wouldn’t do stuff like that (Lucy, the dirty little thing, made a mental note to maybe modify that in the retelling) and Annie does set out for the future and life goes on. She mused for a while, imagining herself installed Claudine-like in some apartment with her father, a man engaged in his work but always ready to devote his entire attention to his little girl. Claudine had not been supplied with a mom, which was one of the chief sources of the delight Lucy took in the novels.