So this is what I would do. I would shit on Blaine, Cox, Amber and Cox. I would shit on the Bishop brothers, on CUP, on the goddamn defendants in Saltz v. Metropolitan Investors, on Norvel Goodwin and his bloody calling cards. I would convince Chester Concannon to let me fight for his freedom and then I would take down Jimmy Moore. And in taking down Jimmy Moore I would make a name for myself. I would win the case for Chester Concannon, I’d save his life, I would, and when I did I’d shout it to the press and watch the clients come roaring in. I would seize opportunity by the neck and wring it, oh yes. I would make a name for myself and from my name, and no one else’s, would flow my power and my wealth and all my worldly success. I would make a name for myself, dammit, and in so doing I alone would make my dreams come true.
43
“HOW’S YOUR PASTRAMI, Morris?” I asked.
“Goot,” he mumbled through a mouth full of meat.
“Not too lean, I hope.”
“No, goot,” he said, fighting to swallow so he could snatch another bite.
“You want more coleslaw, maybe?”
With his mouth again full he nodded his head and lifted the top piece of rye bread off his sandwich. I placed a layer of coleslaw over the thickly sliced spiced meat.
“And more Russian dressing?”
He shrugged, but with the top of his sandwich still off I took a knife and slathered the coleslaw with Russian dressing from the little bowl in front of us.
“I hope it’s not too lean,” I said as Morris was in the middle of taking a bite. “I told the lady not too lean.”
Morris nodded at me, his eyes wide in satisfaction, the sandwich still at his mouth.
“Oh, look,” I said. “This is great. Here come our French fries.”
We were in Ben’s Deli, Ben’s Kosher Deli, a block away from Jewelers’ Row in Philadelphia. Ben’s was a long, low restaurant with one aisle down the middle flanked by booths. The walls were painted white and the floor was white linoleum and the leatherette on the booths was dark green and in the back of the store, on two large planks of plywood, like the tablets from Mt. Sinai, was the menu, writ in dark blue on white. Hot pastrami was a specialty, thick slices of meat with dark peppered crusts and veins of fat that melted on the tongue as you chewed. There was also corned beef, roast beef, tuna fish, chicken salad, egg salad, though no cheese or yogurt or ice cream. Ben’s was a flayshig place, which meant that the cholesterol that oozed out on their platters and into your heart came directly from the very muscles of the twice blessed then slaughtered animals as opposed to indirectly, from their milk. Old Hassids sat at the booths yelling at each other in Yiddish, slick young diamond sellers talked out the sides of their mouths as they snapped the complimentary pickles in their teeth, young boys in yarmulkes sat morosely over their egg salad sandwiches and Cokes. Two nuns squinted at the menu on the wall, searching for the toasted cheese sandwiches they had mistakenly stopped in for.
We were in Ben’s because I had a favor to ask Morris and I astutely figured the best time to ask Morris for a favor was when his mouth was full. “Ketchup?” I asked as the waitress spun the plate of thick-cut fries in front of him.
He shook his head no.
“Beer, how about a beer? A beer would go great with this, wouldn’t it?”
Morris, his mouth once again joyously filled with pastrami and coleslaw and rye bread, shook his head vigorously but then stopped all that shaking and shrugged.
“Miss, could we have two beers? Is Heineken all right, Morris?”
He nodded.
“Two Heinekens.”
When the beers came I poured Morris’s into the little water glass she brought with the bottles, making sure the head was a perfect inch thick.
“How’s your lunch, Morris?”
His glass to his lips, he nodded again.
“Take another bite.”
He took another bite.
“I’ve got a favor to ask.”
He fought to finish swallowing what was in his mouth, took a long drink from his beer, and said, “Tell me, Victor, why am I not surprised by this?”
“Because you’re a wise man, Morris.”
“Wise to you, mine freint, and your obvious attempt at bribery. But Morris Kapustin is a righteous man, he cannot be bought by a simple pastrami sandwich on rye. I am not so easily taken as you think, Victor. Please pass the coleslaw. Sometimes when I take a bite it slips right out of the sandwich and pffft, onto mine lap. These paper napkins they give you now, such schlock. They do nothing to protect you from coleslaw. So tell me what you want from Morris.”
“I need to break into an office.”
He stared at me and shook his head. “I am an investigator, not a thief. You want to find a thief, that’s very simple. Go to a prison, any prison, and you will find many thieves. And the funny thing, even in those prisons there are some thieves who are lawyers, do you understand what I am saying, mine freint? But not here will you find a thief, not at this table at Ben’s. Now you’re insulting me now. All of a sudden I don’t want no more your sandwich. Take it away. Take it. It’s like trayf to me now.”
He pushed his plate away from him. There was still almost a quarter of a sandwich left. He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at the plate and then pulled it back.
“Give me the coleslaw, please,” he said. “Just a pitsel more is all it is needing.”
I refilled his beer glass.
“Thank you,” he said. “Careful there is not too much head. Who wants to be drinking all that shum? It gives gas.”
“I need to break into an office.”
“Again with the office?”
“I have no choice,” I said.
“Okay, Victor. Tell me now what is so important that you have to become a thief and break into some poor shnook’s office. Wait, don’t yet tell me.”
He quickly finished his sandwich and downed the entire glass of beer. He snatched a French fry and ate it in two quick bites. Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he said, “Okay, now. I was hurrying up to finish mine eating so that I wouldn’t lose appetite from what you are going to tell me.”
“I need to break into an office.”
“So I have heard three times already. Whose office, if I may ask?”
“William Prescott’s.”
“The other lawyer on that trial you are losing. Oh, don’t protest like that, I know everything. Mine new friend Herm Finklebaum, he has been watching the trial for me, keeping me up to date on exactly how lousy you are doing.”
“I’m in a difficult position,” I said.
“Herm says you are dropping faster than his mother’s kreplach. I don’t know his mother, never met the poor woman, but I can imagine.”
“I’m in a very difficult position.”
“And breaking into this fellow’s office, it will help? This I want to hear. This will be better than cable.”
“You get cable, Morris?”
“What, I alone in this country, I don’t deserve to watch our favorite movies on TNT? What crime have I committed, Victor, what? Tell me.”
“I just never thought of you sitting back with a beer watching Sports Center.”
“That Berman fellow, he cracks me up. Jewish actually, you know that? I can tell. Such a punim. So tell me why I must to help you commit a felony.”
And so I told him about Concannon and how he wouldn’t let me defend him like he needed to be defended without proof that Jimmy Moore was dumping on him and how I thought that proof was in William Prescott’s office.