The Yiddish Policemen's Union

20

Landsman cadges half a dozen papiroses from the weekend manager, Krankheit, then kills an hour setting fire to three of them while the reports on the dead man in 208 render up their pitiful account of proteins and grease marks and dust. As Bina said, there’s nothing new in any of it. The killer seems to have been a professional, a shlosser of skill who left no trace of his passage. The dead man’s fingerprints match those on record for a Menachem-Mendel Shpilman, arrested seven times on drug charges over the past ten years, under a variety of aliases, including Wilhelm Steinitz, Aron Nimzovitch, and Richard Reti. So much, and no more, is clear.

Landsman contemplates sending down for a pint, but he takes a hot shower instead. Alcohol has failed him, the thought of food turns his stomach, and let’s face it, if he was ever really going to kill himself, he would have done so long before now. So, all right, work is a joke; it remains work. And that is the true content of the accordion file that Bina brought him, her message to him across the divide of departmental policy and marital estrangement and careers rolling in opposite directions: Just keep at it.

Landsman frees his last clean suit from its plastic sack, shaves his chin, works up a lustrous nap in his porkpie hat with his hat brush. He is off duty today, but duty means nothing, today means nothing, nothing means anything but a clean suit, three fresh Broadways, the wobble of the hangover just behind his eyes, the murmur of the brush against the whiskey-brown felt of his hat. And, all right, maybe a trace in his hotel room of the smell of Bina, of the sour collar of her shirt, her verbena soap, the marjoram smell of her armpit. He rides down in the elevator feeling as if he has stepped out from under the onrushing shadow of a plummeting piano, some kind of jazzy clangor in his ear. The knot of his gold-and-green rep necktie presses its thumb against his larynx like a scruple pressing against a guilty conscience, a reminder that he is alive. His hat is as glossy as a seal.

Max Nordau Street has not been plowed; the road crews of Sitka, slashed to skeletons, concentrate on the arterials and the highway. Landsman leaves the Super Sport with the garageman after retrieving his rubber overshoes from the trunk. Then he stomps his way carefully through the foot-deep drifts to Mabuhay Donuts on Monastir Street.

The Filipino-style Chinese donut, or shtekeleh, is the great contribution of the District of Sitka to the food lovers of the world. In its present form, it cannot be found in the Philippines. No Chinese trencherman would recognize it as the fruit of his native fry kettles. Like the storm god Yahweh of Sumeria, the shtekeleh was not invented by the Jews, but the world would sport neither God nor the shtekeleh without Jews and their desires. A panatela of fried dough not quite sweet, not quite salty, rolled in sugar, crisp-skinned, tender inside, and honeycombed with air pockets. You sink it in your paper cup of milky tea and close your eyes, and for ten fat seconds, you seem to glimpse the possibility of finer things.

The hidden master of the Filipino-style Chinese donut is Benito Taganes, proprietor and king of the bubbling vats at Mabuhay. Mabuhay, dark, cramped, invisible from the street, stays open all night long. It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers and shlemiels, whores and night owls. With the fat applauding in the fryers, the exhaust fans roaring, and the boom box blasting the heartsick kundimans of Benito’s Manila childhood, the clientele makes free with their secrets. A golden mist of kosher oil hangs in the air and baffles the senses. Who could overhear with ears full of KosherFry and the wailing of Diomedes Maturan? But Benito Taganes overhears, and he remembers. Benito could draw you family tree for Alexei Lebed, the chieftain of the Russian mob, only on it you would find not grandparents and nieces but bagmen, bump-off’s, and offshore bank accounts. He could sing you a kundiman of wives who remain loyal to their imprisoned husbands and husbands doing time because their wives dropped dimes on them. He knows who’s keeping the head of Furry Markov in his garage, and which narcotics inspector is on the payroll of Anatoly Moskowits the Wild Beast. Only nobody knows that he knows but Meyer Landsman.

“A donut, Reb Taganes,” Landsman says when he comes stomping in from the alley, shivering the crust of snow from his overshoes. The Sitka Saturday afternoon lies dead as a failed messiah in its winding rag of snow. There was nobody on the sidewalk, hardly a car in the street. But here inside Mabuhay Donuts, three or four floaters, solitaries, and drunks between benders lean against the sparkly resin counter, sucking the tea from their shtekelehs and working the calculations of their next big mistakes.

“Only one?” Benito says. He is a squat, thick man with skin the color of the milky tea he serves, his cheeks pitted like a pair of dark moons. Though his hair is black, he’s past seventy. As a young man he was the flyweight champion of Luzon, and with his thick fingers and the tattooed salamis of his forearms he gets taken for a tough customer, which serves the needs of his business. His big caramel eyes betray him, so he keeps them hooded and downcast. But Landsman has looked into them. To run a shtinker, you have to see the broken heart inside the deadest pan. “Look like you should to eat a couple, maybe three, Detective.”

Benito elbows aside the nephew or cousin he’s got working the fry basket, and snake-charms a rope of raw dough into the fat. A few minutes later, Landsman is holding a tight paper packet of heaven in his hand.

“I have that information you wanted on Olivia’s sister’s daughter,” Landsman says around a warm sugary mouthful.

Benito draws a cup of tea for Landsman and then nods toward the alley. He pulls on his anorak and they go out. Benito takes a ring of keys from his belt loop and works open an iron door two doors down from Mabuhay Donuts. This is where Benito keeps his lover, Olivia, in three small, tidy rooms with a Warhol portrait of Dietrich and a bitter smell of vitamins and rotten gardenia. Olivia’s not there. The lady has been in and out of the hospital lately, dying in chapters, with a cliff-hanger at the end of everyone. Benito waves Landsman into a red leather armchair piped in white. Of course, Landsman has no information for Benito about any of Olivia’s sisters’ daughters. Olivia is not really a lady, either, but Landsman is also the only one who knows that about Benito Taganes the donut king. Years ago, a serial rapist named Kohn forced himself on Miss Olivia Lagdameo and found out her secret. Kohn’s second big surprise that night was the chance appearance of Patrolman Landsman. What Landsman did to Kohn’s face left the momzer talking with a slur for the rest of his life. So it’s a mixture of gratitude and shame, and not money, that drives the flow of information from Benito to the man who saved Olivia.

“Ever hear anything about the son of Heskel Shpilman?” Landsman says, setting down the donuts and the cup of tea. “Kid named Mendel?”

Benito stands, hands clasped behind his back, like a boy called on to recite a poem at school. “Over the years,” he says. “A thing or two. Junkie, no?”

Landsman arcs one fuzzy eyebrow a quarter of an inch. You don’t answer a shtinker’s questions, especially not the rhetorical ones.

“Mendel Shpilman,” Benito decides. “Seen him around maybe a few time. Funny guy. Talk a little Tagalog. Sing a little Filipino song. What happen, he not dead?”

Still Landsman doesn’t say anything, but he likes Benny Taganes, and running him always feels a little rude. To cover the silence, he picks up the shtekeleh and takes a bite. It’s still warm, and there’s a hint of vanilla, and the crust crunches between his teeth like a caramel glaze on a pot of custard. As it goes into Landsman’s mouth, Benito watches with the appraising coldness of an orchestra conductor auditioning a flutist.

“That’s good, Benny.”

“Don’t insult me, Detective, I beg you.”

“Sorry.”

“I know it’s good.”

“The best.”

“Nothing in your life even comes close.”

This is so easily true that the sentiment brings a sting of tears to Landsman’s eyes, and to cover that, he eats another donut.

“Somebody was looking for the yid,” Benito says in his rough and fluent Yiddish. “Two, three months back. A couple somebodies.”

“You saw them?”

Benito shrugs. His tactics and operations he keeps a mystery from Landsman, the cousins and nephews and the network of sub-shtinkers he employs.

“Somebody saw them,” he says. “It might have been me.”

“Were they black hats?”

Benito considers the question for a long moment, and Landsman can see it troubles him in a way that’s somehow scientific; almost pleasurable. He gives his head a slow, certain shake. “No black hats,” he says. “But beards.”

“Beards? You mean, what, they were religious types?”

“Little yarmulkes. Neat beards. Young men.”

“Russians? Accents?”

“If I heard about these young men, then the one who told me didn’t say nothing about accents. If I saw them myself, then I’m sorry, I don’t remember. Hey, what’s the matter, what for you don’t write this down, Detective? ”

Early on in their collaboration, Landsman made a show of taking Benito’s information very seriously. Now he fishes out his notebook and scratches a line or two, just to keep the donut king happy. He’s not sure what to make of them, these two or three neat young Jews, religious but not black hat.

“And they were asking what, exactly, please?” he says.

“Whereabouts. Information.”

“Did they get it?”

“Not at Mabuhay Donuts. Not from a Taganes.” Benito’s Shoyfer rings, and he snaps it open and lays it against his ear. All the hardness goes out of the lines around his mouth. His face matches his eyes now, soft, brimming with feeling. He rattles on tenderly in Tagalog. Landsman catches the lowing sound of his own last name.

“How’s Olivia?” Landsman asks as Benito closes his phone and ladles a yard of cold plaster into the mold of his face.

“She can’t eat,” Benito says. “No more shtekelehs.”

“That’s a shame.”

They’re through. Landsman gets up, slips the notebook back into his hip pocket, and feeds himself the last bite. He feels stronger and happier than he has in weeks or perhaps months. There is something in the death of Mendel Shpilman, a story to grab hold of, and it’s shaking the dust and spiders off him. Or else it’s the donut. They head for the door, but Benito puts a hand on Landsman’s arm.

“Why you don’t ask me anything else, Detective?”

“What would you like me to ask you?” Landsman frowns, then lights doubtfully on a question. “You heard something today, maybe? Something out of Verbov Island?” It’s hard to imagine but not inconceivable that word of Verbover displeasure over Landsman’s visit to the rebbe already would have reached Benito’s ears.

“Verbov Island? No, another thing. You still looking for the Zilberblat?”

Viktor Zilberblat is one of the eleven outstanding cases that Landsman and Berko are supposed to be re solving effectively. Zilberblat was stabbed to death last March outside of the Hofbrau tavern in the Nachtasyl, the old German quarter, a few blocks from here. The knife was small and dull, and the murder had an un tudied air.

“Somebody see the brother,” Benito Taganes says. “Rafi. Sneaking around.”

Nobody was sorry to see Viktor go, least of all his brother, Rafael. Viktor had abused Rafael, cheated him, humiliated him, and made free with his cash and his woman. After Viktor died, Rafael left town, whereabouts unknown. The evidence linking Rafael to the knife is inconclusive at best. Two semi reliable witnesses put him forty miles away from the Nachtasyl for two hours on either side of the likely time of his brother’s murder. But Rafi Zilberblat has a long and monotonous police record, and he will do very nicely, Landsman reflects, given the lowered standard of proof that the new policy implies.

“Sneaking where?” Landsman says. The informa tion is like a hot black mouthful of coffee. He can feel himself coiling around Rafael Zilberblat’s freedom like a hundred-pound snake.

“That Big Macher store, it’s gone now, up at Granite Creek. Somebody see him sneaking in and out of there. Carrying things. A can of propane. Maybe he living inside the empty store.”

“Thanks, Benny,” Landsman says. “I’ll check it out.” Landsman starts to let himself out of the apartment. Benito Taganes takes hold of his sleeve. He smooths the collar of Landsman’s overcoat with a paternal hand. He brushes away the crumbs of cinnamon sugar.

“Your wife,” he says. “Here again?”

“In all her glory.”

“Nice lady. Benny says hello.”

“I’ll tell her to drop by.”

“No, you don’t tell her nothing.” Benito grins. “Now she your boss.”

“She was always my boss,” Landsman says. “Now it’s just official.”

The grin winks out, and Landsman averts his gaze from the spectacle of Benito Taganes’s grieving eyes. Benito’s wife is a voiceless and shadowy little woman, but Miss Olivia in her heyday conducted herself like the boss of half the world.

“Better for you,” Benito says. “You need.”