Flesh and Blood Page 15

“What was he, exactly?”

  “He was a fixer,” Burke said. “ A man who made deals. He owned a lot of warehouse space all over the city. He knew people. He got people together.”

  “And he recommended Hannah?”

  “Oh, yes, he did,” Burke said. “He came in one afternoon with Hannah and talked to the boss, Mr. Constanza. They had quite a little huddle in the back room, I guess. And when it was over, Hannah had been hired.” He shifted slightly in his chair, his fingers brushing at a large fern which spread out beside him. “At first I thought somebody was calling in a marker, something like that. But Hannah was not just some ditzy broad that some old man wanted on the payroll. She was a very serious kind of person, and she had a certain look … I don’t know … like she ran things for herself, did what she wanted.”

  “And this was in 1955?”

  “That’s right.”

  Frank glanced quickly at his notes. “But I thought you went to work for Miss Covallo in 1968.”

  “That’s true,” Burke said. “But I’d hired Hannah years before that.”

  “In 1955,” Frank said as he wrote the date down in his notebook.

  “Absolutely,” Burke told him. “I worked for Mr. Constanza then. He owned an operation called Maximum Imports.”

  “And that was the first time you hired Hannah?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “I was never really sure,” Burke said. “She worked in the office for a while, but I don’t think that was the idea.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think she was just biding her time there,” Burke said. “She was really hired to set up her own thing. From the beginning, I mean. And before long, she’d done it. Hannah was like that. Very determined. Within a year she was running her own operation.”

  “Her own operation?”

  “That’s right.”

  “In Manhattan?”

  “No, somewhere in Brooklyn.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “I never found out,” Burke said.

  “But it was Hannah’s, this operation?”

  “Well, it belonged to Mr. Constanza,” Burke said. “But Hannah was in charge of it.”

  “What kind of operation was it?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Burke said. “I just know that Mr. Constanza sunk a lot of money into it. I used to see the bills come in. He bought all kinds of stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Various kinds of equipment. A tremendous amount of cloth.”

  “Cloth?”

  “Plain white cloth,” Burke said. “Thousands of bolts during the few years I worked for him. All of it went to Brooklyn.”

  “But you never found out what any of it was used for?” Frank asked.

  Burke shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

  “You weren’t curious about it?” Frank asked unbelievingly.

  “I was curious,” Burke said. “But it was very hush-hush. And you know how it is, when you work for a guy like Constanza, sometimes it pays to know as little as you can.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you never know what he’s up to,” Burke said. “Or what he’s capable of.”

  Frank looked at him intently. “What did you think it was, the operation in Brooklyn?”

  Burke drew in a long breath. “It could have been anything. Absolutely anything. Maybe they made dresses, who knows? Maybe Hannah ran a whorehouse.” He smiled knowingly. “With that much plain white cloth, you could cover up a lot of shit.”

  “Were you there when Constanza and Bornstein talked about her?”

  “Just for the first couple of minutes,” Burke said. “We were all in the back room, the four of us. Hannah stood in the corner, just sort of glancing around. She was dressed very well, I remember. Elegantly, like she took a lot of pride in herself, in the way she looked.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She let Bornstein do the talking.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told Constanza that she knew a lot about refinishing material. About dyes, sheens, that sort of thing.”

  “Did she?”

  “I never found out,” Burke said. “But I got the feeling it was all some kind of code, you know, between the three of them. I was the odd man out.”

  “Did they talk about what Hannah had been doing during the last few years?”

  “No,” Burke said, “but one time Bornstein sort of laughed and said, ‘And I can assure you that Miss Karlsberg can negotiate with the best of them.’ And then Constanza and Bornstein had a big laugh over that.” He stopped, his mind drifting back suddenly. “But Hannah didn’t laugh,” he said, almost to himself. “I remember glancing over toward her, and she was standing in the corner. Very rigid, you know, very cold, somehow.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “No, nothing,” Burke said. “At least not while I was there. A few minutes later, Bornstein said something about ironing out a few problems, and then Mr. Constanza gave me the sign.”

  “What sign?”

  “To leave, the sign to leave,” Burke said. “That the rest was all private business.”

  “And that’s when you left?”

  “Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Burke said emphatically. “With Constanza, the sign meant get out, that it was strictly his own thing. You know, between the interested parties, as they say.”

  Frank wrote it down quickly, then went on to another subject.

  “Did you ever meet Hannah’s sisters?” he asked.

  “No,” Burke said.

  “But you knew she had two sisters?”

  “I knew she had one.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because one day we were having some trouble on the line,” Burke said. “This was at a shop in the Garment District. Anyway, one of the seamstresses took a few stitches in a finger, and, you know how it is, the whole place came to a stop. The last one to get there was this woman on a crutch. She practically hobbled across the room. Hannah was standing beside me, and I noticed there were tears in her eyes. I said, ‘What’s the matter, Hannah?’ But she just quickly brushed at her eyes. ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘I just thought of my sister.’”

  “When was this?”

  Burke’s eyes rolled upward gently. “Probably a year after she came to work,” he said. “It must have been the fall, because the election was going on. Some sort of election. Everybody was wearing political buttons.”

  Frank wrote it down. “Did she happen to mention her sister’s name?”

  Burke shook his head. “No.”

  “Gilda? Naomi?”

  “She never mentioned a name,” Burke assured him. “And she let the whole business drop right away. I mean, she just wiped her eyes very quickly and walked away.” He stopped, as if trying to find the right words. “Hannah Karlsberg was a complicated person, I think,” he said finally. “You would see pieces of her. Those tears. The way she dressed. Little pieces. But nothing fit together in the right way.” He smiled. “It’s like a pattern. When you tear it, you throw everything off. The lines won’t ever fit again. You can sew and rethread, but to a really good eye, it’ll always look like a patch-up job.”

  “And that’s the way Hannah looked?” Frank asked.

  Burke nodded. “Like she’d been torn into little pieces, and then just sort of stitched together.”

  Frank thought about it a moment, then let his eyes drift back to the notebook. “So Hannah came to work for this Mr. Constanza in 1955?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “And how long did she work for him?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Burke said. “But she was still working for him when I left.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two years after I hired her. Fall of 1957. I moved to Texas. Some plants were opening up near the border. I was down there for almost fifteen years. But I always wanted to come back. After a while. I could afford to. T
hat’s when I hired on with Miss Covallo.”

  “And hired Hannah a second time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that was in 1968?”

  “That’s right, 1968,” Stanley said. “The world had changed. Riots in the streets. But in the rag trade, things were like they’d always been, cutthroat. I mean, Miss Covallo was in big trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she’d started with very little,” Burke told him. “And she’d lost most of it during the first two years.” He laughed. “Now, everywhere you go, you see that sign, the one with the beautiful woman, and just the words: ‘The Imalia Covallo Look.’” He shrugged. “That’s the way this business is, full of surprises. I mean, in 1968, when I hired Hannah, I expected Miss Covallo to go under within a year. That’s why I left.”

  “Left?”

  “Quit,” Burke said. “Took another job. I was jumping ship. Then things changed all of a sudden, and Miss Covallo made a big success. ‘The Imalia Covallo Look’ was born, but too late for me. I was already working with another company. It’s still around, but it’s minor league compared to Covallo.”

  “When did you leave?” Frank asked.

  “In December of 1970,” Burke said. “I was sure that Miss Covallo was flat busted, that she’d go belly up within a few months.” He smiled ironically. “But two years later, she was on top of the fashion world. What a joke.”

  “So you only worked with Hannah for two years?”

  “That’s right,” Burke said. “And I never got to know her.”

  “Do you have any idea why she left Maximum Imports?” Frank asked.

  “Sure, I do,” Burke said with a slight smile. “It closed down a few years after I left.”

  “Closed down?”

  “Constanza ended up in jail,” Burke said. “I don’t know what happened, exactly. I was in Texas by then. But it was something with the IRS.” He smiled. “It always is, right?”

  Frank said nothing.

  “Anyway, they seized everything but Constanza’s jockstrap, if you know what I mean.”

  “When was that?”

  “1965,” Burke said. “I know because a few people called me down in Texas to see if there were any jobs.”

  “Did Hannah call you?”

  “No.”

  Frank wrote it down, then tried to put it all together. “So she was with Maximum from 1955 until it closed about ten years later. Then she came to work for Miss Covallo.”

  “In 1968, yeah.”

  “Do you have any idea what she might have done in between?”

  “No,” Burke said. “But it’s possible she might have gone to some other company. Tax records would show that, of course. It’s even possible that she went back with the union.”

  “You knew about the union?”

  “Oh, sure,” Burke said. “Some of my people used to talk about it. They couldn’t believe that she’d gone over to the other side, to the owners.”

  “They recognized her?”

  “Of course,” Burke said. “I mean, you can change your name, but you can’t change your face. And if time hasn’t changed it enough, people recognize it. And you can be sure they recognized Hannah. I mean, she was considered very radical in the thirties. Very militant. Always making speeches. The word was, that she’d kept the people in her shop out longer than anyone else.” He smiled thinly. “Of course—now this is from the union types who remembered her—the guy she worked for deserved to be ruined more than the others, the son of a bitch.” He shrugged. “I mean, that’s the way my people always told it, that her boss, that he was scum.”

  “You mean Sol Feig?”

  Burke smiled. “Yeah, that’s the name. Feig.”

  “Why did he deserve it more?”

  “Because of what he was,” Burke said with disgust.

  Frank said nothing. He lowered the point of his pencil to the page.

  “He attacked a young girl,” Burke told him. “Tried to rape her.”

  “During the strike?”

  “Toward the end of it,” Burke said. “I was a young man in Cleveland then, of course. All this comes from shoptalk, you know.”

  “What was the shoptalk?”

  “That Feig tried to rape a young woman, and that Hannah found out about it,” Burke told him. “The word was that that’s how the union beat the old bastard. The people found out what he’d done, you see. And it stiffened their backs a little.”

  In his mind, Frank could see Sol Feig’s broken figure as it curled forward in the wheel chair, his fierce blue eyes staring at Farouk.

  “When she worked for you,” he said, “did she ever talk about the strike?”

  “No,” Burke said. “But that would not be unusual.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’d switched teams by then,” Burke said. “It happens a lot, but it always leaves a bad taste.”

  “Switched teams?”

  “Joined the other side,” Burke said, “left the union, became a company man.”

  “But she’d left the union years before she came to work for you,” Frank said.

  “Years mean nothing when it comes to things like this,” Burke told him.

  “Like what?”

  “Like loyalty,” Burke said. “Like betrayal.”

  Frank wrote it down quickly, then looked back up at Burke. “So there was some resentment?” he asked. “Among the other workers?”

  “It was more than resentment,” Burke said. “They froze her out. They gave her the shoulder.” He smiled sadly. “You see, the way they told it, Hannah had been a lot more than a member, she’d been a leader. And the way they felt, she’d deserted them. So, they did what you’d expect.”

  Frank nodded.

  “You a Catholic, Mr. Clemons?” Burke asked suddenly.

  “No.”

  “Well, if you were a Catholic you’d know about excommunication,” Burke said. “Even if you were a Jew, you’d know about that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like a formal ceremony,” Burke went on. “And when it’s over, you’re cast out of the community forever. Your name can’t be spoken. You are one of the living dead.”

  “And they felt that way—the workers—about Hannah?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “All of them?”

  Burke did not answer right away. Instead, he thought about it for a moment. “Well, maybe not all of them. Maybe all but one.”

  Frank felt his breath draw in quickly. “Who?”

  “Molly Gold,” Burke said immediately. “She would talk to Hannah. She took a lot of heat for it. From the others, I mean. But any time Hannah would come into the main shop, the one in Manhattan, the two of them would chat for a while.”

  “Do you have any idea where she is?”

  “No,” Burke said. “But she shouldn’t be hard to find.” He chuckled. “She’s got a record as long as your arm.”

  “Record?”

  “Police record,” Burke said. His face took on a look of wry amusement. “Molly is one of those people who decided to go her own damn way in the world.” The amusement faded abruptly. “And of course, when you do that, life can take some pretty sharp turns.”

  Frank closed his notebook, glanced about the greenhouse for a moment, then turned back to Burke.

  “Why did you tell Miss Covallo that Hannah would work cheap?” he asked.

  Burke smiled. “Imalia told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “She has a good memory.”

  Frank continued to gaze at him silently. “Hannah had a lot of experience in the business, didn’t she?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And she was older by then,” Frank added. He did a quick calculation. “Her mid-fifties.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So why would you think that you could get her cheap?”

  “Because no one else would hire her,” Burke answered finally. “At least, no
body in New York.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’d worked for Constanza.”

  “And he’d been sent to jail.”

  Burke laughed. “Jail? Christ, that had nothing to do with it. I don’t think it even mattered much that he was probably some sort of low-level mobster.” He shook his head. “No, the problem with Constanza is that he was a wildcatter, a guy who didn’t play by the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  “The rules of the trade,” Burke said. “You know, like maybe going with a certain style once in a while, so that everybody has to buy it. Maybe cozying up to a sweetheart union.”

  “Constanza wouldn’t do that sort of thing?”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Burke said. “And not because he wasn’t as corrupt as the next guy. It was just that he was all for himself. He never thought of the interests of the trade as a whole. He didn’t grasp the big picture, you might say.”

  Frank nodded.

  “And Hannah fit into that,” Burke added quietly.

  “Into what?”

  “Into that … What would you call it? … That way of seeing the world,” Burke said. “Constanza’s way.” He shivered slightly, as if in response to a sudden chilling wind. “You could see it in him. In his eyes. Hers, too. I don’t know how to say it … this icy solitude.” He thought a moment, then smiled. “The only person I ever saw cut through it was Molly Gold.”

  16

  It hadn’t taken Tannenbaum very long to get back to Frank with Molly Gold’s last known address, but even so, night had already fallen by the time he made it down to the Lower East Side, and with the darkness, the whole mood of the neighborhood had profoundly changed. The teeming street life of the day had given way to a sullen world of dark, empty streets. Pools of grayish light gathered beneath the street lamps or hazily illuminated deserted stretches of the small, untended parks. The shops which had been so busy the day before were now closed. Thick metal sheets had been drawn down over their fronts and locked in place, and the graffiti which had been scrawled across them gave the entire area a lost and desolate look.

  Molly Gold’s building was a low brick tenement off Hester Street. A few squares of yellow light shone from its windows, but the single bulb in the foyer was dim, and because of that Frank had to light a match to find her name: Gold M.—Apt. 1-C.