and soak my brogans. I was pursuing Margaret’s case so doggedly you’d have thought there was some money in it, but I’d already decided it was on the cuff. It was smoky and overheated inside. I took off my hat out of decent respect for an alien faith, but soon noticed that everyone else had theirs on.
When in Hymietown…I put mine back on, wet as it was.
There must have been fifty or more men gathered in groups, in a room way too small to hold them. I stood around until an old gent in a black skullcap offered me a glass of disgustingly sweet wine and asked what brought me there. It turned out he was some kind of facilitator. He guided me back to a knot of fellows dressed like laborers. We waited around for a pause in their heated conversation, but it got louder. Pretty soon one guy grabbed another by the collar and twisted. “Stalinist bastard!” he said, and he almost burnt the other guy’s big nose with a smoldering fag protruding from the corner of his mouth. I thought the brawl was on, but a guy about my age stepped in. He had a square jaw and a short, dark beard. He didn’t say much, but whatever he said worked. They separated and rejoined the discussion. A moment later I thought I saw one of them launch a sucker punch, but he was just talking with his hands, a common mode of discourse here, I realized, as I looked around.
A few more minutes passed, then the old gent called out, “Lou,” and the guy who’d short-circuited the donnybrook turned our way. His flat gaze came from behind fragile, wire-rimmed specs, but he looked hard nonetheless. When I told him my name and said I’d like to speak to him, he took off the goggles, came right up close, and squinted at me.
After a few moments he said, “Lou Rothman,” and we shook hands. He had a grip like a teamster.
The face mirrors the soul, and I’m often required to make distinctions between one soul and another, so I pride myself on characterizing faces. Nevertheless, I didn’t find the right simile for Rothman’s map until years later, after Slap’s son Danny became a Lincoln Brigadier in a fit of youthful idealism. Spain cured him of that, and when he came home he said it wasn’t the fascists who’d scared him, it was some of the characters who were nominally on his side. Rothman, it occurred to me, had a face you’d see in a doorway in Barcelona just before the bomb exploded. He was personable enough that night though. He laughed when he heard my first question.
“His name is Isadore,” he said. “‘Shay’ is short for ‘shay-gus.’ It’s Yiddish for a certain kind of Eastern European bully that picks on Jews.”
“So he beat up mockies?”
Rothman gave me another long look, best described as bemused. A couple of the other Reds were in earshot, which meant real close—the din of conversation and smoke-induced coughing in that room was something—but it suddenly got quieter on our end and the whole bunch, must’ve been a dozen of them, were all looking at me. The collar-twister edged my way.
“No,” Rothman said. “It’s an irony. When Isadore was a kid he beat up goyim who picked on Jews. He took pleasure in kicking their mick asses.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Okay, neither did I,” he said.
The rest of his group resumed arguing, to my great relief. Now it was my turn to lean in so I could hear what he said.
“What brings you here, McDonough?” he asked. “You didn’t come all the way from St. Paul to find out how Isadore Tilsen got his nickname.”
“I’m here on behalf of someone you know. Margaret Thornton.”
“Sure. We collect money for her.”
“So I hear. But why? I thought you fellows, you know, you lefties, liked Lloyd Jensen.”
“Lloyd Jensen and Walter Thornton were both Farmer-Laborers. They stood squarely with the working man, and their differences didn’t matter to us.” He gestured toward his bunch. “Jensen’s widow will be well taken care of, and Thornton’s shouldn’t go begging either.”
He was no Uncle Slap when it came to malarkey, but he was right up there with any Tin Cups hoocher, and that’s saying something. It inspired me to boldness.
“Margaret thinks Harry Ford paid Tilsen to murder her husband. Myself, I hear Jensen had a lot of friends in this part of town. Maybe one of them hired him.”
“Lloyd Jensen grew up in the neighborhood. Many men in this room knew him personally. They liked him, they liked his politics. You could ask if anybody hired someone to kill Thornton, but it couldn’t have been Isadore. The jury found him not guilty. What’s the matter, you don’t you trust our legal system?”
We were nose to nose, but nobody seemed to be taking any notice. In Tin Cups and other venues with which I’m familiar, going nose to nose was the penultimate gesture before fists flew, but Rothman didn’t seem belligerent. He was just making a point.
“Can’t stop people thinking though,” I said. “Tell me, and this is another thing I’m just curious about, why did those two fellows you broke up almost come to blows?”
“They were arguing. Trotskyism or Stalinism.”
“What’s that about?”
“Trotsky doesn’t compromise on world revolution. Stalin talks about Socialism in one country. No question he’s warped the Soviet workers state to fit his own ideological deformity, but some of us wonder if that’s what’s required to fight fascism. The question is—what do the times call for? What is historically necessary? That’s what Meyer almost punched Sherman about.”
“Doesn’t seem worth fighting over.”
“There are two schools of opinion on that, McDonough. Some call it a trivial matter, others believe that perceiving historical necessity and acting to further it is a high calling.”
“You should hear what us micks fight about,” I said. “Nowhere near as elevated…Is Tilsen here?”
Rothman pointed him out through the smoke. “Come with me, I’ll introduce you if you like.”
Tilsen and a couple yeggs were yakking with each other on the far side of the room. They were positioned between a cluster of fellows in broad-brimmed hats and long coats and a group of more worldly looking men. We picked our way through, Rothman nodding to some, edging by others so as not to interrupt.
Tilsen was a big guy, late forties, with sloping shoulders and a thick neck. Rothman tugged the sleeve of his suit coat, and said something in his ear. Tilsen pulled a wad out of his pocket and counted off some bills.
Rothman motioned me over. “This is Martin McDonough,” he said. “Martin, meet Isadore Tilsen.”
His yeggs kept their hands in their pockets and their eyes on mine. He had big, hairy knuckles, reddish hair going gray at the temples, gold teeth. He didn’t offer his hand, just nodded. “You know Louie?” he said. “Louie wants to change the world.”
“Well, uh, it needs changing,” I replied lamely.
“You think?” He nodded. “Nice meeting you, Mr. McDonough.”
I was dismissed.
“He’s a man of few words,” I said on the way back to the radical caucus.
“He’s short with the goyim, doesn’t trust them,” Rothman replied. “He’s a big puppy with his fellow Jews though. When he was a kid he used to beat up the local shaygus for a favor.
He wasn’t much of a scholar, so that was how he earned respect.” He seemed in a forthcoming mood so I popped the obvious question. “What was that business between you and him, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Not at all. We usually collect ten or twelve bucks for Margaret Thornton, but we like to give her thirty. Isadore makes up the difference.”
“Why is that?”
“You’d have to ask him,” he said.
“No thanks. But I do thank you for everything.”
“My pleasure. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll rejoin the discussion. Stay awhile. Have another glass of wine.”
I did. The wine was awful, but not so awful I couldn’t drink it, and it gave me a chance to sneak a few looks at Tilsen. He and his boys were deep in some kind of conversation. With each other.
It was still raining when I left. I almost ran over a dog in downtown Minneapolis. The streets were deserted except for a few men sleeping in doorways. I nearly got lost trying to find St. Paul, but eventually made my way back to my Rice Street haunts.
Slap thought it unlikely I’d find a bride at Tin Cups, and upon reflection I had to agree. Women had started coming in unescorted after Prohibition—many a shanty-Irish lass, even a few kraut dames from St. Albert’s—but
