Inside of the cottage, Very made straight for Mitch’s sky blue Fender Stratocaster, which was propped against his monster pair of Fender twin reverb amps, stacked one atop the other with a signal splitter on top. “Ow, mommy-mommy! Awesome setup, dude.”
“I make some noise.”
“I’ll bet you do.” Now Very went over toward the table where Mitch’s computer sat amidst heaps of printouts, notepads and DVDs. “Mind if ask what you’re writing about this week?”
“Icebox questions.”
“Icebox… hunh?”
“It’s an expression coined by Hitchcock. His way of shrugging off really obvious lapses in logic or credibility. He believed that as long as the audience was loving the movie they wouldn’t care. Like, say, in The 39 Steps…”
“Never saw it.”
“You never saw The 39 Steps? You must. That scene with the finger totally slays. Anyway, Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll have to spend the night handcuffed together in a room in a remote country inn, okay? And she’s convinced that he’s an escaped killer on the run. It’s really tense. Also pretty damned sexy for 1935. They’re actually lying on top of the bed together, okay? And she’s even removed her wet stockings. You’re totally into the scene. So into it that, in Hitchcock’s words, it isn’t until you get up for a glass of milk in the middle of the night and are standing there at your icebox that you ask yourself: ‘What did they do when one of them had to go to the bathroom?’ Just like with his famous crop duster scene in North by Northwest.”
“Okay, that one I did see. It was incredible.”
“So incredible that it’s not until later that you ask yourself why James Mason went to the trouble of sending Cary Grant all the way to an Indiana cornfield when he could have bumped him off in any back alley in Chicago. And, by the way, who was flying that crop duster? Was it one of Mason’s henchmen? Where did he score a crop duster that’s outfitted with machine guns on such short notice? Did he steal it? Kill the real pilot?”
“None of which matters,” Very conceded. “Because it’s not real life. It’s just a movie.”
“Sorry, did you say just a movie?”
Very held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Whatever, dude.”
“Can I get you something to drink, Lieutenant?”
“I could go for anything cold.”
Mitch went in the kitchen and poured two glasses of chilled well water. Came back and handed Very one. “I have to tell you something you’re not going to like,” he said. “The resident trooper had serious issues with Augie. They even had an altercation on Friday. She said he’d been drinking.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m not surprised. Dawgie didn’t exactly roll with the times. He could be sexually inappropriate, politically incorrect, you name it.” Very paced around the living room as he talked, bristling with intensity. “He started drinking a lot after his wife, Gina, passed. His fuse got shorter and, well, last year, he got into it with a black female officer over some totally minor detail on a case. Called her an inappropriate name in the squad room. You don’t use that kind of language in the workplace. Or anywhere else. She slapped him. He slapped her back. Our captain tried to smooth it over. You know, let’s keep this inside the room. She wouldn’t hear of it. Was going to file all kinds of official charges. So the captain had to convince Dawgie to take early retirement.” Very paused to gulp down some water. “All of which is to say he had a grudge against black female officers. Especially young, good-looking ones-which I’m told the resident trooper is. Damned shame, really. Dawgie was in a position to provide her with some valuable intel. If he’d established a better rapport with her he might still be alive.”
“What sort of valuable intel?”
Very yanked a fat manila file folder out of his knapsack and set it down on Mitch’s coffee table. “You ever hear of the Seven Sisters?”
“Sure. There’s Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith…”
“Not those Seven Sisters. I’m talking about the crime family.”
Mitch shook his head. “No, I can’t say I have.”
“Again, I’m not surprised. The Seven Sisters are one of the great untold stories in the annals of twentieth century crime.” Very flopped down on Mitch’s love seat, then jumped right back up again, pacing, pacing. “Dude, I am talking about a vast, highly sophisticated Jewish crime empire that dates back to New York’s Lower East Side in the early 1900s. According to the birth records there were seven Kudlach girls-Eva, Sonia, Esther, Thelma, Fanny, Bea and Helen. All of them the daughters of Moses and Sarah Kudlach. Moses was a Russian immigrant who sold stuff off a pushcart on Orchard Street. Anything he could get his hands on. The old lady, Sarah, was descended from a long line of Roumanian street gonifs. Jewish gypsies, really. Her girls started learning the family trade as soon as they were old enough to walk. By the time they were six years old, each of them was fanned out across the city all day long, scamming people for money, picking their pockets, snatching their purses, watches, jewelry. Then they’d bring everything home for Mom and Pop to unload. A nice, tight, one-family crime ring. All of it small stuff. But they flourished. Especially after Sarah married each girl off. She chose their husbands carefully. Each one was a neighborhood guy with a legit trade-a tailor, watchmaker, pawnbroker, kosher butcher, auto mechanic, truck driver. Their businesses formed a network for moving stolen merchandise of greater and greater value. By the twenties the family had ownership stakes in high-end dress shops, jewelry stores, restaurants, parking garages. They’d also expanded into bookmaking and loan sharking. No bootlegging or drugs or prostitution. They concentrated on what they knew. They were careful. And smart. And, with one notable exception, they never came to the attention of the law. Just kept growing from one generation to the next, expanding their empire out of New York into Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. You wouldn’t believe the family tree, dude. Dawgie’s got it here in his file somewhere.”
“Lieutenant, are you telling me they still exist?”
“A lot of the third and fourth generation are totally legit-doctors and lawyers, college professors. Some operate businesses that were financed by criminal activity but are now totally clean. But, yeah, quite a few of them are still living the life. It’s in their blood.”
“And you’re telling me all of this because…?”
“You’re tight with Beth Breslauer-or so it appears from the last roll Dawgie FedExed me. Here, I just got these yesterday…” Very opened the file and handed Mitch a batch of eight-by-ten color photos.
Mitch flipped through them. They were surveillance shots of Beth and him drinking smoothies together at The Works on Friday afternoon. Buying fish. Chatting in the parking lot. Her kissing him good-bye. “I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “Augie was following me?”
“Following her. How well do you know the lady?”
“We used to be neighbors in Stuyvesant Town. I was friends with her son Kenny.”
“That would be Kenny Lapidus,” Very said, nodding, nodding. “He’s shagging your yoga teacher, Kimberly Farrell, whose parents live in the same building as Beth Breslauer-which so happens to be where Dawgie lived, too.”
“Welcome to small town life, Lieutenant. But why on earth was Augie following Beth?”
“Because Beth Breslauer’s great-grandmother was Esther Kudlach, one of the original Seven Sisters. Esther’s married name became Pincus. Beth’s grandfather, Saul Pincus, was a major New York racketeer in the thirties. The only high-profile one of the bunch. Movie-star handsome. A real tabloid star-right up until the night he was gunned down eating a bowl of matzoh ball soup in Lindy’s. Saul liked to live large. A thirteen-room apartment on Park Avenue for the wife and kids. And a penthouse on Central Park West for his mistress-a hot little bad girl who danced in the Billy Rose Aquacade. Her name was Bertha Puzewski. You know her as Bertha Peck.”
So that explained it, Mitch reflected. Beth landed her condo in the Captain Chadwick House because Bertha Peck had been her grandfather’s girlfriend. If any of this tale was actually true, that is. Big if.
“A freakin’ gold mine,” Very went on. “That’s what Dawgie called the place. He had Dex Farrell, the world- class Wall Street swindler, in one unit. He had Saul Pincus’ granddaughter living across the hall from Farrell. And Saul’s old girlfriend parked upstairs, passing herself off as WASP royalty.” Very sat back down in front of Augie’s file, leafing through it. “Yeah, here it is-Saul and his wife, Minnie, had two boys, Sam and Nathan. Sam was Beth’s father. He made his living as a bookie. Same as her first husband, Sy Lapidus.”
“You mean Kenny’s dad? No, you’ve got that wrong. Sy’s an accountant, albeit a louse. He deserted them when Kenny and I were kids. Moved out west.”
“He didn’t desert them, dude. He was serving a nickel at the Fishkill Correctional Facility. Didn’t move out to California until years later.”
