The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared Read online

  THE DAY MIRIAM HIRSCH DISAPPEARED was the first short story I wrote. My son had been given a book called “THE JEWS OF CHICAGO” for a Bar Mitzvah present, and when I thumbed through the photographs, they resonated—especially the ones taken in Lawndale side during the ‘30s, a prosperous Jewish community on Chicago’s near west. Little did I know then that the story I wrote about those photos would become the “prequel” to my Ellie Foreman series. Or that the Ellie Foreman series would be the prequel to the Georgia Davis series. The following story, which won the Bouchercon short story contest in 1999, was first published in the Bouchercon Program book. It was later published in ANTHOLOGY TODAY, where it also won a contest, and in the now defunct FUTURES MAGAZINE. You can also find on audio at www.sniplits.com.

  THE DAY MIRIAM HIRSCH DISAPPEARED

  The day Miriam Hirsch disappeared was so hot you could almost see the sidewalk blister and sweat. It was summer, 1938, and I’d been hanging around with Barney Teitelman in Lawndale, the Jewish neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. Barney’s parents owned a restaurant and rooming house near Roosevelt and Kedzie. Miriam rented a room on the third floor. She was a looker, as my father would say, although if he knew his only son was spending that much time with Barney he’d have kittens.

  You see, we lived in Hyde Park, a few miles and a universe away from Lawndale. We were German Jews; the Teitelmans weren’t. They were from Russia, or Lithuania, or one of those other countries with “ia” at the end of them, and what separated us wasn’t just the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We were cultured, assimilated. They were rabble. We had come over before the Civil War; they poured in at the end of the last century. We were merchants, doctors, lawyers. They worked in factories, sweat shops, and, well, restaurants. In fact, when my father was being especially snooty, he’d ask which delicatessen their family owned. I, of course, disagreed with my parents. The Teitelmans talked louder and laughed more, and Mrs. T made a hell of a Shabbos brisket.

  Barney and I had met by accident the previous May. We were waiting for the bus outside the College of Jewish Studies near the Loop, both of us in bowties and yarmulkes. My parents had sent me there to “enrich” my Jewish heritage. I guess Barney’s did too. We stared warily at each other for a few minutes, like dogs sniffing each other out. Then I offered him a piece of Bazooka. He took it. We were best friends.

  He only came to my house once. The frosty reception my mother gave him, after he told her where he lived, was enough. There wasn’t much action in Hyde Park anyway. We tried to sucker the Weinstein girls into a game of strip poker behind the rocks at the Fifty-Seventh Street beach, but they gave us the brush off. We didn’t care. They were ugly. By June I was taking the Cottage Grove street-car to Roosevelt and transferring west to Lawndale as often as possible.

  The first time I saw Miriam, Barney and I were wolfing down brisket sandwiches in the restaurant; I could feel gravy dribbling past my chin. I heard a rustle, turned around. She was walking past our table. No, more like gliding. Dressed in a pearly gown that swept to her feet, she was perfectly proportioned, with a waist so tiny that my hands ached to encircle it, and such a generously endowed bosom that my hands ached—well, you get the idea.

  Her hair was gold, her lips red, and she had the most enormous gray eyes I’d ever seen. A guy could lose his way in them. Especially a fifteen year old. My mouth dropped to my chin; gravy stained my shirt. She was even carrying a parasol. I was in love.

  There weren’t many people in the restaurant that day, but you could feel the collective hush as she passed through. It was as if her presence had struck us dumb, and we were compelled to stare. As her skirt brushed our table, she cast a dazzling smile on Barney. He turned crimson. Then she was gone. The voltage in the air ebbed, and I heard the clink of silverware as people started to live, breathe, and eat again.

  “So, who the hell was that?” I said, in my best tough guy tone.

  Barney looked me over, knew I was bluffing. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  I leaned across the table and grabbed Barney’s collar. “You don’t tell me, Barney Teitelman, I’ll tell your parents what you were trying to do to Dina Preis behind the shul last Saturday.”

  “You wouldn’t.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  I clutched his shirt tighter. “You got five seconds.”

  Barney’s eyes narrowed. I guess he figured he’d better give me something. “All’s I’ll say is she’s not for the likes of you, Jake Forman.”

  I dropped my hold on Barney’s neck and jumped up from the table. “Mrs. T? I have something to tell you.” I headed toward the kitchen.

  “All right already,” Barney whined. “Don’t go up the wall. She’s Miriam Hirsch. She’s an actress with the Yiddish theater.”

  “When did she show up?”

  “Couple days ago.”

  Most of the actresses at the Yiddish theater were from Eastern Europe, but Hirsch was a German name. She and I had something in common already. Then I chastised myself for doing the same thing as my parents.

  “I’m gonna be an actor,” I said.

  Barney balled his napkin up and threw it at me.

  ***

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one Miriam impressed. The next afternoon, as we were hanging out the window trying to blow cigarette smoke into the street instead of the Teitelman’s living room, Miriam came out the front door. Sun-baked heat hung in the air like a blanket, and she opened her parasol to protect her head. Half-way up, it got stuck. I was about to run down and offer my assistance when Skull cut in front of her.

  Ben Skulnick, or Skull, as we called him, hung out at Davy Miller’s gym and pool hall. The Miller brothers were the closest thing Lawndale had to gangsters. They’d moved over from Maxwell Street a few years earlier and built a restaurant and gambling casino next to the gym. Covering all the bases, I guess. Except the type of people who frequented the place weren’t exactly high society.

  Not that the Miller Boys didn’t have their fans. It was Davy Miller’s gang who fought the Uptown goyim in the twenties so that Jews could use Clarendon Beach, and it was his gang who kept all the Yeshivah-buchers, religious students, safe from the Irish street gangs. The scuttlebutt these days was they were going after Nazi sympathizers on the north side. Whatever the truth, Davy Miller and his crew were proof that Jewish boys weren’t sissies, a myth we were all eager to dispel.

  “Look at that, Barney,” I said, my eyes riveted on the scene below us.

  “I see.”

  Tall and dark, Skull cut a dashing figure. He was probably running numbers, greasing palms, and taking cuts off the locals in the area, but with his well-trimmed whiskers, neatly pressed shirt, and Italian suit, he looked like a successful businessman, not a thug. He wore a hat too, a snap-brimmed Fedora, and moved with a sinewy grace, like a cat stalking its prey. No one knew where he came from.

  “He’s gonna make a play for her.” I wasn’t sure if I was devastated or curious.

  “Do you blame him?”

  We watched as he struggled with Miriam’s parasol, opened it, and presented it back to her with a flourish. Before she disappeared underneath its shade, I saw the smile she gave him. And the lazy, appraising smile he gave back.

  “You see that, Jake?”

  I swallowed.

  “Give it up, pal. You’re way out of your league.”

  By the following week, Skull was dropping by the restaurant every afternoon. He’d order a glass of iced tea which he tipped plenty for, but never drank. Sometimes he’d grab a game of gin rummy in the back room, but mostly he checked his watch every few minutes. Around two, he’d make sure to bump into Miriam and walk her to rehearsal. And
back home again later.

  One evening he walked her all the way up to the third floor. That was the last we saw of them all night. Of course, Barney and I snuck up to the third floor landing, but all we heard were strains of “Don’t Be That Way” wafting down the hall from her radio. Benny Goodman. Barney dragged me back downstairs.

  But I hadn’t lost all hope. When Miriam’s show opened, we started to hang around the stage door of Douglas Park Auditorium to catch a glimpse of her. Skull did too. When she came out, sometimes with her stage make-up still on, he would offer her his arm and they’d saunter down the street together. Sometimes they stopped for ice-cream or a sandwich at Carl’s Deli. On Sundays, they headed over to the roof of the Jewish People’s Institute to dance. Even at a distance, you could feel the sparks fly between them. When they smiled at each other or danced the two step, it broke my heart. I was jealous. I was in love—with both of them. They were the epitome of glamour. They were swell. With bells on.

  One night, though, was different.

  “No, Skull, I won’t do it.” Miriam stared straight ahead as they stepped through the stage door. “Stop asking me.”

  There was a gleam in Skull’s eye. “Oh come on, baby, it’s only for a little while.”

  “No.” Miriam walked three steps ahead of him.

  “But you’re the only one who can. You speak their language.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He stopped short. “How can you say that?”

  “You have some chutzpah. How can you ask me to—well, to do something like that?” She whipped around to face him, her eyes flashing. Barney and I flattened ourselves against a building.

  Skull backed off. His voice grew as soft as cotton. Wheedling. “You love me, don’t you baby?”

  She looked at him. She kept her mouth shut, but her eyes, as luminous as waves on the moonlit lake, said it all.

  Skull moved in for the kill. He pushed a lock of hair off her forehead. “All I need is a little information. Then you can stop. Please. Do it for me.” He paused. “For us.”

  Miriam pursed her lips, and I thought she was going to cry. Then, she sagged against Skull, as if he had somehow managed to squeeze all the air out of her.

  Skull grinned and pulled her close, planted a victory kiss on her lips. “That’s my baby.”

  She buried her head in his shoulder. We didn’t hear her reply.

  ***

  Whatever Miriam agreed to that night must not have lasted long, because we never saw them together again. Skull didn’t come around to Teitelmans any more, and he didn’t show up at the auditorium. Miriam came and went by herself. Occasionally, she hailed a cab and never came home at all. It was strange, and I was confused and angry. What had Skull asked her to do? It had to be something so evil that her only recourse was to break up with him.

  A week later, on an afternoon so humid that nothing felt dry, Barney and I lugged groceries past the banks on the corner. Across the street we spotted Skull getting his shoes shined. He was reading a newspaper and scowling. When he saw us he tipped his hat. Barney and I glanced at each other. Did he really mean us?

  As if to answer our question, he called over to us. “Hey, Teitelman.”

  Barney nodded tentatively.

  Skull dropped a buck in the shoeshine guy’s box, overtipping as usual, and crossed the street.

  “You guys been following me for a while, haven’t you?”

  I swallowed. Here it comes. Our first real conversation, and he’s gonna tell us to butt out.

  “I’m glad I run into youse. I’ve been meaning to call. Are youse—young gentlemen interested in a business proposition?”

  My jaw dropped to my chest.

  He squinted at us. “My business in other parts of the city has picked up recently and requires my—my presence there. But I still need some —whadd’ya call it—some representation here. You guys interested?” He yanked his thumb toward our bags of groceries. “Pays better than that.”

  I looked at Barney, then at Skull, trying to mask my excitement with a shrug. It didn’t work. A soft yelp escaped my mouth.

  “Good. Come around to Miller’s at three.” Skull turned on his heel, dropping the paper in the trash on the corner. I glanced at the headline—something about hooligans throwing rocks at a group of German-American Bund members on the north side.

  The long and the short of it was that Skull wanted us to do errands for him in the neighborhood. Nothing major, just running messages to Zookie the Bookie and picking up envelopes from some of the shops. At first he came with us to show us the ropes. Then we were on our own.

  It was a fair trade off. We didn’t have Miriam, but we did have Skull. In some ways, it was better. We were important. Even the guys in the pool hall nodded to us after a while. And we were making great money. Almost ten bucks a day. Barney and I made up new names for each other. I was Jake the Snake; he was Barney Bow-Tie.

  On the days Skull was with us, I watched him operate. He was smooth. He’d flash one of his lazy smiles, and even the people he was bilking smiled back. Especially the ladies. The only time he lost his cool was the afternoon we passed Miriam. She was crossing the street to catch a cab. Their eyes met, and I thought I saw a look of infinite sadness, passion, and what-might-have-been pass between them. How could it be over, with looks like that?

  ***

  I should have known it wouldn’t last. One morning in late July my mother and father woke me up. Poised for attack, they stood at the foot of my bed.

  “Jacob, you have some explaining to do.” My mother’s eyes were cold steel.

  I tried to play dumb. “What’s that, Ma?” I yawned. Slowly.

  “Just exactly what have you been doing in Lawndale?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jacob, don’t try to weasel your way out of this one.” My father glared. “Henry Solomon saw you outside Davy Miller’s the other day. How long have you been consorting with gangsters?”

  “Gangsters? What gangsters?”

  My father cut me off. “You want to play it that way? Fine. You’re forbidden to go there anymore.”

  “But Barney’s my best friend.”

  “He’s a bad influence. They all are.” My father wheeled around as if there was nothing more to say.

  “But I’ve got a job. I’m making good money.”

  “Good money?” My father whipped back around. His face was purple. “That kind of money you don’t need. You want a job, you work in Kahn’s bakery. It was good enough for me—it’ll do for you.”

  I wanted to ask him why he figured Henry Solomon, one of our most respectable Hyde Park neighbors, was over in Lawndale, but somehow I didn’t think the time was right.

  ***

  If the boredom didn’t get me, the pretense did. Life in Hyde Park was intolerable. And hot. Not even a wisp of a breeze fluttered through the curtains of our wide-open windows. About a week later, it got so bad even my parents took off for the Michigan shore. I pled a toothache. As soon as they left, not without suspicious glances at the icepack clamped to my cheek, I hopped the street-car over to Lawndale. Mrs. Teitelman was washing the floor of the restaurant.

  “Where have you been, Jake? Barney’s at a concert in Douglas Park. You just missed him.”

  “I’ll wait.” I looked around. The place was empty. I snuck a glance at the door leading to the stairs.

  “How are things?”

  Mrs. Teitelman followed my gaze. She shrugged, a grim set to her mouth.

  “Did Skull come back?”

  Another shrug.

  I was just breaking out a bottle of seltzer when the door to the stairs opened, and a man crossed the restaurant. He had blond whiskers, a round red face, and an odd twitch in one eye. He didn’t look Jewish. He hurried across the room, staring straight ahead, as if he knew he didn’t belong and wanted to get out fast.

  A few minutes later, Miriam skipped down the steps, her smile as bright as a box of new Shabbos candles. I froze. Wh
o was this impostor? Where was Skull? I felt betrayed. She waved at me before gliding out the door.

  Barney got back from the park around four.

  “What’s been going on around here?” I asked

  “I don’t know.” He hung his head as if he were responsible for the turn of events.

  “Didn’t they get back together?”

  “Nope. He hasn’t been here at all. In fact—”

  “What?” I was starting to feel panicky.

  “I dunno, Jake. Sometimes she doesn’t come home at night. And then one time, her eyes were all red rimmed like she’d been crying, and her dress was ripped. She didn’t even have her key. My father had to let her in.”

  “Jesus, Barney.”

  He nodded. “And when she’s here, she’s ‘entertaining’ in her room. But it isn’t Skull.”

  “The guy I saw earlier?”

  “Yeah. I think he’s goyim. Mother’s ready to kick her out.”

  I turned to Mrs. T in desperation. “You can’t do that. Where will she go?”

  Mrs. T just looked at me. “Jacob, there are some things you’re still too young to understand.”

  That afternoon we ran down to the pool hall and caught up with Skull at Miller’s. We were sweating like pigs, but he was cool and dapper.

  “Where ya bin, Snake?” He grinned.

  “I was grounded, Skull. My parents.” I rolled my eyes.

  He looked at me speculatively. “Your parents must be real Nervous Nellies.”

  “They’re German,” I admitted.

  “So are Miriam’s,” Skull said. “Crabbers. Stiff as sandpaper.”

  I took that as an opening and screwed up my courage. “How is Miriam these days?”

  He ignored my question. “You know, it’s a damn shame about you Yeccas.” That was slang for German Jews. “One of the best guys I ever heard of was Arnold Rothstein. Practically started the Mafia. His family was German, but he was tops. You know what he did?”

  I shook my head.

  “Hustled the most famous pool shark in the country. Beat his tuckus off. And he hardly even played pool.”