New York, New York

Mosha Gottlieb walked around the painting looking from different angles.  Latisha Simone shifted from one foot to the other.  “Latisha, I like it.  Be patient with me.”

            “I wasn’t, I mean…”

            Mosha didn’t understand art, she just knew she had to have some.  When you are rich, you support the arts.  You buy things you will never understand or relate to because your guests do and they are awed by your amazing insights and tastes. 

            “I don’t want it here in the city.  It won’t fit in the apartment.  I was thinking more like the Fire Island place.  The colors are wrong, though.”  She hesitated and put the painting in a darker corner and stood looking at it eyeing Latisha biting her lower lip.  “You’re maturing.  Your work that is.  You I don’t know you well enough yet.”  She paused again.  “You know, that living room hasn’t been painted in years.  Why don’t you live out there this winter and take care of the place for me, paint the living room and maybe that horrid kitchen. That would take care of your rent.  But, you know, it just gets so dreadful out there in January and February.”

            “I’ve known dreadful.  Dreadful like you’ve never seen.”

            “Oh, I don’t know, that fucker Hitler did a number on my head.”  Latish blushed.  “I’m sorry, did I embarrass you?  I have the mouth of a longshoreman.  Always did.”

            “No, I mean how could you have known Hitler.”

            Mosha stared at her over her glasses.  “We’re not connecting here dear.  I am a Jew and I was born in Germany just before the war.  Both my parents were killed in camps and I got out because I didn’t look Jewish with my blonde curly hair.  I was seven when I made it to Switzerland and I was sent to Ohio.  The war ended when I was ten.  All I knew when I was a child was terror and poverty.  That’s what I mean about that fucker Hitler.”

            Latisha looked at the light gray streaks in otherwise shiny blonde hair set against a dark handsome face.  Mosha was not pretty or petite.  Handsome.  Mosha touched her on the shoulder.  “My husband built an art studio out there and never used it.  It’s full of junk.  Call the Goodwill or something and have them haul it away and use the studio. Mosha looked back at the painting.  “How much do you want for it?”

            Mosha’s cell phone screamed before Latisha could answer.  “Yes…Harold, what a darling.  Thanks for returning my call.”  Mosha turned away to talk.  Two thousand?  No, keep it under that, I get the place at Fire Island.  Fifteen hundred.

            Mosha glanced back and roller her eyes.  “Harold, I have a huge favor to ask you.  It’s something my family needs.  I need to find someone.  In Europe.”  She paused.  “What am I doing right now?  Buying some art. I can meet at two…Montrachet?  Fine, Harold, I’ll look for you there at two.”  She flapped the phone shut.  “I’ll give you three thousand and not a penny more.”

            “Uhm, yes, okay.  Fine.  When do you want me to start on the living room?”

            “Move out there any time you like.  I know you’re behind in your rent because I know your landlord, so get your things together.  Here’s a set of keys. You remember how to get there, right?” Latisha nodded.

The taxi slammed to a stop, the driver pointing at the meter and grunting.  Mosha paid the exact fare, slammed the door and stepped lively toward the door.  The driver yelled behind the closed door and drove away.  The door was held open and she thanked the young man with a silver dollar.  She asked for Harold Brown and he pointed to a spot deep inside, well away from the front door or the kitchen.  An extra dry martini waited for her.

            “Harold, you are such a dying breed. There are no more gentlemen anywhere.  I mean it Harold.”  She sipped hard on the Martini.  “We all might as well just start pissing in the street; I think it’s come to that.”  Harold nodded with the measured slowness a man of his station could afford.  Mosha knew better.  When Harold needed to compete and impress, he was ruthless, capable of scaring male barracudas out of the water.  Now white haired and portly, he worked behind the scenes using his many friends and enemies to do in ten minutes what used to take him months.

            “Mosha, you are ravishing as usual.”  He meant it.  She was sixty two and looked forty three.

            “Thank you Harold.  Most people who say that want money, but since you have hundreds times more than I do, I’m taking it as a sincere compliment.  What’s good here and not fattening.”

            “Everything is good and I don’t worry about fat.  The only women who want me anymore are looney bimbos with credit problems.”

            “Harold, shame on you.”  Mosha cracked a laugh.

            “Now, my dear, what can I do for you?”

            “I need to find some punk kid somewhere in Europe.  Did a sex number on my cousin’s niece.  The rest of the family is butt poor and the police aren’t doing anything about it.”

            “I see.”   She knew Harold would listen.  Conservative, powerful, rich and Catholic.  A member of Opus Dei, doing good works for God that met with his view of the religious/political that would most ideally serve to deliver maximum number of souls to God.  “I have a man in mind.”

            “He meets with your approval?”

            “He’s talented and useful.  He does what he gets paid for. Usually a man with his, uhm, affiliations does not work for me.  But he has proven himself faithful to his contracts and I can over look many things if a man does his job.”  Harold sipped his scotch.   “How are you involved in it?”

            “Like I said, Harold, my cousin’s kid.  She hasn’t been able to go to school, eat, anything.  It’s just awful.  I usually have nothing to do with those West Coast people, they always want money.  I went out there for a reunion last summer and that kid is a mess.  I paid for a psychologist and he said the best thing for her is to see the kid who did this to come to some justice.  Now, me, I survived the holocaust and I won’t mention the unspeakable horror I saw being inflicted on women. I survived.  But, the thing is, she’s fragile and this thing just tipped her over the edge.  I want to find the kid and maybe help her out a little.”

            Harold regretted not marrying Mosha.  He proposed, but his family forbade him and that was when a family could get away with it.  A Catholic couldn’t marry a Jew back then.  His own marriage to the approved woman lasted twenty years, until their one son was in college, and true to his Catholicism, he never remarried, living alone during the most productive years of his life. 

            “Do you want justice on the boy?”

            “Harold, of course, otherwise I’d just give them some more money and tell them to shut up.”

            “What do you know about the boy?”

            “Not much.  I talked to a detective, uhm last name Philips.  City police, Mercer Island.  There’s some politics.  Seems the boy’s father is on his way up in this dot bomb thing and they’re about ready to go public.  Locals, especially in the mayor’s and prosecutor’s offices have stock.  Golfing buddies.  Philips was told to drop the case and let the kid live in Europe with an expense account.  He was flat told the city wasn’t going to spend a dime chasing the kid down.”

            Harold was getting interested.  “Where is the boy?”

            “If I knew I’d be sitting outside his door with a baseball bat.” Harold smiled.  He often wondered what their children would have been like.  Aggressive, competitive, competent; all the things that would help them survive.  Life was little more than survival for Harold, and Mosha had the instinct.  His own son wasted every penny he had been given and Harold just cut him off, telling him to get a job.  His ex-wife made the mistake of marrying a lush and Harold was no longer obligated to pay her anything for any reason and in spite of her futile attempts to force him in court, he succeeded every time.  Now there was only Mother Church and the resources he had acquired over the years for the sole purpose of serving her.  Mosha’s project would be nothing more than an amusing diversion.

            “So, who is this man.”

            “He goes by the name of Nick.  No last name.  Just Nick.  Lives in Seattle.”

            “What a dreary city.  Have you spent much time there?  Rains all the time.  Our family reunion in August was spent inside an apartment complex club house and the kids just endured  the rain for a chance to go swimming.”

            “I’ll call him.  I am assuming its okay to give him your telephone number.”

            “Oh, yes, nobody is going to harass me, not with you around.”  Harold smiled.

            “How did that thing with your uncle’s money ever turn out?”

            “Oh, yes, Harold.  Thank you for asking.  I got the money from the bank when I proved his death certificate was legitimate and the money had been moved to a private account in the bank.  The Swiss were very embarrassed.  Your help on that went well.  I donated the money.”

            “Oh, how lovely. “  Harold didn’t ask.  He knew better; he would not like the cause Mosha had chosen to support.  He waited; she would tell him anyway.

            “I donated the money to a school project here in New York.  It educates sixth and seventh graders on what really happened in the holocaust.  And not just to the Jews.  The program teaches them what happened to the homosexuals, the ones with the pink triangles.  The men who cleaned up the shit buckets for the Jews.  Hitler hated the Jews and he used the homosexuals to clean up the shit buckets; that’s what he thought of them.  So I educate the children about that.”  People at other tables overheard and moved their chairs a bit further away.  Harold smiled and  sipped his scotch, staring at her, then looked away.  He picked at his salad.  Mosha didn’t like this look; that look of deep disapproval where he would say nothing.

“Did I tell you I was paying for lunch, Harold?”