The Last Paradise Read online

  “I was only trying to separate them,” Jack said in his defense. “I wasn’t the one who pushed him. In fact, it was you who ignored Prohibition and turned up at the party with barrels of punch.”

  Gabriel snorted. He adjusted his jacket and took a long pull on his cigar. Then he went to his desk, opened a drawer, took out two tickets, and held them out to Jack. “Here. They’re for the new show at the Radio City Music Hall. Have a great time. It’s all I can do for you.”

  If Jack didn’t throw the tickets in his uncle’s face at that moment, it was only because his powerlessness was stronger than his anger. He took the tickets, said good-bye, and left the office in despair. He was about to take the elevator, when his uncle’s accountant called to him.

  “Jack. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help overhearing.” He looked down, unable to hold Jack’s gaze.

  “Don’t worry, Benjamin. It was my fault, really. It was absurd to think that my uncle—”

  “He’s a very strict man. He works day and night, and he has suffered a great deal with his son,” he said in an attempt to excuse Gabriel. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “I know. Well, thanks anyway. It’s been great to see you again. Are you all well?”

  “Yes, we’re all well. All—”

  “I’m really pleased to hear that. Give my regards to your wife and children.”

  “Jack, you know how fond we all were of your father . . .”

  “Yeah. Everyone used to be fond of him. Anyway, good-bye, Ben. Take care.”

  He hugged him.

  “You, too, son.”

  Back on the street, Jack sat on the steps leading up to the complex. He couldn’t go home empty-handed. While he tried to think of something, he fiddled with the tickets that his uncle had given him for Radio City Music Hall, the magnificent theater that everybody was talking about and that had yet to open. He thought they were neat. They announced the premiere of a show called “the Rockettes,” with Caroline Andrews as the diva, and a performance by the Flying Wallendas circus act. Seeing on the reverse that the theater was located just behind Rockefeller Center, he headed there to find out what the tickets cost and inquire whether it would be possible to return them for a refund.

  As he reached the box office, he had to pinch himself when he saw that each ticket was worth nine dollars, an outrageous sum compared to the quarter that it cost to go to the pictures, or the dollar twenty-five to watch a baseball game. The eighteen dollars from his two tickets would be enough for a month’s rent with some left over. The problem was they did not accept returns.

  He decided he wouldn’t give up so easily. He remembered how, in Detroit, he had sometimes bought tickets for Tigers’ games at Navin Field from touts—for double the normal price. If he could find the right buyer, he could make a tidy sum.

  The opportunity presented itself when, after he had hung around outside the box office for several hours, a Duesenberg twice the length of a normal car parked up under the Radio City Music Hall’s impressive neon signs, and a well-dressed couple stepped onto the sidewalk. The man must have been about forty years old, with slicked-back hair and a thin mustache, fashionably trimmed. He was accompanied by a stunning young woman, whom he was obviously trying to impress. He went straight to the box office and argued for a few moments with the clerk, before turning to consult with his girlfriend. The young woman made a face when she learned that the best seats were taken. The box office clerk could only offer them seats on the third balcony. The man had turned up his nose as if he had just been offered a piece of garbage.

  Jack waited for the couple to retreat from the theater. Right when they were about to climb back into their car, he rushed up to offer them his tickets. At first, the wealthy man looked at him with scorn, but then he considered Jack’s proposal. He took the tickets and examined them more closely.

  “These wouldn’t be fakes, now, would they?”

  Jack’s only response was to wave them at the box office clerk, who confirmed their authenticity.

  “Sir, I can assure you that, had my wife not been taken ill, nothing in the world would’ve stopped us seeing this show, on the opening night,” he improvised.

  “And you say you’re selling them for thirty dollars?” the man tried to barter.

  “The cream of New York will be attending. You and the young lady will be shoulder to shoulder with Jean Harlow, Douglas Fairbanks, Kid Chocolate . . . As you already know, the best seats are sold out. But if you can’t afford thirty dollars, that’s understandable.”

  “Douglas Fairbanks?” the young woman cut in, wide-eyed. “Oh, please, darling! Buy them! Please say yes!”

  The man stoically withstood the girl’s arm-twisting, but he eventually shook his head in resignation. He counted out the bills and handed them to Jack.

  “You’re sure Douglas will be here?” he grumbled.

  “Absolutely,” lied Jack as he said farewell with his best smile.

  On the way to Brooklyn, he rued having argued with his father. Though the anger was always short-lived, it wasn’t the first time that, in a fit of rage, Solomon had ordered him out of the apartment. But at least now his father would have cause to be happy. Despite his father’s drinking problem, Jack was convinced that sooner or later everything would return to normal, and the best way for that to happen was to start paying some of the rent they owed Kowalski. Then he would find a job doing whatever he had to and find a way to make Solomon give up the booze. They would get through it together, he and his father. He was certain of it.

  By the time he reached South Second Street, it was almost night. People who still had somewhere to live would be in their homes as it was Christmas Eve, which was why he was surprised to find a crowd gathered outside his father’s apartment block. Wanting to know what had happened, he picked up his pace. As he approached, he saw women sobbing and wailing. One of them gave him a look filled with pity. His pulse quickened.

  He made his way through the crowd until he reached a ring of men busy trying to resuscitate a bloody body. Jack assumed someone had been hit by a car, but a number of people were pointing up at an open window on his father’s building. Jack’s heart stopped. He tried to shoulder his way through, until finally one of the men tending to the unfortunate person moved away to call for help, revealing a devastating sight.

  Flat on the road’s surface, atop a spreading pool of blood, lay the lifeless body of Solomon Beilis, clutching his beloved menorah.

  3

  The cemetery on Bay Parkway was the final stop for Brooklyn’s destitute—a landscape of blackened gravestones permeated by misery, tears, and desolation. Jack hadn’t set foot there since his mother’s death. Now, wearing a borrowed black tie, he stumbled along in the rain with the other pallbearers under the weight of a cheap pine coffin, its edge digging hard into his shoulder.

  As he walked, he suffered the irritating silence of the handful of mourners who had attended the burial, imagining their eyes fixed on his back. He was convinced they all blamed him for his father’s suicide. When they stopped in front of the grave, Jack once again regretted arguing with him, though he was certain that his words had not caused the tragedy. He knew exactly whom to blame. At the vigil, a neighbor from the same landing had sworn that she had heard Kowalski and his goons hammering on Solomon’s door the night of his death. They had banged on the door viciously, again and again, but Solomon hadn’t opened. Instead, he had thrown himself from the window. The woman wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t been the first and he wouldn’t be the last to take his own life during those desperate times.

  Jack kept his emotions in check as the grave swallowed what remained of his father. Though there were no prayers because the Law of Moses forbade them for suicides, he said a few words of his own. Then he cast the first shovelful of earth. When the gravediggers finished their task, Jack laid a stone on his father’s grave. Tears escaped his eyes as he said good-bye.

  On the way out of the cemetery, Jack received condolences f
rom Benjamin, whom he had last seen the day before at Rockefeller Center. The man lowered his head when he tried to justify his boss’s absence, claiming some unavoidable commitment. Jack didn’t believe him. He was certain that his uncle Gabriel was the kind of person who could cancel a meeting with the company president, spit in the face of his partners, and still make more money than he had before. With tear-filled eyes, the accountant said how sorry he was that he’d been unable to help Jack’s father.

  “He was stubborn . . . You know what he was like,” Benjamin said.

  Jack nodded. Solomon had always been stubborn.

  The funeral-goers gradually filed out until Jack was left alone. He stood quietly for a while, letting the rain soak him, until someone approached. Jack looked at him in silence. It was Walter, his spectacles mended with surgical tape. Jack felt ashamed. Yet his old friend spoke to him as if nothing had happened, resting an arm on his shoulder.

  “Come on, Jack. Let’s get you home.”

  Jack wondered what home he meant.

  The last person he imagined he’d find waiting at the entrance to his building that day was Lukas Kowalski. The man was sheltering himself from the rain in silence on the steps leading into the hallway, flanked by two of his thugs. As soon as Jack saw him, a surge of anger filled his chest.

  “You son of a bitch. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Hello, kid.” There was malice in Kowalski’s voice. He didn’t even look at the young man as he took a puff on his cigar. “I wanted to get into my apartment . . . but you have the key.”

  Walter managed to stop Jack just as he went to leap on Kowalski, who continued to smoke undeterred. He merely gave the younger man a condescending smile, as if dealing with a small child.

  “Look, kid. It’s cold and this place stinks, so I advise you to—”

  Jack didn’t let him finish. He shook Walter off, took out the money he’d earned from the sale of the theater tickets, and threw it in Kowalski’s face.

  The landlord raised his eyebrows as he inspected the bills that had fallen at his feet. Without deigning to pick them up, he turned to Jack.

  “Thirty dollars? What do you expect me to do with that, kid? Buy myself a hat?”

  “I’ll have the rest next week,” Jack replied. “Now, get out of here before I kill you.”

  Kowalski sat in silence, as if considering the offer. Finally, he struggled to his feet.

  “Next week . . . next week . . . It’s always the same old story! And then it’s the next, and then the one after, and then, surprise surprise, you suddenly disappear and make a fool of me.” He came down the steps until his face was almost touching Jack’s. “Tell me something, boy, do you think I look like a fool?”

  Jack stepped back to get away from the stench of stale sweat the landlord gave off.

  “Look, Kowalski, I don’t want any trouble. Take the money and come back tomorrow. If I haven’t got what I owe you by then, I’ll pack up my things and—”

  “I don’t think you’ve understood me, kid. I ain’t here for spare change. I’ve come to take what belongs to me . . . as well as all your belongings.”

  “Damn you, Kowalski! I said I’ll—”

  The landlord held his hands to his head.

  “Why is it you Jews never do what you’re told?” he said, raising his voice. “Who knows what might happen tomorrow?” He took a long puff on his cigar, savoring it. “Why don’t you just ask your pop?”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Jack threw himself on Kowalski again, but before he could reach him, the nearest goon stepped in and knocked him down. Walter went to help his friend, but the second thug stopped him dead with a knee to the stomach.

  The two young men writhed on the ground.

  “The key!” Kowalski demanded.

  Jack was trying to get up when a kick to the ribs sent him flying against the handrail on the steps. Walter, immobilized by pain, looked on helplessly.

  “Leave him alone, you bastards!” he bawled.

  The two men turned on Walter and kicked him mercilessly. Jack, bent over the handrail, took the chance to grab a loose metal bar and smash it against the shin of his nearest assailant. The man howled and collapsed on the steps, his leg shattered. Seeing this, the thug kicking Walter left him and turned his attention to Jack. Before he could pounce, Jack moved away just enough to be able to drive the iron bar into the goon’s belly. Then he ran to help Walter.

  “Watch out!” his friend warned him.

  Jack turned in horror to find that the hood he’d just struck was pulling out a revolver. He leapt on him and grabbed his arm before he could take aim. The two men struggled, the revolver dancing in the air until, suddenly, a gunshot rang out in the night.

  For a moment time stopped. Jack and his adversary froze, looking at each other. Then they loosened their grip and slowly separated as, a few yards away, Lukas Kowalski’s body lay lifeless on the steps.

  “Boss!” sputtered the goon.

  Walter approached his friend from behind.

  “Let’s go!” he urged him.

  Jack remained motionless, gazing at Kowalski’s blood-soaked chest.

  “But I . . . I . . . ,” he stammered.

  “For God’s sake, Jack. Run!”

  Jack and Walter fled down a deserted alleyway, stumbling and bumping into things as they dashed across Williamsburg’s avenues, trying to get out of Brooklyn as quickly as possible. Jack followed Walter blindly, certain that Kowalski’s men would appear at any moment to riddle them with bullets. Every so often they heard far-off voices, sirens, or the squealing of brakes, making them duck into porticos or crouch behind trash cans. Whenever they stopped to catch their breath, Jack tried to remember at what point the gun had gone off, but Walter wouldn’t let up, pushing him to keep running. As they got farther away from the scene of the crime, the streetlamps became less frequent, and the avenues turned into a maze of backstreets and alleyways that Walter snaked through as if he’d been born there. Jack thought they must be close to Long Island, the neighborhood where his friend lived, but he couldn’t be sure. Finally, they stopped in front of a doorway that, judging by the rust covering it, seemed as if it had been closed for years. Walter took a key from his pocket, opened the padlock on the iron shutter, and tried to lift it.

  “Come on! Don’t just stand there! Help me before they find us!”

  Jack was still struggling to get his breath back, but he pulled with all his might and the shutter rose with a metallic screech. Walter ducked under the half-raised shutter and turned toward his friend to usher him in. When Jack was inside, Walter lowered the shutter, and they were suddenly in almost complete darkness. Jack remained on the alert. He could barely make out his friend’s form, but he could hear his agitated breathing. A few seconds later, there was a crackle, and a flame appeared in Walter’s hand. Jack looked around. The intense smell of ink and damp, coming from an old Linotype, told him that they were in an abandoned printer’s. At his feet lay dozens of packages of old newspapers with long-forgotten headlines, while the walls were plastered with moldy posters that seemed to come to life in the flickering flame of Walter’s cigarette lighter.

  “It’s the printer’s where I worked before I was laid off,” he informed his friend. “When it closed down, I kept a set of keys, and since then I’ve used it as a union meetinghouse.”

  “Is it safe here?”

  “Safer than your house.”

  Jack fell silent. He couldn’t get Kowalski out of his mind.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” he asked Walter, hoping his reply would be no.

  “I don’t know, but he was bleeding like a stuck pig.”

  “Shit! We should go to the police.”

  Then they heard a noise, and Walter shut off his lighter. Jack felt his heartbeat quicken. A moment later, Walter relit, and his spectacles glistened a handbreadth from Jack’s nose.

  “Shhh . . . rats!” Walter whispered.

  “They’ve fo
und us?”

  “No. Actual rats.” He kicked a creature that went flying with a shrill squeak.

  Jack sighed with relief.

  “I was saying that we should go to the police. We can’t stay hidden forever. Sooner or later Kowalski’s goons will find us.”

  “Are you kidding? If that bastard’s dead, they’ll send you straight to Old Sparky.”

  “That guy was going to kill us. You saw it, Walter.”

  “Of course I saw it! But what do you think those tough guys will say to the judge when he asks them? That it was their gun that went off? And anyway, those people have contacts, Jack. How else do you think they’ve gotten rich while the rest of us are starving to death? Corrupt capitalists . . . ,” he muttered.

  “Damn it! But I didn’t kill him,” he insisted.

  Walter surveyed Jack’s anguished face. Sweat pearled on his brow.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know if he’s dead.”

  “All right . . . So, what’re we going to do? Shit! I can barely breathe. Those assholes must’ve broken my ribs.”

  “I don’t know. Let me think . . .” He moved away from Jack, searched around on top of a workbench, and returned with a candle in his hand. “We should stay here until things calm down. There’s a washbasin with running water out back, and a lavatory. We could—”

  “Wait. And my things? They’re all at the apartment.”

  “For God’s sake, Jack. You’re not saying we should go back . . . The police will have been called by now. They’ll be looking for you, or waiting.”

  “I don’t care! Everything I have is there.”

  “Listen to me. All you have left now is your freedom.”

  Jack fell silent. He knew that Walter was right, but as insignificant as they might seem to his friend, he couldn’t accept losing the last traces of his life.

  “My photographs are there,” he replied.

  “Photographs?” Walter grimaced in disbelief.