Isidore Haiblum

(back cover book content)

From the Casebooks of Morris Weiss

"It's always good to have a paying client. And even better if the paying client is a beautiful woman. Rich also doesn't hurt."

"There are times when one case turns out to be another case. This should be avoided whenever possible. Sometimes, of course, it is not possible."

"I never worry about entrusting a case to Max. What he might lack in experience he makes up for by being very smart. Naturally, the trait runs in the family... ."

Other reviews:

A compelling cast of characters, a plot that ping pongs deftly from past to present and an assured surprise ending.

A mensch of a detective.

Terrific!

First Chapter/New York Confidential:

Chapter 1

Morris Weiss - 1948

Joe Louis was heavyweight champ. Jack Benny, on the radio, made the whole nation laugh. Heifetz had a date at Carnegie Hall. Bogart and Bacall were teamed in Key Largo. Truman was running against Dewey for President, but Henry Wallace. The Progressive Party candidate, was raking the biggest tumel on the Lower East Side. More people read the Yiddish Daily Forward in this neighborhood than The New York Times. The Forward supported Truman. So did Morris Weiss.

"Please," Fineberg said.

Weiss shook his head. "No," he said.

"Morris, I beg you on bended knees."

"No is no," Weiss said.

"What am I to tell Sadie?"

"Tell her the truth," Weiss said. "There is nothing I can do for her boy."

Morris Weiss was a medium-sized man with broad shoulders, a thin mustache and a full head of dark curly hair. He had fought in the amateurs as a teenage middleweight and won all of his thirty-one bouts - twenty-six by knockouts. Approaching thirty, he still moved with the grace and speed of a first class boxer. His heavy-lidded brown eyes looked out at the world with wry amusement. He wore a brown tweed jacket, an orange and green diagonally-striped tie, and immaculately creased tan trousers. His brown shoes were polished to a high gloss.

"Who else is there if not you?" Fineberg asked.

Weiss said, "I hardly know the woman."

"You are a landsman."

"This," Weiss said, "is news to me?"

"It is true, Morris, you are."

"Fineberg, I am everybody's landsman. From all over the Lower East Side they come to me. Find my husband, he has run away from the job, from the children, from me. They are from shtetlech I've never even heard of. And thev are always broke."

"You are a benefactor, Morris."

"And you, Fineberg, are a terrible pest."

From his office window Weiss could see the towering Forward Building in the distance. Nearby, wash dangled from backyard clothes lines strung between tenement fire escapes -- shirts, pants, sheets, pillow cases. A billboard showing a penguin smoking a cigarette was visible from Delancey Street. "Smoke Kools," the billboard urged. Weiss did not smoke. He was not amused by the thought of a smoking penguin.

"Do it for me, Morris," Fineberg begged.

"No," Weiss said.

"Just speak to Joey. If you do not like what he says, then finished, walk away. What harm can there be in that?"

Irving Fineberg was a portly man in a gray three-piece suit. His brown eyes. behind thick glasses, always looked worried. He was only thirty-three but already his hair line was receding.

"I know this Joey Ginzberg," Weiss said, "from the old days. He was never any good."

"That was then," Fineberg said, "before the war. He is a changed person. He now works for City College."

"He teaches crime?"

"Please. Morris."

"He's really changed?" Weiss asked.

Fineberg shrugged. "I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. This is the way of the law."

"My business isn't the law."

"No, you spend your time chasing after runaway husbands. What kind of business is this?"

Weiss shrugged. "I make the husbands pay."

"If you find them."

"I find them," Weiss said. "Their wives, at least, are innocent."

"So maybe Joey is also innocent."

Weiss waved a hand.

"How can you be so sure?" Fineberg asked.

Weiss sighed. "All right. So I'm not so sure."

"There, you have said it yourself."

"Very smart," Weiss said smiling. "I admit my error."

"That is good."

"Your Sadie, she has at least some money?"

"I will pay your fee," Fineberg said.

"You?"

"From my own pocket."

"Fineberg, you are feeling well?"

Fineberg pressed his thumb and forefinger together. "My wife and Sadie, they are this close. What choice do I have?"

"You know my fee?"

"I know, I know. You could get blood from a stone, Morris."

"True," Weiss said, "but it takes some practice."

"Well?" Fineberg said. "We are partners in this?"

Weiss rose to his feet. "You were always a sucker, Fineberg," he said. "And now you are making a sucker of me." Weiss stepped around his desk, went to the closet
for his coat, reached for his hat on the rack near the
door. "Come on, sucker," he said. "Let's go."


The cell door clanged shut behind them.

"Joey," Fineberg said, "I have here someone who maybe can help you. This is Morris Weiss, the detective."

"Hello, Joey," Weiss said.

Joey Ginzberg sat on his narrow cot and gazed dully at his two visitors. He was a short, muscular man in his late twenties. His nose was flattened like a boxer's, his shoulders were wide and sloped, his blondish hair crew cut. He neither spoke nor rose from his cot.

"You don't remember me, Joey?" Weiss said.

"Why should I?" Ginzberg said, in a hoarse, flat voice.

"You snatched a purse once, Joey. I caught you."

"Never," Ginzberg said.

"This was before the war. You grabbed an old woman's pocketbook on Orchard Street. You ran right into my arms."

Ginzberg got to his feet. "Maybe you should've minded your own business."

"That was my business," Weiss said, a half smile on his face. "I'm a detective."

"I was just a kid."

"Sure. I let you go."

A radio, tuned to a soap opera, was playing somewhere in the cell block. Weiss could hear loud voices, a metal door opening or closing. The smell of Lysol burned his nostrils. Weiss hated this place.

Ginzberg said, "You here because of Ma?"

Weiss leaned up against the wall, hands in pockets. He nodded toward Fineberg. "Him."

Ginzberg shook his head. "A pair of greenhorns," he said bitterly. "A pair of damn greenhorns."

"You don't like us?" Fineberg said. "So go hire yourself a Yankee lawyer. You got the
money, Mr. Big Shot?"

"Go on," Ginzberg said, jerking a thumb toward the door, "beat it. I don't need your fucking help."

"Listen, Joey," Fineberg said. "In this state, for murder, they give you the chair, the hot-seat. You understand? We are all you have got. Take it or
leave it."

Ginzberg suddenly sat down on the cot. "I was framed," he said.

"Sure," Weiss said.

"You don't believe me?"

"What is to believe?" Fineberg said. "So far you have given us bubkes."

"Look," Ginzberg said. "I'm a custodian at City College. I sweep. I mop. It's steady work. Why would I go looking for trouble?"

"You tell us." Weiss said.

A second radio began to play in the cell block. Kate Smith, the heavyweight soprano, was talking. Better talking than singing, Weiss thought. The pair of radios became a jumble of unpleasant sounds, mixing with the voices that had now begun to argue. Weiss had an urge to put his hands over his ears.

"It's crazy," Ginzberg said. "I get home last night, same as always."

"The time was what?" Weiss asked.

"Around six o'clock. I open the door and what do I find? This stiff lying in my living room."

Weiss said, "You knew him?"

"Nah, he was just some stiff. I never laid eyes on him before."

"So what did you do, Joey," Fineberg asked, "call the police?"

"Yeah. that's all I need. Listen, I've been keeping my nose clean. But I got a record from before the war. Two-bit stuff, but it makes me a sitting duck. I don't even think twice about calling the law. What I do is lug the stiff down the back stairs. I got my car parked in the alley. I shove him in the back seat, and I'm sitting there by the wheel, like some sap, trying to figure out where the hell to dump him, when suddenly the whole alley is crawling with coppers."

"So what happened?" Fineberg asked.

"What the hell you think happened?" Ginzberg said.

"They pinched me. That's what happened."

The automat was beginning to fill up with the lunchtime crowd. Weiss and Fineberg avoided the steam table which now had a long line. Instead, each put five cents into a slot; coffee poured out of a spigot inside a small metal lion's head and into their cups. A pair of quarters made two small glass windows pop open in the wall. Both men reached in their respective cubicle for American cheese sandwiches on white bread.

"Here is the restaurant of the future, Morris," Fineberg said. "No waiters. No menus -- "

"No taste." Weiss said.

"Very funny," Fineberg said. "Eddy Cantor is sweating you will take his place."

"Tell him not to worry."

They shared a table by the long plate-glass window with two men in work shirts, overalls, and peaked caps. Outside, a horse and wagon moved slowly up the street. The wagon was piled high with junk. A newsboy was hawking the New York Journal American. Pedestrians in long coats with padded shoulders, hurried by on their lunch hour break. Every man and most of the women wore hats.

Fineberg ate in hat and coat. Weiss took off his coat and neatly folded it on the back of his chair. As was the custom, he did not remove his hat.

Both men finished their sandwiches.

"Nu?" Fineberg finally said.

"This Joey is a peach," Weiss said. "You are his only lawyer, Fineberg?"

"I am."

Weiss sipped his coffee, looked at his friend. "You are a criminal lawyer now?"

"You know what I am, Morris. My office, it is a storefront on Rivington Street. I sit and
wait for the customers to come in. Some I help with immigration problems, others with benefits, or maybe taxes. Also, I look over legal papers and give advice."

"From this you make a living?"

"My enemies should make such a living."

"So," Weiss said, "what is your secret? You are maybe a gangster on the side?"

"If I only knew how. No, Morris, I am the lawyer for the Delancey Street Democratic club. There, many deals are made. And I am always making sure that everything is kosher."

"For this they pay you?"
"They pay me."

Weiss shook his head. "America gonif," he said. "It's you who are the benefactor, Fineberg, helping this schlepper, Joey."

"My Rosie, she would kill me if I did not."

Weiss said, "You'll really go to court with him?"

"Never will it come to that."

Weiss smiled. "So, Fineberg, you have something up your sleeve?"

Fineberg nodded.

"What is it?"

"You. Morris."

"Me? You're crazy."

"I am paying good money," Fineberg said. "More than you will ever see from your so-called innocent wives."

Weiss shrugged, put down his empty coffee cup. "I told you, Fineberg, from them I get usually nothing. But in the end I get. And that's plenty for me."

"Now you will get more."

"Who needs more?"

"You need. Everyone needs."

"You are a philosopher, too, eh, Fineberg?"

"I am what it takes," Fineberg said. "This case, it will never go to trial, Morris, because you will clear Joey first."

"I am a detective, not a magician," Weiss said.

"Then for the boy," Fineberg said, "you will become a magician."