When I opened the front door, a small bell tinkled and there was a rustling behind the wall of hanging shoes that stood between Steinman’s workroom and the front. The front room was less than three feet deep and just about eight feet across. There was no chair for waiting because, as Steinman once told me, “I never hurry at my work, Mr. Rawlins. If they want speed, let them buy cardboard soles from Drixor’s department store.”
We probably didn’t have one drop of blood in common but we were cut from the same cloth still and all.
“Mr. Rawlins,” Steinman said. He stood in the small opening that led to his workshop.
“Good morning, Mr. Steinman.”
We had given each other permission to use first names years before but courtesy kept us proper except at odd, more intimate moments.
“Come on in, in back.”
I followed the little cobbler into his workshop, knowing that I was one of only four or five people who were ever given that privilege.
The back room was composed of endless shelves cluttered with pairs of shoes tied together by their laces and marked with yellow tailor’s chalk. Women’s shoes were held together by string.
“Sit, sit,” Steinman said. “I wanted to talk to you. Can I get you something to drink? I have schnapps.”
This was unusual even for our cordial relations. Often I sat for a half hour or more and talked to Theodore. I had been part of an invading army that subdued his homeland—Germany. But Steinman had come to America as a child in 1910 and had no patriotism for the Third Reich or its war on the rest of the world. We talked about cities and streets that I’d seen.
“My mother always told me that Germany is one of the most beautiful countries in the world,” he often said.
I didn’t really agree with her but I always nodded and said, “It sure is.”
But he’d never offered me a drink before. If he had, he would have known that I’d stopped drinking soon after my first wife left me.
“No thanks, Mr. Steinman. It’s a little early for me.”
“Yes. Yes. It is early.”
“How are you, Theodore?” I asked, sensing that we weren’t conducting simple shoe business.
“Yes,” he said, nodding his large bald head. “For me things are fine. I have a good business. My children are doing very well. I have three grandchildren now.”
“That’s great,” I said. I was in no hurry to get to the point. If I had an office, I thought, I wouldn’t have had a waiting room either.
“But some people are not so lucky.”
“Who for instance?” I asked.
“Mr. Tanous.”
I’d never heard that name before and my expression said so.
“He’s the man who owns this building,” Theodore Steinman said. “The whole block really. He’s a nice man. A good man.”
“But he’s got trouble?”
“Yes. Yes. The police found her in the alley behind this building and they took him right off to jail. Right off. They had no proof but still they took him just like Nazis.”
“Who did they find?”
“Jackie Jay, that’s what they called her. She was a…a loose woman I think you say. She made her living being with men. But then somebody killed her.”
“And the police think it was Mr. Tanous?”
The little shoemaker nodded. He had broad shoulders and thick hands. For all that he was a small man, Theodore Steinman was a powerhouse. It was sad to see him so defeated over his friend’s arrest.
“You don’t think he did it?”
“No. Definitely not. Musa would never commit such a crime. He is a peaceful man no matter how angry he gets. How else could he run a building this size with all the trouble some people can be?”
“So why do the cops think he did it?”
“Because he is not a white man.”
“He’s Negro?” I asked, surprised. I thought I knew every black property owner in the neighborhood.
“I don’t know where he’s from. Somewhere from the Mediterranean, maybe from North Africa. Maybe even Iran, he never really said.”
Steinman clasped his hands and stared at the floor. I rubbed my fingers together and considered. A pair of shoes was not worth me getting involved with a murder, but Theodore had given me much more than that. He had always offered me friendship without prejudice.
My weakness had always been the offer of equality.
“This Mr. Tanous in jail?”
“No. He put up five thousand dollars for bail and is waiting for a trial.”
“Did he know this Jackie Jay?”
“Most people around here knew her. When she was a little girl she used to come into my store with her father and brother. He father, Robert, would bring me his shoes to fix.”
“So why are you telling me all this?”
“They say that you know what goes on in this neighborhood. Maybe you could ask around. Maybe somebody would tell you something that might help Musa.”
“You know I probably can’t do anything,” I said.
“But you will try?”
I hesitated a moment.
“I can’t pay you, Ezekiel,” he said. “But I can promise you that whenever you need a pair of shoes I will make them. And these,” he picked up a package of brown wrapping paper and held it out to me, “these are free.”
The time to turn down the job was then, before I laid hands on the package. I should have taken out my wallet and insisted on paying. But that would have insulted my friend and I was raised better than that.
“Your friend might have to pay a little something too,” I said.
“He is a rich man,” Theodore said.
THEODORE LOCKED HIS FRONT DOOR and put up his CLOSED sign. Then he guided me through the back of his workshop into a long, lime-colored-plaster hallway. The dim corridor led to a stairway lit by small windows at the elbow of each half-flight up. The stairs were well maintained and the window panes were clean. There was no dust in the corners or crevices. I was beginning to like Musa Tanous even before we met.
On the fourth floor we entered another mild-green passageway. This hall was filled with light because there were windows at either end. It was a wide corridor lined with maple doors that were sealed with bright tawny varnish. Theodore led me to the last door on the left side. My heart skipped when we came to that amber gate. I don’t know why. There was no sign on it. It was just a door but somehow it seemed perfect. The hinges were brass and the bottom panel was flush to the floor. I imagined that it was hung just right and would open with hardly a squeak.
From inside the room a man’s voice rose. There was worry, maybe even fear in his tone.
“Musa,” Theodore whispered.
I reached for the brass knob and turned.
The door was noiseless and that’s probably what saved me from a slash wound or worse.
It was a good size for an office, rectangular in shape with the long wall leading toward the windows to the street. There was no furniture except for one pine chair. The two men facing each other did not notice the well-oiled door opening. One man was tall and black and powerful, holding a nine-inch butcher’s knife. I would have thought the other one was Mexican if I wasn’t ready to meet a man named Musa.
The black man felt the draft maybe two seconds after I opened the door. While he turned toward me I threw the shoes, hitting him in the temple. Then I grabbed the chair and tossed it lightly, just enough to block any stabbing he might have been contemplating. I kicked him in the knee and hit him on the jaw with four blows before picking the knife up off the floor. It wasn’t a move from any rule book but real fights never are.
The black man, who had a boy’s face, fell against the wall but no further. When he saw me with the knife he rolled away and lurched through the door. He pushed Theodore down. I could hear his heavy steps all the way down the stairs we’d taken.
I helped the cobbler up and then turned to the other man in the office.