Little Easter

Mr. Fancy Picasso

“Mojo?” the hefty, black security guard smiled, resting his hand carelessly on the handle of his Magnum. “You’ll find Mojo down the second isle on your right, third stall on your right. Can’t miss Mojo.”

But apparently I had. I stood in front of a small grubby booth. The cheaply engraved plaque read, “Minkowitz, Inc.-Purveyors of Fine Gems and Jewels.” Seated on a shaky piano stool behind the low wall and glass was a sour-looking Hasidic man in his late forties, early fifties maybe. The wiry salt and pepper beard and curls made a more accurate guess impossible. He wore a dandruff-speckled yarmulke held in place with a worn shiny hairpin. Currently he was inspecting a herd of small diamonds laid out on his sickly pale and pudgy palm.

I watched him. His concentration was incredible, and he manipulated the little stones with an ease and confidence that seemed more instinctive than learned. Occasionally he would remove his black-rimmed glasses, the joints of which were held together with bandaids, shove an eyepiece into his left eye and hold the clear rocks up to his face. All very interesting, but I had to find Mojo. I started back to the security guard.

“I’m who you’re lookin’ for mister,” the man behind the Minkowitz sign called to me without picking his head up from the stones. His voice had that familiar roller coaster lilt of a Yiddish speaker.

“Sorry,” I came back over, “not buying today.”

“From me, you couldn’t afford to buy,” he let the diamonds roll off his palms like so much dust into a folded paper envelope. “You lookin’ for Mojo? I’m Mojo.”

“Mojo Monkowitz?” everything about me was incredulous.

“Listen totaleh, vit a last name like Minkowitz, vould it matta vhat vent in front?” he asked in an accent thick like chicken fat on rye bread.

“You got a point. How-”

“Before we start with the questions, he cut me off, returning to a less theatrical dialect, “who sent you? Nobody comes to Mojo without being sent.”

I handed him Larry’s business card and my infantile drawing of the heart. He read the card, looked at the drawing and shook his head.

“You friends with this man?” Mojo inquired, holding up the business card.

“We grew up together. Did a little work together. I wouldn’t call us friends.”

“Good. Larry Feld is not a righteous man,” Minkowitz sat down and inspected my artwork. “I knew his parents. Good people. Sad little people, but they ran a clean shop. You knew them, Izzi and Anna?”

“Lived two doors down from ‘em for eighteen years. But it’s hard to really know camp survivors,” I offered my opinion.

“Quite so,” he showed me his numerical tattoo. “I do these favors not for the son, but for the pain of the parents. You understand this?” He seemed anxious that I understand and I nodded that I did. “You want to know who handles pieces like this, who makes pieces like this?”

“That’s the big question.”

“Describe a little better what the piece is made out of. How many stones? How big?”

I gave him the specs to the best of my memory. As I did, he shook his head in agreement as if I was simply reinforcing the conclusion he’d already arrived at.

“Fischel Kahn,” Mojo winked. “Fine work. Not much demand for his stuff anymore.”

“Where’s his booth?”

“Four aisles over, but he’s retired maybe fifteen twenty years already. Sold his business to an Iraqi Jew,” Mojo’s sour expression returned. Despite the monolithic image, there were large groups of Jews that couldn’t stomach one another.

“Shi-” I stopped myself. “Sorry.”

“Quiet. Quiet,” Minkowitz waved off my apology and began stroking his beard as if it were a Siamese cat. “Can’t a man think a little?” A moment passed. “Sylvia. . Sylvia. . Sylvia Kim!” Mojo’s eyes lit up.

“Kim? An Asian?” I wondered.

“Used to be Kimmelmann. Now it’s Kim. She’s got her own shop. Next aisle over. Once worked for Fish. Maybe she can help,” he handed me Larry’s card and my rendering and shook my hand. “Mazel and brucha, luck and a blessing to you on your journey.”

“I understood. Thanks. What do I owe you?”

“Like I said before,” the survivor admonished, “from me you can’t afford to buy.”

“You think she’ll remember the piece?” I questioned as an afterthought, pointing at my drawing.

“Listen, Mr. Fancy Picasso with the drawing already. If she was around when the piece was sold, she’ll remember. We’re very good at remembering.” He looked at his tattoo and went back to work.

Sylvia had frosty blond hair that was blown and permed and sprayed into submission. Her teeth were as white as the Himalayas and as natural as astroturf. The skin on her face was Florida tanned and taut as if it were a plastic bag stretched to its limit. Her flaming nails weren’t quite as long as piano keys and there was so much jewelry on her fingers, I could barely see the flesh. She was covered in enough metal and mineral to cover half the Periodic Chart. I wondered if she floated when the hardware came off.

But none of it affected her memory.

“Nice couple. Nice couple.” She got a far away look in her violet contact lenses. “He was a roughly handsome boy, German, Irish maybe. She was a looker, a Jewish girl. She spoke the language.” I took that to mean Yiddish. “Had a figure to die for and the features of a goddess. They were a funny pair.”

I described Johnny and Jane Doe to Sylvia.

“Could be them. Got a picture?” she asked.

“Sorry.”

“Got a girlfriend? she winked at me with black lashes as long as butterfly wings.

“Sure do,” I lied.

“Now I’m the one who’s sorry. What’s this all about?” Rejected, she suddenly got curious.

I showed her Larry’s card.

“Why didn’t you say so?” We were friends again. “Anything else I can do for you? Anything at all?”

“No thanks, Sylvia. Here,” I gave her one of my old business cards with the office number scratched out and my home number scribbled in. “If there’s something else that you recall about the couple or the piece, even if it seems trivial or insignificant, call me.”

“Maybe,” she read my card, “Dylan Klein, I’ll just call you.” If nothing else, Sylvia was persistent.

I kissed the back of her right hand, nearly slicing a lip open in the process, took one of her cards and was gone. On the way out onto West 47th Street, I bumped into the security guard I’d met on the way in.

“Did you find Mojo, all right?” he laughed and slapped my shoulder playfully. “Don’t look much like a Mojo, does he?”

“No, I had to admit that. “How did-”

“-he get that nickname?” the jolly guard finished my question. “Some big gambler give it to him. Said he had to get his Mojo workin’ and bought a big piece from Mr. Minkowitz. Gambler went to Vegas and practically shut down three casinos. Gamblers been comin’ ever since. You know, to get their Mojo workin’. Moshe. Mojo. It just kinda stuck.”

“Not a very kosher name for a Hasidic Jew,” I mused.

“I wouldn’t know about that. Excuse me,” the guard turned his attention to a group of five kids coming through the door. “Can I help you?”

An inch of gray snow came between my feet and the concrete on 6th Avenue. More of it fell onto my nearly defenseless scalp, melting quickly and cascading down my neck as a dirty stream of water. Running-shoed women with newspaper umbrellas elbowed themselves into other people’s taxis. Buses threw slushy gutter puddles up onto tailored pant legs and nyloned ankles. No one took much notice. They could take it. They were New Yorkers. They could take anything. The problem was, they often did.