The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats by Hesh Kestin Page A

across the room I could see Ira-Myra’s perk up. Oblivious, his wife continued studying a day-old copy of the
Daily Mirror
, whose cover had a picture of Shushan, Sfangiullo and others—including me, almost out of the photo—under a headline as unpleasant as it was predictable:
     
    MOB WHO’S WHO
    AT CATS MOM RITES
     
    “I wouldn’t,” I said.
    “You wouldn’t if you
was
me, or you wouldn’t trust
me
with your life?”
    Both, I thought. But copped out. “I wouldn’t trust me with anyone’s life,” I said. “I’m not dependable.”
    “You did the funeral.”
    “I thought maybe it would be dangerous not to,” I said, at the same time wondering why I was being honest. “You didn’t seem to be in the kind of state that needed opposition. Anyway, everything I did, anything I did, it was just a few phone calls. And showing up.”
    “Are you afraid of my brother?” Terri asked in a tone so casually conversational she might have been asking about tomorrow’s weather.
    “Afraid? Sure. Sometimes. Maybe not now. But at first. He has a reputation. He’s in the newspapers. He’s one of those guys when I was growing up it was always better to be on the other side of the street.”
    “And now you’re on the same side of the street,” she said. “How do you feel about him now?”
    “Hey, Esther,” Shushan cut in. “You doing a psycho-whatchamacall on Russy here? That’s not nice. Let the kid alone. He already said it. He’s no gambler. So why would he gamble on getting a stranger like me, as unfairly as I’m characterized in the public prints, angry? He’s more smart than that. Even if all that isn’t much true.”
    “Anybody want something to drink?” I said, standing. “Eat? There’s cold cuts. Or I could order in.” From the corner of my eye I caught Terri looking at me, coolly evaluative. I could almost hear her thinking: Flunky. But I didn’t feel like a flunky. I felt like I was taking care of Shushan the way no one had bothered taking care of me when my father died. I’d sat through the week-long mourning period alone. Friends came and went, my father’s and mine. A few cousins. There weren’t more than a few anyway. Several teachers from Thomas Jefferson High School. A neighbor lady looked in from time to time. But that was it. I’d grown up without a mother, so I was used to it. But until I bumped into Shushan I never knew how much I’d missed. Besides, Shushan needed looking after by someone he wasn’t paying to do so. He could trust me that far. “Anybody?”
    We were eating when the cops walked in.
    Actually they’d been invited. A desk clerk had called from the lobby, “There’s a couple of police officers downstairs who want to come up and pay their respects.”
    Ira-Myra’s looked alert, a guard dog with someone approaching the gate.
    Shushan finished chewing on his corn-beef sandwich. “Tell ‘em yeah, sure.”
    The two cops were Cohen and Kennedy, so mismatched a pair they looked like socks a blind man might have picked out of a drawer. Cohen was tall, balding, and given to smiling nervously. He had a face that looked like he was in the wrong job. Probably he should have been a salesman. He had on a blue blazer and tan trousers—a uniform of sorts—and he was one of those guys who had a five o’clock shadow at noon. It was now almost two. The shadow had lengthened. His partner was more my size, just under six foot, with chestnut hair combed straight back off a friendly face. He had bright blue eyes and a nice round nose beginning to show broken blood vessels, and even less sense of how to dress than his partner. Tie askew, his suit, shiny from repeated pressings, was that olive poplin half of New York wore in summer. This was November.
    “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Cats,” Cohen said.
    “Me too,” Kennedy said. “May your mother rest with the angels in heaven.” He looked suddenly uncertain, and turned to Cohen. “That okay to say?”
    “Sure,”