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His mother had died ten years before, and now his two brothers and his sister were squabbling over the business/inheritance, the upshot being that sister Anna left the city with a good chunk of the family savings, not to be heard of again for some years. His brothers, Jacob and Benjamin, stayed in New York but never spoke to each other again; they rarely saw Hiram, either, a nearly crippled, isolated man who was lucky to get his job in a sweatshop in the garment district.
    In 1871 my grandfather married Naomi Levitz, a fellow sweatshop worker. My father, Mahlon, was bora in 1875, my uncle Louis in 1877. In 1884 my grandfather collapsed while working and from then on was totally bedridden, left at home to look after the two boys as best he could, while grandmother continued working. In 1886 the crowded tenement building the family lived in caught fire. Many died in the blaze. My grandmother got my father and uncle out safely, then went back in after grandfather. Neither came out.
    My father's aunt- who had left town with her estimated share of the inheritance- had got back in touch with the rest of the family, letting them know she was "successful." It was to her the two boys were sent. To Chicago. From the train to the streetcar, the wide-eyed boys were shuttled not to the Jewish section of the near West Side but to the section of the city known as the Levee. The First Ward- home of "Bathhouse" John and "Hinky Dink," the corrupt ward bosses; site of the most famous whorehouse in the country, the Everleigh Club, run by sisters Ada and Minna, and scores of lesser houses of ill repute. Their "successful" Aunt Anna was a madam in one of the latter.
    Not that Aunt Anna was at the bottom rung; not when there were tenements housing row upon row of crib upon crib of streetwalkers taking a load off. Vile establishments, one of which was owned by the police superintendent at one time; several others by Carter Harrison, Sr., five-time mayor of Chicago. And then there were the panel houses, providing rooms furnished only with a bed and a chair, the former occupied by a girl and her client, the latter by the client's pants; and from a sliding panel in a wall or door, a third part)' would enter at an opportune moment and make a withdrawal, often at the very moment a deposit was being made.
    At the other end of the spectrum were the Everleigh sisters and, before them. Carrie Watson, into whose parlor one could go at least five ways, as there were five parlors in her three-story brownstone mansion. There were also twenty bedrooms, a billiard room, and, in the basement, a bowling alley. Damask upholster> ; , silk gowns, linen sheets; wine served in silver buckets, sipped from gold goblets.
    Then there was Anna Heller's house. Wine was served there, too; the dozen girls residing there had it for breakfast. This was around 1:00 P.M., and the third liquid meal of their (so far) short day: at noon a colored girl woke these "withered roses of society" for cocktails in bed; they dressed themselves with the assistance of absinthe, and headed down for breakfast. Soon the girls, in pairs, would sit at windows and attract the attention of male passersby. This would be done by rapping on the window and providing a glimpse of what a girl was wearing, if you could call it that: costumes ranging from Mother Hubbards made of mosquito netting to jockey uniforms to gowns without sleeves to gowns without bosoms (or rather, with bosoms out) to nothing. Business was brisk. And by four or five in the morning, the girls would find a novel use for a bed: sleep. Or drunken stupor.
    It helped a girl to stay drunk at Anna Heller's. Anna was known to boast that no act was too disgusting or perverse for her girls-- Circus Night was held three or four times a month- and heaven help the girl who made a liar out of Anna. It was said- though this one aspect of his aunt's business my father never witnessed- that Anna had in her employ six colored gentlemen who resided at a