This chapter-by-chapter summary contains plot spoilers!

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Navigate the Summary Parts: Part 1: Beginning Part 2: to Chap 6 - meet Berko Part 3: to Chap 9 - bar hopping Part 4: to Chap 11 - the black hats Part 5: to Chap 16 - Verbov Island Part 6: to Chap 22 - the shoot-out to be continued ...

Summary of The Yiddish Policemen's Union
by Michael Chabon
Pages 52 – 81:

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(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  Chapter 7.  Landsman and Berko drive to the police station where they find out that Bina Gelbfish, Landsman's ex, is now their new supervisor.  She orders them to limit their work-time to solving their 11 outstanding cases in the nine weeks before Reversion happens, which will mandate handing over law enforcement authority to the U.S. Marshall for Sitka.  Landsman and Berko whine and complain.  Bina stresses that they must either make sure to stick these unsolved cases to blamable culprits, or put a black label on them and cold-case them.  She personally slaps a black label on this new murder case, their 12th unsolved mystery.

Chapter 8. Landsman and Berko leave and hunt for a bar where they won't be noticed by other cops. They find the Front Page, where they are unlucky enough to get waved over by Dennis Brennan, a reporter who has recently returned to Sitka after living abroad.  Brennan is a gentile who speaks a type of Yiddish that sounds like (page 64) "a sausage recipe with footnotes." Some years back, Brennan wrote an expose of Hertz Shemets's evil deeds committed while working for the FBI – and this caused the FBI to shut down its counter-intelligence program, and Hertz Shemets to retire in disgrace. Now Brennan apologizes for the harm he's caused, but Berko remains unforgiving.

Chapter 9. Landsman and Berko move on to an even worse bar, the Vorsht, where the musicians of Sitka gather to drink.  The old battle-axe Mrs. Kalushiner who owns the place grudging lets them in and waves them to a table. She brings them pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, poppy-seed rolls, and sour cream.  Landsman points out Hershel, a terrier who used to belong to Mr. Kalushiner, a jazz clarinet player. Mr. Kalushiner has been dead for five years, and that's how long the dog has been chained up near the stage where he used to play.

Landsman orders a Coke, surprising both Berko and Mrs. Kalushiner who know him as a hard-drinker.  He goes to the restroom and unexpectedly finds a musician passed out on the floor.  After ascertaining that the musician is alive, Landsman lifts a pint of vodka from the man's pocket, has a drink, and transfers the pint to his own pocket.

He returns to the table where he and Berko talk about Hertz Shemets. Hertz worked for the FBI for 40 years in domestic surveillance: specifically, he wiped out the Communists, the Yiddish left, and the radical Tlingit movements. But his real agenda was to achieve permanent statehood for Sitka.  To this end, Hertz bribed everyone he could, especially wealthy American Jews to influence Permanent Status bills to pass through the U.S. Congress. It all came to nothing, and now Hertz is hiding out near the Tlingit reservation.

Berko mentions how he and his family have applied for residency cards so that they may stay on in Sitka after the Reversion.  He asks if Landsman has, too. Landsman lies and says he has, but he's really not been organized enough to do anything.  Landsman thinks to himself that not many Jews will be allowed to stay, and that if Berko continues to help him put a lot of time into this murder case, in direct defiance of Bina's orders, he could get into the kind of trouble that might jeopardize his residency card.  Nevertheless, Landsman asks Berko to help him with this murder case, and Berko agrees because Landsman is family.

Meanwhile, Berko unchains Hershel the dog and lets him out the front door of the bar.  But the dog comes right back to the stage, waiting patiently to be chained up once more.
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