by David Grand
“Hard work, no matter for whom it is done, no matter what the conditions, should be rewarded fairly. That is in our best interests.”
“Putting the rise of fascism and the real possibility of war aside, Mr. Commissioner, by their own admission Waters and Capp have been members of the Communist Party and have contributed columns to a Trotskyist organ.”
“That’s within their rights as well.”
“Are you saying that you don’t consider the communist apparatus a significant threat?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But, Mr. Commissioner, please—just as a practical matter, don’t you consider the recent strikes at the steel mills across the country to be evidence enough that our national security may be threatened if we are forced into a war with Nazi Germany? If the Long Meadow Munitions Workers Union is allowed to set this precedent—”
“As it stands now,” Harry interrupted, “as I’ve said over and over again, I’ve seen no evidence to make me feel that there’s a group of so-called communist underground operatives working within the labor movement to bring this country to its knees. Look—I’m not here to fight against movements or causes, I’m here to fight for law-abiding citizens, for decency, for hardworking men and women who deserve a voice in a collective bargaining process. When they work hard, they should get what’s coming to them. What is not within the rights of the Long Meadow Munitions Workers Unions is to sabotage their plant, endanger workers, or commit a conspiracy that would undermine the welfare of the plant. A strike for the sake of fair contract negotiations may force Julius Fief to tighten his belt a little, but it will also require the union to tighten theirs. As far as I’m concerned, before Julius Fief is ever allowed to be released from his contract with the residents of Long Meadow and the union, those people have every right to place demands on the Department of Investigations to provide indisputable proof that Long Meadow union leaders were, in fact, responsible for the explosion at the plant and were involved in a conspiracy to undermine Fief Munitions. Chief Investigator Tines’s belief that a socialist labor movement is threatening to destroy American business interests—that, and the small bit of circumstantial evidence he has against Mr. Waters and Mr. Capp—is not, in my opinion, grounds enough for him to make a case that could potentially level a grave injustice against the livelihood of an entire town—a town, I should add, that invested so much capital to provide Fief with his facility.”
“Mr. Commissioner . . .”
A man dressed in a gray belted overcoat and black fedora entered the room and, ignoring the reporters, approached the podium. Harry excused himself and allowed the man to whisper in his ear. The man leaned away and then stood beside Harry and looked out into the crowd.
“Well . . .” Harry said with a small voice. “I won’t pretend to have a grasp on this, but it seems that Johnny Mann and Jerzy Roth are dead.” He talked over all the reporters shouting out questions at once. “They were found shot inside Johnny Mann’s office at the Triple Mark. Tines’s men are on the scene and . . . I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this short.” Harry made a parting half-gesture with his hand and said, “Please, excuse me.” With the narcotics officer flanking his side, Harry walked out into the crowd of reporters amid flashes and shouts, and made for the elevator. The reporters, nearly trampling one another to get out of the press gallery, flooded onto the street outside the State Government Building. Those who had cars got into their cars. Those who didn’t have cars got into the cars of their colleagues, and headed to the Triple Mark, Faith and her photographer included.
Standing outside Harry’s office was a young, clean-cut officer from the Department of Investigations with an envelope in hand. The door to Harry’s office was open, the phones were ringing, and Zelda was standing in the threshold, staring in at several other department men who were rummaging through Harry’s desk and files.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Harry said to the young officer when he arrived from the press gallery.
“I tried to keep them out, sir,” Zelda said. “I told them to wait until you got back, but they barged right in.”
“It’s all right, Zelda,” Harry said, pointing her to the door leading to the hall. “Why don’t you take a break.”
Zelda grabbed her purse off her desk and left, shaken.
The young officer handed Harry a folded piece of paper. “We have a warrant.”
“What for?”
“Corruption. Murder. Obstruction. Take your pick.”
Harry glanced at the warrant. “On what evidence?”
“Chief Investigator Tines gave me this to give you. As a courtesy.” The officer smiled glibly and handed Harry the envelope.
Harry opened the envelope and pulled out half a dozen blood-splattered photographs.
“We found them up at the Triple Mark, in Mann’s office. Mann was keeping them warm for us when we got there.”
“Who is this?”
“That there? That, I am told, is Boris Lardner.”
The picture on top was the same photograph Faith had found in the safety deposit box at International Trust Bank, Boris Lardner flying down to the street from the top of the el. The picture following that was the one of Boris about to crash through the window of Schweitzer’s Piano Shop. “I take it this here is . . .” Harry pointed to the man standing in front of the shop.
“That would be Victor Ribe,” the officer said, deadpan.
Harry’s heart felt as though it had skipped a few beats. He grimly flipped to the next image.
“These big fellas I’m told you should know.”
Harry could clearly see Ira and Pally on the el platform holding Boris Lardner by the collar of his druggist coat. Boris looked as if he had been beaten so severely he wouldn’t have been able to stand on his own. Off to the side was Maurice Klempt. Harry’s heart skipped a few more beats as he flipped to the next image and found his three men hoisting Boris up by the arms and the legs. In the next image, with all their might, they heaved Boris’s body over the rail, down toward the street.
Harry could suddenly see in his mind the newsreel camera turning on Faith Rapaport as she brought up Boris Lardner’s death just a few minutes earlier.
“There’s one more you might be interested in,” the officer said, making use of his glib smile again.
Harry flipped to the next photo. It was dark, taken inside a dimly lit garage, but Harry could easily make out Ira and Pally heaving Crown into the trunk of his car in his bedclothes.
“We’ve already picked up your men,” the officer said.
Harry was speechless. Even though he already knew it was Ira and Pally who had killed Crown, the sight of the hard evidence made him feel as though he were plummeting to the earth from a great height.
“Say, Mr. Commissioner,” one of the officers said from Harry’s office, “you want to give us the combination to this safe, or you want that we should haul it off and open it ourselves?”
Harry now took a seat on one of the chairs in front of Zelda’s desk as he remembered placing the blackmail note in the safe along with the deed to the Ten Lakes property. He felt utterly defeated. As soon as he sat down, he got up again and walked over to Zelda’s desk. He wrote out the combination and handed it to the officer.
“I don’t want to be here for this, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself,” the young officer said dryly. “Tines wants to talk.”
“He obviously knows how to get to me.” Harry walked into his dismantled office and grabbed his coat and hat, wrapped himself up, and made his way out.
Chapter 27
Arthur Brilovsky—now forty-two years old, gray around the temples, shoulders stooped, cheeks round and jowled—stood in the third-story window of his suite in the Ansonia Hotel, where he watched Elaine and their nineteen-year-old son, Joshua, walk outside into the heavy snowfall. Joshua took his mother by the arm and stepped carefully over the slippery street. They crossed the avenue and then sta
rted walking uptown; as they walked beyond the view of the window frame, a bearded man wearing a black overcoat and fur hat stepped off a streetcar; he was studying a piece of paper, looking at the building numbers. The man stuffed the paper into his coat pocket, then crossed over the avenue. He passed through the visible exhaust of an idling car and disappeared under the hotel’s brocade awning.
Seeing the man spurred Arthur into action. He drew the curtains to all the windows and turned on the lights. He walked over to a cabinet, removed a bottle of vodka, and placed it on the table among two covered trays, a basket of black bread, and a small bowl of pickles. He then opened the door to the room and stood by it as the bearded man walked toward him, down the hall, past head-lit busts of robed men and garlanded women who sat on pedestals recessed into paisley walls.
“Hello, Mitya,” Arthur said warily as Professor Tarkhov walked past him, entering the suite without greeting Arthur. Arthur picked up the conversation in Russian. “Were you able to get away without any trouble?”
“Yes.”
Arthur shut the door. The professor walked to one of the windows, where from the side of the curtain he looked out onto the falling snow, at the people passing on the avenue, at the gray windows of the building opposite the hotel. “They’re happy to accommodate me in every way.”
“Good.”
“Yes, good.” The professor turned from the window and looked at Arthur, his eyes narrowed, his heavy chin raised, his complexion reddening.
“I trust that everything is going according to schedule?”
“Everything is as your people told me it would be.”
Arthur, maintaining his indifference, approached Professor Tarkhov and offered his arm for his coat and hat. “You should step away from the window, Mitya,” Arthur said mildly as he approached. “Please. There are people out there watching us.”
The professor, somewhat startled, looked back out the window, and though he saw no one who seemed to be looking in on them, he did as he was told. He then slowly removed his wet garments, all the time studying Arthur’s face. It looked more determined than he remembered it in Petrograd following Arthur’s arrival, when the professor was taken away from his studies at the university to serve as Arthur and Elaine’s translator. The man he knew then was frightened and naive, his eyes compassionate and easy to comprehend; they were the eyes of a physician, of affluence, of privilege, not those of any kind of revolutionary he had ever come across. They lacked a singular and obvious motivation, any haze of rigorous self-deception. Now, however, this was the time-worn face of a man well acquainted with the subtleties of all deceptions, his eyes recondite, his features unwaveringly noncommittal.
“Do you have the package?” Arthur asked, still holding out his arm for the professor’s garments.
The professor nodded his head and handed Arthur his coat and hat and draped his ascot over his arm. Arthur hung the wet clothes in an armoire and joined the professor at the table. The professor took an envelope from his jacket pocket and pushed it over the tablecloth in Arthur’s direction. Arthur opened the envelope and removed a small hand mirror.
“Will that help you see yourself more clearly?”
Arthur smiled politely at the professor, then examined the clasps holding the mirror’s backing. He easily twisted one of them around, twisted it back, then returned the mirror to the envelope.
“What is it for?” Tarkhov asked as Arthur opened the bottle of vodka. “That I had to carry it all the way from Moscow.”
“It’s better that you don’t know,” Arthur said.
“Is there anything good I can look forward to knowing about this arrangement?”
“No,” Arthur said. “I’m afraid not.” Arthur uncovered the two plates of steak and potatoes, poured a glass of vodka for the professor and himself, then raised his glass perfunctorily. “To your safe passage,” he said benignly.
Professor Tarkhov didn’t say anything. He lifted the vodka and drank the shot along with Arthur, then reached for a pickle from the bowl, pressed it lengthwise against the whiskers under his nose, and inhaled a long deep breath. He placed the pickle on his plate and stared at Arthur, waiting impatiently for the next formality.
“Please eat,” Arthur implored. “Eat, and say what’s on your mind.”
Tarkhov looked at his food, and seeing the thick piece of meat before him, he reached for his knife and fork and sliced into it. But before he could bring his fork to his mouth and bite into the steak, he shook his head and placed the utensils down. “I will say this first, Arthur. Had you come to me, had you sent me a letter warning me what was to happen, perhaps, perhaps, I would have understood this. But the way this happened . . . the way this happened? It is unacceptable!” The professor raised his hand and hit the table with the butt of his palm. The silverware clattered, the bottle shook, and the professor, going against his reserved nature, stood up as if he were about to lunge at Arthur. “Can you imagine?” he said, standing over the table, over Arthur. “You might say you can, but I don’t think you can. They came in the middle of the night. In the middle of the night. Irina and I were in bed. The children were asleep. In the middle of the night, we hear the knock on the door. The police, knocking on the door. Irina immediately began crying and holding me and telling me how much she loved me and that she knew this would happen and what would she do and will they take her too and what will become of the children . . . should we hide? . . . should I run? No, you can’t imagine. You can’t imagine.”
“Thankfully, it wasn’t what you believed it to be,” Arthur said, looking away from the professor to a crack in the edge of the table. He started rubbing his fingers over the small serration, feeling it prick at his soft skin.
“No, there is nothing to be thankful for, Arthur. Nothing was explained to me until I arrived in Moscow. Until then, no one would tell me why I was being taken from my home—and then only details, minutiae, more details, of what I am to do, and then threats, saying that if I don’t do it, my family’s safety was in question. This I should be thankful for? . . . And before that? The humiliation? ‘Professor Mikhail Tarkhov,’ this young nobody announced at the door of my apartment, ‘you are required to accompany us. Please pack a suitcase of clothes.’ Nothing more than that. Irina? She was beside herself. She thought I was being arrested. I thought I was being arrested. I could hear the neighbors through the walls when I was packing. They thought I was being arrested. Irina fell to her knees and started begging the officers to leave, to leave us alone. I had to lift my sobbing wife off the ground and put her in the children’s room while I dressed and packed. And then when I left, I thought I might never see them again.” Tarkhov continued to lean onto the table, bending forward, inching his nose closer to Arthur’s head. “It was only after I reached Moscow, after ten hours on the train, that I found out about all this nonsense and was allowed to telegraph my wife and tell her I had a special duty to perform for the state.”
“I apologize,” Arthur said, sounding incapable of expressing his regret.
“No, no you don’t. You can’t even look at me.”
“I sincerely apologize, Mitya,” Arthur said as he continued to watch his fingers run along the edge of the table. “Please,” he said, finally looking up. He lifted his hand and started gently waving it at the professor as though he were patting the head of a small restless animal. “Please, sit down and listen to me.”
“How could you have done this?” the professor continued in his agitated state, now looking Arthur square in the eye.
“Please, Mitya.”
Professor Tarkhov reluctantly inched back and resumed his place in his chair. “I truly did believe we were friends, Arthur.”
“We are friends, Mitya. And you must believe me when I say that it was an act of friendship that brought you here.”
“Having me forcibly removed from my home, from my country, with threats made on my family?” Tarkhov laughed with sarcasm. “This is an act of friendship? Please, forgive me. I
must be a little thick.”
“If I hadn’t done what I had done, Mitya,” Arthur said plainly, “if I hadn’t staged this as it was staged, those knocks on the door that you mistook for the police coming to arrest you would have, in fact, been the knocks of the police coming to arrest you.”
The professor raised his chin and narrowed his eyes as he had done when he first beheld Arthur’s face. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying this, Mitya—that within a week from the day that you were taken from your apartment, by my men, there was to be a purge within several departments of the university, including your own.”
“How is that possible?”
“How is anything that happens in Russia these days possible?”
Tarkhov’s eyes blinked rapidly behind his wireless spectacles as though he were trying to recall all the words that he had written over the past ten years. “But what could they possibly want with me? I lead a simple life. I write. I write boring articles and books about classical painters who matter to no one, including myself. Quietly, I do this. So quietly. Since my voice has fallen out of favor, I’ve done all that I can to be quiet and not draw attention to myself. How could I possibly accept this as the truth?”
“How, you ask?” Arthur stood up from his chair and went into the bedroom. He returned carrying a file, which he handed to the professor. “It’s all there in your hands,” he said. “According to whoever wrote this, it appears that even when writing about your benign subjects, you continue to exhibit a defiant tone. I don’t claim to make any sense of it.”
Professor Tarkhov opened the file and flipped through some of the pages, skimming. “I don’t understand this.” His anger now tempered by his confusion, he took hold of his beard and stroked it softly as he studied the documents and mumbled to himself. Professor Tarkhov shook his head as he flipped through the pages. “How do I know you didn’t manufacture this?”