Catch Me: Kill Me

by Hallahan, William H. ;

  “Friday?” She shook her head.

  It was hopeless. There was no information here. “I would like to borrow your husband’s journals for a few days. The current one I brought with me, plus the two or three that preceded it. They may have a hint or a piece of information—”

  She turned her head away abruptly. She drew a breath, then let it out in a long sigh.

  When Leary walked out of the apartment building, he was relieved that he would never have to see the two women again. He’d made a mess of the interview.

  Why hadn’t he mailed the case back? Why hadn’t he kept silent? Their eyes had been looking at him, eyes that clearly expected that he would say something—else why had he traveled all the way from Washington? He’d looked at the beautiful green eyes of the daughter, then at the older and wiser beautiful green eyes of the mother, and he’d opened his mouth. Words came out. Consoling words. Hopeful words. Lies: “Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

  How easy it was. How glib he had been. The government (in pear-shaped tones) is doing everything in its power. How much is everything? That’s right, Mrs. Corson; everything is very little. In fact, the government was powerless. No one was looking for Boris Kotlikoff.

  He stood on the sidewalk hesitantly. The day had come like a flag of truce from winter, and people walked the streets, coats undone, hats off, faces up to the sun, and also stood on corners in small groups, talking quietly with easy smiles, and squinted at the sudden springtime brightness. In their coats and winter hats, walking the stained, weathered streets, they looked like dazed but delighted survivors in combat dress come out with the armistice to do a head count and to take note of the missing. “Kotlikoff didn’t make it? What a tragedy. He waited so long for spring. He came so close. One day more!”

  Find him, he’d said: The United States would find him. How? He looked at the buildings around him. There were multitudes of windows, any one of which might hide Boris Kotlikoff—hordes of windows looking at him. The man could be just a few blocks from home or on another continent. He was thankful it wasn’t his job to find him. He hadn’t the vaguest idea where to look.

  Maybe the question wasn’t “Where?” Maybe the question was “Why?”

  No, he’d intruded far enough. He would send the journals back to her—safely away from those green eyes, from a distance, by mail—and be done with it. The mistake was to have come in the first place. It had cost him his emotional distance, cost him his bureaucratic indifference. Now, the Kotlikoff affair had become personal. He had gotten personally involved. Worse, he felt like a fool, sensing that they hadn’t believed him, anyway.

  He decided to take the subway to his aunt’s, then go back to Washington and peace. But at the subway he didn’t take the downtown train to his aunt’s. He took the uptown train to Boris Kotlikoff’s office. He avoided asking himself why.

  There was no work being done in the office.

  When he had opened the door marked HARMALOV & SON, three women were sitting behind a desk in a small circle, knees by thighs, leaning toward each other and murmuring and listening wide-eyed. They moved back to their own desks when Leary entered.

  Ms. Cohan, Kotlikoff’s secretary, was afflicted with total recall, and her tongue, released from silence by Leary’s government ID card, issued a log jam of facts and details. She explained about the making of the morning coffee, the number of cups the pot held, the opening of the mail which had been delivered late, the processing of bills and checks from her desk to the bookkeeper who isn’t in today—she has the flu. The men of the office were also not in now.

  The two other women had commenced typing busily.

  He interrupted her. “May I see his desk?”

  “They’ve been all through that.”

  “Who?”

  “The police—a detective was here yesterday. He was with the FBI.”

  “Did he take anything?”

  “No. He just looked at things and left.”

  Leary walked into Kotlikoff’s office. Morning sunlight lay in the desk chair. Through the partly open window the spring air fluttered the leaves of plants on the windowsill. Leary looked down at the street, at the traffic and slowly strolling pedestrians. This was the window mentioned in his notebooks. Having maintained a watch on winter from it, Kotlikoff had been cheated of his goal. Spring had arrived one day too late.

  On Kotlikoff’s desk were miscellaneous papers, books, roadmaps and plastic tape dispensers. There were several piles of typeset galleys. Resting on one pile like a paper-weight was Kotlikoff’s coffee mug. There were more galleys in the drawers, as well as manuscripts, printer’s mechanicals for dust jackets, letter openers, paper clips. He found a manila envelope and opened it. It held books of checkbook stubs. He put the envelope back.

  Ms. Cohan, he realized, was still talking, like a schoolgirl, reciting a poem with intense concentration and absently cracking her knuckles. She’d gotten to the part where Mr. Kotlikoff was ready to leave the office in the rain to catch a train to Poughkeepsie to get his wife and little daughter back home. Suddenly she was weeping, but the narrative continued unimpeded. “Rubber overshoes, I told him. Maybe in Russia they don’t catch cold in the rain, but in New York they catch cold!”

  Leary, slowly building a sense of Kotlikoff’s personality, was amused by the picture of the reserved man coping with an office mother.

  “And the manuscript. I told him not to go riding around with that in his case. Thank God I made copies.”

  Leary thought about the checkbook stubs and retrieved the envelope. “You made copies of his manuscript, Lyrics from a Shtetl?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’d like to borrow a copy if I may.” Leary peered into the brown envelope. The checkbook stubs were numbered sequentially. Leary sat down in Kotlikoff’s sun-warmed chair and began to examine the stubs. It was sort of an economic biography. A check for $86 to an eye doctor, a check for an insurance premium, a check for the rent on the apartment, checks for cash, for magazine subscriptions, dozens of checks recording the inconsequential financial data of a New York householder. Kotlikoff had become a capitalist chained to a checkbook.

  Ms. Cohan stood in the doorway and held out a copy of the manuscript. “Ah, thank you.” He opened his attaché case and put it in on top of Kotlikoff’s journals. Casually, he put the envelope of checkbook stubs in with it and shut it.

  “Did he have any income besides his job here?”

  “I don’t—well, royalties, you mean?”

  “What royalties?”

  “From his poetry. When he got here from Russia, there was a lot of money in trust for him in a bank.”

  “Do you know Jay Simmonds personally or just on the phone?”

  “Who’s Jay Simmonds?”

  He stood up. Ms. Cohan had much more to tell him. He politely but firmly thanked her and left.

  Back on the street, he was struck anew by the pointlessness of his investigation. He felt he should visit his Aunt Maureen, then take the late afternoon flight back home. He decided he would.

  At Forty-first and Third, a cab stopped and the passenger door was flung open. “Leary!” An accusing finger reached out of the cab into the sunlight. It beckoned him closer. Leary leaned down and looked into the angry eyes of Gus Geller, a balloon over a red bow tie.

  “I thought it was understood you’re off the Kotlikoff case.”

  Leary sighed and elaborately set down his attaché case. Straightening, he reached his left hand into a jacket pocket and drew out a pad. With his right hand he took out a mechanical pencil and wrote, slowly; tore the sheet from the pad, then leaned into the cab and pushed the paper into Geller’s jacket pocket. “I’m off the Kotlikoff case when I decide or when that man tells me so. Call him.”

  “You’re off. And you’re off now. Listen.” Geller struggled over closer to the open door and then shook his finger in air. “You were snooping around his office, talking to people about a very serious situation involving national se
curity. Now this is the last time I’m going to warn you.”

  Leary felt himself near laughter. “Geller, you have no authority—”

  “Get off or you’ll be taken off in a basket.”

  Leary reached into the cab and seized Geller’s bow tie and pulled Geller to him. “I don’t let people talk that way to me, Geller. You go play cloak-and-dagger someplace else and stop bothering the grownups. And, if we meet again, you call me Mister. Got it? Hey? Mister Leary.” By the tie and throat, Leary pushed Geller back into the cab and slammed the door.

  Geller leaned out of the cab as it reentered traffic. Then he shook a slow, solemn, silent finger at Leary.

  Leary watched the cab thoughtfully. How could Geller have known he had just visited Kotlikoff’s office? How had he been able to find him on the crowded streets of Manhattan?

  In a basket.

  The walk to Grand Central took less than ten minutes. And that left him still more than half an hour before his lunch date with Powell. He entered the train station and found the lavatory. Men were moving in and out, heads down, abstracted, occupied with their own private thoughts—light-years distant from one another’s minds.

  The attendant was an irascible man. “That stupid Gelb knew goddam right well that that guy wasn’t no drunk. I’ve seen a million drunks around here, and not one of them was ever like that guy. Ask me, that guy Gelb should have his ass kicked and his cop’s badge taken from him. Ask me, that United Nations Building ought to be burned to the ground, and those freeloading foreigners who mouth off about this country ought to be kicked to hell out of here, before they kidnap the whole country. Next time I need a cop around here, I’m going over to Jersey or up into Connecticut and get a real one. Screw that Gelb.”

  “He on duty now?”

  “Sure. This whole week it’s the same trick. You want him? Just go up the street to the cafeteria. He’ll be in there or in the coop behind it.”

  “What’s the coop?”

  “A hangout, a place to hide from the sergeant. It’s the boiler room at the back of the building.”

  Gelb was in the cafeteria with his wife and son, sitting in a booth in the rear talking to the owner, who stood in a white apron next to the table. It was the lunch hour and crowded. Gelb was angry and thumping a fist on his chest. The owner watched, hands pocketed, slouching and nodding sympathetically.

  “They’re making out that I’m at fault,” said Gelb to Leary when he sat down. “Ask my wife here. Screw every Jew in New York. Them bastards is looking down their big Jew noses at me. They’re holding me up to contempt. They’re laughing at me. Calling me a dumb cop. A dumb Jewish cop, a traitor to my religion because some cockamamie poet—a Commie at that—got snatched on my beat. Who the hell are they to criticize me? Ha? Who? Them bastards couldn’t handle the animals on my post here for five minutes. This is Forty-second Street, Manhattan. They have no idea what goes on here every day. Screw them all.” He crammed bread into his mouth and swallowed it, half-chewed. He took a mouthful of seltzer water and swallowed it. “What’s a Jew anyway? You’re supposed to be what you’re born. I was born over in Brooklyn. That makes me an American. A New York cop American. I don’t belong to no temple or synagogue. I never been to a temple or a shul. I never been bar-mitzvahed. I don’t know the prayers. I never read the Book. I don’t speak Yiddish or Hebrew. So what makes me a Jew? What?”

  His wife touched his arm. “It’s in there, Harry. In those veins. In your blood. I married a Jew and his name is Harry Gelb. You’re a Jew.”

  “Balls.”

  His son pointed a finger at his head. “It’s in here, too, Pop. You’re a Jew here.” He pointed to his chest. “And in here. Here, Pop.”

  “Balls. A Jew is someone who belongs to the Jewish religion. Period. That goddam Kelleher in our precinct stopped going to Catholic church when he’s fourteen. You call him a Catholic, he’ll knock you on your ass. So he’s no longer a Catholic. But me. I never been to temple. I don’t know a thing about the Jewish religion, yet I’m a Jew until I die. Who says so? Other people I never even met say so. Other people who ain’t Jewish. People who don’t know nothing about the Jewish religion say I’m a Jew, so I am. Well, I’m not. I say I’m not. And that’s the end of that.” His wife shook her head. “Okay, Harry. Okay. By you, you’re not a Jew. But by me, you’re a Jew. God forbid all these years I had a gentile in my bed. You’re a Jew, and Boris Kotlikoff, God help him, he’s a Jew. Not a Commie. A Jew. He fought his way out of Russia so he could live like a Jew. He’s a kharif, a—a—gaon! A great, great teacher and a genius.”

  “Who says so?”

  “The whole world—Jews and gentiles. Russians and Americans. The whole world.”

  “He’s a Commie. A copout on a cause he spent his life in. Even Commies got loyalty to their own, don’t they? He’s a Commie and a traitor. I got nothing to do with him.”

  “He’s a great man, Pop. A great teacher, a great poet and a fellow Jew.”

  “What do I need for you to tell me that for? Don’t give me that fellow-Jew crap. What’s with this fellow-Jew crap? Fellow Jew. Am I a fellow Jew to the rich Jew merchants here in New York? ‘Our crowd,’ my ass. My bleeding itching ass. Those fellow Jews of mine in New York with the big numbers in their bank accounts are nothing to me. They wouldn’t give me the sweat off their bicycle seats. Fellow Jew. Don’t fellow-Jew me, hear! Don’t fellow-Jew me! And stop picking up them bread seeds with your wet fingers right out of your mouth. We gotta eat off of that table. Jesus, doesn’t your mother learn you manners?”

  His son shrugged angrily out of the booth and walked toward the doorway.

  “Fine, Harry, fine,” said his wife. “You win again. You shout louder and pound the table harder, and he leaves with his mouth shut. Have you been in his room lately? He has a quotation from some big writer on his wall. And you know what it says, Harry? It says like—ah—‘Just because you’ve silenced a man doesn’t mean you’ve convinced him.’”

  “Gaon, schmaon. Screw Kotlikoff. Could I care less?”

  His wife sipped cold tea from her cup. “I wonder where he is? What he’s doing?”

  “Who?”

  “Boris Kotlikoff.”

  “What do you mean—doing? What kind of doing?”

  “Come on, Harry, you don’t think they captured him just to get him to sign autographs, do you? He’s lying in a room somewhere. Maybe they have him bound and gagged and lying in a closet.” Her eyes filled. “A gaon in a closet all tied up.”

  “Stop! Jesus Christ, stop!”

  Leary heard his name being called as he walked along Forty-second toward Madison. He turned to see Harry Gelb jogging toward him. “That’s funny. You don’t look Jewish,” said Leary.

  “Yeah, yeah, listen.” Gelb turned and looked back at the corner where his wife stood. “Listen, you look like the right kind of guy. I wouldn’t say this even to them smart-ass Feds, but look, I want to help. I mean like—well, how can I say this? I knew. I knew. You know what I mean? When they hustled him out of there, I figured it was a bunch of goddam foreigners. Let them settle it among themselves. I mean, I didn’t exactly know. But I knew. You act like you’re interested in this case. I figure you to try real hard to get this Kotlikoff. And I want to help. Okay? You tell me how to help. Look.” He took out a pad and pencil. “Here’s my home phone and address and this is the precinct number. I’m either home or in the precinct house or on my post here. Okay? You just tell me. You call me.”

  “Nice of you to be so interested in the plight of one of our fellow Jews, Harry.”

  “And up yours, too, sweetheart. I don’t care about Kotlikoff. I care about me. Me. You call me. Okay?”

  Leary looked at Gelb, estimating his seriousness. “You want to help? Okay. Find the men who kidnapped Kotlikoff.”

  “Yeah. How? How!”

  “If those men were attached to one of the foreign missions in New York, they all probably live and work right here in your own precinct.”


  Gelb considered that. “You mean I should hang around their buildings and try to spot one of them?”

  “Why not?”

  “Sure. Why not?” But Gelb didn’t look sure. He looked unhappy. “Okay. I’ll be in touch.” He turned, wearing misery all over his face, and walked back to his wife. His son was not with her.

  It was in all a very pleasant place—a table by the window overlooking the East River, restaurant sounds, and the murmur of civilized voices. Waiting for Powell, Leary sat examining Kotlikoff’s checkbook stubs. Boris Kotlikoff handled money with care. Even his check stubs for cash stated the purpose (food or entertainment or baby-sitter), and in the dozens of stubs that he read, Leary found only one unusual check: $1,800 to R&E Realty, dated March 18, two weeks before. Purpose: apartment lease. But it wasn’t for the Kotlikoff apartment. That was under lease from Bauer Enterprises. Leary wondered if Kotlikoff had set up a love nest.

  He put the stubs away and took out his copy of the manuscript. But this was old ground. He hadn’t seen anything in those poems that could foment a kidnapping. An impatient scanning of a few of the poems revealed nothing.

  He opened it to the last entry. A violent line had been scribbled through the entire page of notes. It was a failed attempt at a poem: “Winter Ode: While Waiting for the First Day of Spring.” Kotlikoff dwelt on the intimidating silence of voiceless winter—never to reply to man’s ancient questions. All things burrow and wait in paralyzed dead still air. Entombed in his heated sepulcher, man waits. All voices are still and time stops, and in the wind there is no promise of spring. And wait and wait and wait. Phrases and clauses, words and substitute words, all rejected and abandoned like a jumbled box of broken parts. A smashed poem.

  He looked again at the quotation on the cover of the journal.

  More than two thousand years ago

  Hillel asked three questions:

  If I am not for myself, who will be?

  If I am only for myself, what am I?

  If not now, when?