I scowled, testing the tape that held my head together. “Since you were about to ask if I’m okay, I’m fine, thanks to your granddaughter patching me up.” Alfred looked confused, but I didn’t feel like explaining. “If you think Walther’s an asshole, wait ‘til you meet his son.”
“I also know Rudolph Drax… an unpleasant individual. He struck you?”
“It was one of his security guys.”
“Name of Valentine?”
“No, his name’s Daley.”
Alfred leaned in for a closer look and winced.
“Please don’t do that. It feels worse than it looks.” I pulled back to regain my personal space. “Who’s Valentine?”
“Drax chief of security. I advise avoiding him. He served his country in the European theater but apparently wasn’t satisfied with the war’s end. Became a mercenary in Africa for whoever controlled the gold mines. His methods are—how to put this for polite company—field tested. Has an affectation for knives, I believe.”
“I’ll commit that to memory.”
“Wise.” Alfred brought a hand to his chin, thinking, and then said, “Speaking of memories, you called Walther a Nazi. Do you recall that seminal moment?”
The entire episode on the upper floors of Drax headquarters was tattooed on the inside of my skull. “I never called him a Nazi. I compared the train station to the Louvre, both subjected to invasion.”
Alfred pursed his lips. “You’re splitting hairs. Your point was clear.”
“What’s your point?”
“That you weren’t far from the truth.”
I didn’t follow.
“Ever heard of the company DuPont?”
“Of course.”
“How about Ford?”
The lecture was strumming my nerves. “I hope to buy a car someday, once I get a real job.”
“Standard Oil? General Electric? ITT?”
“Is this going somewhere?”
Alfred flashed the weary smile of a parent with an obstinate child. “All these companies have one thing in common. They actively supported the Nazi movement in the years before World War II.” Alfred paused for dramatic effect. “Do you believe it?”
It seemed inconceivable. He’d named mainstream American institutions, employing hundreds of thousands of workers, while simultaneously backing a monster?
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Alfred went on, “but foresight is lousy. No one knew of Hitler’s territorial ambitions until Austria fell in 1938, and no one knew of his grotesque plans for the Jews until years later. Throughout most of the 1930s, American businesses viewed the Führer as the leader of a large potential market, nothing more.”
“Supported the Nazi movement how?”
Alfred made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Mostly they sent money, sometimes supplies. Worst of all, they sent legitimacy. What could possibly be sinister about the Third Reich if the Wehrmacht rode into Poland in Ford trucks, and if IBM—the company, not just their tabulating equipment—ran Germany’s national census? Never mind that the data collected was used to round up the Jews.”
I flipped over the book in my hands and reread the title: Building Hitler’s War Machine—Deutschmarks and Dollars. Alfred’s World War II volumes represented more than a history buff’s collectibles. They were research. “You’re saying Drax financed Hitler?”
The old man painted the air with hand gestures like a professor. “The name Drax is an Americanized version of Drexler, German for lathe operator. Not a bad moniker for a construction company, wouldn’t you say?”
I didn’t reply.
Alfred leaned back against the desk and folded his arms. “Of course, being German in America didn’t make you a Nazi sympathizer. Good heavens, half the residents on Cincinnati’s north side are Prussians and Bavarians.” He became stern. “But sending massive quantities of stolen money, to eventually be used to bankroll the Final Solution? That’s a different story.”
“Stolen? You’re saying Drax ripped off Cincinnati to help finance Hitler’s grand plan?”
Alfred gave me a sad smile.
“That’s one helluva charge. How do you know Drax did it?”
Alfred pushed off the desk and began pacing, gaze to the floor, bony fingers interwoven behind his back. “Fast-forward to right after Hitler fell, when newsreels showed bulldozers pushing hundreds of murdered Jews into mass graves. The world was shocked—horrified.”
The inhumanity captured in those old films altered everyone who saw it. I remembered the survivors, skeletons with barely-beating hearts, eyes empty, no tears left.
“Secrets poured out,” Alfred went on, “like primal scream therapy—anything to put distance between us and the evil.” He stopped walking and met my gaze. “A handful of Drax people contacted the newspaper in secret, low-level people too tortured by guilt to sleep at night. One of them worked the company’s books and saw the money transfers.”
“A brave man.”
“Yes, but he spoke in whispers, wouldn’t go public, wouldn’t dare try to walk out with records under his arm. He was too scared, and for good reason. People had gone missing.”
“Including one person in particular, right?” I said. Alfred shrank at the mention. “One of the reporters. Your partner.”
Alfred ambled to the wall that displayed his awards, certificates, and mementos. He caressed a framed photo, one I’d noticed before. It featured two young men—Alfred and another, with thick hair and a beard that met his sideburns—receiving trophy cups from a third, presumably a boss. The banner overhead read Cincinnati Enquirer Shining Stars Gala, and all three men were dressed to the nines in suitcoats, vests, watch chains, and neckties. “The paper put us on two-man teams, one writer and one photographer. I liked it because I didn’t just focus and shoot, I pursued leads.”
“Your partner didn’t mind you doing reporter work?”
“Richard? That was his name, Richard Baumgartner. No, he wasn’t territorial like that. He was sure of himself, and glad to have the help. See, we were busy.” Alfred reset his rail-straight posture. “They gave us bigger news items, and then feature articles, investigative stuff. We got a bit of a reputation. Remember when Councilman Freitag got tangled up with bridge kickbacks?”
Not really, but it didn’t matter. I nodded.
“That was us, why we won this award.” Alfred waved a hand toward the photo. “So when people started showing up from Drax desperate to make a papist confession, the editor sent them down the hall to us.”
“Did you believe Drax sent money to Hitler? I mean, when you first heard it?”
Alfred wrinkled his brow in thought. “Hollywood actors can sob on cue, but not accountants. Yes, I believed it.” He absentmindedly lifted a paperweight from his desk, a cast-iron caboose with cozy yellow light painted in the windows.
“Where were the cops in all this?”
“In Drax’s pocket, or so we assumed. But we didn’t need the cops. People opened up to us.” Alfred pondered that a moment, bringing the past into focus. “Well, they did to Richard.”
“To a newsman? Someone who spreads information for a living?”
Alfred scowled. “A newsman with integrity. When he promised to protect his sources, he meant it.” The old man’s features softened with a recollection. “He had a kind face that matched the man inside, and eyes you could trust.” But the reverie vaporized. Alfred set the paperweight down hard on the desk. “One morning Richard didn’t show up at the office. I never saw him again.”
Huh? I’d been expecting blackjacks, garrotes, and dark sedans pulling up alongside dull-witted victims. “That’
s all?”
“The cops investigated, for what that’s worth. Richard was last seen carrying a suitcase from his house and getting on a bus. The police said no foul play, as if that made everything copacetic.”
“What’d you do?”
Alfred shrugged. “I went back to the photographer pool, shooting crime scenes and ribbon cuttings and political dinners. But I knew something was wrong.”
“What makes you so sure Richard didn’t just take off?”
Alfred shot me a toasty glare. “The rumor mill had it all explained. First, that Richard was fed up with risky assignments on a word jockey’s pay scale. Second, that he’d gotten cozy with a leggy female journalist visiting from Buenos Aires.”
“She was for real?”
“Yes.” Alfred gave a small shake to his head as if dismissing the absurdity of it all. “Part of some bogus exchange program by Argentinian politicians to show they cared about freedom of the press.”
“He took a shine to her?”
Alfred blasted the notion like airborne skeet. “Of course not.” I was tempted to observe that horny guys routinely chased gorgeous girls, but Alfred kept going. “There was a third rumor. Supposedly Richard had uncovered a dirty money trail pointing to a waterworks contractor, and that he’d put the squeeze on the guy, saying he’d bury the evidence if the contractor paid up.”
“Extortion?”
“He would never do that.”
“So what happened?” I was beginning to feel like the straight man in a failed comic routine.
“I called in a favor from a bank manager. He discreetly checked Richard’s records.” Alfred lowered his gaze and his voice grew quieter, the edge gone. “Three days before he disappeared, fourteen thousand dollars was deposited to his account, with no listed depositor. Banks back then received money without asking questions. On the afternoon before he disappeared, all the money was withdrawn in cash.”
“By Richard?”
Alfred gritted his teeth, still staring down. “Some pimple-faced teller swore the man looked like Richard and presented an acceptable ID.” Alfred took three steps around his desk and dropped into his chair. All energy seemed to leave him, and a sadness peeked out from behind the bluster, like a man defending a woman’s honor while knowing, win or lose, his loyalty would never be returned.
I placed the book on the shelf and took a chair across from him.
“The rumor mill was satisfied,” Alfred continued. “Everything had been explained perfectly. Richard outsmarted a crook and escaped the nine-to-five for piña coladas and his Argentinian woman. People were actually envious.”
“But not you.”
“No,” he replied, scrunching his brow. “The Drax investigation died with him.”
“Died with him?”
Alfred bolted upright. “Have you been asleep this whole time? Drax murdered him. They stuffed his body in one of those boxes you found in the subway.” Something in my gut churned. I remembered the body—the skin covered in dust. Perhaps somewhere in the crates, a crop of thick hair and sideburns. Dark pits that once held eyes.
But something wasn’t making sense, and I didn’t know how to say it without whipping Alfred into a frenzy. “Strictly devil’s advocate, okay? I could see why some people would reach the wrong conclusion, couldn’t you?” I gave him a hesitant glance and counted out points on my fingers. “There was no foul play, big bucks mysteriously showed up and then left as cash, and there was an attractive alternative—and I’m not just talking about the woman. I mean, who hasn’t dreamed of a fresh start in some tropical paradise?”
Alfred simmered. “You don’t know Richard.”
“Everyone has a breaking point.”
“You—don’t—know—Richard.”
I rose from my chair. “Oh, come on. The woman wasn’t a ghost. And why carry a suitcase to the bus if he wasn’t going someplace? The bank teller identified him walking away with his pockets stuffed with cash, cash with a reason for being there. This doesn’t sound like make-believe.”
Alfred leapt to his feet, his face crimson. “Of all people, you should know what Drax is capable of. They arranged it all. Can’t you see that?”
“Try me.”
Alfred stabbed the air with his index finger. “Drax deposited the money. Drax arranged to have a look-alike carry a suitcase from his house to the bus stop for the neighbor to see. Drax sent the look-alike to the bank to present a fake ID to the greenest teller. Drax floated the rumors and everyone gobbled them up.” He caught his breath and exhaled, his shoulders sagging under the weight of his hopelessness.
There was no convincing him. Or was there? “If Richard’s body is in those crates, then so is proof of foul play. There must be dental records.”
Alfred gave an empty laugh. “Now you’re being stupid. To the law, that walled-off tunnel is a sacred resting place for hundreds of people.”
I opened my mouth to speak but Alfred shoved my words back with an open palm.
“Legally, cracking open one of those boxes is the same as exhuming a grave, so you’re planning to unearth an entire cemetery? Even in a normal city, one that wasn’t corrupt from the mailman to the mayor, that won’t happen. Believe me, I tried.”
No wonder Alfred teared up when I mentioned the crates. The city had never re-interred the bodies. Therefore, to Alfred’s thinking, his former partner still lay below Cincinnati’s streets, sent there by Drax’s founder.
“Walther started it all?” I asked. “Backing Hitler?”
“Absolutely. Good friends with Lindbergh.”
Charles Lindbergh. American hero, first to fly across the Atlantic, and the most famous American Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist. I’d seen his picture in the hallway at Drax headquarters. Beaming next to the legendary pilot was Walther Drax. “What about Rudolph?”
“He was junior at the time but already active in the company, being groomed for an executive role. His hands are bloody.”
“Tony?”
Alfred thought a moment. “I don’t know how much he knows about Drax’s history. But evil is a cancer, and some cancers are genetic.”
Three entire generations. I sighed. Our small campaign suddenly felt too small, with our shop-class laser, seat-of-the-pants expeditions, and no more safety equipment than a penny on a lanyard.
Our adversary suddenly felt too big, a multimillion-dollar corporation and Cincinnati institution as permanent as the Roebling Bridge. “DuPont, Ford, IBM,” I said. “They’re all going strong. Why didn’t the public turn on them for supporting the fascists?”
Alfred chuckled. “The answer lies in that book you were perusing when I came in. Those companies played the public relations game brilliantly. They found scapegoats in the organization and lopped off their heads—sometimes senior managers, sometimes not. They formed task forces, pretended to be shocked at the findings, and swore to new codes of conduct. They donated millions to Jewish charities and apologized until they were blue in the face.” He elevated his brows. “Which brings us to a vital point. Think Drax could pull off that kind of performance?”
Of course. Drax could and would do anything to save its skin, angling the limelight perfectly to conceal every blemish. The oversized banners hanging in the headquarters building made Drax seem like the Wizard of Oz fulfilling everyone’s dreams.
“Imagine this,” Alfred said. “Walther and Rudolph would hold a press conference, looking haggard from their sleepless nights trying to learn what had gone wrong all those years ago. They’d release the findings from their rigorous internal investigation. Erroneous information about Hitler’s intentions had bubbled up from parts of the organization. Fact-chec
king had been weak. Mistakes had been made. Staring unblinking into the camera, Walther would apologize—not for crimes against humanity, mind you, but for being too trusting. Then, per the script, Walther would shed a tear and Rudolph would follow suit in sympathy for Dad’s suffering. Finally, surrounded by his loyal employees—all visibly shaken by the revelations and worried for their beloved patriarch—Walther would announce the upcoming groundbreaking for the Cincinnati Museum of Jewish Heritage.”
I believed every word of it. Drax could turn a PR disaster into a boon. “But a fraud conviction would change everything.”
Alfred’s eyes lit up, and for the first time, he looked at me as a compatriot instead of a subordinate. “Exactly. We’ll paint a very different public image, one that can’t be erased by their PR department. Do you understand?” I nodded. “By defrauding the city with that subway, sending Hitler the proceeds, and never coming clean, Drax made every Cincinnatian unwittingly complicit in history’s worst mass murder.” Alfred slapped his fist into his palm. “The company would never survive.”
I stared at the floor for a few seconds, feeling Alfred’s gaze on the side of my face. “Drax swiped the test negatives but left one good strip behind. I reprinted the shots this morning.”
“Good deal. I’ll tell Smith to hop to it. Once he verifies the calculations, we’ll need to move fast.”
In other words, I would need to move fast to take all the measurement photos before time ran out.
I took a few steps toward the door but stopped midway. “This may come as a complete surprise to you, Mr. Blumenfeld, but I don’t like Nazis either. You could’ve told me about this at the beginning.”
“Right,” Alfred replied with acid sarcasm, “because you’ve always shown such discretion and judgment in what you say and do.” He lifted the Sunday Cavalcade from his desk and dropped it into the trash can. “Now, can I trust you with what I just told you?”
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