It was noon and I had some time to kill, so I drove to the warehouse. I hadn’t been back there since the reconstruction exercise back in early September. I parked my car in the exact spot I parked it that night. August 25—it was unusually hot and muggy for late summer, and a cluster of gnats encircled me when I got out of the car that night to chase away what I thought were teenage boys drinking in the warehouse. The place was a frequent rendezvous point for underage drinking. I should have let it go. Ignored it.
Now the cold was biting. It was just shy of twenty degrees, but the relentless wind from the north made it feel a hell of lot icier. Although the warehouse where the shooting had taken place was abandoned, the small one across from it was owned by a local Hasidic guy, Mordecai Little. He operated an antique store a couple hundred yards up the road and kept excess or in-need-of-repair inventory in this warehouse.
I walked around the perimeter of the abandoned building. The police tape had been taken down a few weeks ago. When I got to the front door I hesitated, then took a deep breath before turning the handle. The air was slightly warmer inside, so I slid off my gloves and shoved them into my pocket. I stood in the spot I stood in that night and conjured up the figures of Calvin, Melvin, Wayne and the two buyers. What did I see in Calvin’s hand? I’d been so sure it was a gun. Was it possible I saw Wayne’s gun and assumed Calvin had one too? Maybe Eldridge was right. The mind playing tricks in a stressful situation. Or maybe it was unconscious bias. Did I harbor unacknowledged prejudice against minorities? I’d like to think not, but I was not that naive to believe I was immune from such thinking.
A wave of nausea sent me fleeing outside to the corner of Mordecai Little’s warehouse where I upended my breakfast. I remained doubled over until the last remnant of my breakfast sandwich landed on the grassy area between my feet. My back ached and I stretched skyward with both my arms to relieve the tension. That was when I saw it. A white, baseball-sized CCTV camera lodged under the eave facing out to where my car was parked. My mind started to race. Was this camera operational? How long had it been there? Could there be footage from the night of the shooting? Did it even matter, since this camera was outside, not where the incident occurred?
I snapped a picture of the CCTV camera with my phone and texted Eldridge asking him if anyone was aware of this. I immediately saw the three dots indicating he was texting me back.
Cliff: Let me check. But you are not to get involved. I’ll have Marty run this down
* * *
Me: Today?
* * *
Cliff: Yes today
* * *
Me: Ok
I checked my watch. Dad and I were supposed to Skype with the lifeguard at two. It was nearly one o’clock and I had told Dad I would meet him at his apartment at one-thirty. My mouth was sour; I scrounged around the inside of my car for gum or mints. All I could find was an empty Altoids tin. I was not sure how long that water bottle had been sitting in the cupholder. Perhaps a week. No more than two. I rinsed out my mouth with the two inches of tepid water and spat it out before slamming the car door shut.
I FOUND Dad in the game room playing pool with one of his buddies. He was holding a pool cue in his left hand and a little square box of blue chalk in his right palm. He placed the chalk on the edge of the billiards table and lined up the shot. Two women were perched on barstools nearby. They applauded when Dad sank a ball into a pocket. His cheerleaders.
“Two more shots, Susan,” he said, rubbing the chalk onto the end of the tapered cue. “The two ball, then the eight ball.”
Dad leaned over the table and hit the white cue ball, applying a little English. The cue ball, now besmirched with a powdery blue dot on its smooth surface, spun into the blue ball, which in turn swiveled into a side pocket. Without saying a word, he strode over to the other side of the table. With the tip of the pool cue, he tapped the far corner pocket to indicate his intention. He rested the cue between his thumb and forefinger, bent forward at the waist and tapped the cue ball with just enough finesse that it ricocheted off the far bumper and careened into the eight ball, knocking it into the corner pocket. The two women clapped and gushed. Dad bowed slightly at the waist while making flourishing circles with his right hand as though he were honoring a king . . . or in this case, two queens.
“You owe me a beer, Mitch.” He inserted the cue in the wall cabinet, then reset the fifteen balls in the plastic triangle. “Be with you in one second, Susan.” He sauntered off to the corner of the room and yakked it up with a couple of guys playing cards.
Dad the hustler. Dad the show-off. Dad the eligible bachelor. Dad the socializer. When he looked over at me, I overdramatized looking at my watch. He slapped one of the guys on the back and finally headed my way.
As we exited the game room, I told him about my little discovery at the warehouse.
“Sometimes it’s luck that turns things around. Like the social security number in the Solomon case,” he said. “This could be your lucky break.”
“I’m not counting my chickens just yet. It’s a long shot that there even is a recording, let alone something worthwhile on it. But as you like to say . . . never leave a stone unturned.”
“HELLO, BRIAN.”
Dad and I huddled on his couch so that we both fit in the frame of my laptop computer. Brian appeared to be sitting on a barstool at a kitchen island. I could make out a high-end stovetop behind him. A Jenn-Air or a Wolf. The one with the red knobs. I took the lead and laid out the case from the moment the state troopers found the bones along the highway (the body still unidentified).
“You mentioned that you can offer something enlightening, something only you would know that might help us understand what happened to Trudy,” I said.
“What I’m about to tell you I haven’t told anyone . . . except my wife. When I saw your inquiry on Facebook, well, I just felt it was time to come clean. Actually, my wife prodded me. Maybe this is information I should have shared with the cops forty years ago, but I couldn’t. And I’m not sure it would have made a difference—”
“Just tell us what you know,” Dad interjected, a trace of impatience in his voice.
“Well, here goes . . . I had an affair with Rachel Roth.” Brian paused, perhaps expecting Dad or me to say something. But we were stunned into silence. “I was twenty-two, she was thirty-eight. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”
Well, Dad was right about one thing. The Graduate. He’d just pegged the wrong couple.
“Rachel was looking for attention and affection. Stanley was a philanderer, getting it on with the women who stayed at the hotel for weeks while their husbands worked in the city.”
“And Rachel knew about this?”
“Rachel said they had an understanding, an arrangement. They were essentially a married couple living separate lives. And she was fine with that. ‘Together for the kids,’ she said. But seeing that they are still together, they must have decided to make it work as empty nesters. I’m sure it has to do with all the money they got after they sold the hotel. I don’t know the details, but I remember she told me that her father made Stanley the beneficiary of the hotel. So he probably ended up controlling the purse strings. Which meant she was stuck with him if she wanted to live high on the hog.”
“What does this have to do with Trudy Solomon?” Dad asked.
“Just getting to that. The reason I contacted you was because of a conversation I had with Rachel about a week or so after Trudy went missing. She was very concerned about Scott. He was a moody kid, didn’t get along with Stanley at all. Didn’t get along with anyone, really. A bit of a loner. Rachel suspected Scott was somehow involved with Trudy because she saw them together a few times, usually whispering and trying not to be seen.”
“And you didn’t mention any of this to the police, because . . .?” I asked.
“I just couldn’t say anything. She begged me to keep our affair a secret, and I was afraid if I was pressed on what I heard from her, th
ere would be questions as to how I knew all this. And Rachel didn’t want Scott questioned by the police. She arranged to have him stay with her sister in New Jersey for the rest of that summer—then he went off to college.”
“Do you think Scott was involved in Trudy’s disappearance?”
“I honestly didn’t think so at the time. I spoke to Scott before he left and he told me I got it all wrong. That Trudy was just a friend and I should mind my own business and go to . . . well, he alluded to the fact that he knew about me and his mom. But I always got the feeling he was hiding something. Something which may, or may not, have anything to do with Trudy’s disappearance. It just seemed like he was in a bad place that summer . . . even before Trudy went missing.”
Like a huge pane of skyscraper glass crashing down onto the pavement, my notion of Rachel Roth shattered into a million pieces. She’d been June Cleaver to my mom’s Joan Crawford. The perfect mom who tended to her four children, kept her home immaculate, knew all the repeat guests and staff by name, didn’t smoke, sipped the occasional cocktail, attended Sabbath services every Friday evening, and stood lovingly by her husband’s side every Sunday greeting new guests. Was it all a facade?
“Did you continue to see Rachel after the summer?” I asked.
“No. She broke it off. I was just her summer boy toy. Thinking back on it, I would say she was pretty manipulative. Got what she wanted by hook or crook. I’m pretty sure I was not her first dalliance. Nor her last.”
I glanced at Dad, who looked shell-shocked by the conversation. I turned back to the screen. “Anything else you want to get off your chest?”
“Nope. That’s all I got. I have to say I felt relieved when you posted that Trudy was still alive. I’ve been carrying around some amount of guilt because I never told anyone about this. I mean, like I said, Scott didn’t seem like the kind of person to harm someone, but in hindsight that was for the police to figure out. I was just a dumb kid thinking with my dick, not my brain.”
“One last question. Did you know an Ed Resnick? Skinny guy with blues eyes and a bushy mustache.” I positioned the sketch in front of the laptop camera.
Brian squinted, then shook his head. “Not ringing any bells.”
Within seconds of ending the Skype session, Dad finally said something. “Fuckety fuck fuck.”
Yeah. Sounded about right.
Trudy
Trudy and her nurse sat hip to hip at the edge of the exercise pool.
“You know what would be lovely, Maxine?” Trudy said to the nurse.
“No. What?” the nurse replied.
“I should take swimming lessons. Problem is, I don’t think Ben is going to let me. He said he didn’t want some guy touching me.” Trudy tittered.
“You can do whatever you want, Trudy. You don’t have to listen to Ben.”
Trudy leaned in closer to the nurse. “You have to admit, the lifeguard is super cute.”
“You got a crush on him?” the nurse asked.
“I do NOT.” Trudy held up her thumb and pointer, spread a few inches apart. “Okay, this much.”
The nurse laughed.
Trudy thought about the lifeguard. And the rumors. Him and Mrs. R. “Brian only likes older women.”
“Really now.”
“Oh yeah. But I don’t blame Mrs. R.” Trudy leaned in closer and whispered, “Her husband . . . um . . . he . . . well, he wasn’t . . . nice to her.” She sat quietly, splashing the water with her feet. Then suddenly stopped and said softly, “He wasn’t nice to anybody.”
The nurse patted Trudy’s thigh. “You wanna swim, Trudy?”
“I never took swimming lessons. Ben wouldn’t let me.”
The nurse reached out her hand. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
13
Thursday, November 8, 2018
SNOW WAS accumulating on the roads, so I drove a bit slower than usual as we made our way to Lenny’s trailer home.
“Man, that story sure was something.” Dad and I were still reeling from yesterday’s conversation with “Brian the Lifeguard,” the name we’d bestowed upon him. His real last name being somewhat of a tongue twister—Przeciszewska. “I would have been happy to oblige Rachel’s need for attention and affection. Man o’ mighty. You know, that was the year your mom and I separated. I was unofficially a bachelor. If I only knew. I was still in my prime then. Maybe not twenty-two, but a virile thirty-seven year old.”
“Jeez Dad. TMI. I really don’t want to hear about your crush on Rachel Roth. And you weren’t exactly a bachelor either. You came around often enough to make me think you still wanted to reconcile with Mom.”
“I came around to see you. I remember that summer like it was yesterday. You changed your name from Suzie to Susan. Remember that? Man, that drove your mother crazy.”
I turned onto Mullover Street and spotted Lenny’s Honda Civic parked under a makeshift carport erected next to his trailer home. As we got out of the car, Lenny stepped out the door. He lit up a cigarette and leaned against the railing, eyeing us as we walked along the broken stone path to his doorway.
“You’re going to catch a cold standing out here like this in that flimsy coat,” Dad said, blowing into his cupped hands. “What do you say we go inside?”
“I’m fine just here. Don’t like it? Leave.” With the cigarette dangling from his lip, Lenny zipped up his windbreaker jacket.
“Fine. Have it your way. Just trying to save you some medical expenses.”
“Yeah. Well, I have insurance. Whaddah you want? I already told you everything I know.”
“We don’t think you did,” I said. “People who knew Ed Resnick tell us he knew you,” I lied.
“Who?” Lenny said without missing a beat.
“You know who. We showed you his picture last time we were here,” Dad said, taking the police sketch out of his pocket and unfolding it. “Tell you what. You tell us about Ed and Trudy and we’ll not pursue a search warrant for these premises.”
Lenny took a long, slow drag. He tilted his head sideways to blow out the smoke. He was obviously stalling, weighing his options.
“Here. Let me see that.”
Dad handed him the sketch. “Yeah, that could be Ed. I kinda remember him. We hung out once in a while. Heard he got killed years ago.”
“You know about that?”
“Word got back to me. Can’t remember who told me. I was a junkie back then. Memories shot to hell. Clean now.” Then he held his fingers like a gun to his head and pretended to shoot himself. “But still fucked up in the head.”
“So tell me, when you hung out with Ed, did he mention his plans to leave the area with Trudy?”
“I guess since he’s dead it don’t matter that I’m tellin’ you this. But yeah. He talked about it with me. Told me to keep it on the DL. Said he needed to protect Trudy. Someone gave him five thousand dollars to, as he said, start a new life. I think he went to Rochester. His mother lived there.”
I felt the vibration of my phone in my coat pocket. “Hold on. Gotta take this.” I walked just far enough away from Dad and Lenny for some privacy, then swiped to answer. “Hi Rhonda.”
“Hey Susan. Wanted to let you know that I spoke to some of the members and we got a few takers willing to give character statements on your behalf.”
“I really appreciate that. So I guess this means you’re sitting on the sidelines?”
“I’m afraid I have no choice. This is the best I can do. And Susan, I do believe you did what you had to do. But my hands are tied.”
“Sure, sure. I understand. Just to have a few people willing to do this is great. Really, I appreciate you doing this for me.”
“Should they call the chief and make arrangements to give a statement?”
“Let me check with Eldridge and I’ll get back to you.”
As I headed back over to Lenny and Dad, I could hear them talking about football. Dad was always good at building rapport with just about anyone. Slick lawyers, slime-ball c
riminals, little-old-lady witnesses, cagey suspects, attractive women. I wished I’d inherited this skill, but in this department I was more like Mom—small talk just wasn’t my thing. I liked to get straight to the point. Sidestep the chitchat.
“Sorry about that. Urgent matter. You were talking about Ed getting five thousand dollars to start a new life? You know from whom?”
“I dunno. But he did drop the word ‘she’ into the conversation when he told me about the cash. He also told me to keep my mouth shut about it. He was holdin’ something over me, so I kept my end of the bargain. But seein’ that he’s dead and Trudy has been found, I guess it don’t make no difference now.”
“What was he holding over you?” Dad asked.
“I was skimmin’ some money from the coffee shop. Gonna arrest me? Pretty sure no one gives a shit anymore.”
“Do you know if Ed was shaking down someone?”
“If he was, I don’t know nothin' about that. Haven’t spoken to the dude since he left here.”
“Do you know if his mother is still alive?” I asked.
"Haven't a clue.”
“Okay. Do you happen to know his mother’s name?”
Lenny pulled off his glasses and pinched the top of his nose with his thumb and middle finger. “Something with an M. Marjorie. Margaret. Mildred? I can’t recall.”
“And his father?”
“Never brought him up. Got the feelin’ he didn’t have a father. Are we done with this interrogation? I’m gettin’ cold.”
“We can go inside if you like,” Dad said. Lenny shook his head.
The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon Page 9