by Ann Aptaker
“I don’t keep up much with the academic crowd.”
“I see. Well, Marcus was invited to America to give a program of lectures at one of your universities here in New York. That was in 1930. But when Hitler and his hooligans started making serious trouble in Germany, the university let Marcus stay. They gave him sanctuary and a teaching position. It is why he escaped the Nazis.” Her relief at her brother’s escape and her pride in his American success are real, but there’s a hint of resentment under it, resentment that he lived to start a new life while her husband and children were tortured and killed. But she catches herself, and with a small sad but restorative smile, she continues. “So after his classes at the university during the day, at night he developed a formula for one of those new plastics all the industrial men are excited about. He made a fortune from his formula, and he built a good business. He married, and they have a child, a daughter who’s a teenager now. It was Marcus who brought me here after the War. And he kept track of the money that would have been Theo’s. Marcus signed my husband’s stock in the business and his share of the profits over to me. So you see, Cantor? You needn’t worry. I am not a millionaire but I will be fine.” She pinches my cheek and adds with a laugh, “And I will be a good customer!”
“You will be a treasured customer.”
“Thank you. Please, are you sure you won’t stay for a coffee?”
“No, someone’s waiting.”
“Ah, yes, of course. For me, it is time to relax, but for you the night is young.” She rises from the sofa with the dignity of an aristocrat and the good cheer of an imp and leads me back to the vestibule where she takes my coat and cap from the closet. “Thank you, Cantor. You’ve returned my husband’s joy to me. You have done something very important. And now, good night.”
*
Rosie’s body, supple and warm in my bed, is delicious as fruit in summer. I could spend the rest of the night letting my mouth roam around her breasts, flicking her nipples with my tongue, biting and sucking and coaxing them, but my need to take her again is too powerful, too urgent. Lifting myself, I spread her knees, position my equipment. She takes me in.
My moans mingle with Rosie’s. My back arches, my breath rolls through me and out of my mouth in a growl, loud and raspy, grating and insistent, over and over again in a rhythm that’s greedy with need but a noise now out of sync with my body because it’s not the rasp of my breath but the unrelenting noise of the buzzer at my apartment door.
“Just a…! Just a damn…! Jee-zuss fucking Christ!” roars out of me because the door buzzer doesn’t stop, its noise an invader that thrusts itself between me and Rosie and pushes us apart. I almost fall off the bed but manage to land on my feet.
I grab my robe and start to storm out of the bedroom with all the grace of an angry gorilla, but Rosie calls me back. “Cantor, you forgot something!” She’s pointing at my groin.
Oh yeah, the equipment. I yank the equipment out of the harness, tie my robe, then stomp through the living room, nearly knocking over a table lamp before I turn the light on. All I want is to rip out that goddamn door buzzer, which is still buzzing.
Whoever’s pounding that buzzer in the middle of the night, one a.m. by the credenza clock, they’d better be someone who really needs me, needs me so bad its life or death—
—or Sophie? Sophie? Did you get away from whoever grabbed you? Oh God, Sophie, did you find your way home?
My clenched hands fumble stupidly with the lock until I turn the doorknob and open the door, ready to pull Sophie to me, hold her, finally hold her again.
“Did we get you outta bed, Gold?” comes from the buzz-saw voice of a guy with a matching buzz-saw personality. His hat, complete with grease stains at the pinches, is pulled low on his ugly, skinny face. The voice, the personality, the hat, and the face belong to Lieutenant Norm Huber, homicide cop.
I don’t know which I’ll be able to calm first—my aching groin or my aching heart—and keep the pain hidden from Huber’s nosy cop instincts. I try pushing the aches down with a deep breath which I hope passes for a groggy yawn and then mumble through the yawn-breath, “What are you doing here, Huber? I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Not saying you did. Can we come in?” It’s not a question, just an offhand remark as Huber and another cop stroll into my apartment. The other cop is less skinny but just as dead eyed and dry faced. Night-shift homicide cops all get that look after a few years of ripe corpses and stale coffee.
The other cop, a guy I don’t know, makes himself comfortable in one of my club chairs. The dark red upholstery makes his gray overcoat look even dingier and his misshapen fedora more misshapen. He looks around the room like he’s never seen furniture or window drapes before. Then he looks at me like he’s never seen a striped robe before.
I wish he’d stop staring. The equipment’s gone but I’m still wearing the harness, and if the leather rig peeks out from the robe, and if the moron asks what it is, and Huber—who, I’m dead sure, will know what it is—gets a good look at it, I’ll be dragged downtown and tossed in the tank on a morals charge. After that, maybe prison or maybe the Law’s other favorite torture for folks of my persuasion, the psycho ward, but either way it’s good-bye, Cantor Gold.
The guy finally looks away.
Lieutenant Huber doesn’t sit down. He’s the tense type, his tweedy brown overcoat hanging in sharp folds along his bony body. “I’ve got some sad news, Gold. A dame you know is dead.” He didn’t really say it, he sneered it.
It’s like he’s holding an ax over my head. If he says her name—if he says Sophie’s name, if they finally found her and she’s dead—that ax will come down and split my skull.
“It’s a shame”—he tsks—“the way the killer cut her up. The woman barely had any face left. You wouldn’t have recognized her, Gold. You’d never know the dead pile of pulp on the floor was Hannah Jacobson.”
Chapter Three
Huber’s announcement cuts me in two. Half of me stunned, the other half wild with relief. I’m punched-in-the-gut staggered that Hannah Jacobson, the sweet, smart, great lady I saw just a few hours ago, survived the hell of Auschwitz only to be murdered in her own apartment in what was supposed to be the safe haven of America, but I could dance with joy that the death Huber dropped in my lap isn’t Sophie’s. I can keep searching for her.
My dizzying lurch between grief and relief is made worse by Huber’s pushy questioning. “Your name came up tonight, Gold. The doorman at the Jacobson place said you visited around ten o’clock. What was your business with the old lady?”
“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Huber’s grin is tight and ugly, his disapproval of me oozing through his cigar-yellowed teeth. He says, “You know, I almost wish you did kill her. I’d love to be the cop who puts you away for good. You’re a prize catch, Gold.”
“Spare me the honor. Just tell me why you’re here.”
His grin shrinks. His disapproval doesn’t. “Okay, maybe you didn’t kill her, but you’re in a dangerous racket. Maybe your business caused her death.”
“And how do you figure that?”
“You might’ve been the last person to see Hannah Jacobson alive. The doorman says you left around ten thirty, says he didn’t see anyone else go up to her place until my boys arrived around midnight. Seems a neighbor called after hearing noises and maybe a scream in the Jacobson apartment.”
“The neighbor see anything? See anyone leaving?”
“Nope, said she was too scared to look in the hall. Just kept herself to herself until I questioned her. Same story with the rest of the neighbors on the floor. Nobody saw a thing, nobody heard a thing. Nobody ever does.” His annoyance at this common denominator of every crime scene is so chewed over you’d think he’d get rid of it by now. But cops can be like a dog with a bone, never letting go even after it’s chewed to dust. “Look, what was your business with her, Gold? I didn’t see any fancy antiques or snooty artwork
around her place, and believe me, once we knew you were involved, I had my boys give the apartment a good going over.”
I have to fight to keep my face steady, my eyes level, and my eyebrows from rising like kites in a sudden wind. Huber doesn’t know it but he’s just told me that the Dürer watercolor’s gone.
Someone stole everything from Hannah Jacobson. They stole her life and stole her legacy. And if her face was cut up as bad as Huber says it was, then whoever killed her must’ve hated her, too. Only someone who hates you wants to obliterate your identity.
“Well, Gold? You gonna tell me what you were doing at the Jacobson place? How’d you know her? Was she hiring you to steal something?”
“Stealing is against the law, Lieutenant.”
“Don’t toy with me, Gold, or I’ll have Tommy put the cuffs on you.” Tommy being the quiet cop in my club chair, I assume. “Tommy likes cuffing people,” Huber says. “It’s his favorite activity. Makes it easy to drag them downtown.”
“You want to question me downtown? Okay by me. You won’t get any different answers there than you’re getting from me here, but sure, I’ll play along.” And it’ll get the cops out of my apartment. The longer they’re here, the longer Rosie’s trapped in my bedroom. She can’t come out, she can’t even make a sound; if Huber figures I’ve got a woman in my bedroom, if he hears Rosie or catches sight of her, he’ll toss us both in the tank on a morals charge. So I keep the mood light, keep things focused on getting Huber and his Tommy-boy outta here. “Give me five minutes to get some clothes on and then we can take a nice ride in your nice squad car to your nice precinct.”
I start back to the bedroom but Huber grabs the sleeve of my robe. The touch of his cop fingers turns my stomach. He sees me recoil, relishes his spiteful little victory. “I don’t trust you, Gold. You might slip out the bedroom window and down the fire escape. So I’m gonna send Tommy into the bedroom with you while you get your clothes. You can bring ’em to the bathroom and change in there. There’s no fire escape in your bathroom and you’re not about to jump out the window from the tenth floor. Don’t worry,” Huber adds with an offhand sneer, “Tommy will wait outside.”
I’m usually pretty good at getting around cops who want to pin me for my racket, but the woman-love issue is a bigger problem. If Tommy the Cop goes into my bedroom and sees Rosie, Huber will haul us both to the hoosegow. It’ll be even worse than the night I spent locked up after a raid on the Green Door Club, where a lot of us were caught dancing too close for the Law’s comfort. Get arrested for dancing, and the Law beats you up and gives you a night in jail. Get arrested on a sex rap, and if you’re lucky the Law gives you a prison sentence; if you’re not so lucky, you get the needles and tubes of the psycho ward.
I think fast but talk slow. I can’t let Huber catch on that he worries me. “First of all, Lieutenant, get your talons off my sleeve. You’re damaging the silk. And second of all, Tommy isn’t going to invade my bedroom, not unless you want my lawyer—You’ve heard of my lawyer? The one with all the connections to the politicians in City Hall?—well, unless you want him to look into some of your, um, activities, I suggest you keep Tommy right where he is, asleep in my chair.” I’m banking on the idea that Huber, like a lot of cops of my acquaintance, has at least a fingertip in some not-so-savory pies, maybe even illegal ones, certainly embarrassing ones. If stuff like that became public it could get him busted back to a traffic beat, maybe even end his career if it touches too many higher-ups.
But he’s not flinching. Either the only skeleton Huber’s got is the one inside his skin or he’s playing me a bare-knuckled game of chicken. He’s pushed his hat back to give me the full force of his heavy-lidded leer. “Why do you want to keep us out of your bedroom, Gold?”
“Oh, get off it, Huber. No one likes cops rummaging in their sheets,” I say, giving him my own pushback.
“Just answer the question, Gold, and don’t throw me threats about your high-priced lawyer. He can look in my bedroom anytime he likes, but right now I want to know why you don’t want us looking in yours.”
“Look, Lieutenant, you’re here on a murder investigation. Stick to it and stop wasting everybody’s time.”
His leer twists into a cold grin. “Watching you squirm is never a waste of time, Gold.”
I don’t like being an amusement, not for the cops or for anyone else, and particularly not for this smarmy lieutenant who thinks he’s found a way to hang my hide on his trophy wall and get his name in the paper and a round of drinks from his precinct buddies. But I like it even less when he barks a laugh as he pushes past me, rapping the dozing Tommy on the back of the head as he moves toward my bedroom.
I’m a goner and I know it. I can handle it. I can take whatever they’ll dish out at the city lockup and in Bedford Hills women’s prison, but it’s Rosie I’m scared for. Rosie, my beautiful soldier, who stood by me when I walked the floor over losing Sophie, who comes through during every job, no matter the danger. Rosie doesn’t deserve the humiliation and brutality that’s coming her way.
Huber says, “Open the door, Tommy. Grab anyone who’s in there, understand?”
“Even if it’s a guy?”
Huber snorts. “Don’t make me laugh.”
When Tommy opens the door, I feel my gut tighten and my soul weep. I’ve always been able to avoid this, always been careful to keep the Law out of my pants, been careful to shield any woman who shares my bed. But my luck’s run out.
At least Rosie won’t be hauled off alone. I’ll be right there beside—
“It’s empty, Lieutenant. There’s nobody there.”
Huber pushes into the bedroom, leaving me dumbfounded in the doorway. I catch my breath while the two angry cops rush to the window. It’s open.
I feel a smile curl along my lips. Rosie’s done it, she’s eluded the Law, saved her hide and mine. She must’ve heard the cops in the living room and made a break for it out the window and down the fire escape. Huber worried about the wrong escapee.
But my smile shrivels up when I remember Huber bragging that anyone could look in his bedroom anytime. Sure, neither Huber nor whoever’s in his bed will ever have to gather up their dignity with their clothes and slink away on a fire escape.
*
I put on a pale apricot shirt, a pale blue and dark green chevron-pattern tie, the same dark blue silk pinstripe suit I wore to Mrs. J’s, finish it off with an apricot pocket handkerchief, and throw on the same overcoat and cap I wore earlier. After I get through with the cops, there’s someone else I want to look good for.
I head out with Huber and sidekick Tommy.
Their squad car is the usual black-and-green with a chrome grille that looks like a mouth ready to spit. The car hugs the curb in front of my building like a rat claiming territory. Frankly, rats would find a warmer welcome in my neighborhood, a few blocks north of Times Square and just east of Broadway. A lot of theater and nightclub folk live along my street—some whose names you’d know—and jazz musicians who work the local clubs. More than a few of my neighbors are people like me, if you catch my drift, and those who aren’t don’t mind sharing the sidewalk. Some are even my clients. After mink, diamonds, and lovers, famous actresses like classy art. All in all, the show folk and horn players in my neighborhood live interesting lives, the kind of lives we don’t want the vice or narco squads to poke around in.
Which may be why Lieutenant Huber gives the eye to passing pedestrians and they pointedly ignore him.
Tommy gets into the driver’s seat of the squad car while Huber hustles me into the backseat. He slams the driver’s seat back to make his point, then gets in beside Tommy.
Huber doesn’t talk to me during the drive, making this the only time in my life I’ve enjoyed his company. But we’re not headed downtown, we’re headed crosstown. “I thought we’re going to the precinct house,” I say. “What’s the angle, Huber?” It wouldn’t be the first time the cops have taken someone, me for instance, to an out-of-the-w
ay spot—like one of those dark fissures I mentioned—and beat the crap or a confession out of them. I’ve never confessed to anything and only gave the cops silence or chitchat. Maybe Huber figures tonight’s his night to try again. Maybe he’s mad he couldn’t hang me with a morals rap.
Or maybe he’s just being efficient, actually doing his job, because we’ve just parked in front of Hannah Jacobson’s apartment building.
The same elf of a doorman I dealt with earlier is still on duty. The three people in the world he least wants to see have just gotten out of the squad car.
Huber starts the conversation. “Hello again, Doyle,” he says to the doorman. Then, pointing to me, he says, “Is this who you announced to Mrs. Jacobson tonight?”
Doorman Doyle looks me over with even more discomfort than when he saw me a few hours ago. Earlier I was just a freak, as far as he was concerned; now I’m a freak tying him up in a murder. He looks scared, and like he’s wishing I’d simply drop dead. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s her. Said her name’s Cantor Gold. She the one you think killed that sweet old lady?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Doyle,” Huber says. “And now that you’ve seen her again, do you remember if she was carrying anything? Look her over, try to remember. Take your time.”
There’s nothing more annoying, or nerve-racking, than a cop with brains. Right now I’d like to knock them out of Huber’s skull, but my own smarts tell me to keep cool and don’t do anything that might jog the doorman’s memory.
“Like what?” he asks.
“Like a box or a package.” Huber says it like he wants to add you dummy, but his cop discipline kicks in before he can blurt out an insult that could make doorman Doyle clam up. “Maybe something like a jewelry box or something square and flat?”
Like a painting.
“Lemme think,” Doyle says, making a show of it. “Nah, I didn’t see anything like that.”