by Andrew Gross
I blew a deep breath out my cheeks, knowing how this was going to play. “Yes.”
“And you opened it somehow? Like with a key?”
I nodded again.
“And you obviously knew where this key was. Where did you say this trunk was? In a closet?”
“In the hall closet next to the front door,” I said. “Yes.”
“In the hall closet. And not in plain view, I assume?”
I took in another deep breath and shook my head. “No.”
Now it was the detective’s turn to exhale. “So you see what we got ourselves here, don’t you? If you got this fancy degree like you say, you probably heard of a thing called unlawful search and entry. Was their front door locked as well?”
“No.”
“It was just what … open?”
“Not just open,” I said. “Kind of cracked.”
“Cracked or kind of cracked?”
“Cracked,” I said. I twisted in my seat.
“But the owners of the apartment…” He consulted his notes. “This Mr. or Mrs. Bauer, they weren’t there at the time, I presume?”
“No.” I cleared my throat. “Of course not. They weren’t there.”
He nodded with sort of a troubled frown and tapped his fingers into a steeple, kind of pensively. “You’re sure it was a radio transmitter though? That’s important.”
“I’m pretty sure. Yes. And coupling it with the coded message I found…”
“You’re the one who’s claiming it was a code,” the detective said.
“And the meeting with the Nazis at Marienplatz…,” I said, adding emphasis, “and this business about Lebensraum … It does all add up, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know what it all adds up to, Mr. Mossman. I’m just listening. So anything else you want to add…?”
“Yes. One more thing. There was a book in the trunk as well. Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. In German. There were a lot of words and numbers circled and underlined. I think it might be the key to the code I spoke of.”
“Again with the code,” he said.
“Look, I’m laying something out that I think anyone who looks at these things would find troubling,” I said, my voice rising an octave.
“Gimme a second,” the lieutenant said, seeming to grow equally annoyed with me. He made some notes on his pad. “You got dates for all these…?”
“Dates for what?”
“All these things you’re describing. For the report.”
“Not exact dates, no. I wasn’t exactly taking notes. But yeah, I think I can put that together. Or at least close.”
“Good.” He scribbled something again. “That should do it for now. Oh, just one more thing from me.… Earlier, you said you were away.” The detective looked up. “Where?”
I knew it was bound to come up. Sooner or later. And I knew it wasn’t going to make the rest of what I’d had to say any more convincing. “In prison,” I cleared my throat and said.
Now the detective’s eyes really stretched wide. “In prison? You’re on parole?”
“My sentence was commuted. I had a situation. You can look it up. I got into a fight. Outside this bar in Midtown. It was the night of the German Bund rally at Madison Square Garden two years ago. You remember, when all those Nazis got together. Anyway, someone got hurt. Killed. Accidentally. A kid.”
“A kid?”
“Sixteen. I got into a tussle with a bunch of Nazi sympathizers who barged into the bar, and he was just passing by and got sent into a plate of broken glass. I spent two years up at the penitentiary in Auburn, New York, for it. Third-degree manslaughter.” I sat back and let him absorb what I’d said.
“So now it’s kind of making sense to me,” he said.
“What’s making sense?”
“Seems to me you got this thing against Nazi-lovers.”
“What do you mean, a thing? I don’t have a thing against them. Any more than half the world does. At the bar, I’d had a bunch to drink. The witnesses will tell you, this crew of them who barged in, they were an ugly group. Instigating and insulting. I went off. The poor kid just happened to be in the way. It’s all in the trial proceedings.”
“I’m sure it is.” Monahan jotted some thoughts on his pad. Like he had me sized up.
“And this time, if you’re even interested, this time it was all purely happenstance. While I was at Auburn, my wife moved to this apartment in Yorkville. This couple happened to be across the hall. I visit my daughter twice a week. That’s all.”
“Other than you followed them to that Nazi bar and broke into their apartment.”
“I didn’t break into their apartment,” I huffed, my frustration rising now. “They left the door open. And this isn’t about me, Officer. I’m reporting something serious here. The right people should know about it.”
“Lieutenant,” he said, glancing up at me.
“Huh?”
“It’s Lieutenant,” he said, pointing to the nameplate on his desk.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” I corrected myself. “Sorry.”
“So just one more thing.…” The detective tapped his pen on his desk and looked at me. “You still drink?”
I leveled my eyes back at him and looked at him squarely. “No.”
“Not at all?”
“It’s a condition of being with my daughter. So no.”
“Good. Glad to see you’re on the mend. So I think I got all I need.…” He finished scribbling a few notes, tapped the pages together, and then slid the stack across the desk to me. “Look it over and put your John Hancock on it. I want to thank you for coming in and doing your civic duty. That’s how we find these people. People like you.”
The way he said it made me think he would never look at it again.
“Will the FBI even get a look at this?” I questioned. “It’s still valid, everything I’ve said. Whether I followed them or not, or went inside their apartment. There’s still a transmitter there.”
“See that file…?” He twisted around and pointed with his thumb to a bulging file on the shelf. It was maybe ten inches thick, and barely covered what looked like a hundred reports stuffed inside. Maybe five hundred. “People in Yorkville who think they uncovered Nazi spies.”
People who hadn’t spent two years in jail; and who didn’t have a history of drinking, he didn’t have to add.
He chuffed, “If I only had a nickel, right…?”
“No one’s going to even see this, are they?” I looked at my own report, discouraged. Desultorily, I added my signature and address at the bottom of the last page.
“Don’t worry, everything gets reported,” the lieutenant said. “You can take that to the bank. Your Swiss grandparents will be on someone’s desk. The right people. Mr.…” He glanced down, double-checking my name on the report. “… Mossman, right?”
18
For the next week, I didn’t hear anything back on the police visit, nor did I expect to. Or from Liz or the Bauers about how I had made my way into their apartment.
Still, I did my best to steer clear of them. I’d done what I could about what I’d found. The rest … law enforcement and the government would have to take it from here. If they even heard about it. My day job was expanding. A Marymount colleague had a friend who needed some help in his appliance store down on Houston Street. And I found I actually liked the work. Assistant manager in the repairs department. It was becoming increasingly clear I was never going to get a job teaching anytime soon.
And something else happened that same week that changed my life.
I met someone.
Without even meaning to. Isn’t that the way it happens? I was heading back from the shop to the elevated trains on Third on my way back to Brooklyn. I was thinking maybe I’d take in a film tonight. On my own. Suspicion with Cary Grant was at the RKO on Grand Avenue. The weather was particularly chilly for November, and all of New York was bundled in winter coats.
I was walking, glancing
at the headlines of the afternoon Herald Tribune.
Suddenly a gust of wind rose up, and in front of me, crossing Houston, a young woman cried out as papers she was carrying in sort of a bundle flew into the air. Six or seven of them, perhaps, scattering onto the street.
“Here, let me help,” I said, springing into action. I kneeled and, one by one, picked them up off the sidewalk. One literally right from under someone’s heel as they passed by. They were a little soiled now, whatever they were: typed, in some kind of order. But they all seemed salvageable.
“Oh, that one too!” The woman pointed to another blown like a leaf into the busy traffic on Houston.
I sprinted after it.
“Careful!” she called after me, hugging herself with worry. “You’ll be—”
I darted into the street, raised my hand to stop an oncoming truck, which put on the brakes and gave a honk at me. Quickly, I picked up the sheet. A car had run over it and turned it into a dirty mess.
“Here,” I said, hopping back onto the sidewalk, presenting them back to her. “I hope they’re okay.”
She was around thirty, and pretty, in a dark cloth coat, her curly brown hair tucked under a flat wool cap. Her eyes were olive, but bright, and sparkling, mostly with gratitude. “You could have injured yourself,” she said. “Thank you so much.” She placed all the pages back in a folder. I detected an accent. Dutch. French. In any case, not from around here.
“A little soiled.” I shrugged. “But a little grime from the streets will only give them character,” I said. “Whatever they are.”
“My dissertation,” she said. French it was, it seemed. “How do you say it, I think … my thesis…?” I now saw the papers were all written in French. “I am having it translated.”
“Your thesis? What’s it on?” I asked.
“What it is on…?” She seemed surprised at my question. Cars honked as they went by. “Why, Jung. And it’s my only copy. If it was gone…” She showed me a folder with many more pages in it and shook her head, as if to say, a real mess. “You see, I had the address I was going here.…” She adjusted her bundle and showed me a piece of paper clipped to the first page. 144 East 2nd St. “A tutor. He is helping me to get into a graduate program here. And…” She flung her hand in the air. “Then suddenly, le vent! Disaster!”
“Le grand vent,” I said. “Though Jung might say you were sabotaging your own efforts to gain admission,” I said, “by carrying your work that way.” I grinned sheepishly.
“Jung, maybe…” She laughed. “More likely Freud. Anyway, you have saved me from such a fate. These streets, they are all new to me.”
“You’re French?”
“Oui. From Honfleur. A small town in Normandy. Do you know?”
“I was in Rouen once. At the cathedral.”
“Yes, the Monets are in your museum here. I saw them. Yes, that is nearby. Anyway,” she glanced at her watch and her eyes went wide with alarm, “I must go. To my appointment. The time. I was late to start.…”
“Of course. It’s only around the corner anyway.” I pointed out the route for her. “This is Lafayette, and the next street over is Bowery. Then you make a right on Second Street.”
“This person is very important, I am told, so I must hurry. But maybe some other time…” She hesitated. “We…”
“We could meet,” I said, delighted, picking up on what I was hoping she was trying to say. Who wouldn’t be, gazing into those vibrant green eyes.
“Well, I suppose, yes. We could. I owe you a proper thanks for being so brave.”
“How long is your appointment?” I asked, suddenly having an idea.
“My appointment?” She hesitated. “Why, an hour. If I can even make it.” She smiled guiltily with another glance at her watch. “I’m so late.”
“Then go. But how about I wait for you afterward?”
“Wait…?”
“Why not? Look, I don’t mean to be too forward. But I’ve just finished work and I’ve got nothing planned. Say in that coffee shop over there.…” I pointed to one across the street where I’d had lunch a few times. “We could have a coffee.”
“Well, we could have a coffee, yes. Why not?” she agreed. “You have been the savior of my day. I’d be happy to have a café with you. In an hour…?”
“Great. I’ll be waiting then. Don’t you reconsider now. Dr. Jung would be angry.”
“No, I won’t.” She laughed. Then she glanced at her watch and her eyes went wide again. “But for now I must go! Goodbye.”
“Yes, go,” I said. “I’ll be there. In an hour.” She waved and rushed off into the crowd. “Hey, what’s your name?” I called after her.
She turned. “Pardon?”
“Your name!”
She had one hand grasping her bundle and the other holding on to her hat as the wind picked up. An image of her that I would always picture in my mind.
“Noelle.”
* * *
For the next hour I sat in the coffee shop, not wanting to miss her in case she came back early. It had been years since someone smiled at me that way, and it felt truly uplifting. Years. Since that altercation at the bar—no, going back to since Ben had died the year before—it seemed only tragedy had followed me. I thought of Liz. I’ve moved on, Charlie. She’d left no doubt of how she wanted to make our separation final. So, why not? I thought. Why not open myself to someone. I’d paid my penance. I was trying to do the right things in my life. I deserved a little happiness too.
Meanwhile I cautioned myself not to get ahead of myself. A cup of coffee was a long way from a real date.
First, let’s see if she even comes back, I told myself.
The hour passed. I glanced to the front door maybe a hundred times, and each time it flooded my heart with expectation. But still, no sign of her. I checked my watch over and over. At an hour and fifteen minutes, a little doubt began to set in. Maybe she’d reconsidered. Perhaps I’d been too forward. Meeting someone on the street that way, so happenstance, though I might have a feeling about it, the possibilities, who knew if she felt the same? Or if she was married? I never even looked for a ring. Or had a guy? I began to feel sure she wouldn’t show, thinking, how did I even deserve such good fortune? A girl as pretty as her. Still, fate had intervened in that moment.
After an hour and twenty minutes, I looked at my watch one last time in discouragement and decided maybe I should just go home. She wasn’t coming. I could still catch that show at the Orpheum.
Then the café door opened, and to my delight, in walked Noelle, still clutching her manuscript like a baby in her arms. My heart soared. She looked around awkwardly, those large emerald eyes searching the tables.
I stood up.
She smiled as she came upon me. “I am so sorry.” She hurried over, putting her bundle down. “He would not stop and I did not know how to leave. He kept asking if I would like coffee. I’m glad you’re still here.”
“I’m glad you came,” I said. “Here…” I helped her off with her coat. She had a pretty beige sweater underneath and a colorful scarf tied around her neck. A petite, appealing figure. “Please, sit down. I admit, I was starting to have my doubts.”
“Well, I couldn’t just let your mind go off in the wrong direction with all those thoughts of Jung and Freud, could I?” she said. She took a seat. “So, I am Noelle,” she announced formally, and put out her hand. “I think we said that.”
“And I’m Charlie,” I said, shaking it.
“Charlie, Charles…” She had a warm smile like Ingrid Bergman and I was immediately swept under it. “Very nice to meet you, Charlie.”
Over coffee she said how she was new to this country. She’d been here for just five months. A refugee, from France, through Lisbon. She lived in a women’s boardinghouse on Thirtieth Street. “I was very lucky to get a visa to be here,” she said. “The circumstances of my trip were not straightforward.”
I didn’t ask her to explain.
She said she’d been in graduate school in Paris before the war. In psychology.
She asked about me and I told her I was separated, and that I had a daughter. “She’s six. A real young lady,” I said, beaming. That I had been a university instructor myself, in European history, but the job came to an end. I declined to go into just how. The market for such positions was very tight now, I said. The economy had still not fully come back. “But I still read papers for my old department head at Columbia.”
“You read papers?”
“Exams. Dissertations,” I said in my best French accent. “Like yours.”
“You mean they are in French?” she said, wide-eyed, then broke into a smile. It was clear she was teasing me.
“No.” I smiled back. “Though sometimes they might sound that way. And mostly they manage to stay out of the street.”
She laughed.
“It is very hard to start over here in school,” she said, exhaling. “My records, they do not exist anymore. Due to the war. Do you think America will come in?”
“Into the war? Yes,” I said. “I do. In the end, it will be hard to stay out.”
“Good. I hope so,” she said, pinching her cheeks. “I have no love for the Bosch.”
The mention of the war seemed to make her downcast. “But let’s not talk about such topics. Please, tell me about your life here in New York. That would interest me very much.”
* * *
The next time I saw her, only a few days later, for dinner, she told me how she was alone here in the United States. That her parents were in a Nazi prison back in France. “Political prisoners,” she explained. “My father was the mayor of our town. He was very important there, how you say, a dignitary, but he would not welcome them.” That was over a year ago. She knew nothing of their fates. “There is no one who can tell me anything,” she said. “It is very hard.”
A brother, in the French army, had died in the German blitzkrieg, defending the Maginot Line.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Are you Jewish?”
“Jewish? No.” She shook her head. “Though sometimes I feel like one.”