House of Ghosts

by House of Ghosts (epub)

  “Make it five-thirty. It’ll give us more time to watch PBS after dinner,” she said with a wink. Joe hated PBS and NPR radio—his tax dollars weren’t meant to support socialist propaganda. He held his hands over his heart. “I’ll be in pain until then.” He watched the complete package return to the sales desk.

  The Westfield Senior Citizen Complex, located a good tee-shot and three-wood from the OptimaCare Center, was a pair of ten story buildings, ill designed and looking more decrepit than their thirty years. Joe parked in the designated fire lane of building One, putting his W.P.D. credentials on the dashboard. He searched the mess in the console between the front seats, coming up with a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. A sign next to the main entrance warned that only service dogs were permitted. Taking the coffee cake and five-iron, he maneuvered to the rear of the station wagon and opened the hatch. Despite not having visited the Weinsteins for close to a year, Roxy bolted for the door. Naomi’s unlimited supply of dog treats was ingrained on her brain. Inside the vestibule, Joe pressed the intercom key for 8D.

  “Who is it?” Naomi crackled.

  “Judge Crater.”

  “Joe Henderson, I could give you the beating of your life.” The electronic lock buzzed.

  Joe crossed the lobby with Roxy in tow. One elevator was out of service, the other stuck on floor eight. Roxy sat at the elevator, her tail swishing against the aquamarine tile floor. Taking the stairs was out of the question. A bench and four chairs had been stolen and hadn’t been replaced. Joe rested against an eight foot turkey erected for Thanksgiving. The red lights began to move on the overhead indicator. Joe counted down the floors, “Three, two, one—the eagle has landed.” The elevator door slid open. An EMS crew hovered over a woman hooked to an oxygen tank, her complexion the color of day-old oatmeal. “Lieutenant, have you gotten the flies out of your hair?” asked one of the paramedics who had been at Preston’s house the day his body was found.

  Joe pulled Roxy out of the way. “I got that fly, but I think one crawled up you know where.”

  The old lady moaned, trying to remove the mask over her nose. “Maybe you should seek professional help,” the uniformed medical wise guy offered.

  “I have, but the girl got busted,” Joe laughed. The trio moved away.

  Joe and Roxy got on the elevator. In a series of fits and starts, the Otis model 1970 made it to the eighth floor. Once lily-white, the senior towers were a cross section of the United Nations. When applications from town residents fell precipitously in the 1990s, the rolls were opened to non-residents. An ambient temperature mimicking the Amazon acted as a catalyst to turn essences of curry and kimchi to lethal weapons. Joe tried to hold his breath as he limped toward the end of the hall.

  Roxy’s tongue assumed its August position, drooping to the floor. Panting, she pawed the metal door, flaking chips of yellow paint onto the soiled blue carpet. Joe pressed the chime. Naomi Weinstein, wheelchair bound, answered the door. “Let me guess. You’re Ray Charles,” Naomi said. She didn’t wait for Joe’s answer, turning to Roxy. “My special friend, I’ve missed you.”

  Roxy licked Naomi on her cheek. The three-room, postage stamp size apartment was adorned with prints of horseracing greats. Naomi could cite chapter and verse from The Daily Racing Form. A series of portraits memorializing the Weinstein’s departed Corgis were prominently on display.

  “I’ve missed you,” Joe said, bending to give Naomi a kiss. He deposited the cake in her lap.

  “You’re a shit, but I missed you, too.” She grabbed him around the neck.

  “Where’s the big guy?” Joe asked.

  “On his throne in the living room. Kope, we have a visitor!” she yelled from the hall.

  “Is that Joe?” Kopel asked from his recliner, unable to see more than a few inches past his nose. A combination of macula degeneration and glaucoma robbed him of the ability to read. Television was reduced to figures in a gray haze.

  “Yeah, Kope. It’s me.”

  Roxy raced down the short hall that opened to a living room/dining area crammed with possessions moved from a home they occupied for four decades. She cut around a wingback chair, hurtling into Kopel, knocking an extinguished half-smoked cigar from his mouth. The old man rubbed her head. “Mel told us you broke out of your cocoon. If I knew you were coming, I would’ve dressed for the occasion.” Kopel was still in a pajama bottom and T-shirt. Electronic digital vision enhancing goggles were balanced on his nose.

  “You look very debonair,” Joe said, picking the stogie off the floor. “Do the new cheaters help?” An arc welder could have used the contraption.

  “Barely, but any change is better than none,” Kopel said. “Amy, how about some coffee.”

  “I’ve got it covered. Come to the table,” she yelled from the kitchen.

  Joe led Kopel to his chair at the mission style dinette. “Amy, I’ll give you a hand,”

  “To hell you will, sit down,” Naomi ordered.

  Joe did as told, hanging his Yankee baseball jacket on the back of the chair. He was amazed that Naomi was able to take care of the both of them. Roxy trailed Naomi as she maneuvered her wheelchair around the galley kitchen while balancing a tray laden with a coffee carafe, three mugs, plates and utensils. She positioned the wheelchair at the end of the table. A ledge four inches lower than the table top allowed her to sit in her wheelchair and eat without reaching for her plate.

  “Did you go to the Series?” Kopel asked. Kopel shared two of Joe’s passions— the New York Yankees and golf. “I watched the games on the radio.”

  “Beating the Mets was never in doubt,” Joe said. “As Casey used to say, the boys done good.”

  “Mel said you were asking about our graduating from N.Y.U. in 1942,” Naomi said, pouring the coffee. She handed Joe two mugs. Black coffee was the rule of the house. Naomi considered putting anything into the beans sent by God, sacrilegious. “You working on a case?” Homebound, she devoured mystery novels to kill the time. Dick Francis and his racetrack novels were on top of her list.

  Joe put one of the mugs in front of Kopel, bringing his hand to the mug’s handle. “A diary has come into my possession. I’m fairly certain that the writer graduated from N.Y.U. in 1942. Maybe you knew him.”

  “Years ago when I could get around, I found a signed 1942 yearbook at a garage sale,” Naomi said, placing slice of cake on glass plates. She handed the desserts to Joe. “I didn’t know the guy.”

  As he did with the coffee, Joe placed the cake before Kopel then handed him a fork. “Cake is in front of you.” He fished Rothstein’s photo from his shirt pocket, handing it to Naomi.

  Naomi sat looking at the face. Without turning the photo over she said, “Paul Rothstein. He was one of Kope’s friends. It’s been so many years since I thought about him.”

  Kopel struggled with his cake, scattering the powdered topping on the tablecloth. “I sat next to him in most of my accounting classes,” he said, managing to snare a piece. “Thirty-two of my classmates died in the war. Paul was one of them.”

  “Old diaries are a dime a dozen. Every estate sale has one,” Naomi said. “This is part of a case. I knew it.”

  “I’m retired. This is a personal project,” Joe said, sipping his coffee. “From his diaries, Paul sounds like a great guy who came from a tight knit family. Can you tell me about him?”

  “I came to know Paul pretty well from being in many of the same courses,” Kopel said without hesitation. “His family was dirt poor, and if it weren’t for his older brother, he couldn’t have paid the tuition. He was sharp, with a knack for math, far better than I. He married a gal right after graduation, before he went into the service. Naomi and I did the same. Now I am stumped. Amy, do you remember her name?”

  “Sure, her name was Sarah Greenbaum. In fact, she was in a few of my classes, a real sweet kid. They were really in love, an item almost from the beginning of our freshman year.” She rolled away from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

 
; “His Brooklyn accent still rings in my ears,” Kopel said, closing his eyes. “Paul was concerned about what was going on in Europe, far more than I was. I’m talking about 1938. I only knew of the Nazis from what I read in the papers.”

  “I thought that the Nazis were everybody’s concern,” Joe said.

  Naomi returned with their N.Y.U. yearbook opened to Paul Rothstein’s picture. “That’s not the way it was,” Naomi said. “I’m not just talking about the non-Jews. On the whole, the Jewish students weren’t concerned about what was happening in Europe. When the Germans took over the Czechs, there wasn’t much of a reaction. I remember how Paul was upset. He couldn’t understand why Jewish students weren’t worried about Hitler. Am I correct about that Kope?”

  “To us, Hitler was a distant problem,” Kopel said. “I remember when Kristalnacht, the night of broken glass, happened. There wasn’t much reaction even in New York to the Nazis breaking the windows of every Jewish business and burning down synagogues. Paul came to school more agitated than ever.”

  “I find it hard to believe that American Jews sat on their collective asses as the Nazis were killing their European brothers. Weren’t there any Jewish student organizations on campus that organized a response to at least throw rocks at the German embassy?” Joe asked.

  Kopel continued to fish among the crumbs on his plate. “There weren’t any organized Jewish groups per say. It was 1938, not 1968. You people of the sixties have a different set of values, taking on the government over Vietnam. We didn’t think about doing anything like that in 1938. Besides, the Jewish population wasn’t so much concerned with the Nazis, as being labeled communists.”

  “No protests, no nothing,” Joe said with a wave of his hand. “What about Father Charles Coughlin? He was a Jew hater right here in this country.”

  “We didn’t listen to his program,” Kopel said.

  “There wasn’t much talk about the German Jews in the synagogue that my family attended,” Naomi said, cutting another piece of cake. “Where I lived in the Bronx, you just didn’t talk about it. When I look back, I can’t believe we were so indifferent to what was going on, and what would happen. Roosevelt was supposed to know more than we did and do what was correct.”

  They sat drinking their coffee. “There’s a long entry in Paul’s diary that tells of Sarah’s cousin being rescued from the ship the St. Louis.”

  “Sarah was also from the Bronx. As an only child, she was extremely close to her parents,” Naomi said.

  Naomi slipped a piece of cake under the table to Roxy. “One day, Sarah comes to school all excited. Mail from Germany took weeks, and the Greenbaums received the news just days before the ship was to dock in Havana. But within a few days, her euphoria turned to despair. I can still see her crying, telling us her cousin was going to be sent back to Germany to end up in a concentration camp.”

  After nearly sixty years, Naomi and Kopel could complete each other’s sentences, Kopel continued, “We were going into the exam period when Paul said he had to go to Miami. No one I knew had ever been farther than Atlantic City. Naturally we were curious, and the more we asked, the more convoluted were the answers.”

  “What did Sarah have to say?” Joe asked.

  “Nothing. She disappeared along with Paul,” Naomi said.

  “The history books say nobody got off that ship. Her cousin Minnah didn’t drop from the sky. Paul later admitted his brother Jake pulled some strings to have the girl released.” Kopel said.

  “When did you find out that Paul died?” Joe asked.

  “I followed Kope to Fort Knox where I got a job on the base. We were married before Kope went into the army as did Paul and Sarah. When we came back in the fall of 1945, we heard Paul had been killed in action. I tried to get in touch with Sarah, but could never locate her. The Rothstein’s moved from Brooklyn. She vanished without a trace,” Naomi said.

  “None of your friends had any information?” Joe asked.

  Kopel seemed a little perturbed. “We came home from the service after almost three years. We had to get on with our lives, and the first order of business was to get a job. I don’t think that we found out about his death for seven or eight months.”

  “And that was by chance. We bumped into Paul’s best friend Dave Cohen in of all places, Times Square,” Naomi said.

  “Dave didn’t have many details, just that Paul’s plane was shot down,” Kopel said.

  “Did he say where he went down?” Joe asked.

  “Somewhere over Poland. Paul was gone, what difference did it make where he went down.” Kopel said. “Dave was always rushing someplace even when we were in school. That day was no different. He was gone in a flash. We haven’t seen him since.”

  Naomi flipped the yearbook pages to Dave Cohen’s picture. “Dave was a real character.” She handed Joe the book.

  “Is Dave Cohen still alive?” Joe asked. The notation under the picture said “Lawyer to Be.”

  “Funny you should ask,” Naomi said. “We received an alumni bulletin last week and it mentioned he received a life achievement award for community service in Westchester. It’s under the Time magazine on the counter behind you. His picture is in the last few pages.”

  Joe retrieved the bulletin. Cohen’s picture was taken at a Marriott hotel. The company’s logo was on the draperies behind the dais. A brief bio listed Dave’s awards and kudos for fifty years of being a C.P.A. “What about Jake Rothstein?”

  “Give me two fingers more of coffee.” Kopel handed Joe his mug. “His picture was in the papers.”

  Joe filled the mug, handing it back to Kopel. “Something about a murder. I can’t remember the details,” Kopel said.

  “When?” Joe asked.

  “Amy?” Kopel said.

  “1946 or ’47. Jake Rothstein was a gangster. Killed a guy for not paying up what he owed to a loan shark. He went away for a long time.” Naomi said.

  Roxy stared at Joe, then walked down the hall to the door. “Do you mind if I borrow this?” he asked, holding up the bulletin.

  “One less thing to throw out,” Naomi said. “Paul Rothstein is more than a curiosity for you. You’re working on a case. I can read you like a book. Promise me you’ll tell me what happened to Sarah.”

  “Everyone reads me like a book.” Joe gave Naomi a kiss. “I’ll be back, sweetheart,” he said in his best Bogart impersonation.

  Chapter 29

  WESTFIELD, NJ NOVEMBER 2000

  “COMING TO THE LIBRARY IS NOT A DATE,” Alenia protested. “We haven’t been together for a week and you bring me here.” She turned heads in her black cashmere sweater, diverting eyes from books and newspapers in the research section of the Westfield library.

  This was Joe’s second trip in as many days. His searches through archived issues of The New York Times for articles about Jake Rothstein’s legal troubles had been fruitless. “I need help. If you love somebody, it doesn’t matter where you are.” He batted his eyes like Groucho Marx. From a file cabinet, he removed a reel of microfilm marked January-June 1948.

  “What are these films?” Alenia asked. “Motion pictures?”

  Joe threaded the film into the viewer, pressing the forward button. The front page of January 1, 1948 began to scroll. “Each frame is a page of the newspaper.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alenia said. “This is ancient history.”

  “I always tell you that you’re as smart as you are beautiful,” Joe said, giving her a kiss. “I want you to look for the ‘bad’ man.”

  Alenia squirmed on the hardwood seat. “The man who tried to break into the house?”

  Joe stopped the film at January 20th. “I don’t know if you’ll see his face. I’ll settle for his name—Jacob Rothstein or Ted Steele.”

  “He’s brother of the soldier in the picture from the old man Swedge?” Alenia asked.

  “That’s correct. You keep reading. I’m going to look at the second half of 1948.”

  “These prices, I can�
�t believe. Ladies skirt two dollars, ninety eight cents,” Alenia read. “Ritz crackers, twenty-one cents.”

  “A man made twenty-five dollars a week,” Joe said. “Everything is relative.”

  “Big bargains, no Rothstein,” Alenia said. “I don’t understand why you’re wasting time. Even if you find out what Swedge was doing, what he was hiding all years, nothing changes. You can’t bring back the dead.”

  Joe fast forwarded through the want-ads of September 5, 1948. “America is supposed to be the liberator of the oppressed and the champion of the downtrodden.”

  “Governments are all the same,” Alenia spat.

  “I hate Russian philosophers,” Joe said, thinking that the retired exotic dancer was correct. “Shut up and keep reading.”

  “Stalin,” Alenia said, pointing to the dictator’s picture on the screen. The connected article concerned Soviet domination of Poland and Hungary. “The West did nothing to stop him. Maybe Swedge had his hand in that too.”

  Joe loaded 1949. “Preston was many things, but a commie-pinko, I doubt it.”

  “Nich-o-las Spag-no-la,” Alenia said, twirling a lock of hair.

  Joe spun toward Alenia’s screen. March 23, 1948. He read, “Nicholas Spagnola and Jacob Rothstein were sentenced by Judge Marvin Hirschhorn to twenty years for the murder of Mordecai Stein. Their attorney, former Congressman Benjamin Goodman, said he would appeal immediately.”

  “This is what we’re wasting our time?” Alenia asked.

  “I think so.” Joe continued to read. “Stein, owner of a business in the Manhattan garment center, fell out of an eighth floor window during a fight with Rothstein and Spagnola. The duo with known connections to waterfront boss and loan shark Thomas Bavosa paid a visit to Stein to collect on a loan that had fallen in arrears. The jury deliberated for just half an hour, convicting the defendants on the testimony of Selma Stein who referred to Rothstein by his alias Ted Steele as the one who had beaten her husband with a baseball bat three months prior.”