Unless God was using closed-circuit TV cameras these days, it wasn’t He who was watching. I found two surveillance cameras: one mounted in the corner to the right of the fireplace, one above the front door. I waited a few more minutes before flashing my badge at the camera above the door. Miraculously, the man who had met me outside the abandoned synagogue in town came through the door within several seconds.
“How may we help you, Officer?”
I produced two pictures of Arthur Rosen. One was a mug shot, the other an autopsy photo. “I need to speak to Mr. Wannsee.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be—”
“It’s all right, Jeffrey,” announced Wannsee’s voice over a loudspeaker. “Show the officer to my bungalow.”
Without hesitation, Jeffrey showed me the way. We walked to a bungalow hidden behind the two longhouses. It was about double the size of the other bungalows but in no better repair. My guide held the door open and did not follow me in. Wannsee sat behind a spare metal desk. On the desk were a microphone, a telephone, and several small TV monitors.
“Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing to a plain wooden chair facing the desk.
Wannsee was a handsome man in his late forties. He had a strong jaw, a full head of silver hair, and a smile like Burt Lancaster. He had the whiff of cheap charisma, the kind successful used-car salesmen possess.
I sat. Explained who I was, sort of. I guess I neglected to mention I no longer had any official standing. Even if I had, I was way out of my jurisdiction. Wannsee must have known that, but seemed disinclined to discuss it. Unfortunately, he seemed disinclined to discuss many things, one of them being Arthur’s stint as a Yellow Star.
“I have a reliable source who will testify that Arthur Rosen, the man pictured here,” I lied, pointing to the photos on his desk, “was a member of your group within the last several years.”
“First, Officer Prager, why should anyone be testifying about anything? What crime was committed, and by whom? We have no interest or responsibility in any of this. Second, as I stated previously, we are not a group, per se. The only group we recognize belonging to is the same group, presumably, you belong to. We are all Jews. Some of us are proud of that fact. Some, like yourself, are tormented.”
We went round and round like that for a few minutes. It seemed to me Wannsee was being intentionally confrontational. I just wasn’t sure why. If he had simply let me ask my questions about Arthur, I would have been out of there in five minutes. No, apparently he wanted to do some probing of his own, but didn’t want me to notice. He probably thought he was a real pro at it. Sometime I’d have to introduce him to my father-in-law. I decided to take the offensive.
“You chose your stage name quite carefully to elicit the maximum amount of discomfort from your audience,” I observed.
“Did I?”
“Judas, the Jew who betrayed Christ. Judas, the original scapegoat. Judas, who has served as the model for Jewish scapegoating throughout the centuries. I always thought it pretty interesting how the Romans escape culpability for the death of Christ, don’t you? But it’s the Wannsee I really admire,” I complimented. “It was at the Wannsee Conference, outside Berlin, where the details of the Final Solution were arranged.”
He stood and applauded. “Very, very good, Officer Prager. Bravo! You’re a well-educated self-hater, the worst kind. All your life you thought that if you could understand why the Nazis hated us you’d understand your own hatred. I bet you are fluent in Nazi trivia and can sing ‘Deutschland über Alles.’ But this isn’t a quiz show.”
“Look,” I said, “you want me outta here and I want to get outta here, so just give me some straight answers about Arthur Rosen and I’ll be gone.”
“Poor Arthur was with us a very short time a few years back,” he relented. “We are the answer for some people, people like yourself, for instance. We were not, however, the answer for Arthur. He was so troubled by so many things, haunted by ghosts of his own making. We tried, but when he stopped taking his medication and became delusional, we were forced to ask him to leave.”
“Delusional about what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Judas waved dismissively. “I think he was developing a Jesus complex.”
He was almost too flippant about that. It was the first thing he’d said all night that rang like tin. His dismissive wave was also too Hollywood, a gesture not in his usual repertoire but one he’d aped from some B-movie actor. Class was out. He made excuses about being tired. I got the hint. When we shook hands goodbye, he stared into my eyes as he had earlier.
“I know your pain,” he said. “When you’re finished with whatever you’re doing up here, please come back and see us. We can set you free.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I’m not in the market for a used car.”
Outside now, I realized that last comment was too gratuitous and flippant by half. The truth was, he’d gotten to me, and there was no running away from it.
Back at the Swan Song, I noticed mine was now the only car in the guest parking lot. Previously there had always been the same two or three other cars to keep mine company, but they were gone. I thought it very sad that I might be Sam’s last guest. It would have been more appropriate if it had been someone like Mr. Roth, a man who had so enjoyed the Catskills over the decades.
Inside, Sam, standing a moot watch behind the front desk, was smoking one of his baseball-bat-sized cigars and enjoying cognac out of a crystal snifter. He had the newspaper, probably the Tribune, spread out on the counter. I watched from the doorway as he scanned the page. It was the only truly relaxed thing I’d ever seen Sam do. He was always “on” and always on the offensive, kibitzing, wisecracking, performing. He saw something in the paper he liked. He liked it a lot. A smile crossed his cigar-twisted lips, and he danced a little dance of celebration.
“Hey!” I shouted at him. “What, you just win the lottery or something?”
For just a brief second I thought I saw panic wash over his face, but when I looked more closely Sam had settled back into his world-weary comedian persona. He folded up the paper as if it were a linen napkin and unceremoniously dropped it into the wastepaper basket behind the desk.
“I bet a horse,” he said. “Paid twelve to one. Maybe things are looking up.”
“Watch out, Sam,” I warned halfheartedly, “the ponies will get you in trouble.”
“At my age, boychik, the only thing that’ll get me in trouble is too much stool softener.”
“Forget I brought it up.”
“I already did.”
Sam confirmed what I’d already guessed. I was, as fate would have it, his last guest. Unless some other detective or salesman showed up, I was it.
“I hope you like takeout,” Sam said. “Because, other than breakfast, that’s what we’re eating for the next few days. I had to let the staff go.”
“I’m a Jew from Brooklyn, Sam. Takeout is my middle name. Bacon and eggs for breakfast?”
“Oy, such a demanding guest, but bacon and eggs it is. I’ll ring you around eight.”
“Eight it is,” I agreed. “Listen, I’m gonna need an outside line in a few minutes, okay?”
The old comic threw up his hands in mock disgust: “More demands! Get upstairs before I throw you out.”
I actually made two calls. The first was to 212 area-code information. The second was to Sunshine Manor, Arthur Rosen’s last earthly residence.
“Sunshine Manor.”
“Dr. Prince, please.”
“Speaking.”
I gave him the pro-forma you-may-not-remember-me opening. In return he gave me the of-course-I-remember-you-how-can-I-help response. That was easy enough for me to answer. Without going into too much detail, I recounted to Dr. Prince what Judas Wannsee had said about Arthur Rosen becoming delusional.
“How long ago was this?” he wanted to know.
“Two or three years ago.”
Now we returned to the same dance with which we ha
d started. He gave me the old doctor-patient privilege routine.
And I gave him the old but-he’s-dead reply. I begged. I lied, telling him I was about to solve the crime of the century. I kept at it until he just gave in.
“This is off the record, right?”
“Very far off the record,” I reassured.
“Okay, Mr. Prager, I’ll dig the files out and call you tomorrow morning, before I leave.”
“That’ll be great, Doc.”
“Not unless you enjoy watching the sunrise.”
Chapter Twelve
December 5th
There were no hints in the blackness outside my window that the sun would rise again. The phone, however, demanded that I rise. It was a disgustingly chipper Dr. Prince on the other end of the line. He had the files. After several minutes of admonitions, caveats, qualifications, and cautions, we got down to business, sort of.
“What is it you want to know, Mr. Prager?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But—”
“Was Arthur Rosen delusional?”
It was a pretty straightforward question. The answer, however, was not. First, Dr. Prince felt compelled to explain the difference between hallucination, delusion, and flight of ideas, giving practical examples for each. He went on to explain how laymen often used these terms interchangeably when they were in fact three very distinct psychological phenomena. So, when someone like Judas Wannsee, for example, called Arthur delusional, he might have been describing one, two, three, or none of these things. Hey, I had several hours to kill before breakfast, and Prince was pretty entertaining.
“But was Arthur Rosen delusional?” I repeated about fifteen minutes into the lecture.
“Now, you must realize Arthur was with us less than eighteen months and we do not have a full psychiatric history,” he equivocated.
“Doc, don’t make me beg. Was Arthur—”
“No, as far as I can tell from his treating psychiatrist’s notes and history of medication, Arthur was not delusional, not for his last eighteen months. And there’s nothing in the data we have about his previous treatment history to indicate that he ever exhibited patterns of delusional thought or behavior.”
“You mentioned medication. What medication?”
“Lithium.”
“If he stopped taking his lithium, could that elicit delusional—”
“Lithium is prescribed to treat a chemical imbalance that contributes to the vast mood swings exhibited by many patients with Arthur’s diagnosis. Going off his lithium might certainly affect his moods, yes, but if he wasn’t exhibiting delusional thought or behavior beforehand, I doubt it would cause an onset of new symptoms.”
“Was he ever on anything else?” I asked. “Any, what are they called, psycho …”
“Psychotropic drugs, antipsychotics. No, just lithium, as far as I can tell. Now, I want to be perfectly clear about this, Mr. Prager, I cannot say that Arthur never self-medicated. If he did, it would be impossible for me to give definitive answers.”
“Understood. Thanks, Doc, I appreciate the information.”
“Did any of this help?”
“It’s like your business, Doc, it’s hard to be sure right away. I’ll let you know.”
Talk about your basic dead end. How appropriate, I thought, that this was all about the aftermath of a fire. The whole of it was now smoke, because the flames had burned themselves out sixteen years ago. It dawned on me that I hadn’t found anything new because there was nothing new to find. That the only flames that had burned these many years burned in the hearts of the Hammerlings and the Rosens.
Denial, like gravity, is a great unseen energy of the universe, but, unlike gravity, denial can be created and destroyed. I was about to prove it. The power of Arthur Rosen’s denial hadn’t died with him, but I think I was on the verge of putting it to rest. I had had enough. Enough of the infection of sadness, of Anton Harder and Judas Wannsee, of smoky bars and small-town New York. I had a wife who loved me, the most beautiful, smart, and adoring daughter ever born, and a business to run. I had had my fill. What was it that Freud said? “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Well, sometimes an idiot smoking in bed is just an idiot smoking in bed. Wouldn’t the Rosens and the Hammerlings have been better off if they could have seen there was tragedy enough in that?
Bang! There was furious, insistent pounding at my door. It had to be Sam.
“What’s the matter, Sam?”
“Hurry, there’s a fire. Come quick, boychik.”
I threw on yesterday’s clothes and flew downstairs. Sam was waiting at the base of the grand staircase.
“Come!”
I followed him out the front door, onto a carpet of fresh snow, around the side of the main house toward the area between the utility sheds and the old pool. Sure enough, one of the old sheds was aflame, and if the wind shifted, the main house might be next. We grabbed some fire extinguishers from the kitchen and doused the flames. The fire had actually looked a lot worse than it was. Sam seemed understandably shaken. When I tried to comfort him, he said it wasn’t the fire that upset him so.
“If it was only the fire, so what? So I would have gotten maybe the insurance better than the money from selling. You know what they say, six in one hand … It reminds me of the old joke about the town veterinarian who also does taxidermy. His motto is: Either way, you get your dog back. Well, toteleh, either way I’m getting the money.”
“If it’s not the fire, what is it?”
He beckoned me to follow him. The words DIE JEWS had been spray-painted on the walls of another shed. They were painted in a familiar shade of yellow. I’d seen its like only a week before. There was something that didn’t fit, but, as with everything else in this case, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then, when Sam started raging, I lost focus.
“I’m gonna go kill that disrespectful little pisher,” Sam threatened, throwing his extinguisher canister against the shed wall in disgust. “That hateful little bastard.”
“No, Sam. I think it’s about time for Anton Harder and me to have a pow-wow of sorts. Let’s go inside and have breakfast. We’ll talk it over over eggs and bacon. Firefighting gives me quite an appetite.”
Sam and I discussed calling in the local constabulary. We each had our separate reasons for not sprinting to dial 911. I told Sam about my bizarre run-in with Lieutenant Bailey, carefully omitting the details about the police file. Sam said the Old Rotterdam Police Department made the Keystone Kops seem like the FBI. He recited a litany of complaints about the local force that practically reached back to the nineteenth century.
“And corrupt!” he hissed, waving his hands. “No offense to your former employers, but these guys make the bagmen on the NYPD seem like amateurs. The local cops take more under-the-table money than a cheap whore. They bleed all the hotel owners dry up here. But soon all the blood’s gonna run out.”
Now that we had clearly established that the cops weren’t to be involved—not yet, anyhow—I asked Sam to give me as many details about the old Fir Grove property as he could remember. He had a remarkable memory. I guess he had room in that brain of his for something other than dirty jokes and cynicism. He knew every foot of the place, ways to access the property that Anton Harder’s people would probably never discover. He drew me a fairly detailed map, based, of course, on the old layout of the place. Combining his encyclopedic memory with the intelligence I’d gained on my recent visit to the shantytown that had once been the Fir Grove resort, Sam and I figured I had a good shot at finding the little Harder before he found me.
My kidneys were feeling much better, and the blood in my urine, if any remained, was undetectable to the human eye. So, as I relaxed in preparation for my evening’s appointment, I decided it was time to sample that bottle Mr. Roth had left me. When I reached under the bed, I grabbed nothing but air. The gift was gone. I thought about calling down to Sam, but realized one of his angry ex-employees had probably taken it. Revenge comes
in many different forms, some of them quite silly and pointless. I needed my wits about me anyway, and as long as I still had Mr. Roth’s address and phone number, I was fine. The bottle itself was unimportant. I owned a wine shop, for Christ’s sakes.
For dinner, Sam and I ordered in a pizza from town. If you liked cardboard with red dye and flavorless cheese, Old Rotterdam was your kind of pizza town. Even eating the pepperoni, one had the sense it had been produced not at a Hormel processing plant but by Dow Chemical. We finished every last crumb, in spite of our better judgment. And, speaking of better judgment, Sam began voicing some doubts about our plan for the evening.
“You sure you wanna go through with this? I mean no offense, but you were a city cop, not a Green Beret. The woods at night can be pitch-black and dangerous.”
“I owe that little prick. We owe him.” I was rather too gung-ho. “Besides, they know I’m a cop. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to kill me.”
Sam shook his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure. What you think their collective IQ is over there? You think Einstein winters with them? Besides, just to point out a minor detail or two, not so you should get upset with me, but you’re not really a cop anymore, and you’ll be trespassing. They could always claim they thought you were a raccoon or something. Hunting is a big thing up here. They’d probably get off.”
“Sam, do me a favor. When you sell the hotel, don’t go into motivational speaking as a career. You’ve got no future in it.”
“It’s not my future I’m worried about.”
I left it at that. He was correct, of course. What seemed like such a good idea this morning was no longer looking so wonderful. Our plan was full of holes. Sam hadn’t been on the Fir Grove grounds for years, and I’d spent less than a half-hour there. I’d seen several hungry dogs who would have found an intruder more than a tasty treat. I knew they had at least one shotgun on the premises, and I was willing to bet the ranch it had a lot of company on the gun rack. Whether someone was willing actually to shoot me instead of just aim at me was a separate issue. Pulling a trigger is easy. Killing someone, even someone you don’t especially care for, isn’t. I’d just have to keep telling myself that, because, true or not, I was going.
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