“What do you want, Ellie?”
I scanned the room again for signs of Gigi. The bathroom door was closed.
“Ellie?”
“I want to talk to you, Hildy,” I said, trying to cap my rage. “And I want to talk to him.”
Hildy seethed. “Look, Ellie, I’m sorry, but it’s no big deal. We’re both adults, we can do as we please,” she said, gathering some indignation. “He’s not your property, whether he’s your father’s favorite or not.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, a glimmer of my misunderstanding just dawning. “Who is it in there?”
She glanced to the bathroom door and back to me, words failing her. Then the door creaked open, and a hand emerged.
“Ellie,” he smiled sheepishly in a T-shirt, a towel knotted around his waist.
“Bernie!” The nauseous soup in my gut fell calm, as if the high flame boiling it had been blown out.
“You won’t tell your father I’ve been here,” he said.
“Grow a spine, Bernie,” ordered Hildy.
“What’s this all about, Ellie?” asked Bernie.
I felt my land legs beneath me, and smiled. “I came to ask Hildy if she knew who had lunch with my father last Friday.”
Bernie looked to her for an answer, and Hildy frowned. “No, I told you the other night that I saw him in the office last Friday, but not at lunchtime.”
How could she have remembered that, I wondered. She was quite drunk when she told me at the reception.
“What about Friday evening?” I asked, well aware Bernie had been with my father that night.
“I told you, Ellie,” she glared. “I had a date. It doesn’t concern you.”
“You had a date?” asked Bernie.
“Let it go,” ordered Hildy.
“OK, well, what about Chalmers?” asked Bernie, the stress showing in his neck. “If he finds out about this, he’ll have my head. And yours too, Hildy.”
Hildy threw back her head and laughed. “You’re right about that. Chalmers would pluck the hair off your head, Bernie, if he knew. But don’t worry; Miss Eleonora Stone won’t tell anyone. Isn’t that right, Miss Eleonora?”
I didn’t like the “Miss” bit, but I nodded, intent on hiding my jealousy and bother from Hildy. I forced a broad smile, as if I were enjoying Bernie’s discomfort as much as she was.
“We don’t know who had lunch with your father last Friday, so why don’t you just shove off?” said Bernie, now clearly annoyed with the ribbing. “Go ask Roger Purdy; he told me he saw your father leave and come back from lunch that day. Or ask Gigi Lucchesi.”
“Gigi Lucchesi?” I asked. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” said Bernie. “Didn’t he help your father catalog his books? He spent hours with him a couple of months ago. Of course that was before the Barnard girl fell in love with him. Your father was incensed that Chalmers tried to cover it up.”
“Don’t be jealous, Bernie,” said Hildy with a snicker. “Your boyfriend needed help, and Gigi was Johnny-on-the-spot. You were too slow off the mark. And that girl was moony over Gigi. He did nothing wrong.”
“That’s enough of that, Hildy,” said Bernie, but I was suddenly sobbing fiercely into my hands. My lungs burned with each gasping breath. The tears poured down my cheeks unchecked. I was disconsolate, beyond humiliation; my emotions had dissolved without warning, and later I wondered if it was my anguish for my ailing father or for Gigi that had pushed me to tears. I felt a wretch, alone and unworthy of affection or even sympathy. And pathetic to have tried to surprise Hildy Jaspers on a cold Sunday morning. I didn’t respect myself; why should anyone else?
“Ellie . . .” said Hildy softly, coming to my side to comfort me. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I waved her off and ran through the door and down the stairs. My jealousy was stronger than my love for my father, I feared, and I was crushed.
I wandered through Chelsea, past Seventh and Sixth Avenues, and ended up sitting on a cold bench in Madison Square Park, staring at the Flatiron building. I wiped my nose with a handkerchief and thought of my father—he insisted on calling it the Fuller Building. He was always stuck somewhere in the past, stubbornly defending some obsolete garrison of prescriptive grammar or fighting a lost cause against the advances of Philistinism.
I drew a deep sigh and wished my life was different, not the isolated existence I had built around myself. No real friends, just boyfriends and pals. No family, just relations. It felt like a dirge was playing in my head, an insufferable lament that never stopped. How had I come to this spot? Was there anywhere else to go?
I don’t know why, but I thought about my mother and her quirky, sweet nature. Despite my father’s cantankerous disposition, they had never quarreled. It seemed a miracle to me, but she was patient with him, and he was tender with her. Perhaps she acted as a tonic for his hot temper, and he a stimulant for her quiet temperament. She could be prickly with him at times, but I had never heard her raise her voice to him. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle, flanges neatly accommodated by bespoke notches.
I sat on the cold bench, considering my parents’ enduring love affair, and I felt distracted, if not comforted, from my misery. The interruption allowed me to breathe, relax, and the tightness in my throat eased. It allowed my mind to wander off on other tangents, focus on the mundane—a greasy black pigeon poking around at my feet—and the sublime—a carillon of church bells sounding somewhere to the east. I looked up at the gray Sunday sky and remembered I had work to do.
I pushed myself off the bench and crossed Fifth Avenue to the northwest corner of Twenty-Third Street. There, I folded myself into a phone booth and dialed Roger Purdy’s number, saving myself a subway token.
“I’m on my way to church,” he said after I’d identified myself. “What do you want?”
“One question, if you please,” I said. “Then I’ll leave you to your genuflection.”
“Please, Miss Stone,” he said with disdain. “I’m a Presbyterian, not a papist.”
“What about Anthony Petronella? Isn’t he Catholic?”
A pause grew stale down the line. “You had a question?”
“Bernie Sanger says you saw my father last Friday on his way to lunch at the Faculty Club.”
“It was a supreme pleasure, yes.”
“And you saw him return.”
“I wondered if I was worthy.”
“Who was he with?” I asked, thinking what an ass he was.
“Come on, Miss Stone,” he said, the coy boy. “I’m sure an investigator as tenacious and perspicacious as you should have an educated guess.”
“I do. But I need confirmation of my hunch.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
He’d have to hit me over the head first. “Ruggero Ercolano.”
Static down the line. Then, “That’s right.” He sounded disappointed.
“Thank you,” I said. “I think I know who hit my father on the head, and who threw that radio into Ercolano’s bathtub.”
I needed a motive, something more than the vague threat my father posed to Bruchner. I needed to know exactly what he suspected the gray man had done, and how the tattoo fit into the picture. Without understanding the tattoo, I didn’t know where to look for the proof. All I had were my father’s suspicions. On the surface, it seemed unlikely that a Jew would be an anti-Semite. It was even more improbable that a concentration camp survivor would harbor such hatred toward his own people.
I believe in logic; people do things for reasons, whether choosing a color for a new car or deciding to murder someone. There is always a sense to an action, unless you’re dealing with a defective mind. So, I dismantled the enigma in a taxi uptown and as I walked west toward Riverside Park and Professor Saettano’s apartment.
My first question was, what had kicked off my father’s suspicions? Bruchner himself admitted that the incident in the steam bath at
the gym was the beginning. The tattoo on his chest, as innocent as it appeared, communicated a significant clue to my father. I couldn’t figure what it meant to him, so I moved on to my second question.
How could Bruchner be an anti-Semite if he was Jewish? That’s where Karen Bruchner came in. One of the two Bruchners was a fake, why not the professor? Maybe my father had discovered Bruchner’s charade. But would such a discovery prompt such hostility? I’m sure there are lots of people using assumed names, especially war refugees; it shouldn’t make my father blow his stack in a restaurant full of colleagues. There was something more to it, and I was back to the tattoo.
Three: something had convinced my father that his doubts about Bruchner were justified, or he never would have leapt at his throat in public. What was it? Perhaps a letter from Professor Arturo Marescialli had arrived that morning. I didn’t know for sure that such a letter existed, but I hadn’t located it among my father’s files. Or did he have other sources of information? Being the compulsive cataloguer that he is, he would have filed the letter in his correspondence folder. The burglar—Bruchner, I thought—knew to look for the damning evidence, and had apparently found it.
Four: Why kill Ercolano? This was the only question I could answer. Roger Purdy had seen my father leave the office with Ercolano before lunch and return with him afterward. I figured it a safe bet that Ruggero Ercolano had been the man with my father at the Faculty Club lunch that Friday afternoon. Bruchner’s motive for killing Ercolano, therefore, could have been the latter’s knowledge of my father’s suspicions and/or proof of Bruchner’s charade. Unfortunately for my cluttered mind, this scenario presented another question.
Five: How did Bruchner get into Ercolano’s apartment? No idea.
Libby opened the door tentatively.
“Please excuse the intrusion,” I said. “Is the professor in?”
“It’s a bit early to be calling on a Sunday,” she said peevishly. “But come in. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Libby showed me to the study overlooking the Hudson. She brought me a tray of coffee and Danish and explained that the professor would join me shortly. A few minutes later, Franco Saettano, dressed in a paisley robe with an ascot knotted around his neck, hobbled into the room behind his cane.
“Good morning, Eleonora,” he said, offering a frail hand. “You’re visiting early today.”
“I apologize, but it’s important.”
He took a seat. “How can I help you?”
“Sometimes, asking the proper question is the key to finding the right answer,” I began. “I thought you might ask me the right question. So, I’d like you to listen to my scenario, and test me, question me about it.”
“Va bene, avanti.”
“Last October, my father ran into Gualtieri Bruchner in the steam bath at the gymnasium. He noticed a strange tattoo on Bruchner’s chest, and he began to suspect Bruchner wasn’t who he seemed to be. My father launched an informal investigation, writing letters to colleagues in Italy to inquire about Bruchner’s past. In the meantime, he may well have carried out other research here in the United States; I know, for instance, that he visited his cousin, Max Zeitler, in Washington last December.”
“What did he suspect?”
“I’m not sure. But he was convinced Bruchner was a fake. It seems to have something to do with his being Jewish.”
“Does this have to do with the destroyed phonograph records?”
“I think so. The importance of being Jewish is at the heart of these crimes. My brother’s grave desecrated, smeared with swastikas; my father attacked, his ‘Jewish’ music destroyed; and in the case of Bruchner, his Jewishness is being challenged.”
“Are you forgetting about Ercolano?” asked the old man. “He was not Jewish.”
“You’re right. That was a missing piece of the puzzle, and I couldn’t link the crimes until this morning. Last Friday, my father had lunch at the Faculty Club, as did Bruchner, and there was an ugly confrontation. My father tried to strangle him.”
“Yes, Victor Chalmers told me the story,” said Saettano, shaking his head. “But how does that connect the attack on your father to Ruggero Ercolano’s death?”
“Ercolano was the man with my father at lunch last Friday. He witnessed everything.”
“Interesting,” he said, ever the professor weighing his student’s reasoning. “But since Ercolano cannot tell us what he heard and saw, we can only speculate. What do you think happened?”
“A busboy at the restaurant told me that my father approached Bruchner’s table, exchanged angry words with him, then went for his throat, yelling in a foreign language the busboy thought was German. Ercolano helped pull them apart. I’m sure he heard everything and, therefore, as a witness, became a threat to Bruchner.”
“But a threat to what, Eleonora? You have not proven anything against Gualtieri Bruchner.”
“I may never be able to, but that doesn’t mean he’s not guilty. This isn’t a court of law, Professor Saettano, nor a simple intellectual exercise. This is life and death, crime and punishment, and I intend to catch him.”
“Very well,” he said, as if leaving an unsatisfactory answer behind on an oral exam. “Have you any other evidence? Something, perhaps, to illuminate these suspicions of your father’s? Something to compromise Gualtieri Bruchner’s credibility? So far you have not convinced me.”
“As a matter of fact, I do have more evidence. There is in Brooklyn a man named Gualtieri ‘Caronte’ Bruchner. He was born on the same day, the same year, and in the same town in Alto Adige as Professor Bruchner. I believe that Professor Bruchner stole his name and identity in the closing days of the war.”
Saettano leaned forward in his seat, intrigued by the coincidences. “And you have met this man?”
I nodded.
“This name, ‘Caronte,’ do you know what it means?”
“I do. And he explained how he got it. He was deported in 1943 to Auschwitz, where he worked as the train engineer between the station, the camp, and the mines. He took the Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz.”
“A cruel but clever sobriquet,” mused Saettano, sitting back. “A ferryman of doomed souls. Is his wrist tattooed?”
I nodded again. “With the same number Professor Bruchner wears.”
“You have seen them both, the tattoos? And they appear authentic?”
“To my eye, yes. They’re both real tattoos, if that’s what you mean; under the skin, and not since yesterday. The ink looks just faded enough, like an old sailor’s tattoo.”
“So, Eleonora, you have a dilemma, indeed. Which of the two men do you believe?”
“Bruchner,” I answered, smiling. “Caronte Bruchner.”
“But you have no proof.”
“That’s what I’m looking for.”
“So, you have come to me.”
He tapped his cane on the oak floor boards, gazing out the window at nothing in particular.
“What is your theory?” he asked. “How do you think Bruchner came to have the other man’s name?”
I shrugged and shifted in my chair. “I’m not sure. I’ve thought that maybe he was a fellow deportee. When the Russians liberated the camp, maybe he had no papers, so he assumed Bruchner’s identity.”
“Your logic is flawed, Eleonora,” said Saettano.
I looked at him, wondering where I had gone awry.
“Remember what you told me about the tattoos,” he said.
Of course, I thought. Of course! “They have identical numbers on their wrists,” I mumbled. “That means that if Professor Bruchner is the imposter, he could not have been a prisoner at Auschwitz.”
“Exactly. If he had been a prisoner, he would have had his own number.”
I considered my oversight and realized that my false assumption about the professor had cut off all other avenues of exploration. The idea that Bruchner had been a deportee was a brick wall; I could bang my head off it forever and come away with nothi
ng more elucidating than a headache. Once I turned my nose away from the wall, I could see the exit. A new road opened before me, and the most plausible interpretation revealed itself to me effortlessly. The puzzle was far from complete, but I had filled in a lot more letters.
“What is it, Eleonora?” asked Saettano, shaking me from my rumination.
I smiled at him. “Thank you, Professor Saettano,” I said. “I think I’ve got it.”
“Indeed?”
“I’ve been in the habit of distrusting my father’s wisdom for so long that I didn’t even consider the ready-made analysis of what wasn’t quite kosher about Bruchner.”
“What was that?”
“My father knew Bruchner wasn’t Jewish; his inquiries showed that. But I was looking for another explanation.” I laughed, shaking my head, emotions straddling admiration for my father and relief for myself.
“Congratulations,” said Saettano, though not wholeheartedly. “Eleonora, you have proven nothing about Gualtieri Bruchner. Can you demonstrate that he is not who he claims to be?”
I nodded, my smile growing ever broader.
“Have you resolved the incongruity of Anton Bruckner’s presence among the Jewish composers?”
“I believe so. You see, I’m finally listening to my father.”
“You speak so strangely, Eleonora. How do you mean?”
“The tattoo,” I said. “The one on his chest. The one that sparked my father’s suspicions.”
Sitting in a downtown A-Train, I considered Saettano’s parting counsel: “You are a bright girl, Eleonora,” he said, shaking a bony finger at me. “But you must be sure that your deductions have solid foundations. Never fashion your conclusions to fit your thesis.”
I jumped off the train at Thirty-Fourth Street and hurried across town on foot, arriving at Bruchner’s building at a little before noon. The concierge shook his head when I asked for the professor.
“Left this morning about six,” he said. “And I haven’t seen him come back.”
“Was he carrying luggage?” I asked, fearing he’d fled.
“No, miss. Just an overcoat, not even his briefcase. He turned down Lex, but that’s all I know.”
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