Angela Farber blinked, looked to Walter, Gustav, or whatever his name was, then back at me.
“Furthermore, my father’s cousin from Washington is somewhere in the Painted Desert right now. He won’t be back until next week.”
There was a long silence.
“Why don’t we talk inside,” said McKeever, motioning to the box. “I don’t think we want to share this discussion with everyone.”
The box was empty, except for the chairs and a couple of forgotten programs. McKeever held the door for Angela Farber, Emmel, and me, then closed us in.
“Is this going to take long?” she asked. “I don’t intend to miss the second half of this program. And Walter and I have a table reserved at the Russian Tea Room later on.”
“I wouldn’t count on either if I were you,” I said. “Mrs. Farber, I think you already know Detective-Sergeant McKeever of the NYPD. He’s here to arrest you for the murder of Ruggero Ercolano and the attempted murder of my father.”
Her jaw dropped, and McKeever blushed.
“Ellie,” he protested. “I have no plans to arrest this lady.”
“How could you think I’d do such a thing?” she gasped. “I didn’t even know that Ercolano fellow.”
“I realize that,” I said. “Or you hardly knew him. That’s why it never occurred to me that you might be the one. You had no direct ties to the Italian Department, besides living next door to my father, so I had no reason to suspect you.”
“You have the wrong idea, Ellie,” she said, trying to muster another smile. Her upper lip glistened with perspiration. “I had no reason to kill anyone, and no opportunity.”
“You had both,” I said, looking at Emmel, whose gray face had turned green. “Walter, here, was your motive.”
“I had nothing to do with these crimes, Miss Stone,” said Emmel.
“I know,” I said. “But you were the inspiration.”
“What are you talking about, Ellie?” asked Mrs. Farber, eyes smoldering.
“You’re in love with Walter, aren’t you?”
She fidgeted, but didn’t answer. Emmel just groaned.
“You’re in love with him,” I continued, “and intent on keeping him by any means available. You told me yourself he was losing interest, didn’t call anymore.”
“So I went out and tried to kill your father? You’re crazy, Ellie!”
Her voice echoed through the hall, and some patrons in nearby boxes interrupted their conversations to stare.
“No, not me, Mrs. Farber,” I said, though not as mean as it sounds. “I think you were mad with love, mad with fear of losing Walter, mad with the turmoil inside your own head—the same turmoil that sent you away for all those years.”
Her eyes clouded up with tears.
“You couldn’t bear being alone,” I continued. “You’d already lost one man: Garth. He’s still in jail, isn’t he? Or did he die? He was a junkie, wasn’t he? When they sent him away, you broke down.”
“Officer, can’t you stop her?” she asked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “My poor Garth!”
McKeever stared at her, then me, gulped, but said nothing, did nothing to try to stop me.
“You fell for Walter in a big way, didn’t know what you’d do if you lost him. And you were losing him. Some people accept rejection in love, swallow the pain and heartache and get on with their lives. And there are others who hang on to love for dear life, often at the expense of their self-esteem or emotional health. Most times, they lose in the end anyway. And then there are those who won’t accept rejection and won’t settle for less than everything. That’s you, Mrs. Farber.”
“I never did anything to harm Walter!” she said.
“No, but you wanted him enough to blackmail him back into your arms. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to be there, you would win back his affections if only you had him. If he walked away, he’d never realize his mistake.”
“First murder, now blackmail?” she asked. “How would I blackmail him? What leverage did I have?”
“His past,” I said, and Emmel sat down on one of the tall chairs near the rear of the box. “You went so far as to smash some of my father’s Anton Bruckner records, even though Bruckner wasn’t Jewish, just to point a not-so-subtle finger at Walter.”
Mrs. Farber’s tears stopped, and her face betrayed the very fear I had just described: she was going to lose him. She was going to lose him to deportation or jail, just as she had lost Garth.
“Sergeant McKeever,” I said, turning to the bewildered cop, “you might be interested to know that Professor Gualtieri Bruchner’s real name is Gustav Emmel. He has been living a false life since the end of the war, making his way in the world with another man’s name and past.”
“It’s not true!” screamed Mrs. Farber, falling to her knees at my feet. “Please, Ellie, no! Not Walter, please! I’ll confess to everything, but don’t send him back! No, Elijah, not Garth! Please!”
The violence of her collapse stunned all of us in the box. She melted on the carpet between my legs, sobbing and kissing my wet shoes, mumbling my name then Garth’s then Elijah’s alternately, no longer making any sense. Emmel knelt down to comfort her, stroking her head and cooing soothing platitudes into her ear for several minutes. I couldn’t move, not even enough to see McKeever, who didn’t peep. Emmel stared up at me with something akin to pity in his steel eyes. Mrs. Farber had gone quiet now, catatonic, I’d say, and I managed to wrench my legs from her grip.
“Can we get her out of here?” said Emmel. “Must we humiliate her when the others return?”
McKeever opened the door, and a patrolman helped carry her downstairs where a squad car met us outside the hall. As we packed her into the backseat, a cold wind whipped up Fifty-Seventh Street. The patrolman handcuffed her, though she wasn’t a risk to anyone. She was silent as McKeever knelt in the doorway of the car to inform her of the charges. I watched as he dispatched his duty calmly and politely.
“You’re under arrest, Mrs. Farber, for the murder of Ruggero Ercolano.” She didn’t react. McKeever paused, then looked up at me with an ache in his eyes. “And for the murder of Abraham Stone.”
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1960
Even though my father had lived as a secular Jew, I arranged his funeral according to Jewish custom. Rabbi Oshry, of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol on Norfolk Street, handled most of the planning. He didn’t like the idea of cremation, but I insisted and won in the end. I was willing to take his remains to any funeral parlor to have it done, and Rabbi Oshry relented.
The service was held Monday evening, barely twenty hours after my father had passed away at Saint Vincent’s. His heart, the one I had broken, had stopped late Sunday afternoon. The usual gang from Columbia showed up to mourn and pay respects, but I was finished with the lot of them, including Gigi Lucchesi, who tried endlessly to make eye contact with me. I avoided him. The doormen from my father’s building were there, some friends of my mother’s, vaguely familiar relatives from Long Island, and Sean McDonnough, too. I spoke to few of them, and remembered little of the conversations, preferring to dwell on thoughts of how I had failed my late father. I had selfishly put away all thoughts that he might die, allowing myself the freedom to pursue the solution to the crime. And my own appetites. Now the reality of his death hit me harder for the surprise of it. I’d had no time to prepare myself for it, no time to make amends, to heal the wounds of years with him. I had squandered all chances of righting the wrongs for so long, most recently in Gigi Lucchesi’s arms. But the worst crime, the one that had riven the bonds of our love, was my teenage transgression: the one that had left me pregnant and my father gutted, our relationship shattered beyond repair. That wound had never closed.
I had failed him, ruined myself forever in his eyes when I fell. It was an NYU boy, a passing fancy at sixteen, a stupid lapse of good sense and propriety. And the consequences have dogged me like a pitiless hunter throughout the ensuing years. I had buried it deep inside, shutt
ing it out of my consciousness for the pain it revived each time it visited my memory. I can only imagine how it ached in my father’s chest.
He made the arrangements. My mother never knew. Elijah never knew. It was an infernal secret my father and I shared, and it consumed our love.
I felt sorry for myself. Not only was my father dead, but I was now utterly alone in the world, saddled with my own ponderous remorse and stinging guilt for the sorry relationship that had died with him. Death is final. No chances to repair, replay, or tweak. My grief was inflamed by anger and disgust, both for me and for my father, who’d never cared to fix things either.
I shook hands with hundreds that evening, wanting nothing more than to walk away and disappear into nothingness, never to face them again. I wanted to wash my hands.
When the service was over, and all the eulogizing had ended, we were herded into the annex for some awful buffet meal that would have revolted and angered my father, had he been subjected to it. I excused myself on the pretense of using the powder room, and walked out of the synagogue into the cold rain.
Forty minutes later I was soaking in Scotch whiskey at Jock Brady’s, sitting at the bar in my wet overcoat. The bartender remembered me, as did Pat Duggan and his pal Dennis. This night they left me alone. People can sense when you’re dangerous to approach.
Jimmo McKeever was different; he didn’t know when to leave you alone. He appeared next to me at the bar and ordered a stout. We sat in silence for a while, him for not knowing how to start, me for not wanting to. Finally, he offered a simple, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I nodded.
“That’s not how I wanted to tell you,” he said softly. “I tried to find the words in the hall, but I couldn’t. You were going on about Mr. Lucchesi, and then the intermission came.”
“It’s all right,” I said, and we fell silent for two more rounds of drinks.
Then I took Jim’s hand and clutched it in mine. I didn’t look at him, I just held him fast. He was warm, his palm was smooth and dry, even if I was making him nervous.
“Ellie,” he began, but I kissed him before he could finish.
He let me kiss him, but returned none of the gesture. He froze in place, eyes open and staring blankly over my shoulder. I released him and returned to my drink.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Ellie, don’t do that to yourself. That’s not what you want.”
“I thought it was you who didn’t want.”
He shook his head slowly. “You have no idea what I want. Or how much.”
Then McKeever offered me a lift home, but I shook my head. He tried to convince me to go, but I wanted to stay. Reluctantly he left, but not before asking to see me the next day to tie up some loose ends. I said sure. As he left, he looked like I’d wounded him to the core. Not my problem.
Once he’d gone, I bought a round for Pat and Dennis. They accepted warily, but soon we were old pals, celebrating the heroes of the Irish Rebellion. Two drinks later, Pat wrapped his arms around my shoulders and sang from the bottom of his heart at the top of his voice. We laughed, drank, and shouted about who had arrived first at the bar. Then we argued about the streetlight outside; I don’t remember the context or the outcome. And we disagreed about the day of the week. I emptied my wallet, and they theirs. We drank to auld lang syne and Mayor Wagner, whom they seemed to like. At two o’clock, I wandered out the door. I didn’t say good night. I shuffled drunk through the rain back to my father’s apartment. It was mine now.
Rodney greeted me at the door, offered his condolences; I believed he’d attended the service at the Norfolk Street synagogue, but now I wasn’t sure. He hobbled into the elevator and pushed fifteen, then spoke.
“That Italian boy stopped by to see you earlier. Waited for an hour. Wanted you to phone him when you got in.”
I grunted to indicate message received, eyes fixed on the floor.
“And Raul said he forgot to give you this.” He handed me a sealed envelope. “Someone dropped it off Thursday, but it slipped his mind.”
“Thanks,” I said, stuffing it into my coat pocket.
“And Miss Ruth also stopped in.”
I looked up. “Ruth Chalmers?”
“That’s what she said her name was, yes. She seemed very sad and wanted to see you. I told her today was a bad day for that, and she left about midnight.”
We reached the fifteenth floor, and Rodney nodded solemnly as I stepped out into the corridor. I thanked him for his kind words.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Eleonora,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes. “I was on duty that night. I feel responsible.”
I shook my head. “Mrs. Farber lives in the building, Rodney. You didn’t let her in. She has her own key.”
“Just the same,” he said, and the doors rolled shut, leaving me alone in the hallway.
I walked slowly to the end of the hall, pausing at 1504, and reflecting on how easily the tragedy might have been avoided. If Garth Farber hadn’t been sent away; if Gualtieri Bruchner had died at Auschwitz . . . The French say that with “if” you can put Paris in a bottle. It was nothing more than an intellectual torment. I opened my father’s door and let myself in. Once inside, I left the door unlocked, just to tempt fate and to torture myself, too. There would be no danger this night. I knew that. That was the punishment. My contrapasso.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1960
The following morning at nine, Raul called from the elevator to announce Detective-Sergeant McKeever. I wasn’t dressed, but I was awake. Unable to sleep much, I’d moved from my father’s bed to the sofa in the parlor.
“Glad to see you made it home last night,” he said once I’d let him in. “Kind of late.”
“What do you know about it?”
He shrugged and looked off to the side. “I waited for you to leave and . . . followed you back here in the car.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I kept a discreet distance so you wouldn’t know.”
“Why didn’t you offer me a ride? I almost froze to death.”
McKeever didn’t know what to say, so I patted him on the shoulder and told him never mind. I invited him to sit and poured us some coffee.
“I wanted to speak to you about some of the details,” he began. “I know this is a terrible time for you, but the sooner we wrap this up, the better . . . Well, it’ll be over.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I don’t have anywhere to be.”
The cop retrieved a binder from the case he’d brought, opened it on the coffee table in the parlor, and dived in.
“First, Angela Farber made a full confession last night,” he said. He looked a little awkward, swallowed hard, then continued. “She confessed to both crimes.”
McKeever clearly didn’t want to relate the story, and I wasn’t happy about hearing it. I asked if I could read the report instead. It would be easier for both of us. He agreed.
Angela Farber’s confession detailed how she’d noticed the lights dim on Friday, January 22, at about 10:15 p.m., and knew that my father had just returned home. She had been expecting him for hours. Her plan to was to wait for him to go to bed, let herself in with the key she’d had since she’d cared for his plants, and club him to death in his bed. But everything changed when she heard voices in his apartment: my father’s and Bernie Sanger’s. She waited until Bernie left about twenty minutes later, then buzzed my father’s door. She made up a story about a missing letter she’d been expecting, had the doorman mixed it with his mail by mistake? He checked his mail right there in the foyer, and said no, it wasn’t there. They chatted a moment in the doorway, my father still holding his mail.
She noticed a letter in his hand: the one from Carnegie Hall, and mused how she really should investigate the spring program. My father, knowing what was in the envelope, opened it and proudly displayed the tickets for the January 31 concert. Mrs. Farber gushed her admiration for Van Cliburn, and my father offered to lend her an LP of Cliburn pla
ying Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto. She followed him into his apartment, stooping to grab the small, cast iron doorstop from his threshold as she went. He led the way to his study, never turning fully to look at her, prattling about how the concerto had no trombones or tuba and that the second movement consisted of the most beautiful violin solos. Then she dashed the iron against the back of his head without a word. She hit him again, then again, and I had to look away from the report.
“Where does Bruchner fit in?” I asked once I’d composed myself.
McKeever offered me a handkerchief. I turned it down; he needed it for his own eyes. I almost threw my arms around him.
“Bruchner wasn’t adjusting too well at the department,” he said a moment later. “She said he often complained about the politics, the intrigues, and personalities. He was scared that Friday afternoon after the lunch at the Faculty Club and phoned Angela Farber right after the incident. He told her everything, expressed his fear of deportation and jail. According to the statement he gave us last night, his idea was to leave, skip town, just disappear, before your father could take any action against him. She talked him out of it, or at least into waiting a while, and decided to settle the matter herself. Angela Farber knew as much as Emmel did about the department, its people, and their peccadilloes, including Ruggero Ercolano. Everyone knew his haunts, his weakness for female flesh. She simply waited outside his place and followed him that Saturday to one of the bars Emmel had mentioned during one of his rantings. She flirted with him, and he took her back to his apartment. She actually had . . . intercourse . . . with him before killing him, like a praying mantis or a black widow. Said she did it for love.”
“Was it the Crystal Lounge?” I asked. “Just across the street from Ercolano’s place.”
“Yes, how did you know?”
I shrugged. “Ercolano had the matchbook, and Mrs. Farber mentioned the name to me once.”
“We showed his photograph to the manager and he remembered him from that night. He said Ercolano met a lady and left with her after about an hour. He identified Angela Farber as the lady.”
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