“Did she tell you about my father’s manuscript?” I asked.
“She said she mailed the book Monday, like you said. She knew it would come back for insufficient postage and implicate Ercolano.”
We sat quietly for a moment, sipping our coffee. I preferred talking about Ercolano’s case to my father’s. It distracted me, if only for a while.
“We don’t know exactly how she got into Ercolano’s office,” said McKeever. “She kind of faded away after a while and stopped speaking.”
“She took his office key,” I said. “I’m sure of it. The police found two silver latchkeys and a mailbox key in his possession, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, the keys to the Hamilton offices are brass,” I said, producing my father’s key, the one Joan Little had given me. “So, it made me wonder why he didn’t carry an office key, and the answer was that someone—his murderer—had taken it from his chain.”
McKeever nodded, then remembered something.
“I thought you’d like to know that we spoke to Mr. Lucchesi about his fingerprints on your father’s key. By the way, turns out he’s been waiting for you to contact him for the last several days. He said he’d left you a message, and you didn’t respond. Didn’t want to harass you.”
“I certainly didn’t get any message.”
McKeever shrugged. “Anyway, he says he used the key a while ago when he was helping your father catalogue his books. Miss Little seems to think no one has used it since then.”
“Well, that explains it,” I said.
“You must be glad Lucchesi’s not involved. I know how you feel about him.”
“No, you don’t, Jim,” I said, staring deep into his blue eyes. We held each other’s gaze for a long spell, until McKeever blinked and looked away.
“And all this happened because your father noticed Bruchner’s tattoo,” he said wistfully, bringing me back to the painful topic.
“It wasn’t the tattoo,” I announced.
“Beg your pardon.”
“My father’s suspicions weren’t caused by the tattoo, at least not initially.”
“Then what was it?”
I blushed. “It was Bruchner’s penis.”
“What?” McKeever had turned magenta.
“The man wasn’t circumcised. That’s what my father must have seen in the steam bath. It was only later on that he became suspicious of the tattoo.”
“How did you figure that?”
“In one of her drunken ramblings, Angela Farber mentioned that Walter wasn’t circumcised. I remembered it last night. That’s how my father knew he wasn’t Jewish. The tattoo must have seemed innocuous at first glance.”
“Bruchner still insists that the tattoo is not a cover-up of an SS tattoo. He says it’s a girl’s name. Katia, I think.”
“Was it Bruchner who made the call to the ICU the morning Mrs. Farber disconnected the breathing tube?”
“No,” said McKeever. “She kept Bruchner out of her schemes. She paid a vagrant outside the hospital to make the call from a pay phone.”
“What about Bruchner now?” I asked.
“He’s leaving the country. We had a long talk with his lawyer and him about his options. We might have tried to prosecute him, but we don’t believe he knew Angela Farber had done this until yesterday. She put the screws to him, threatened to go to the police about his identity. That’s why he went to the concert with her. I think he’s done with the charade. He wants to go home.”
“He was in a tough spot,” I said. “His past was closing in on him from all sides, even from his lover. I believe people are responsible for their actions, but I still feel pity for him.”
“That’s pretty generous of you, given the circumstances.”
I shrugged and sniffled. “I still can’t believe the coincidence. Both Gualtieri Bruchners in New York. What are the odds?”
“Not so hard to believe,” said McKeever. “After the war, Jewish refugees either went to Israel or they came here. And this was an attractive job for the professor. I understand a lot of Europeans are getting university jobs here. They call it ‘Brain Drain.’”
“Still,” I said, “you must admit it’s a coincidence.”
“Sure, but odds are that unlikely coincidences have to happen every so often. Ask an actuary. The real stroke of luck is that you picked up the wrong phonebook and found a Gualtieri Bruchner in Millwood.”
“Just by chance,” I mused. “Who knows if I ever would have connected Angela Farber to Emmel without Karen Bruchner?”
“And without that connection, she would have got away with murder. Two of them.”
“What about Mrs. Farber?” I asked. “How is she? She was pretty pathetic last night.”
“She’s insane. The DA’s going to have a couple of psychiatrists examine her before he decides which charges to file, but she’s gone around the bend.”
“Did you ask her about Elijah’s grave?” I asked.
McKeever nodded. “Yes, but she wouldn’t admit to that,” he said. “We asked her several times, but she denied it. Emmel, too.”
“I’ve come to believe it was just a random act of hooliganism,” I said. “You were right, Jim. Just some local punks, not an anti-Semitic crusade against my family. Angela Farber didn’t know about the confrontation at lunch until Friday night. Elijah’s grave was vandalized Wednesday.”
I spent the day meeting with lawyers and morticians, settling the bills and signing papers. The work was far from finished, but that was enough for one day. When I left the lawyer’s office, I ducked into a movie theater and sat through Ben-Hur. I don’t remember what it was about. That night, I arrived back at my father’s place after ten. Rodney was on his usual chair, sitting up a little straighter than usual. On the sofa was a visitor.
“Hello, Ruth,” I said.
Upstairs, I poured her a glass of sherry to steady her shaky determination.
“I had to see you, Ellie,” she said, staring into her glass. “I want to apologize for lying to you. I wanted to tell you the other day when we met, but I couldn’t do it.”
“There’s no need, Ruth,” I said, pouring myself some of my father’s whiskey and taking a seat next to her on the sofa.
“Don’t stop me, please,” she continued. “I want to clear my conscience. This belongs to your mother,” she said, twisting the ruby ring off her finger and folding it into my hand. “When I found it in Ruggero’s apartment, I thought it was his, a family ring of some kind, so I took it. The police told me it belonged to your mother. I’m so sorry, Ellie,” and she sobbed, head bowed.
I took her hands and smiled sadly. We said nothing for several minutes, and all I could think of was that time, years before, at the picnic when her mother had slapped her face. Poor little Ruth, to echo my father’s words. Poor little Ruth.
She looked up at me, her eyes sparkling behind tears, then fell against me. She cried for several minutes, her left hand still clutched in mine. She didn’t notice the ruby on her middle finger until she’d regained her calm.
“Ellie?”
“This isn’t my mother’s ring,” I said. “I found hers yesterday and put it in a safe deposit box today.” A lie. “This must have been Ruggero’s mother’s ring. Now, it’s yours.”
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1960
I arrived back in New Holland after eleven o’clock the following Sunday. I parked my car in its usual spot in front of my apartment on Lincoln Avenue, and, seeing the light still on in Fiorello’s, stopped in to chat with Fadge. The radio was playing from a shelf behind the counter: The Fleetwoods singing “Come Softly to Me.”
Fadge had already heard the news about my father; I don’t know how. I didn’t want to discuss it. We talked a while about nothing in particular, then I said I was calling it a day. I was about to leave when he remembered a message he was to give me:
“By the way,” he said, pulling a scrap of paper from the cash register. “Aside from all the calls from yo
ur editor, some guy from New York’s been calling here the past couple of days. He got the number from the paper, I think.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“He said his name was Gigi,” he said, reading the note. “Had an accent. There’s a number here; he wants you to call him,” and he handed the slip of paper to me.
I stuffed the paper into my coat pocket, and my fingers felt the envelope Rodney had given me the night of Dad’s funeral. I had forgotten it was there.
“Good night, Fadge,” I said, heading for the door.
“Good night, Ellie,” he called. “And I’m real sorry about your dad. If there’s anything you need, let me know.”
“How about a dirty magazine?”
“A little night reading?” asked Fadge, and I felt a little better.
Across the street, I climbed the stairs to my cold apartment and opened the radiator valves wide for some heat. Standing in the kitchen, still in my overcoat, I opened the envelope. It was from Gigi.
Thursday, January 28, 1960
Dear Ellie,
It’s hard to reach you by phone, so I decided to drop off this short note. I wanted you to know how nice it was to see you last night. If it’s not too late, I’d like to invite you for dinner Saturday at Barbetta. You deserve an evening out.
I know you’re very busy these days. Please call me when you have a free moment.
Tuo Gigi
I folded the letter into its envelope and slipped it back into my coat pocket. Again my fingers came across something else, this time a small, hard object. I pulled it out and turned it over in my hand. It was a roll of film: Gigi in slumber. I pried the cap off the canister and dropped the roll into my left palm. Kodak Tri-X, twenty-four exposures. I stared at it for a long moment before gripping the tail of the film tightly between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. Then I yanked it out of the cartridge, deliberately exposing it to the light to ruin it. I never wanted to see those pictures or Gigi again. I didn’t want to be reminded of what we’d done.
I dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, desolate and miserable, then collapsed sobbing, my face buried in the crook of my arm. It was one of those desperate, howling breakdowns that exhaust you, rend your lungs raw and make your stomach ache. It was as violent as it was hopeless. Then there was a knock at my door.
I was sure it was Mrs. Giannetti come to complain; I must have been crying too loud for her taste. But when I opened the door, I found Fadge standing sheepishly in the cold, a brown paper bag tucked under his arm.
“Hi, come on in,” I said, wiping my eyes on a handkerchief. He followed me up the stairs, rumbling as he went.
“I thought you might like a cocktail,” he said once we were in the warmth of my kitchen. He pulled two quarts of Schaefer beer from his parcel and placed them on the table. “And dinner,” he said, producing a large bag of Wise potato chips.
I was still tingling from my spell, but trying to hide the evidence with bravado. “It’s not fair,” I smiled. “A girl doesn’t stand a chance with a big spender like you.”
He stared at me with his bulging eyes for a moment, making me think maybe I’d misjudged and gone too far with the teasing. I was wrong.
“Well, in that case, let’s get you out of that sweater,” he said, and I had to laugh.
After one glass of beer, I left the rest of the Schaefer’s to Fadge, while I switched to White Label. We sat in my parlor for hours, listening softly to some of Elijah’s jazz records. The break from the loneliness was a godsend, even if we talked about sad things.
Fadge told me how his mother had died a few years before, and his father before that. And he had lost a brother, too. Always sickly, suffering from some kind of congenital heart problem as well as polio, Ron’s older brother, Robert, had passed away while still in high school. He told me it had been hard to lose everyone, but there wasn’t any getting around it. That was the way it was. I appreciated the wisdom of his fatalism, the acceptance, and the resignation. I promised myself that I, too, would try the same one day, once I’d had my fill of grief.
We marveled at the coincidences in our lives, the shared pain, and I took a perverse comfort in it. It was as if I had been rotting for years in a dark prison, alone, desperate, and cold, when, suddenly, the cell door opens. A dear old friend, beaten and unconscious, is pitched inside with me, and I am overcome with joy.
“Why did you come over tonight?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you were hoping to get lucky.”
He shook his head. “With a skinny girl like you? Naw.” He paused, thinking of something. “I just wanted to have a beer,” he said finally.
I smiled gently at him as he looked away. I knew why he had come, and it almost felt like he’d saved my life. I’ve loved that fat guy ever since.
The next day, I spent hours developing the photographs of Dad’s drawings. They were some of the nicest shots I’d ever taken. I made a couple of sets of prints, experimenting with different exposures and sizes. I intended to get a few of them enlarged, printed, and professionally framed. One photograph—Charon, ferryman on the River Acheron—I sent to an address in Brooklyn: a walk-down on Sixteenth Street, in the shadow of the El. I thought Karen Bruchner might want to keep it, the same way he’d kept that name all those years.
Deepest appreciation to Dan Mayer, editorial director at Seventh Street Books.
Greatest respect and affection for il grande John Freccero, a dear friend and an inspirational scholar, who taught me so much about Dante and The Divine Comedy.
Heartfelt gratitude to my peerless agent, Bill Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates, Inc., without whom Ellie Stone would never have come to life, and Styx & Stone would have languished forever in a drawer.
A linguist by training, James W. Ziskin earned bachelor of arts and a master of arts in Romance languages and literature from the University of Pennsylvania and speaks Italian and French fluently. He worked in New York City as a photo-news producer and writer, and then as director of NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. He has since spent fifteen years in the Hollywood postproduction industry, running large, international operations in the subtitling/localization and visual-effects fields.
James lives in the Hollywood Hills with his wife, Lakshmi, and cats Bobbie and Tinker. He is represented by William Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates, Inc.
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