Chug-a-chug! Chug-a-chug! Chug-a-chug!
“What is it! What’s that noise!”
He put his hands over his ears and opened his eyes and right there in front of him was a huge swastika on the wall and another one on the ceiling. Yet another one was on the floor. There were swastikas everywhere. Dozens. Hundreds of them. Their black arms twirling. Going round and round and round. All of them together. Like pistons.
CHUG-A-CHUG! CHUG-A-CHUG! CHUG-A-CHUG!
Jack was surrounded by all these swastikas. Stepping on them. Breathing them into his lungs. He started to gag with his arms flailing about and then the swastikas became snakes, their dancing arms turning into serpents with hideous heads at the end. One of them wound itself around his neck and started squeezing the life out of him. He put his hands onto its slithery body and felt the cold, wet scales in his fingers. Then its massive head jutted out right in front of him. Staring him in the face. A cobra. The mouth wide open with fangs ready to strike.
“Help me! Help me!” cried Jack.
The next thing he knew, two women were getting him off the floor. They had blue robes just like the staff at the Greenwich Village Seniors Center.
“Are you all right?”
“What?”
“You fell,” one of them said. “Right here outside the laundry room. Are you all right?”
“Where am I?” said Jack. He looked around, bewildered. “Where are the snakes?”
“Easy now. You got lost. Disoriented. You’re in the basement.”
“The basement? I’m in the basement? How did I get here?”
“You probably came out of the elevator and thought you were somewhere else.”
“The elevator?”
He looked around. There were no swastikas. No snakes. Only bare grey walls.
“You’re Jack Fisher, aren’t you? From the sixth floor?”
“What?”
“We’ll take you to your room and get a nurse.”
44
Hodgson keyed in the name Brett Krust of Kitchener, Ontario, which got him into the Canada-United States Police Information Exchange System. It was a massive but effective databank that for police purposes treated the border between the two countries as if it didn’t exist. And for police investigations it didn’t. Now he had access to Canada’s police data on crime. Everything he wanted. There were no convictions for Brett Krust, but there was one charge of assault against him laid by his wife. It had been stayed. Once she took out a restraining order against him. But there was also something else. Not a conviction or even a charge, but information. He was a member of The United Front, a group based in Atlanta, Georgia with chapters all over the world. There was nothing to show how many members it had, but its publications were printed in different languages – English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian.
The United Front had grown out of the old National Alliance, which was once cited by the FBI as the best-financed, best-organized, white nationalist group in America. But by the year 2010, its membership had dwindled to less than a thousand. After the Great Holocaust of 2029, however, it returned with a new name and new executive. A radio program and an ezine called Voices of Dissidence had a string of regular contributors. One of them known as The Cobra wrote about survival of the white race and how it was under attack. The Cobra said blacks, Jews, Muslims, Orientals and anyone not white and Christian were a problem for America. The Cobra said the Jewish holocaust never happened because it was impossible for that many people to have been murdered back in the 1940s.
“Kathy, I want you to find what you can about whoever writes this column The Cobra for The United Front.”
Kathy Sottario had not endeared herself to Jack, but she was helping Hodgson with the Christine Fisher file. When it came to research, she was a crack investigator who could find things faster than anyone else.
“Have you got a name?” she asked Hodgson.
“No. Just The Cobra. I’ve been through some of the columns but I can’t find a name anywhere. You might start by learning what you can about this group. The United Front.”
“I’ll get right to it, Lieutenant.”
“And if you do get a name see if there’s anything about him in NCIC.”
The National Crime Information Center was the central database for tracking all crime in the United States. The very next day Kathy knocked on Hodgson’s door.
“His name is Jon Creeley,” she said. “No ‘h’ in Jon. He lives in Jersey.”
“Go on.”
“Like you said he writes a column called The Cobra and it’s widely circulated through The United Front. It gets translated into several languages but not once does he ever identify himself. He’s just The Cobra. However he does radio broadcasts and those get translated too so I managed to tap into some of the internal correspondence between the ezine editor in Atlanta and the translator who actually lives in Frankfurt but everything the translator does is sidetracked through London.”
“London?”
“That’s right. Germany has tougher laws than England for stuff like this so I’m guessing he doesn’t want to show any German connection. No German-based 3DE identity code. No German address of any kind.”
“How did you find that out?”
“I have my ways.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
Kathy started reading from her mini.
“NCIC showed three Jon Creeley’s in the state of New Jersey who are still alive and have criminal records. The first Jon Creeley is in his seventies. He’s long retired. Back in the 1990s this guy got convicted of auto theft. The second Jon Creeley is fifty-six, a digital strategist who did six months for possession of child pornography in 2027. That’s all it shows.”
“What exactly is a digital strategist?”
“It could be anything. Someone who adapts data into 3D or builds new platform technologies from older formats.”
“I see. And the third one?”
“The third Jon Creeley is younger than those two. Thirty-six. His occupation is listed as fight promoter.”
“Fight promoter?”
“That’s right. For the past four years he’s been one of the backers of a professional martial arts circuit that stages fights. Bouts. It’s organized and legit but he seems to have his finger in a few pies because he manages one of the fighters himself. A guy named Colton Brock who is known as Coal. He’s the champion. Undefeated. An ex-Navy Seal who once killed a guy in training and got discharged. No criminal charges were ever filed.”
“Hmm. It was military.”
“It was military. But here’s the thing. This Jon Creeley character was known to the police before he ever got involved in the martial arts circuit.”
“How?”
“Jon Creeley had a conviction for fraud in 2026. Another conviction for embezzling in 2028 and for that he got six months. He served his time at Attica and got paroled but later was charged with parole violation but he never did any more jail time. In 2030 there were charges for common assault on a minor … teenage girl … but the charge was withdrawn.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Four years ago in 2035 …”
“Yeah?”
“He was questioned about a homicide.”
“A homicide?”
“That’s right. Albert Freedman was a ninety-five-year-old man who was found murdered in his apartment on the upper East Side. His superintendent found him. Massive trauma to the body. He was badly beaten and was either choked to death with a cane … it was probably his own … or else he died of a snapped vertebra.”
“Snapped vertebra?”
“Broken neck.”
“Nasty. Why one or the other?”
“The police report wasn’t clear about the cause of death. And the file is still open on that one. Nobody was ever charged. The place was ransacked. Money gone. Stuff like that. It looked like a robbery.”
“But no ninety-year-old is going to put up much of a fight. Why did they have to k
ill him?”
“He was ninety-five.”
“Okay. Why did they have to kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what’s this got to do with Jon Creeley?”
“Well that’s just it, Lieutenant. Jon Creeley … the fight promoter Jon Creeley … was questioned by police. On the night of Albert Freedman’s murder he was seen on the street outside the old man’s apartment. They let him go. There was nothing to implicate him. But there’s more.”
Hodgson leaned over.
“There was a story about the old man who was murdered … Albert Freedman … in The Jewish Post. That newspaper is still around. Not cyber. Newsprint. There’s not many of those anymore.”
“No.”
“Well this story said Albert Freedman was a holocaust survivor. A Jewish holocaust survivor.”
“Kathy, give me that again.”
“I said this man Albert Freedman was a holocaust survivor. At least according to this story.”
“And he was ninety what?”
“Ninety-five.”
“When was that? When was he murdered?”
“Four years ago.”
Hodgson did the math. “So if he was alive today … he’d be ninety-nine.”
Albert Freedman, a murdered man, was born one year after Jack. A holocaust survivor.
“I suppose it could’ve been a robbery gone astray,” Hodgson said. “Heat of the moment. Stuff like that.”
“Unless they wanted to kill him,” said Kathy.
“But why would someone want to kill a ninety-five-year-old man?”
“I don’t know.”
45
The taxi deposited Jack in front of the three-storey brownstone on East 88th Street. It was near the Jewish Museum, a few blocks from the Gracie Mansion. The driver offered to help him up the stairs, but Jack said no. He had a cane. Ever since he turned ninety – ever since Eve died – people have been saying that he needed a cane, as if her death rendered him incapable of walking on his own. But now there had been two incidents at the residence, both of them falls, so he had a cane. He tipped the driver, marched up the steps and rang the bell. A woman’s voice said she’d be right down. Jack waited and then there she was. Emily Silver. The woman he saw on the 3DE.
“You must be Mr. Klukowsky,” she said with a smile.
Mr. Klukowsky? Jack had never been called that before. It sounded strange. He returned her smile with one of his own.
“Please,” he said, “you can call me …” He stopped himself and thought about it. “You can call me Jacob.”
“Jacob,” she said, extending a hand. “What a pleasure. What an honor. Please come in. And watch your step.”
She noticed the cane and he saw how she noticed it. Then she apologized for living on the second floor and for there not being a lift. She said she would help him up the stairs, but Jack said no.
“I have a cane,” he said.
“Yes I know you do.”
“But it’s not my cane. It’s society’s cane. I don’t really need it but everybody seems to think a man my age should have a cane so I have it to make them happy.”
She said something about him being a hundred years old. He dismissed it as no big deal.
“Lots of people get to be a hundred these days,” Jack said. “But two hundred? Now that would be something. That’s what I’m working on now.”
She liked him right away.
No one else was home. She said her husband was at work and they had two sons, both at college out of town. She said she owned a hair dressing salon and drew customers from well-to-do women on the Upper East Side. Business was good. Even though she was the owner, she worked Saturdays – her busiest day – but took Wednesday off, which was today.
“I guess I was lucky,” Jack said.
“No I arranged it like that. If you couldn’t have come today I would have taken another day off. Meeting you was more important than going to work.”
She brought him coffee and cookies, and said she wanted to have him for dinner one evening to meet the family, but thought it better this time if it was just the two of them. She mentioned Christine and said what a lovely girl she was. Jack hadn’t told her what happened. He didn’t know how to begin. Then she began talking about her grandfather. Her Zayda. Jack listened and then he started telling her stories from the ghetto about himself and Josef Karasik, but she seemed to know them all.
“My Zayda told me everything,” she said. “He always talked about you. What a brave little boy you were. But what I don’t know is what happened to you after the ghetto. After they took you away.”
Jack told her about the sewers and how his baby brother was born there and died there. How his Aunt Gerda had to suffocate him because he wouldn’t have survived and how she had to do it or the Germans would have found out about them, but they did anyway. He told her about Father Kasinski and what he did for the family. He told her how he, his parents, his aunt and his two cousins all went to Auschwitz and how he was the only survivor.
“That’s what I want to know,” Emily said. “How did you survive Auschwitz? Children didn’t survive that place.”
Jack said two dozen children, including him, were liberated by the Red Army in January, 1945. He said they were from many countries – Poland, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. Then she said something about how the Russians never got credit for helping defeat the Nazis.
“That’s true,” Jack said and then he shook his head. “They raped the girls, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“When they came to liberate us. Some of the older Jewish girls. The Russian soldiers raped them. There was no one to stop them. I thought they were beating them up. What did I know?”
“I never heard that before.”
“It was a war.”
Jack said he had been at the camp since August 1944 when he arrived by train from Lodz. He told her about the boxcar.
“How did you survive? You were just a little boy.”
Jack said it was a long story, but if she had the time he would tell her.
“For you Jacob I have all the time in the world.”
He liked being called that. No one had called him Jacob for so long that he had forgotten what it sounded like, but his parents called him that. Or something close. Ya-coov. She went to bring fresh coffee and when she returned she wanted to hear the story about how he survived.
“One thing your grandfather and I both learned in the ghetto was this,” Jack said. “Even people who want to harm you have a price. They can be bought. Josef … your grandfather … used to buy them by selling them cigarettes. I learned a lot from him. He was a rascal.”
Emily laughed and her eyes started to tear up.
“You want to know how I survived Auschwitz? A boy who wasn’t even five years old? I turned five on December 1, 1944, a few weeks before we were liberated. There was no birthday party for me.”
She smiled.
“I survived because I took what people taught me and used it.”
“Tell me,” she said. “I want to know.”
“When I got to the barracks at Birkenau … they called it Auschwitz II … I shared my bunk with an older boy named Jerzy. He told me everything that went on there. Everything. Birkenau was hell. Even a little boy four years old can recognize hell when he sees it. Every night the Kapo came for him. He was a German … seventeen … eighteen … and I still remember what he looked like. He wasn’t tall but husky and he was a lot bigger than me and he was a lot bigger than Jerzy. He took Jerzy away every night and did what he wanted to him. I didn’t understand any of that at the time. All I knew was that every night the Kapo came for Jerzy and a few hours later Jerzy came back and he was always tired. One night the Kapo took him away and Jerzy never came back. I never found out what happened to him. He probably wound up in the gas chamber unless the Kapo killed him. I don’t know. Anything was possible. But a couple nights later the Kapo came and this time he
wanted me.”
Emily put her hand to her face.
“I opened up the heel on my right shoe and showed him my chervonets. It was a gold coin from Russia. Father Kasinski gave it to me. Naturally the Kapo wanted it but I told him I had lots of them. I told him I hid a coin at the bottom of every latrine out in the back and there were a lot of latrines there, at least thirty of them, but I only had room for one coin in my heel. He didn’t believe me so I told him if he left me alone I would show him a different chervonets the next night. He would know because it would have a different year inscribed on it and that’s what happened. Every night I showed him a gold coin with a different year on it. One time I heard Mengele and the other doctors talking and I knew the war wasn’t going well for the Germans. It was just a matter of time, they said, before the Allies defeated them so I told the Kapo when the war was over I would share all my gold coins with him. I promised to give him half of them. If he would just leave me alone.”
“But you said you only had one gold coin,” Emily said.
“I did have only one gold coin but when I was a little boy living in the ghetto my father showed me how he changed the nameplate on sewing machines. You see, he was a tailor and he fixed everyone’s sewing machine. All the Jews wanted a Singer sewing machine and all the Germans wanted a Pfaff. It was a different make. German, of course. The name was painted in gold letters on the black base, then it was covered with this transparent lacquer. My father showed me how to sand off the lacquer, repaint the black, then paint the name ‘Singer’ in gold and recoat it with the lacquer. He was a very enterprising man. He made sure every Jew got a Singer sewing machine and every German got a Pfaff. Nobody could tell the difference. They just looked at the nameplate. So no matter what kind of sewing machine he had he made sure all his customers were happy. I used that same kind of reasoning with my chervonets at Birkenau. You see, I had a friend. A Sonderkommando. They were Jews who helped burn the bodies. Some of them were just as bad as the Nazis but this man helped me. He took me where the ovens were and put my chervonets in for a few seconds. That was all we needed to heat it up. Then we took it out and etched a new year in it with a carving knife. We did it together. We did that every day until the Kapo was convinced I had a mini Fort Knox hidden in the latrines out in the back.”
The Last Witness Page 25