by Lee Harris
“It was spring and it was a good time to travel. I think they felt it was a good day to be in the New York area. Many of their children and grandchildren live around here, and they could spend the day with their families and then have their celebration at night.”
“I gather from what Janet told me that something terrible happened that night.”
“It did.”
Our first courses were just arriving, and we said nothing while the waiter placed them artfully in front of us. Before beginning to eat her salad, Lila opened her bag and pulled out a small black-and-white snapshot. She put it on the table between us, and I picked it up and looked at it.
Two rows of young boys grinned impishly at me, boys with pudgy cheeks and unruly hair, sparkling eyes and smudged shirts. There were five in the back row, four in the front, and the background appeared to be brick with a window frame at the left end, probably an apartment house they lived in or near. It was hard not to smile back at them.
Above the heads of the ones in the back row and on the shirts of the ones in the front, someone had lettered in black ink the first name of each boy.
“This one’s Dad,” Lila said, pointing to Morty, who stood between Ernie and Bruce in the back row.
Morty was taller than either of the boys around him, and although he was smiling, he wasn’t mugging for the camera the way some of the others were.
“George Fried died several years ago,” she said, pointing to the boy in the front row second from the right. “He lived out west somewhere. Here, let me go through them in order. In the back row is Dave Koch. He’s a lawyer now. Bernie Reskin was a schoolteacher till he retired but he still works part-time. Ernie Greene—they always used to laugh about Bernie and Ernie—Ernie went into medicine but never practiced. He’s been in research his whole life. There are rumors he’s been considered for a Nobel Prize.”
“That’s amazing.”
“They’re an amazing group of men. Then there’s Dad; he’s also a doctor but he’s been cutting back for a few years. Bruce had a hard life. He went into his father-in-law’s business and got mixed up in an embezzling scandal. He wasn’t the embezzler, but I think he covered up for someone to save the other man’s skin. In the front row, Fred Beller hasn’t shown up at the reunions for years, and I don’t know if anyone knows what’s become of him. Art Wien is a writer and has a lovely sense of humor. George is the one who died. And the last one on the right is Joe Meyer. Joe has had a long career as a concert violinist but I hear he’s thinking of retiring.” She had been careful not to let on which of them had been murdered.
“I can hardly believe that a group of children connected only by the place they lived could have turned out to be such astounding people.”
“They were motivated and they were smart.”
“I gather one of them was murdered last Sunday.”
“Yes.” She looked at the picture as though she had the power of life and death over them, as though they were all alive until her finger came down on one little smiling face. “It was Art who was murdered, Arthur Wien, the writer. I have something to show you.” She took an envelope out of her bag and pulled a color photo out of it. This one was about four by six and showed gray and graying men, several with paunches, all wearing suits and ties, all smiling. They were also standing in two rows with gaps in the front row.
“They arranged themselves the way they were in the old snap. The space on the left here in the front is for Fred, the one who never comes to reunions, and the space between Art and Joe is for George, the one who died. It was taken before the murder, and we just got the pictures back yesterday.”
“Mom,” Janet said, speaking for the first time, “will you let her eat?”
“Oh I’m so sorry, Chris. Please. Your soup is getting cold.”
I lined the pictures up with the new one above the old one and looked at them as I ate. I kept trying to describe for myself what I was feeling. It was startling, astounding, confounding, and amazing. A motley group of boys had become men of stature and importance in a variety of respected fields. I found myself wondering whether there was something in the water they drank or the air they breathed. Had they all had parents who drove them relentlessly or had they simply been instilled with such desire to achieve that they made wonderful things happen?
When we finished, our plates were whisked away by waiters obviously anxious to deliver our main course. Lila apologized again, and I assured her I was interested in hearing everything.
“I wasn’t at the reunion,” she said. “It was just the men and their wives. Dad said they had an oval table so they could all sit together. He said everyone was in a good mood; they all gave speeches, short ones, and had a good time.”
“Who took the pictures?” I asked.
“A waiter. There are other pictures besides this one. They took a bunch, some of them with their wives. I have all of them.”
“Tell me about the murder.”
“As near as they can determine, it took place about nine-thirty. They had all gathered at the restaurant at seven. They were in a private room, but they had to use the men’s and women’s rooms for the regular restaurant. Dad said he didn’t take particular notice of who got up and left the room, but he was aware that people did as the evening went on. By nine they had finished eating and were making toasts and doing their usual telling of tales, which always got them laughing and sometimes a little teary eyed. There was music piped in and some of the couples were dancing. Dad went to the men’s room about nine-thirty and he found Art’s body on the floor. He had been stabbed with an ice pick. Dad thought it had just happened. His body was still warm. No one else was in the men’s room.”
“Was it a room for one or were there several stalls?”
“I never asked.”
“I assume your father called the police immediately.”
“He did. And they came very fast; he told me that.”
“And everyone was questioned.”
“And questioned and questioned. They’re all suspects, and unfortunately, my father is suspect number one because he found the body only minutes after the murder. It puts him on the spot. I can’t tell you what this has done to my family.”
I could imagine. “When you say that your father is the main suspect, have the police let you know that?”
“Not in so many words, but they’ve been back to ask him questions several times, and my mother too. My folks have hired a lawyer.”
“Does your father have a feeling about who may have done it?”
“Not at all. Quite the contrary, he’s ready to vouch for the character of any one of the boys. Men.” She smiled. “He’s never called them anything but boys when he’s talked about them, and I’ve never known them as anything but men.”
“Lila, this is not only an ongoing police investigation but a very new one. I’m not sure how I can help you without getting in the way of the police, and I won’t do that.”
“I know. I knew you would say that.” She had been picking at her fish. Now she laid her fork down.
“Mom,” Janet said, “you promised.”
That’s when I realized Lila was holding back tears. “I’m so worried about him,” she said unsteadily. “I don’t really expect you to figure out who did this terrible thing. I hoped you might be able to clear my father, to find something that would prove he couldn’t have done it. He’s not a young man any more and this is taking its toll. Janet was so impressed with you, both as a teacher and as a person.”
I let it all rush through my head. Her family was surely in turmoil. If her father were innocent, this burden would affect his life every day until the police decided he was not their man. If he had committed the murder, and he might have, I would hate to be the one to dig up the evidence that pointed to him. I wasn’t sure how much I could accomplish toward either end. From what Lila had said, some of the men at the dinner lived far from the New York area, and I had a young child whom I couldn’t just drop off for days with
a sitter while I went flying around the country, not to mention Jack’s precarious situation with a new job and the bar exams not far down the road.
“It’s all right,” Lila said, sounding recovered. “I was asking too much. Why don’t we just have a nice lunch and not talk about it any more?”
“Let me talk to your father,” I said. I could see Janet’s eyes widen across the table. She broke into a smile, and I remembered what a pretty girl she was, how much more forthcoming she was in class.
“He’ll probably regale you with stories of the old neighborhood.”
“That’s OK. I kind of like that sort of thing. And maybe I’ll begin to understand how this group of little boys turned into such fine old men.”
“Don’t call Dad an old man if you value your life. He’s only in his late sixties, and he’s as powerful a human being as he was in his forties.”
“Sounds good.”
Lila pressed a tissue to her eyes. “Thank you.” She smiled. “I think I’ll have dessert today.”
“You, Mom?” her daughter asked in apparent disbelief.
“Yes, me.”
“Then I will too,” Janet said.
I wasn’t about to be the odd man out.
2
I came home with a large envelope from Lila. After I had told her I would look into the murder, she had held out her hand to Janet who had given her the envelope on cue. It had been on the floor next to Janet during our conversation. What was inside would be the beginning of my investigation if I took it on.
The envelope contained not only the photographs but also jottings that Dr. Horowitz, Lila’s father, had made, not for me but for himself. She had xeroxed them that morning and given me the copies. It was a place to start my thinking. Tonight, she would call her father and arrange for me to meet him as soon as he could make time for me. Eddie had been pretty rambunctious when I picked him up at Elsie’s, and I didn’t get a chance to look at the pictures and writings till a few minutes before Jack walked in the door.
I put Eddie to bed before Jack came home. His tour was ten to six, but he was lucky to leave on time and it was a long drive from Brooklyn to Oakwood, especially at that hour of the day. I had roasted a chicken according to my friend Melanie Gross’s fail-safe recipe, the only kind of recipe I ever use, and the kitchen smelled wonderful, full of garlic and rosemary and lemon.
When I heard the car, I put the stuff back in the envelope and opened the family room door, the closest door to the garage.
He came inside, gave me a kiss, and looked at me strangely. “What’s up?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s happened? Is Eddie OK?”
“Eddie’s fine. We’re both fine. Dinner’s ready.”
“You look a little—I don’t know. What did you do today?”
“I had an interesting day. Sit down and eat your melon.”
We sat down at the kitchen table, which was already set, and started to eat.
“Nice and sweet,” Jack said. “You gonna tell me?” He took another bite and looked at me. “You’re on a case.”
I started to laugh. “You saw that in my face?”
“I saw something. You had that look like you were really fixed on something. Is that it? You walk into a murder this afternoon?”
“One of my students called,” I said. I told him about it as he carved the chicken and I got the potatoes and string beans on the table.
“Maurice’s, huh? You’re gonna need a whole new wardrobe for this one.”
“I doubt whether I’ll be eating many more lunches there. Lila’s going to arrange for me to meet her father, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. She was in tears, Jack. I tried to say no because I want to be around while you study.”
“Honey, I can study alone. I just won’t make a very good baby-sitter. I’ll really have to concentrate.”
“I know.”
“But it sounds interesting, a bunch of guys who love each other except that two of them don’t. At least the things you stumble into don’t involve drugs and gangs.”
“These men could hardly be called a gang. I’d love to drive over to where they lived when they were children and get a look at it.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Bronx. A Hundred Seventy-fourth Street and Morris Avenue. They called themselves the Morris Avenue Boys.”
“You’re kidding. You want to go there?”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s just above Claremont Park. It’s drugs and gangs and you don’t want to know what all else in the street.”
“That bad?”
“It can be.”
“I guess Lila was right. She said nobody lived there anymore.”
“It’s gone way downhill since the forties and fifties. The young people left; the older people left or died. Look at this guy’s pictures. They’re a lot better than reality.”
I mulled it over after dinner. Jack sat down in the family room, which he likes better than the office upstairs, and I sat down away from him with my envelope of goodies after we’d had coffee and some extraordinary Jersey strawberries I had picked up on my way home from lunch. Eddie had eaten several with relish and his father did the same hours later.
I emptied the envelope and took out the smaller envelope of pictures. It was thick enough that they must have used a whole roll of film to record the evening’s activities. Lila had said they were in chronological order, and I was anxious to keep them that way. With a pencil, I numbered the backs before I sat back to look at them.
They told the story of a happy reunion, a festive dinner, a group of men who, as far as I could see, cared about each other. There were no solemn faces, no hints of anger, no tense, nervous wives. I was particularly interested in Arthur Wien, the victim. Using the first picture Lila had shown me as a key, I identified him in picture after picture, a man of average height, hair still mostly dark, thickening at the midsection, standing close to a wife who was many years younger than he and very attractive. He had a good-looking face that had probably been quite handsome when he was young, and he was dressed, like the others, in a well-cut suit. Instead of the dress shirt that most of the others wore, he had on a white turtleneck. His wife, whose name was Cindy, was wearing a dazzling low-cut dress that showed off an enviable figure. Even in these amateur snapshots, the sequins on her dress caught the light. Like everyone else there, they seemed to be very happy and enjoying the evening.
As a boy he had been shorter than most of the others, his hair dark, although hair color in black-and-white pictures is hard to determine, and a bit on the pudgy side. There was nothing about his looks that would indicate he would grow up successful and famous in a competitive field.
A sudden thought sent me to the bag of recyclable paper, which we keep in the family room where we read newspapers, magazines, and mail. I pulled out The New York Times from Monday and turned to the obituary page. There was no mention of Wien, but if he had died during the night, that was understandable. But Tuesday’s edition had a paid notice that read: “Wien, Arthur A., suddenly on Father’s Day, beloved husband of Cynthia (Cindy) Porter, devoted father of Michael and Katherine, Robert and Sondra, and Melissa and John Beck.” It went on to name numerous grandchildren and then said, “Author of The Lost Boulevard and many other respected novels, Art was a good father, a good husband, and a good friend. In lieu of flowers, contributions to the Authors Guild will be welcome.”
I thought that last was very generous. I was about to tear out the small square of paper when I noticed that just below it was a second, smaller notice for Arthur Wien: “A good man and a great friend. We will miss him forever. The Morris Avenue Boys.”
I tore the tiny notices out of the paper and slipped the clipping into my envelope. Then I checked yesterday’s paper and found the same family notice again but no Times obit. Today’s paper was an arm’s length away, and I reached over and pulled it toward me. This time there was a long obituary with a ph
otograph taken about ten years ago.
Arthur Wien, novelist and author of The Lost Boulevard, died Sunday night, the victim of an apparent homicide. Police said there were no immediate suspects.
Born in the Bronx to immigrant parents who owned a grocery store in which he often worked after school, Mr. Wien attended City College where he majored in English and graduated after World War II. He held a number of teaching jobs until, days before his thirtieth birthday, his first novel, The Lost Boulevard, was published to great critical acclaim. The Times called it “a searing, incisive study of the generation that came of age during and after the war.”
It went on to note the titles of his other books, not all of them critical successes although apparently they did well enough commercially. The obituary mentioned places he had lived—he had apparently become an expatriate for a while and taken up residence in Paris—and some of the people he had known.
He is survived by his second wife, Cynthia Porter, and three children of his first marriage, which ended in divorce, his sons Michael of New York, Robert of Short Hills, and one daughter, Melissa Beck of San Francisco.
When I tore the section out of the paper, Jack looked up to see what I was doing and then went quickly back to his books. As I put the obituary in the envelope, the phone rang.
It was Lila Stern with an appointment for me to see her father. He would talk to me after his last morning patient; it was the best she could do. His office was in New York, and if I didn’t mind, he would order a take-out lunch so he could eat while we talked. I didn’t mind at all. That was one tuna fish sandwich less I had to make for myself.
I went back to my comfortable seat in the family room and took out the several sheets of xeroxed handwritten notes. They had been written in pencil, and there were places where words were so faint they were not legible. To make matters worse, the handwriting was that of a doctor who was used to scribbling so that no one but a pharmacist could read it. But as I looked the first page over, I realized he had tried to put down on paper a chronology of the events of the Father’s Day dinner, starting with the arrival of the men and their wives at the restaurant.