I’ll say, thought Cabby. And then, lightning quick, her thoughts barreled on. In her estimation, most men were creatures of habit, especially where food was concerned. With no wife to come home to, McKenna must eat his meals out. It was a long shot, but— “Hey, Merv, any idea where Lieutenant McKenna has his supper?”
“Why?” An admonishing look came into Merv’s faded blue eyes. “If you’re willing to cool your heels a while, you can always catch him at Homicide.”
“Well, ah…that’s just it. Halper has me on another assignment, and I don’t have much time—plus my little talk with McKenna has to be on the strict QT.”
“Halper, huh. That guy still the hardest of hard asses?” His hand flew almost instantly to his mouth. “Uh, oh. Ladies present. Shoulda watched my mouth.”
Cabby broke out in a laugh. “I work in the newsroom, remember. Even you couldn’t come up with any language I haven’t heard.”
From his stool, Jimmy rumbled out a deep chuckle.
Cabby glanced at her watch. “Spill it, will ya, Merv. McKenna? Supper?”
“Okay.” The old reporter shrugged. “The Centre Street brass favor a pricey restaurant on Grand Street called…Headquarters. Get it?” His shoulders shook at the wit of it all.
“And guys farther down the line—like McKenna?”
“Well, you might run him down at a chop house, also on Grand. Louie’s. A lot of the detectives eat there.”
Finally, Cabby thought, as she fumbled in her bag. “Thanks, Merv, thanks a lot. Have a shine on me.” She flipped a coin toward Jimmy. At least she could make sure the old guy’s shoes were clean. For once.
Chapter Fifty-six
“What is wrong with that woman? Why won’t she talk?” Abe Pritzker fulminated over a fried flounder sandwich. Abe and Louise were eating lunch at a sawdust-floor restaurant on Beekman Street near the Fulton Fish Market. “Doesn’t she realize we’re on her side?”
“Masako is in shock, Abe.”
“Oh, yeah?” He ripped off another bite.
“And in a deeply depressive state. Her ego is retreating, protecting her from the stresses of the outside world.” Louise spooned in a gulp of creamy fish chowder. “It’s an unconscious defense mechanism.”
He returned the remains of his sandwich to the plate and leaned back in the rickety chair. “Say, you really know this psychiatry stuff.”
She shrugged. “We got a bit in nursing school. I was interested, so I just kept reading.”
“You just kept reading, huh?” He appeared deep in thought as he took out a pipe and fingered its smooth wood. “Well, tell me, Dr. Hunter, what treatment would you prescribe to snap her out of it?”
Stung, she let the heavy spoon splash into her bowl. “Don’t mock me!”
“I’m not. I take you very seriously.” He reached over and touched the back of her hand.
She pushed the bowl away and crossed her arms. “You called me Doctor Hunter!”
“Yeah, and why not? Why couldn’t you become a physician? So brainy you read psychoanalytic theory on the side.” His expression grew even more sober. The unlit pipe went back in his pocket. “What I’m asking is—assuming we ever get ourselves back into that fortress they call an immigration center—what can we do to get Mrs. Oakley to talk?”
Louise thought about the long, free-flowing conversations she and Masako had enjoyed while the professor had been sleeping. She sighed and wiped her fingers on a coarse paper napkin. “I know just exactly what would do it.”
“What?” The lawyer sat forward eagerly.
“A cup of jasmine tea, her own kitchen table, and a sympathetic ear.”
***
Later, leaving the Ninety-sixth Street subway station, Louise heard the wail of an ambulance in the distance. Her breath tightened, and she immediately thought of Professor Oakley. She gave a wry inward laugh as she turned north on Broadway. Seven million people in this city, and she immediately assumed the siren wailed for her patient.
It was an uneventful winter afternoon on the wide sidewalks of the upper West Side: a pair of tightly corseted ladies coming out of a Childs restaurant; a colored housekeeper strolling along, red wool coat open over a neat black uniform; a policeman twirling his nightstick and winking at her. But something was happening on Ninety-eighth. A revolving light pulsated in plate-glass windows next door to—
That was the Oakleys’ building! She burst into a run and reached the white-and-red ambulance just as orderlies were preparing to load a stretcher. At first all she saw were blankets. Then the fabric shifted and the professor’s face came into view, beard bristling, lips and skin dangerously blue.
He opened one eye. His lips moved, but no sound issued.
Does he recognize me? Louise wondered. Dr. Wright was there, too, expression grave under his brown fedora.
“What happened” Louise asked, panting.
“The nurse called me around eleven—temperature spiking one hundred and five. Sliding into delirium from lack of oxygen.” Dr. Wright shifted his leather bag, motioned the orderlies to proceed.
Someone stepped in between them—Lillian Bridges in her red hat and elegant gray coat. “Is that Robert? Oh, no! I was just coming to see him.” She let her gladiolas drop to the sidewalk and bent over the stretcher. “Robert—you must hang on.”
“Step back, Lillian, please,” the doctor said. “The sooner we get Bob into an oxygen tent the better.”
Louise shuffled back as well. Watched the heavy doors close with a sick feeling. “The crisis can’t be far off,” she whispered bleakly.
Dr. Wright nodded. “He’ll have a better chance of surviving it in the hospital, though. The old fool.” He shook his head. “If I hadn’t been so besieged with all this war hysteria, I would have insisted on hospitalizing him days ago.” His voice trailed off as the ambulance sped uptown with a wordless wail.
Louise and the doctor watched it go. Like Professor Bridges, gathering up her bruised flowers, they shivered in the raw wind.
Chapter Fifty-seven
Twenty minutes later, Louise added a plate of sandwiches to her order of tea and wondered if she’d made a mistake in accepting Lillian Bridges’ invitation.
As the ambulance had roared away, Louise planned to make her own way to the hospital. But Professor Bridges twined her arm around Louise’s and said, “They won’t let us see Robert until the nurses have him settled. Meanwhile, I’ve had no lunch. Come to Schrafft’s with me—my treat. We can keep each other company.”
Louise, still a bit dazed, permitted herself to be led down the street. At the corner, the older woman had tossed her armload of imported flowers in a trash can.
“Yes, waiter,” Lillian Bridges now said, “I’ll have a cup of tea, thank you. Nothing else.”
Nothing else? But she said she’d had no lunch.
At the next table, two uptown ladies in small feathered hats were being served chocolate sundaes smothered with whipped cream and nuts. Louise’s mouth watered. She’d finished the bowl of chowder in the fish market restaurant, but with all the meals she’d had to skip lately…
“I understand you saw dear Masako at Ellis Island. How is she?” Professor Bridges shrugged off her coat to reveal a beautifully cut ice-blue suit in fine wool and a white blouse with a ruffle falling from the collar.
Louise sighed in something that might have been envy; she’d dressed so hastily when Abe called this morning that she knew she didn’t fit in at this sophisticated tearoom. Lillian Bridges outclassed her, hands down.
Now the professor regarded her with a serious expression. “My dear? I asked about Masako. How is she?”
“How is she?” Louise took a sip from her iced water as she repeated the question. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Abe Pritzker and I went back to the detention center this morning. We co
uldn’t get a word out of her. Mas— er, Mrs. Oakley is too depressed to cooperate.”
“Appalling, isn’t it? The situation she’s got herself in—” The remainder of Lillian Bridges’ statement was drowned out by a busboy collecting dirty china at a nearby table.
Huh? What was she talking about? Mrs. Oakley hadn’t gotten herself into anything. Her arrest was a direct result of misguided governmental policies. “She’s done nothing wrong,” Louise said. “And, actually, she’s more worried about her husband than about herself.”
Lillian Bridges sat back and folded her slim, white hands. “Well, it’s killing Robert.”
“Oh!” Louise decided a change of subject might be a good idea. “I need to ask you—Mrs. Oakley doesn’t want the FBI to get their hands on her remaining paintings, those at her studio on Bleecker Street. She thought you might volunteer to keep them at your apartment. Would you? They’d never think to look there. Mr. Pritzker plans to have the Japanese captions translated by someone we can trust, so the Feds can’t claim they contain coded secret information.”
The professor pondered, twisting her fingers. Where most women of her age would wear a wedding band, Miss Bridges displayed a deep blue sapphire set in heavily carved gold. A museum piece, thought Louise, a jewel fit for the hand of a Renaissance queen. She had to admit the ring looked perfectly at home on her companion’s graceful hand.
“Well, well,” Lillian Bridges finally replied. “I hadn’t given Masako’s studio a thought. But you’re right—Arthur would have chosen to take only the works he thought would make the biggest splash. There must be a number left.”
“Right. And I have the studio key. Professor Oakley gave it to me yesterday.”
“Did he, now?” Miss Bridges dropped her gaze and refolded the napkin in her lap.
The aproned waiter delivered Louise’s plate of sandwiches. They were cut into finger-sized rectangles and topped with watercress. While he fussed with the tea, her companion made an abrupt brushing motion with her hand, knocking over an empty cup. “Take my tea away.” Her tone was brusque. “Bring me a martini instead.” She turned to Louise. “Do you want one, dear?” Without waiting for a response, she continued, “of course you do. Waiter, make that two martinis. Dry.”
Louise objected. “But I don’t—”
“Nonsense! This is my treat.” Lillian Bridges regarded Louise carefully. “You were saying about Masako…?”
“Oh…well, of course, if keeping her paintings would put you in danger…”
She gave a confident laugh. “I’ll like to see the Federal Bureau fence with me. Maybe they can get away with threatening these recent immigrants, but Mother and I are members of the DAR.”
Louise nodded silently. Masako had said Lillian Bridges was inordinately proud of her ancestry. “Everybody’s from somewhere else,” Abe had said. But did it really matter when? Aren’t we all Americans?
She didn’t think she’d pass that philosophy on to Professor Lillian Bridges.
The martinis were delivered post-haste and set on scalloped paper coasters by the expressionless waiter. Louise’s companion took a long sip and nodded at him. “So,” she continued, turning her attention back to Louise, “Of course I’ll take the paintings. How about moving them tomorrow morning? I have a seminar in the afternoon.”
“Yes, fine.”
Another gulp from the delicately stemmed glass. “You must call Desmond Cox at the gallery for the name of a bonded art mover. I’ll meet you at the studio. Perhaps that lawyer fellow would like to tag along.”
Louise had formed the vague image of Abe renting a panel truck, but, yes, of course, those art works were valuable. They should be transported correctly. Deep in thought, she picked up a chicken salad sandwich and ate it in two bites. It was on thin, crustless bread, and there were chopped grapes and walnuts in the filling.
Lillian drained her martini. Between nibbles of olive, she said, “Masako is not doing well, you say? Robert’s hospitalization won’t help any, I fear.”
“No,” Louise responded. “Not at all. That’s why I’m not planning to tell her. No one should.” She gave Lillian Bridges a long, cautionary look and took a sip of her tea.
“Very proper, I’m sure.” Lillian was eying Louise’s martini. “Not imbibing, dear?”
Louise shook her head.
“Well, then…” Her hostess commandeered the glass.
Yes, Louise thought, lunch with the intelligent and fashionable Lillian Bridges had probably been a mistake. Also, a revelation. Louise wouldn’t be asking this erratic woman for any further help or advice.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Jesus’ robe was the same blood-red as the fear coursing through Helda’s heart, the sky behind him Virgin Mary blue. Usually the sanctuary of Emmanuel German Lutheran Church was a place of refuge for Helda. Today, try as she might, even on her knees she could not pray. Her gaze remained fixed on the stained-glass window that loomed behind the pulpit. If only she could take some comfort from it—an ecstatic Christ kneeling in Gethsemane, wrapped in flowing crimson.
Where was her son? Had Ernst taken him? Had her husband come back during the night? Had he entered the house, perhaps through that window in the dining room, the one he knew had a broken latch? The one he had never gotten around to fixing? Had Howie welcomed his father with open arms?
Even before Helda had found Howie’s bed empty, she’d lain awake, tortured by her own fears. She knew Ernst hadn’t come back to New York on his own—he must have been sent back. A chemical engineer by training, he would be of most value to Hitler back here in the USA. Ernst and those other members of the Bund who had returned to Germany—for training, that was all Ernst would say at the time. Yes, she feared she knew all too well why he had come back. Was her son, her Howie, perhaps even today, being trained as a Nazi saboteur?
Dear Jesus, what should I do? Help me, oh, help me, Good Shepherd. I’ve never felt so lost, she prayed.
She could not call the police. If her fears were true, they would send the FBI after Howie. Perhaps they would come for her, too, take her to Ellis Island as they had taken Herr Roeber from the butcher shop. The young ladies in the house had been comforting, but she could not tell them about Ernst. She had gone to Frau Frommer, who had brought Ernst’s letter, thinking Ernst and Howie might be hiding at the Frommer house. The curtains were drawn. No smoke came from the chimney. No smell of cooking at the kitchen door. She knocked and knocked, but no one came.
So here she was sobbing in the front pew of Emmanuel Lutheran, enveloped in the familiar odor of beeswax and lemon polish, the scent of prayer.
A hand on her shoulder and she jumped. “Oh, Pastor, you startled me,” she said in German to the middle-aged clergyman with his white hair all fly-away and spider-web veins on his dumpling cheeks.
He answered in English, “My dear Helda. Whatever is wrong?”
She shook her head—she would say nothing—but he pressed on.
“I know you have had your troubles over the past years.” He paused. Significance deepened his brief silence. “But never have I seen you so distraught.”
“It’s Howie, Pastor.” She burst into tears.
Pastor Ulrich let out his breath, as if in relief.
“Helda, my dear.” He sat next to her and took her hand. “Howie is a good boy—you know that. He will cause you no grief. Come, come, Liebchen. This is your church home, and I am your brother in Christ. Tell me, what has he done? Is he smoking? Has he taken a drink?”
“Oh, Pastor, no.” She grasped his comforting hand. “I cannot tell you. No one can know.”
Now both his plump hands were on hers. “I insist, Liebchen,” he said. “There is nothing you cannot say to me. And, who knows, perhaps I can help you.”
The sanctuary darkened as a cloud crossed the sun. Helda shivered. “Howie�
��has run away. I’m looking everywhere. I can’t find him, and no one knows where he has gone.” She choked on a sob.
He patted her. “All boys run away at times. It’s just natural. Why, Jesus himself…He will come home.”
She couldn’t hold it in. “Oh, Pastor Ulrich,” she burst out. “It is worse than you think. Ernst is back. I don’t know how or why, but he came to me last night. I fear Howie has gone to join him and the others.”
The clergyman dropped her hands as if they were on fire. He pulled away from her on the hard oak pew.
“Do you…” Her hands reached out to him. “Do you…perhaps know where Ernst is?”
“Ernst? Nein!” His expression was horrified. “I am a loyal American. I know nothing about those—”
“Hans! Hans!” It was Frau Ulrich’s reedy soprano. She pushed through the carved oak doors from the narthex and came huffing down the aisle. “It has come. Oh, mein Gott, it has come.”
The pastor pushed himself further away from Helda. “What, mein frau? What is it?”
“On the radio. I just heard. Roosevelt—the president. It has finally happened. He has just this moment declared war on Germany!”
“Mein Gott,” the pastor said. “Where will this end?”
As Helda shuffled back down the aisle, Jesus’ robe appeared blood red as before, but the blue, blue sky behind him had clouded over into gun-metal gray.
Chapter Fifty-nine
When the two cops came out of Louie’s Chophouse, Cabby shrank back into the recessed entrance of a nearby Western Union office. She’d been waiting outside Louie’s big front window for the best part of an hour, legs freezing in her last good pair of nylons. Now she clapped her gloved hands together; only the nervous bustle on the Grand Street sidewalk kept her from jumping up and down. McKenna, at last!
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