Long Knives

by Charles Rosenberg

  “No. I was surprised to read that, and I never heard him threaten Primo.”

  “Do you think Quinto was capable of it?”

  She paused. “I’m not sure. Maybe. He had a violent temper sometimes, but it was mainly raging arguments with Primo about who was most important and who had the right to do things first or have the biggest piece of pie, or whatever. It had to do with their birth order. It always seemed stupid to me.”

  “Weren’t those arguments in Italian?”

  “Sure. But I spent a semester abroad in Florence during college, and my Italian’s good enough that I was able to follow most of it.”

  “Did you tell them you could speak Italian?”

  “Of course not. It was more fun pretending to be a dumb American who spoke only English.”

  “Kind of dishonest.”

  “Maybe, but kind of useful, too, huh?”

  I was appalled—but maybe I should have been more appalled when I learned she stole the diary, and equally appalled when I took it from her. I decided to move on. “Okay, well, what do you know about the birth order thing?”

  “I only know that some rural Italian families name their sons ‘first,’ ‘second,’ ‘third’ and so forth. Quinto was the fifth child, and he told me one night that all of the older kids picked on him when he was young. But he thought he was way smarter than the rest of them.”

  “So he was one of five?”

  “Yes, and the youngest.”

  “Did you read the stuff in the diary about a map?”

  “I did. And I heard Primo and Quinto talking about it a few times. But I never saw any map.”

  “Did they say where it came from?”

  “From their grandfather. But they talked about how they had gotten it updated at some point a couple of years ago—in a way that really pinpoints where the ship went down.”

  “Do you know how they managed to do that?”

  “No. That was one topic they never discussed in detail in front of me, and if I came into the room when they were clearly talking about it, they stopped talking.”

  “If I ask you a question, can you keep the fact that I asked it confidential?”

  She hesitated. “I’ll have to be able to tell Consuelo. You know, the girl who sits beside me in class.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Primo and I didn’t end so well, you know. But at one time I thought I loved the guy, and I feel like I have an obligation to find out how he died.”

  “Don’t you think you should leave that to the coroner?”

  “I’m not talking about what physically killed him. I just have a gut sense that whatever happened, someone did it on purpose, and that it’s wrapped up with this map thing.”

  “Why do you have to talk to Consuelo about it?”

  “She’s been my best friend since college, and I just need to have someone to confide in.”

  “Julie, do you have any experience in investigating crimes?”

  “Not really. Well, actually, I won at murder mystery night at my sorority.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like a dinner theater where there’s a supposed murder, and there are clues, and the guests try to guess who did it.”

  “And you guessed?”

  “Yeah. I was the only one who got it.”

  Frankly, Julie’s statement about her investigative credentials made me wonder how she’d gotten into our highly selective law school, but it didn’t seem like the right time to diss her. Instead, I just said, “I see. Well, that’s not much of a credential, and you need to be careful. If it really was a crime, investigating it could make you a target.”

  “That’s true. Anyway, what did you want to ask me that I need to keep secret?” She leaned toward me, her eyes wide, waiting.

  Looking at her eager face, which reminded of the way Nancy Drew was depicted on the covers of all those girl sleuth novels I’d read as a kid, I wondered whether I should be telling Julie, let alone Consuelo, anything. In the end it seemed worth the risk because I had two lawyers helping me but no detectives, and I had turned down Aldous’s offer to hire one for me. Now that he was at least a remote suspect in my mind, I couldn’t accept the offer, and I didn’t think I could afford one on my own. Julie might be able to help.

  “I’ll tell you, Julie, but you’ll have to promise to tell no one but Consuelo, and pledge her to secrecy. Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “All right, then. There’s a preliminary report—very preliminary—that Primo could have been poisoned by a chemical called sodium azide.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a reagent, often used as a preservative in biology and medical labs. It’s closely related to sodium cyanide.”

  “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “Quinto is an undergrad here, majoring in biochemistry.”

  “That’s interesting, to say the least.”

  “Yes. Maybe I’ll try to find out if Quinto has access to sodium…what did you say its full name was again?”

  “Sodium azide.”

  “Okay. I can remember that now.”

  “Good. See what you can find out, Julie, and let me know.”

  Having Julie research it seemed, in fact, like the perfect solution. I had wanted to research sodium azide myself but had hesitated because I didn’t want to leave a computer trail.

  “Hey, Professor, do you have any more questions for me?”

  “I do, but I’m late for something, and it might take a while. Can I catch you later?”

  “Sure.”

  What I wanted to question her about, of course, was whether she had ripped any pages out of the diary. But now that I’d engaged her as my detective, it didn’t seem prudent to ask right at that moment. Ask her I would, though. But later, after I’d gotten what I needed from her.

  CHAPTER 39

  At one o’clock I stood waiting for my father on the sidewalk outside the UCLA Faculty Center, which is only about a block from the law school. It’s housed in a contemporary one-story A-frame clad in tan brick, wood and glass. Built in the 1950s, it’s very Frank Lloyd Wrightian in style, and something of a relief from all the neo-Romanesque architecture nearby.

  I hadn’t seen my father since Christmas the year before, when I had made my way back to Cleveland for the holidays. My mother had been dead at that point for a little over a year, and I remember thinking that, at age eighty-three, my father looked hollowed out. Nothing to do and nowhere to go.

  There had been a horrific snowstorm while I was there—it was the first time I’d ever heard the term Snowmageddon—and we had been housebound for four days of my seven-day visit. On some level that was good. We got to talk a lot. On others, particularly on the level that my brother, Henry, had come in from London, where he’s some kind of investment banker, it was bad. My brother and I have never gotten along. Actually, Henry is my half brother, older by almost ten years. He’s the son of my father’s first wife. I’m a late-in-life second child by Dad’s second wife.

  We spent a good deal of time discussing politics, or rather my father and my brother spent a good deal of time discussing politics, while I mostly just listened. Henry is the political junkie in the family and was old enough to travel with my dad during two of his senate campaigns. I was too young to go at that point, and by the time I was old enough to do it—something I pined to do—the disaster had been visited upon us. That was the allegation that when my dad was on the Cleveland City Council he had taken bribes in exchange for voting to approve certain real-estate projects. The scandal and the subsequent federal trial gobbled up two years of our lives, and by the time the acquittal came in—the allegation was proved to be the utter fabrication of a bitter political enemy—he had been defeated and his political career was kaput.

  My reminiscences of all that was interrupted by the arrival of a sleek black town car, which pulled up directly in front of the Faculty Center, just missing a couple of bicyclists a
s it swung to the curb. The driver got out, went around the car and opened the rear passenger door for my father. I really hadn’t expected him to arrive in anything less impressive. Once you’ve been a US senator, you’re a prince of the realm for life.

  My father stepped out of the car and strode toward me. He seemed to have a renewed spring in his step, and his face was aglow. He was still senatorially handsome—six foot tall and square jawed, with steel-blue eyes and a large shock of Kennedyesque hair gone white, and clad in a deep blue pin-striped suit that fit him like the tailor-made garment it no doubt was.

  “Oh my God,” he said, “what happened to you?” He was looking at my face.

  “Bike accident. But I’m okay. Just bruises.”

  “Can I hug you?”

  “Better not. It still hurts.”

  He stood and looked at me as only a father can. “Well, other than that, you look great, honey.”

  “Is that,” I asked, “similar to the old joke, ‘other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?’”

  “I guess it has some similarities.”

  “Well, you do look great, Dad. Shall we go in and get some lunch?”

  “You bet.”

  The Faculty Club features a dining room sprinkled with small tables for four, each covered with a white tablecloth, with silverware already in place. But at lunch there’s no actual table service. You walk to a room to the side, order from various food stations and then carry your lunch on a plastic tray back to a table in the main room.

  Dad ordered a roast beef sandwich with everything on it. I asked for a mac and cheese. Not exactly what I needed to maintain my trim physique, but like Baby Bear’s porridge, it seemed just right for the day it was turning out to be. By the time we had ordered, picked up our food and paid for it, Dad had become best friends with two of the short-order cooks and the cashier. He knew their names. They knew his. Not for nothing had one of the Ohio newspapers once called him the best retail politician in Ohio in over a century. I just stood there holding my tray and watching.

  Finally, we made it into the dining room, sat down to eat and caught up for a few minutes on the usual: Dad’s aging friends and their various ailments, the neighbors who never turned off their lights at night and the health of our old dog, Taft, who had been a puppy when I was sixteen but was by now, at age eighteen, the Methuselah of border collies. When we had finished the catch-up talk, my father took another bite out of his sandwich, put it down on his plate, crooked his head to the side and gave me an appraising look.

  “Jenna Joy, is something wrong?”

  “No, Dad. Why?”

  “Well, you’re usually bright and cheery, but today you kind of look like you just lost your best friend.”

  There’s always a question about how much to tell your parents, especially when the parent you’re talking to is eighty-three. I decided to skip the tenure thing and the Primo thing and talk about Aldous.

  “Dad, you’ve always been perceptive about people. What’s going on is that I have a very serious boyfriend. A guy named Aldous Hartleb, who’s also a professor here. I hadn’t told you about him because I wasn’t sure until recently that it was serious.”

  “Why’s that a reason to have a hangdog look? I don’t understand.”

  “Because, for a variety of reasons, he’s probably going to leave UCLA and move to—wait for it—Buffalo. He’s on his way there for interviews.”

  “Nothing wrong with Buffalo. I mean, it gets lake-effect snow, sure. But sizewise, it’s not that much smaller than Cleveland, and if you wanted to run for Congress, you could probably make a go of it. You’ve got great credentials for it, and there’s even an admiralty practice of sorts there that you can engage in while you build your political base.”

  “Dad, I don’t want to run for Congress. In Buffalo or anywhere else. I want to stay here in LA, where I’ve lived for more than ten years, where all my friends are and where I have a great law-school teaching job.” I realized that I was starting to tear up. Of course my tears weren’t due to the prospect of Aldous leaving. They were due to my world rapidly falling apart.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I’m making light of something that’s clearly really important to you.” He took a white handkerchief out of his breast pocket, leaned across the table and dabbed at my tears. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. It didn’t appear that anyone had, thank God.

  “I’ll be okay, Dad. And who knows, maybe I really will move to Buffalo with him.”

  As I said that, I realized that my emotions about Aldous seemed like a yo-yo going up and down on a string. Earlier in the day, the yo-yo had been spinning at the bottom. Aldous was emotionally unavailable, and maybe trying to kill me. Now, at midday, the yo-yo had climbed its string back up to the top. I felt better about Aldous for no reason I could put my finger on, and the idea that he was trying to kill me seemed so ridiculous that I was sitting there telling my father I might actually follow the guy to Buffalo.

  “Well,” my father said, “to cheer you up, let me tell you my piece of good news.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to run for Congress again. For the House of Representatives.”

  “What’s the punch line?”

  “There is no punch line. I’m serious. The seat is opening up because the incumbent is going to run for the Senate. Our house is right in the middle of the district, so I don’t have to move to run. And it’s where I got my start in Congress, before I ran for the Senate.”

  “Dad, you can’t be serious. You’ll be eighty-four next month.”

  “I know. And so when I tell people I’ll only stay for three terms, they’re going to believe it. Term limits are still really, really popular around there, but I’ve already got the experience without having to stay a long time. I think my campaign slogan will be ‘Doesn’t Need to Learn on the Job.’”

  “I don’t think you should do it.”

  “There’d be a role for you, too. You told me you thought you were about to get tenure, so I figured after that you could take a six-month leave and help run the campaign. Your brother got a chance to participate in the old days, but you never did. So now it’s your turn, huh?”

  “No, Dad. Count me out.”

  “You know, when you scrunch up your face like that, so serious and determined, you look just like your mother.”

  “Like crazy Mary?”

  “You shouldn’t speak of her that way. She’s dead and can’t fight back. And she wasn’t crazy.”

  I looked around the dining room again to make sure there wasn’t anyone at nearby tables, because I didn’t want what I was about to say to be overheard by anyone at UCLA. “Dad, you were gone in Washington three or four days out of every seven. And even when you were in town, you were out at some event, usually ’til late at night. So you didn’t get to see crazy Mary melt down and talk to the houseplants.”

  “She didn’t do that.”

  “Yes she did. She particularly liked talking to the schefflera. Although she worried that it was trying to get under the bedroom door at night.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “I’m not. It was a nightmare for most of my childhood. Do you recall that I graduated from high school when I was sixteen?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I worked hard to get out early so I could get out of there and go off to college. Though you thought I was too young for college, so you sent me off to live for a year with Uncle Freddie, in Hilo. Which was fine. He was really into growing certain plants, but at least he didn’t talk to them.”

  My father just sat there, kind of twitching his mouth around. “I’m really sorry, honey. I didn’t realize how bad it was. If I’d known, I would have tried to fix it.”

  I knew I was expected to say it was all okay, but I wasn’t in a forgiving mood. “You know what worries me the most, Dad? It’s that I’m going to end up like her. I have her intensity, but I also have some quirks, and maybe they’re
going to get out of their cage.”

  “Like what?”

  “Have you ever seen me fold paper?”

  “I recall you used to do that as a kid.”

  “Well, I still do it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know that I sometimes drink ten cups of coffee in a day?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “So enough. Let’s go back to talking about Taft or something. This conversation is going off the rails.”

  “Okay, good idea, good idea.”

  We chatted on about nothing in particular, but as we got toward the end of the meal, he said, “By the way, I wasn’t thrilled to hear you’re living with Freddie’s boy.”

  “You mean Tommy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s odd.”

  “There are a lot of odd people in the world, Dad.”

  “It has to do with when he came to visit us.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “He was about fourteen. I think you were away at college.”

  “Did something go wrong during the visit?”

  “Sometimes he stayed up all night.”

  “Well, that’s hardly unusual for a teenager.”

  “Maybe not. But he also used to roam the house at night, looking into cupboards and drawers.”

  “That’s probably still within the normal range of teen behavior, Dad, if perhaps a bit out there. And he doesn’t do that now.”

  Or did he? I really didn’t know, since I usually closed my door at night and put on white noise to help me sleep.

  “Okay,” my father said. “But if I were you I wouldn’t let him cook for you.”

  His comment took me aback. Poisoning food—which was clearly what my father was talking about—seemed uncomfortably close to poisoning coffee. “Dad, are you suggesting he might poison my food?”

  “No, no, just another way of saying he’s odd.”

  I decided to drop it. I changed the topic again and, when we had finished our meal, walked him out to his car, which was waiting. As he got in, he said, “By the way, I’d like to meet this Aldous guy while I’m here.”