“Let me just ask a few more questions, Mrs. Kruzan, and I won’t bother you again. I’m probably only going to look for a few days and then talk to Rabbi London.”
Martha Kruzan looked at her husband. He nodded.
“All right, Mr. Ryle. But please make it quick.”
“I will. And I apologize, but it would be pointless if I didn’t ask you some difficult questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as where were you when the Rabbi got...when he was shot?”
“I was in school. I’m a school librarian in a large high school. That’s where I met Wendell. He’s a history teacher. He provided such assistance.”
Wendell stepped forward, “And for the record, I was also in the school.”
I nodded. Then I turned to Martha.
“I’ve noticed how teachers stick together. I suppose Mr. Kruzan offered to help you soon after your first husband died.”
She surprised me with a brief laugh.
“Oh, no. Wendell was too shy. One day he was in the library looking for books, and I went over to him and asked if he knew anything about electricity. He said he did, and so I asked him if he could come to the house. My husband Gerry had found out a month before he died that the wiring in our attic was dangerous. Evidently the original owner had thought he was Edison and had done the work himself. Wendell came over. It was warm up there, but he crawled around and re-wired the entire place. Then he went around the house and replaced some outlets. It was so good to have a man around the house. Gerry was a wonderful spouse, but he couldn’t do those kinds of repairs if his life depended on it. I’m grateful for Wendell even if I had to ask him.
“I didn’t think we’d have a relationship. I had been married to a Rabbi, and Wendell isn’t Jewish, so I didn’t expect much. Like I say, he was very shy, but I figured out how to let him catch me.”
It was evidently a line she had used before because they both laughed.
“Mr. Kruzan, did you know Rabbi Siegel?”
“I only met him once. He seemed very nice, but obviously I wasn’t a member of the congregation. Martha took him along to some art event at the school, and she introduced us.”
I thought for a moment.
“Do either of you have any idea who might have wanted Rabbi Siegel dead? Excuse my blunt language, please.”
“Mr. Ryle, the police asked me more questions than you can imagine. They asked me that too. I don’t...oh, my goodness there is one thing I should tell you.”
“What’s that, Mrs. Kruzan?”
“The graffiti spray-painted on the wall. It was vile and vicious. ‘Jews Must Die’ and ‘Hitler was right.’ That kind of horrible hate. Oh, I can still see some of that blue paint dripping down the wall.”
“The police saw this?”
“Oh, yes. They took photos. They scraped pieces of the paint off the wall.”
“But I take it that nothing ever came of it.”
She shook her head.
“No. And as I was starting to say, I can’t imagine anyone who hated Gerry enough to kill him. Oh, of course there were people in the congregation who didn’t like him. They wanted him to give up his life to take care of them. He spoke too slowly or too fast. He didn’t talk enough about politics or he talked too much. The usual synagogue life, I’m afraid. To be honest, I didn’t care for it at all. At first, I thought it would be a great honor to be a rebbetzin, a Rabbi’s wife. It was a strain on me.”
She didn’t realize she was naming a motive for getting rid of him.
“Did the Rabbi gamble? Did he have any vices?”
Kruzan held up his hands. “Don’t try to ruin my wife’s memory or the Rabbi’s good name, Mr. Ryle. Talk to the police. They have done all this work. All you’re doing is unnecessarily bringing pain back into our lives.”
“I’m very sorry if I’ve done that. I will do my best to finish this investigation as quickly as I can and not bother you. I expect I won’t find too much.”
I was going to say that to everyone I met. I didn’t want to disturb anyone, much less the killer.
“A final thought, Mrs. Kruzan, and then I’ll leave. Did your husband have any contacts with criminals? Maybe, for example, he taught in a jail. Or corresponded with criminals.”
“That’s actually an interesting thought, Mr. Ryle. Criminals in jail did write to him. I never read the letters, but I used to laugh whenever I saw the return address on those letters.”
“Do you know where those letters are now?”
“I threw them all out when I was cleaning up, Mr. Ryle.”
I nodded.
“Good-bye, Mr. Ryle.”
I liked how Kruzan was trying to protect his wife.
“Again, I apologize for interrupting such a nice day.”
“You should apologize to the ducks for interfering with their meal,” she said with a smile.
“I’ll do that,” I said.
I turned.
I had to do some research before I went to the police.
But I had another task first.
CHAPTER SIX
Janet wouldn’t get too upset with me if I didn’t do opposition research on Ken Lucey. She never got angry at anyone except herself in private. But I had told her I’d check, and it was part of the campaign, so it was useful.
Ken Lucey was a newcomer to the First C.D. I glanced over stories about him. He had lived in New York and had moved to Old Field when his wife got pregnant. He got involved with local issues, made a name for being smart and articulate, and decided to run for Congress. He had three children, one of whom was Asian, maybe from South Korea.
There are all kinds of ways to do oppo research. Most of it is just being a reporter. You check to see if the candidate has a history of drunk driving arrests. You make sure that becomes public. You hope he was in jail at some point for a minor crime. You don’t want to cheer on robbery or worse, but maybe he was caught cheating some clients. Lucey did some work with futures, an area about which, like so much else, I was completely ignorant. You check the educational background. Maybe the candidate was kicked out of college and lists a false degree on his resume. You look at his financial records. Can he afford his house or houses? His cars? Does he have too expensive a boat? You check his voting record. Did he skip school budget votes? The public doesn’t like that. And, of course, you consider every romantic angle. You look at past relationships. You check to see if he spends too much time with one of his volunteers or paid staff. Do they know his name in strip clubs? Is there a Lucey Home for Wayward Women somewhere?
These are the honest approaches to oppo work. You can also imitate our spy agencies that are going after an enemy agent. They don’t place much faith in honesty.
The Russians used to do this. They’d find a vulnerable, single woman in an agency they wanted to infiltrate. Around dinner time, a handsome agent would get some pretty flowers and knock on her door. She’d answer, and he’d look embarrassed. He’d appear flustered and then express an apology. He’d been told someone else lived there. His friends had played a mean trick on him. Then he’d say the woman seemed sweet, and he’d offer her the flowers because he didn’t have anyone to give them to. Maybe she’d invite him in on her own. Most often, though, he’d pretend to feel faint and say he was thirsty. Then she’d offer to have him come inside her house or apartment for a glass of water. He would charm her. She wasn’t used to such attention by a handsome man. It wouldn’t take long. She’d be getting information from her agency for him. He wouldn’t say he was from Moscow, of course. They would have checked her background. If her family was German, say, he’d mention that his family came from just south of Berlin. Sometimes he would say he was employed by another U.S. agency put in charge of monitoring the agency she worked for. She wanted to believe him. She needed to believe him.
Some people do that to a staff member of a candidate. It was simple tradecraft. Or they’d hire a prostitute to try to seduce the candidate.
Somet
imes you could just bribe an informant from inside the candidate’s campaign.
And what if you couldn’t find out any damaging information after all that? No problem.
You make it up.
And then you start a whisper campaign. Did you hear that Candidate X once was so drunk he slammed his car right through a Ford dealer’s show window? You find out what bar a key reporter goes to and then pay someone to be within earshot of the reporter and repeat the car dealer story.
Or you play dirty tricks. You hire a company to call people at three a.m. seeking their votes for your opponent. You steal the candidate’s campaign signs. You do whatever you need to do to win.
I got some change and began calling around. I knew a lot of people.
Three hours later I didn’t have much.
Lucey wasn’t a complete saint. He had smoked marijuana in college. He spent too much money, but not enough to hurt his election chances. Translation: not enough.
I recommended a mailer with pictures of him standing close to women be sent to the women in the district with suggestions, vague hints, about his marital fidelity. I didn’t know if it would help, but you try everything. Janet said she would take the idea to Mr. Ennis, who would turn it down.
I realized I was tired.
I needed to drive to get rid of the feelings I didn’t like getting when doing that kind of work. I liked driving out east. I was always symbolically heading home when I did that.
I knew a place on a side street between Sag Harbor and Southampton where I could get what I needed. It was called Jack’s Café. They had had some robberies there, but they made the best meatball sandwiches I had ever eaten. Jack was no longer alive. He had bet a friend he could take a famously dangerous curve at 60 miles per hour. He couldn’t. And now Jack’s widow Alice ran the place, and ran it well.
I didn’t need to, but I drove around Southampton remembering spots. I passed where Bob Keene’s bookstore used to be. It was on Hampton Road. Keene had sold the place a year ago. I saw Capote in there. And James Jones. And Steinbeck, although for whatever reason he only signed books for people he knew.
I got to Jack’s. Alice greeted me.
“I don’t have to ask what you want, Danny.”
I smiled at her.
“You do not. I’d eat those meatball sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I tell you, Alice, if ethnicity was determined by taste in food, then you’ve made me Italian.”
She liked that.
I was sitting there when I had an idea.
The food came, and my mind completely focused on the tomato sauce roaming over the meat and the roll.
I was comfortably filled, and relaxed for a few minutes, feeling a rare moment of peace and satisfaction. The miracle of a perfect meatball sandwich.
I went to the back wall to the telephone and called Amanda, a reporter on Newsday who covered politics. I asked her if she knew the cop who was in charge of the Rabbi Gerald Siegel murder investigation eighteen months earlier.
“And this has exactly what to do with your sad campaign, Danny? You’d better watch out. People are talking about Lucey.”
“Yes, I know. It’s for a friend. It has nothing to do with the campaign.”
“I don’t know who was in charge. Call Eddie Costello, the Captain of the Homicide Squad.”
“Can I use your name?”
“And I get what for this?”
“I don’t know. You’ll get something.”
“I’ll get dinner. With you being nice to me. Pretending you think I’m adorable and you’re deeply in desire for me.”
“You’re asking a lot, Amanda.”
“I don’t like being alone at night.”
“Who does? So, can I use your name?”
“Yeah. He likes me. You’re lucky.”
I called Eddie Costello, threw in Amanda’s name, and found out the guy I was looking for was named Al Flanagan. He was now working for the D.A.’s Major Offense Bureau.
I called Flanagan and told him Eddie Costello had suggested I call. I told him it was about the Rabbi Siegel case.
“Yeah? I love to get calls from people who want favors. Cause I got nothing to do here in the D.A’s office. The criminals, they march in here and volunteer to go to jail.”
“Name your favorite watering hole and restaurant. I’ll treat you. Anything you want. And all I want is a few minutes of conversation.”
“About a case I never solved.”
“I’m not going to remind you of that. I’m not going after you in any way. All I want to find out is what you found out.”
“Bobby Van’s in Bridgehampton. Tonight at 7:30.”
“I’ll be there. Bring your thirst.”
“This you do not have to worry about.”
I paid the bill, walked outside, and turned the corner.
Two young men were standing there. They each held a baseball bat.
“Just make this easy,” one said to me. “Hand us your wallet and your watch.”
I tried a thick French accent. “I no understand English.”
The guy who had spoken took a swing at my left arm. I winced in pain.
“Why don’t you let him go?”
We all turned to see who had spoken.
It was a big man, thick with muscles. He had very curly black hair. Maybe thirty or thirty-two. He had a heavy accent, but I couldn’t place it. But it was his eyes that I most saw. This was not a friendly sort of guy. You wouldn’t hire him to be a social director on a cruise. Maybe as a lion tamer if he promised not to punch the lion.
He spoke again.
“The odds don’t look fair. There’s only two of you. That guy will take care of you both. You should have gotten more friends.”
The young man who had hit me went over to the curly-haired stranger.
The bat came around.
The stranger grabbed it in mid-air and yanked it from the assailant’s hand. Then he moved forward and stepped down hard on the attacker’s foot. The young man bent over. The stranger hit him with an uppercut. I could hear the bones in the face breaking.
The young man went down.
The other young man started to run.
The stranger tripped him and yanked him up by the back of his shirt.
“You need some dental work.”
The stranger punched the second young man and again I heard a sound. The man spit out some teeth. One more punch and the second man joined his friend on the ground.
The stranger came to get me.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
He took me to my car, although I wasn’t sure how he knew where it was.
“Can you drive?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ll drive. I love driving American cars. Tell me where to go.”
I directed him to the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton. Bobby Van’s was right across the street, so I wouldn’t be late for that.
We went inside and ordered some coffee.
Up close I could see he had a dark tan. There was a scar under his left eye.
“Are you feeling better?
I nodded.
“It’s nice in here. I love ice cream.”
I stared at him. “The farmers and the storeowners come here for breakfast. They hang out and talk. They’re gone now.”
I paused.
“Thank you for what you did. Do you want to tell me who you are and how you came to help?”
He took a sip of the coffee.
“My name is Ari Eilat. I am here because your father asked me to look after you.”
I should have figured that out.
“Look. You did good work. Really. But, I don’t need to be looked after. You can go to the beach every day.”
“You’re going to get me fired on my first day of my new job.”
“You speak English very well.”
He shrugged. “We learn it in school in Israel. If you study to be an engineer, all your classes are in Engli
sh. All the books are in English.”
“Were you a soldier? You look like one.”
“I was in a special forces unit of the Israel Defense Forces. The unit was the Sayeret Matkal. We save hostages and fight terrorists. You see? You are safe with me. I can fight men with baseball bats.”
“Why are you in the United States?”
“I love my country. I would die for Israel. Please do not ask me about it, but I am here because I am running away from something I did. I need to be in another space, another language, and another life for a while.”
I stared at him. “I wish you well. I’m not quite sure I get how my father learned about you.”
Ari Eilat shrugged again.
“He has a friend in our Consulate in New York. He called this friend saying he was looking for someone no one knew on Long Island. He asked for someone with particular skills, someone, for example, who would not back down from a gunfight.”
“And how would my father know someone in your Consulate?”
“I believe they met in 1947. You may not know this, but your father helped us with arms for the 1948 War of Independence.”
“My father? My father was a killer.”
“Sometimes killers are on the side of the good.”
“That wouldn’t be my father’s side.”
“You asked me a question, and I gave you an honest answer.”
“It’s Ari?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want someone to watch over me. I need freedom of action.”
“You see I am good. I followed you here, and you didn’t know you are being followed. Even if you don’t need me, I need you. If I don’t have some job, they will say I should go back. I have told you. I can’t go back. I won’t bother you. You won’t even know I’m there. I’m your shadow. Please.”
“No disturbing me.”
“I will not bother you unless maybe somebody is shooting at you.”
“All right. As long as you stay away, I guess you can follow me. I have an extra room in my house. You can stay there.”
“That is excellent. The back seat of my car is too small for me.”
“Come on. I’ll show you how to get to the ocean. I have a few hours to kill.”
The Dead Don't Talk Page 3