The Case Against My Brother

by Libby Sternberg

  “About Bernie,” I said, drawing him back to the story. “How was he going to keep the bank from knowing? Was he going to leave town? Get money from somewhere else?” From pawning family jewels? I wondered.

  “He was going to get an inheritance, he said—from his father-in-law. The fellow passed away a couple months ago, and they were just waiting for the will to be settled. But it was taking too long, so Bernie had to act.”

  Or maybe the inheritance story was a sham and selling the jewels was the real windfall he’d been waiting for. At last, I felt my hunches were paying off. Rose’s brother had been in on it all along. I couldn’t wait to tell Adam, however mad I was at him.

  “But you knew what he’d done,” I said more to myself than to Jonesy. That’s why Jonesy blackmailed Bernie. He knew about the bank loan scheme.

  “I was going to do the right thing. Honest! I wasn’t going to ask Bernie for any more cash!” He reached for his jacket, pulling it to him. “But Bernie—he was wild that night. Just crazy. He was swinging that gun in my face and threatening to kill me. He was going to dump my body in the river! He told me how he’d planned it! I couldn’t just let him shoot me and walk away! I had to fight. I. . .”

  Jonesy then pulled something from the pocket of his jacket, and I swallowed, hard.

  There, in the palm of his hand, was the gun.

  Chapter Twenty

  As Jonesy talked, holding the gun, my pencil froze over the paper. He was beginning to sound as crazy as Bernard Peterson had that night by the river. His voice was squeaky and trembling. His hands shook as he gestured. His eyes were wide and wild. I had to calm him down, get the rest of the story, and keep him from leaving town. In what I hoped was a soothing voice, I said to him, “That’s evidence, Jonesy. Best not to touch it. It’s probably got Bernie’s fingerprints all over it, right?”

  The gun lay flat in the palm of his hand. Staring at it, he said, “That’s right—his fingerprints. He was waving it at me like a madman!”

  I pulled from my pocket a clean handkerchief, the one I’d made sure to keep on me after my lunch with Rose, and handed it to him. “Here, wrap it in this. It can clear your name, Jonesy. It’ll prove your story.”

  Like a child, he looked up at me, and for a breathtaking second, I wondered if he’d hand over the gun or use it—on me or himself.

  The room was still except for the sound of our breathing. He lifted the gun up, his fingers caressing its steely handle, his index finger sliding toward the trigger. My eyes began to close, waiting for him to pull that trigger, ending either my life or his.

  As he fingered the weapon, his eyes took on a glazed look. His mind was far away, having perhaps returned to that night he’d shot Bernard Peterson. He’d killed one man. Would it be easier now to kill again? Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed, and the effort unleashed another coughing jag.

  Bringing my hand to my mouth, I dropped the handkerchief and hacked away for a full minute, my face reddening as I struggled for air.

  It was enough to shift the mood. Jonesy turned to me, his brow furrowed with concern. Laying the gun on the handkerchief in front of me, he stood and started patting me on the back to ease the coughing. “You’re sick, too,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I managed between coughs. Once the fit passed, I quickly scooped up the gun in its cloth cover. “It’s getting better now,” I said hoarsely. “Now, tell me about that night.”

  Rubbing his head, he settled back on the mattress.

  “It was an awful fight and I was never good at fighting. I can’t even remember getting into a fight, except maybe with my brother when we were kids. But Bernie, he was treating it like it was a game, like we were wrestling in school. He was laughing and shouting, but he wouldn’t let go of the gun. He punched me and scraped me. But he wouldn’t let go of the gun!”

  His voice went high and quivering again. “He just wouldn’t. I tried to reason with him. When he started laughing, I said, ‘Bernie, come on, this is ridiculous.’ And he jammed it in my chest. I thought I’d be dead in a single click!” He paused, blinking fast. “So I rammed into him as fast and hard as I could, grabbed that gun, and twisted his hand. . . oh, dear Lord. . .”

  He bent over and sobbed.

  “And then the gun went off,” I said softly into the quiet room. He wasn’t listening. He was lost in his misery. It filled the room, touching me, too, as I imagined the awful scene. I again smelled the river that night, and heard the cawing gulls, the lap of the water, and the shuffling of the two men as they struggled. It was horrible for me to remember. What must it have been like for him?

  When he’d regained control, he said, “I didn’t know what to do. I pocketed the gun. I was going to leave. And then, and then. . . I realized I couldn’t just leave him there. I dragged his body to the river and dumped it in. Then I had the idea of driving his car in as well. I thought maybe they’d think it was a car accident, that they wouldn’t notice the gunshot wound when they found him. I didn’t think they’d find him so fast.” His shoulders shook as he cried.

  Not knowing what else to do, I wrote it all down, word for word, while he cried it out.

  “Now I’m a murderer,” he said, “as well as a thief.”

  “You’re not a murderer,” I told him. “You killed Bernard Peterson because he was going to kill you.”

  “Is that how you’ll write it up?” he asked eagerly.

  Folding the paper, I stood. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll get our best reporter to write it up himself. But you have to come with me. Now.”

  Despite his addled state, it didn’t take much convincing to get him to go with me to Briggs’s house. In fact, he led me to his car, hidden behind the house, and drove us there. His confession loosened his tongue even more, so he spent the lonely drive giving me more details about Bernard Peterson’s death. I scribbled them down as best I could in the dark.

  When we arrived at Vincent Briggs’s house, I thought fast and rushed to the front door. Banging on it, I shouted out his name.

  “Vinnie, Vinnie!” I yelled at the windows on the second floor. “It’s Carl, your assistant.” After rousing Briggs from a good night’s sleep, I barreled into my story as we stood on the front step, telling him in a deep, serious tone how I, his trusty assistant, had “gotten the story”—just as he’d instructed me to—and how now we’d beat The Daily Oregonian to it.

  Dressed in a dark-red velvet robe and sleeping cap, Briggs glared at me but played along, leading us into his dark study. Once there, he listened as I blurted out the facts as Jonesy had told them to me.

  Leaning into his desk, his chin in his hand, he asked me for my “notes.” I handed over the sheets with my scribblings, swelling with pride when I saw his face change from amusement to admiration.

  “Good work, Carl. Very good work,” he said in a voice that was straight and sincere. He had a few more questions of his own, of course, and I listened, rapt, as he got Jonesy to talk about the blackmail in a way that didn’t make him uncomfortable admitting to it. I saw Briggs writing fast and using funny abbreviations and shortcuts for words so he could get it all down. I would ask him about those later.

  At the end of the session, Jonesy pulled the gun from his jacket, causing Briggs’s eyes to bug out of his head.

  “Well, well,” he said, looking at it, “that should clear everything up. Give it to me, son, and be on your way. I won’t tell the police where you are because I don’t know. But once my story appears, I expect you’ll be safe coming out of your hiding place.”

  With a look of immense gratitude, Reginald Jones limped out the door. Before I left, Vincent Briggs patted me on the shoulder and held me back.

  “You could have a future in the newspaper trade, young man. Good work.”

  That Tuesday, the big story in all the newspapers was about a huge Klan rally at an old farm south of town. Several thousand Klansmen gathered to welcome several hundred new recruits into the fold. Instead of a flaming cross, the art
icle said, they used a big electric one. Huh? An electric one? Guess all you had to do to the electric one was unplug it. There were speeches about “keeping America American,” and the “threat of the mongrel Communists from across the seas whose names as well as religion make them unfit to enjoy the privileges of this great country.”

  Even with that story and the related School Question taking up the front page, Vincent Briggs still managed to snag the lower right corner with his article. “BANK EMBEZZLEMENT LEADS TO DEATH,” it was headlined. I was surprised to read at the end of it that Reginald Jones had turned himself in for the death of Bernard Peterson, but no charges were likely to be filed. It was a clear-cut case of self-defense. But the alleged blackmail was another matter, and Jonesy’s lawyers were “talking with the D.A.”

  Because of the story, I relaxed a bit that week. My body was still weak, though, and more than once I had to leave a room because of a coughing fit. I was only working half of what I was supposed to for Lester, but he didn’t complain. Pete wanted the doctor to look me over again, but I knew we couldn’t afford it, so I told him I was fine.

  The Wednesday after the story appeared, I started delivering my papers again, and Officer Miller was once again waiting for me.

  “Seen your brother around?” he asked. His voice—had it been one of those I’d heard the night of the Klan rally on our yard? Now I measured every voice against those I’d heard that night. Everyone was suspect. No one was a friend. The familiar blue feeling crept back in.

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, not looking at him as I cut my papers’ wires, “no.”

  “I’m still looking for him, you know,” Miller fumed. “Just because you got off the hook doesn’t mean he will.”

  I stared at him hard. “I didn’t get off the hook,” I said evenly in a real man’s voice, not the pretend one I’d used on Reginald Jones. “I didn’t do anything wrong to begin with.”

  “Huh!” He put his hands on his hips. “Don’t think I don’t know it was you in that bank talking to Bernard Peterson. You used a made-up name, remember? Mine!” His face was red with anger, his heavy jowls trembling with rage. So that was it—he couldn’t stand the idea that a kid like me would use his good name. Despite myself, I laughed.

  Raising the papers into my webbed carrier, I brushed past him. “I like my own name better,” I said without looking at him. “Yours is too plain!”

  He didn’t follow me, but I could feel his gaze penetrating my back. It didn’t matter. I’d meant what I said. I didn’t care what my name said about where I came from. I liked it. I felt like shouting it at the next passer-by. “Yeah, I’m Carl Matuski! That’s right— Matuski! You don’t like it, you fight me, right here, right now.”

  I’d never feel ashamed of my name again. I didn’t hide it under white hoods and ghostly sheets. I wore it proudly.

  My paper route was slow that day, because I was still recovering, and I had to stop once to let a coughing spell pass. I’d be glad when this sickness was done with. I still woke up with night sweats and fever, even though the worst of the illness was gone.

  At home, Pete still took care of me by fixing special foods. That night, he made a lamb stew and asked me often about how I was feeling. When I didn’t say much, he asked me specifically how many times I’d coughed that day. Clearing the table, he told me to get a lot of rest. “And if you’re not any better in a week, I’m having the doctor look at you again,” he said.

  Pete himself was haggard from work, taking care of me, and his Truth Society meetings. He always had dark shadows under his eyes now, and he looked even thinner than usual, his belt pulled in another notch. He didn’t say anything about the story in the paper on the Peterson death, but he did cut out a copy of the Klan rally story. I caught him staring at it and sighing before I went to bed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I had hoped that the Peterson story would take care of everything, including removing the pressure on my brother. As Vincent Briggs reported, Peterson had been in debt and doing desperate things to pay it off. He was stealing from his employer, after all. It wasn’t unreasonable to think he might have stolen his own mother’s jewelry, too. From the start, I’d had a bunch of other suspects—the younger Peterson brother, the maid, the cook, even some random thief—but all that was just speculation. Bernard Peterson had access to the jewels and good reason to steal them. It had to be him.

  But there was no clear evidence of it. No one had seen him with the jewelry. No one had heard him talking about them. And they hadn’t yet turned up, as far as I knew. This nagged at me.

  I still held out hope, though, and kept waiting for more jewelers to answer the letters I’d written. If Bernard had pawned the jewels, I’d find out eventually and the entire case would be closed.

  Later that week, as I sat at the kitchen table finishing a hot cup of strong tea, I tried to think of ways to get that information. Maybe I needed to write to more jewelers and more pawn shops. Or maybe I should go in person.

  But what if Peterson had sold the jewels to a private individual? In that case, they’d be nearly impossible to find. Or what if they hadn’t been sold yet at all, and were still among his personal belongings? If so, his wife would surely turn them over to Rose’s mother. And then Adam would be in the clear.

  At the thought of Rose, I sighed. Her sadness must have been acute. Her brother was not only dead but dishonored.

  A steady knock at the front door startled me. Pete was at a meeting, so I stood to see who it was, afraid it could be Officer Miller or some other bad sort. “Who’s there?” I called out.

  “It’s me—Vinnie,” came the reply. Vincent Briggs! What was he doing here? My face breaking into a smile, I opened the door.

  Briggs stepped inside at my invitation, shivering in the cool air.

  “Geez, you’re hard to find, kid. You don’t have a telephone?” He looked around our bare living room. For a moment, I was embarrassed. Briggs’s house was filled with furniture. It was clean and bright, and looked well cared-for. Our living room held an old sofa with threadbare arms, some spindly chairs, and a broken table propped against the wall.

  “Uh. . . come on in, Mr. Briggs,” I said, wondering how to treat a visitor. “Want some tea. . . or coffee?”

  He followed me to the kitchen table, where I cleared my cup. But he held up a hand to get me to stop.

  “I’m not going to stay long. Just wanted to drop something off.” After pulling off leather gloves, he dug into his coat pocket, searching for something. “I had to go to Payroll to get your address, but I’m not the paper’s best reporter for nothing. I know where to find the facts.” After rummaging around for a few seconds, pulling out odd scraps of paper, a thumb tack, a box of matches, and a handkerchief, he finally located what he was looking for. “And other things,” he said, holding it up in the light.

  A circle of pearly beads in groups of ten—my mother’s rosary!

  “The police had it and I managed to get it from them,” he said, holding it out to me. “It looked to be a little damaged—a link was missing—but I figured you’d still want it, so I got it fixed for you.”

  The beads dangled before me. My mother’s rosary had been her last gift to me. I never thought I’d see it again. I wanted to hug old Briggs, or jump for joy, or something. But instead, I just stared at it, feeling choked and dry. I took it from him.

  “I. . . I don’t know how to thank you,” I sputtered.

  “Thank me? I should be thanking you!” he laughed. “My editor’s still shaking his head over how I got that Peterson story!” He looked at me with twinkling eyes that quickly turned serious. “How’s that cold of yours?”

  “Getting better, sir.”

  “Stop that ‘sir’ business, Carl. You can call me Vincent, or you can call me Briggs—anything but Vinnie.” He looked around the kitchen. “You getting enough to eat? Who takes care of you?”

  I told him about my uncle and where he was, and how I’d be going to t
he doctor the next week if I didn’t get better. I remembered the money Vincent had given me, too. It was still under my mattress. I’d have to give it to Pete.

  “Well, if there’s anything I can ever do for you, you let me know, young man,” Vincent said. He smiled and I could tell he was getting ready to go.

  “There is one thing,” I said. “I’m still trying to find out where those jewels went—what Peterson did with them, that is. I was thinking of getting in touch with jewelers, more jewelers, and I need some help with that. I thought maybe—”

  He cut me off. “I’m sorry, Carl. I don’t think Bernard Peterson took them. Knowing your brother’s problem, I thought about that angle. I figured the jewels would turn up soon. But they haven’t.”

  He rocked back on his heels and let that sink in.

  “Who do you think took them, then?” I asked.

  Shrugging, he smiled sadly. “I don’t know. And I don’t know if we’ll ever know.” He tapped me on the head with his gloves. “You’ve got a bright future ahead of you, Carl. Don’t let distractions weigh you down. Come by and see me at the newsroom whenever you want—especially if you have a good story.”

  After seeing him to the door, I pulled out my mother’s rosary and looked at it for a long time. Then I placed it in my pocket, fingering the smooth beads. In the silence of the house, the nagging thoughts I’d had about the jewels not turning up crystallized into a theory, one I’d been reluctant to face. Peterson had been stealing money from the bank. That was a big risk. It would have been far easier—far less risky—for him to have taken the jewels from his mother’s house. They were worth an awful lot. But if he’d taken them, he wouldn’t have needed to steal from the bank. He either didn’t think of it, or couldn’t bring himself to steal from his own mother. He chose the riskier path, stealing from the bank.

  What did all that mean?

  I kept waiting for the jewels to turn up, hoping they’d provide the last clue I needed. I looked at the newspaper every day, expecting a story about how some petty thief was caught with the jewels on his person. And I kept waiting for Esther to write me again. At least I could do something about that discomfort. I penned another note to her, telling her I’d be back in Baltimore for sure—before Christmas.