She seemed to bristle in her seat.
“Well, I’ve told you what I know. I don’t want anything to do with this anymore.”
“I’m afraid it may be a little late for that.”
She gave him a sharp look.
Nick tried to speak softly. This was getting tricky. “Someone doesn’t want your uncle being investigated. First they tried to kill me, but now they know I’m hiding. It looks like they may be changing strategies.”
Her eyes were steady, but her cheeks once again seemed to be losing color. “Keep going.”
“These people don’t want private investigators digging around this estate, but they have no way of knowing how many PI’s are involved. So they have an easier solution. If they can insure that there are no heirs, then they think that the heir finders will have no incentive to investigate the estate anymore. They think we’ll drop it—”
“But I didn’t sign any contract,” she said. “They must know I haven’t made a claim on the estate.”
“But they still feel threatened by the possibility of you suddenly deciding to become an heir. If you do, all this goes to court and everything I’ve learned about your uncle becomes public information. As long as you’re alive to sign another contract—”
“This is crazy,” she said sharply. She stood. “Look, I have to go. I don’t think we need to talk anymore.”
“Your life’s in danger,” said Nick, not budging. “They came after Matt, and they’ll come after you. Don’t try to ignore this, Jessica. You’ll end up dead.”
She sat back down out of necessity now. Her eyes were glassy and ready to tear up. Nick regretted being so blunt but saw little choice. He entered the kitchen and found fresh tissue. She pushed his hand away when he offered it.
“Why did you have to show up here in the first place?” she asked, not looking at him. “Why didn’t you just leave it alone? None of this would have happened if you hadn’t dug this up.”
Nick stood there and felt a twinge in his stomach. She was partially right. It could have been some other heir-finding firm that solved the case, but the fact was, it had been Merchant and Associates who had found her brother and filed those papers. As much as he wanted to tell her it wasn’t his fault, the words just would not come.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m not blameless here. But it has to work both ways. If I have to take a measure of responsibility for your brother, then I also have to take responsibility for our lives too.”
She dabbed at her eyes a bit but didn’t respond. Nick walked to the front window and stood for two minutes, staring out at nothing. Alex had said Matt Von Rohr had been so excited when she’d told him of the inheritance. Young, engaged to be married, and now incapable of anything.
Jessica was looking down, refusing to look at him. Considering what she had been through in the last hour, he thought she was holding up remarkably well.
“Listen,” he said softly, “do you honestly think I would’ve touched this if I had known what was going to happen? You can’t possibly think that.”
“Someone has to take the blame.”
“You’re right. I think whoever killed your brother should.” He sat next to her. “Look, I will find out what’s going on here, one way or another. You can help me or you can run, but please don’t ignore this.”
“I really wish you would—”
Nick hushed her. He had heard it over her voice. It was an insignificant sound, but it resounded clearly in the still of the house, a hollow sound, a dull thud that vanished as quickly as it came. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but this situation was nowhere near normal.
He crept to the front blinds, his hand on the gun in his jacket. Two men were on opposite sides of her front porch. He looked at her quickly.
“Expecting someone?” he whispered.
Her eyes were wide and confused. She shook her head.
Nick reached for the bank certificate and shoved it down a pocket as the doorbell rang. He quickly approached her. “Come on.”
He led her to the back door. The doorbell chimed again, and he pulled the gun free.
“What the hell are you doing?” she whispered, stepping away from him.
He didn’t reply as he quietly opened the back door. Behind the property, perhaps thirty yards away, fenced farmland. Cornstalks, eight feet tall and thick.
Nick was about to speak when something suddenly slammed against the front door. Wood cracked loudly as another solid impact quickly followed.
Nick lunged for Jessica’s hand and pulled her out the back door. They reached the field in seconds, ducking under the fence just as the back door of the Von Rohr home flew open behind them. The two of them ran fifteen yards blindly through the field, then veered abruptly to the right. An explosion of automatic weapon fire suddenly tore the air, ripping through the field behind them. Nick instantly pulled her flat to the ground. Several long seconds passed before silence settled around them.
Jessica was breathing so quickly that Nick had to hold a finger to her lips. She was squeezing his hand tightly, but he hardly noticed. A sound came into focus. A rustling, coming closer. The men had entered the field, pushing through the stalks after them.
Nick pulled her up and to the left. They hurried forward for half a minute, then stopped, collapsed to their knees, and listened. Nothing. The air again exploded with gunfire. They threw themselves flat as shattered husks rained down on them. Two seconds later it stopped.
Nick gripped the pistol tightly. There was no way he could get close enough to get off an accurate shot. He looked down at the ground, his eyes darting about the dirt, and listened. The air had gone still again. Silent. Jessica opened her mouth to speak, but Nick again motioned for her to remain quiet. Somewhere behind them, the gunmen were still as statues, listening, searching out their location. Absolute silence settled over the field, only a light breeze rustling the stalks. For what seemed like several minutes, nothing stirred.
The cell phone in Nick’s pocket suddenly rang. He grabbed for it wildly, flipping it free to the dirt. Two full rings sounded, shattering the silence, before he could grab it. They looked at each other in horror. Nick heard a distant movement, and then they were in the middle of a third barrage, their faces down against the dirt as the stalks whipped and spit around them. Nick raised his head when it stopped. Somewhere behind them—or was it in front of them?—maybe thirty or forty yards away—the stalks were snapping and rustling. He pulled her up to a crouch, and again they ran, staying as low as possible.
This time they kept moving—for how long Nick had no idea. All frame of reference was gone. They ran blindly, Nick pulling her along.
They finally stopped and ducked low again. He looked at her. Her face, her hair—her entire body—was coated with dust. Her eyes were wide with fear, but her panting was no worse than his own. He felt thankful she was a runner. He wished he could say the same for himself. His heart was slamming his chest, his lungs were in flames. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. He studied the dirt, straining to hear. Nothing stirred except cornstalks, swaying gently in the warm autumn breeze. At first all he could hear was the thump of his own heartbeat. But then a distant, high-pitched noise intruded over the silence. He wasn’t imagining it. Police sirens—slowly coming closer by the sound of it.
They heard a stirring from somewhere in the field not too far from them. Their attackers were on the move again and making no effort to be subtle about it. Nick gripped the pistol and waited, his finger on the trigger. They were running—he was certain of it—but in the opposite direction. They had heard the sirens too.
The two of them stood still for another minute, letting the sound draw nearer. Then Nick took her arm as they started toward the back of the field.
CHAPTER
18
IN THE MANHATTAN office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Edmund Arminger reached for the phone and got his boss in Washington.
“Anything new?”
asked Gordon.
“We’ve got a confession from the attorney in Columbia County,” replied Arminger. “Merchant and Associates paid him ten thousand for the Jacobs file, just as we suspected.”
“Have teletypes on Merchant been sent?”
“Every department in fifty states. We’re talking with San Francisco, Des Moines, and New York City and sending our profiles and photographs. I’m glad we’re finally—”
“And you’ve spoken with the newspapers?”
“We’re all set,” replied Arminger. “I’ve spoken with Directors Hampton and Rivera and gotten commitments for half a dozen agents from each of their jurisdictions. We’ll get him.”
Gordon felt a bit irritated. “I’d like you to confer with me before implementing any future tactical maneuvers, Edmund. This has gotten too big to be making rash movements. I don’t give a damn what the situation is—you let me know next time. My neck may be on the line here and if that’s the case, so is yours. Are we clear on that?”
“Very clear,” replied Arminger, after a brief but noticeable pause.
“Good,” said Gordon. “I’ve spoken with the San Francisco Police Department. Seems there was something to that story Merchant gave us. Someone did blow up his apartment. His secretary—woman by the name of Rosemary Penn—was killed.”
“He was telling the truth, then,” said Arminger. “What the hell is going on with all this?”
“Let me tell you about my meeting with the President,” replied Gordon. “And a surprise guest.” The director told Arminger of his discussion in the White House.
“What do you make of it?” asked Arminger.
“Well, Newland’s always had the President’s ear,” said Gordon. “On the surface, it’s simple. The senator’s committee is being jeopardized by the possibility of Jacobs’s true identity being revealed. Neither the President nor Newland wants that to happen. From what I heard, I don’t either. In which case we need to find Merchant and put him away.”
“And is there something beneath the surface?”
Gordon paused for a long four or five seconds. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “The whole damn thing’s an embarrassment. Closing a protected witness file shouldn’t have been so damn difficult, but somehow we managed to screw it up, and now we have Newland to deal with. Committee or not, I don’t like him being privy to our operations.”
Arminger leaned back in his chair, frowning thoughtfully. “You think there’s something else here, Arthur?”
“I didn’t say that. But something doesn’t feel right to me. Nothing I can put my finger on at the moment.”
“So what do we do?”
“We’ll do what we’ve been instructed to do—find Merchant as quick as we can. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do some digging of our own. If there is something more here, we want to make damn sure it doesn’t sneak up and bite us.”
“I agree,” said Arminger. “I have another interesting bit of news out of Sacramento. The signed heir to the Jacobs fortune was murdered earlier today in his home. Merchant’s out of the money. These heir finders are turning on each other.”
“That’s the obvious conclusion. Too obvious, I’d say. No, this may travel beyond a small group of PI’s.” Gordon paused and left the line quiet for a moment. “This murder may turn out to be a positive development. Now that Merchant has no client, we may not have to concern ourselves with a court hearing. I suspect he may be over the border by now anyway.”
“I plan to find him if he’s not.”
“Someone will.”
Night was falling quickly in Schenectady. Congested skies had smothered the city throughout the day, but dusk had at last brought a break in the clouds. The dry air hung heavy in the warm autumn evening.
Alex didn’t care enough to notice. She drove south on State Street toward Albany. Her plan was basic—to find out whatever she could on Ludwig Holtzmann. She wouldn’t be returning to the apartment until she did just that.
Her afternoon had been spent on the phone. Her calls had confirmed one fact, albeit one she already knew: the bankers of Switzerland were obsessively protective of their clients. She had contacted seven banks holding Holtzmann accounts—three in Geneva, four in Zurich—and received seven remarkably similar reactions. It had been a common refrain: without an original letter of authorization in her possession, she could be given no information pertaining to account holders or their accounts. Her trusty assortment of clever phone ruses, which normally worked so well with American banks, had gotten her nowhere. One banker had even hung up on her during her dead-relative sob story.
She made a right on Dove Street. If nothing else, she could now scratch the bankers of Switzerland from her list of contacts. She hadn’t expected a treasure trove of information from them anyway. Her main hope that morning lay in her next stop.
The Balom Holocaust Museum was located behind a synagogue that had stood in midtown Albany for over fifty years. The synagogue had recently been renovated with nearly a quarter million dollars of worshipers’ funds, its dry-rotted wood being replaced with new lumber. The congregation was largely elderly, a handful having faithfully attended since the onset of World War II. The current rabbi had survived one year in Auschwitz.
In the parking lot, Alex cut the engine and thought. Nick had pulled 270 of the bank documents from Jacobs’s garage. She had counted them. On exactly 52 of these, “secondary holders” were listed. Ludwig Holtzmann’s name on top, the secondary holders’ names beneath. She reached into her portfolio for the hastily scribbled list she had compiled earlier of the 52 names. With luck those names were about to confirm one of her nagging suspicions.
A wind was coming up from the east, scattering dead leaves about the parking lot. They crunched beneath her shoes, but the sounds didn’t register. She combed her way down the list mentally as she walked to the entrance of the museum. Saul Weinstein . . . Elsia Berman . . . Meir Ibrahim . . . Rebecca Wershowitz . . . She felt strangely uncomfortable. They had speculated that Jacobs had been a Nazi. The names on the list sounded Jewish. A murky picture was developing, and she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to see it.
She pushed through the entrance of the Balom Museum and looked around. Old people lounged about on saggy cloth couches. Meticulously detailed murals filled the walls. The place looked more like a community center than a museum. She approached the counter, which was manned by a fortyish man in a lightweight sweater.
“Hi, my name’s Debra Ramos,” Alex said. “I spoke with Benjamin Roth this afternoon about some research.”
“I’m Ben Roth.” They shook hands. “Good to meet you. Shall we go to my office?”
They walked through the heart of the center, Roth greeting several people as they passed through. Alex followed him into a small office on the opposite side of the main lobby.
“Would I be prying to ask what this research is for?” asked Roth, sitting at his desk.
“Not at all,” replied Alex. “I’m doing some genealogy on some prominent Jewish families. I suspect that some of the ancestors of the families I’m researching may have died in the Holocaust. We’re trying to help them recover some assets.”
Roth placed his elbows on his desk and nodded intently. “I’m happy to help with that. Wonderful that after fifty-odd years someone is making an effort regarding asset recovery. If you’re trying to get these assets out of Switzerland, all I can say is good luck.”
Alex removed the list from her pocket and laid it out flat on the desk. “I’ve a list of about fifty names of people who may have died during the war. I guess it’s pretty much a long shot to find anything on them.”
Roth took the list and scanned it quickly. “Not necessarily. What may help us is the fact that after fifty years of efforts by Jewish and Allied organizations, we now have a fairly complete picture of just who did perish in the Holocaust.” He turned on a computer. “We may come up with some questionable name matches, but let’s give it a shot.”
“You�
��ve got some sort of a list on-line?”
“Oh yes. It’s recorded in books, too, of course, but we have quite a few names to look up here. Shall we just start at the top?”
Alex nodded, pulling her chair around to get a better view.
“Hildi . . . Eva . . . Strauch,” said Roth, reading from the list and tapping the letters in.
Alex looked about the office as Roth manned the keyboard. It was the first time she could recall ever having conducted research in a Jewish institution. The museum felt foreign to her, a glimpse into a world she knew little about.
“Here’s a match,” said Roth.
Alex’s surprise made her pause. “Really?”
“Yes,” said Roth. He read from the screen. “Hildi Eva Strauch, born 1897, Dresden, Germany. Daughter of Jaco and Maria Strauch. Died 1943. Treblinka concentration camp.”
Alex took the sheet and placed a check next to the woman’s name. “Let’s try another.”
Roth examined the list and typed in the name. “Here we are. Albert Saul Mamin, born June 1885, Krakow, Poland.” He ran his finger down the screen. “Died in 1942. Auschwitz concentration camp.”
Alex marked the sheet again, then looked for the next name. “How about Frances Gerta Rosen?”
Roth typed the name and waited. “This may not be a match. No—there she is. Frances G. Rosen, born 1926, Mannheim, Germany. Died 1945 in Auschwitz.” Roth looked at Alex. “All these long shots of yours seem to be coming in.”
Alex scooted her chair forward. “Do you have fifteen or twenty minutes to make a run down this entire list?”
“I can give you twenty minutes or so.”
“Mira Ana Birowicz . . .”
Back in the car, Alex counted the checkmarks. Of the fifty-two names, forty-seven had been marked and traced to the death camps. That afternoon she had hoped to find information on two or three. She folded the paper up and stuffed it in her pocket. Nick had told her that Jacobs had seven full boxes of the letters in his garage. The two hundred or so taken that night, then, were barely a fraction of the total. The partners had speculated about Jacobs’s past, and now they knew massive numbers of Swiss bank accounts were involved. It seemed likely that their Nazi theory was not theory but fact.
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