Once Upon a Time

by Barbara Fradkin

  Green’s first instinct was to rush to his side and bundle him in his warm, dry parka, but he stopped himself. Mendelsohn was snoring peacefully, his head resting back against the stone beside his wife’s name. He was wrapped in a long, warm parka with boots, mittens and hat. Although he was gaunt and unshaven, he looked at peace. When Green came to stand at his side, he opened his eyes and came to slowly. Focussing on Green’s face, he managed a smile.

  “Nu, Mishka,” he murmured. “So. You figured it out?”

  “Some of it, Bernie.” Green knelt beside him. “Are you in pain?”

  Mendelsohn shook his head. “Not now. I have my pills.”

  “Maybe you should visit your son before you go.”

  “And say what?” Mendelsohn sighed. “Some things I cannot fix. Would you talk to him?”

  Green tried to hold his gaze. Remembering Irving Mendelsohn, he could have said “I don’t think he’ll listen,” but instead he nodded. “Sure I will. And he’ll understand, Bernie. Don’t you worry.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill Kressman, you know,” Mendelsohn remarked in a musing tone.

  Green thought of Ruth Walker’s comment that things had ended as they were meant to end. That perhaps by some power beyond ours, the wrongs had been righted. “You didn’t really,” he said. “You were just fending him off with your cane. He died of hypothermia.”

  Mendelsohn looked at him in surprise. “He was scared I was going to tell the whole story to the police. He still had the same coward’s temper he had when he was young. Always his fists was the first way out. In Lodz there was a story that he used to go with the Christian peasants before the war, trying to be one of them because he was tall and blonde. Such a mensch, too much a coward even to call himself a Jew.”

  “Did he call you to arrange a meeting?”

  “Him? To face me? Oh no. I called him. I wanted to see him, to see if this Eugene Walker was really Leib Kressman, and also to ask him why.”

  “And did he remember you?”

  “When he saw my face, oh yes. We don’t forget those days, Michael. They are burned into our brains like a hot iron. He got very scared. He said he had to do those things or the Nazis would kill him. Hah!” Mendelsohn’s eyes glowed in his pale face as he struggled to sit up. “I knew his kind. Whores! They thought they could stay nice and warm by getting into the Nazis’ bed. Little men inside, trying to be big. He had an older brother, short and fat but ten times the man, a councilman in the ghetto. People looked up to him. He was trying to protect us by giving false names to the Germans of who should be deported. The SS shot him, and then they had no such trouble with Leib. He sent his own father to the trains so he wouldn’t have to see the shame in his eyes. Leib rolled over like a good dog and spread his legs. And worse, Mishka, he got to like it! He stopped being one of us, he thought he could be one of them and make a nice little profit out of both sides.”

  He stopped to catch his breath, his chest heaving from the effort of his outburst. Spittle had formed at the edges of his mouth, and he wiped it away. “But he was a fool. In the end they sent him away to a camp just like the rest of us. Even now, fifty years later, the fool still doesn’t know who to hate. I didn’t kill your family, he shouts, and I think he’s going to jump over the car seat at me. He’s drunk, and he’s getting all red. I’m not such a healthy man, so I get out of the car, and he gets out too. He says if I want the real murderer of my family, he is here in Canada living happily with his family.”

  “And he told you about Josef Gryszkiewicz.”

  “Gryszkiewicz.” Mendelsohn spat the name out. “Called himself Fritsch back then, a Nazi halfbreed who thought his blood was pure enough for the super race. They gave him a fancy uniform and a job at the gate, keeping Jews in their place. He loved it! Thought he was born to catch the young boys smuggling blankets and the mothers sneaking potatoes to their children.”

  The sun sank slowly, carving hazy shadows across the snow, and on Bank Street the homebound traffic gathered strength. Green asked the question he knew he should leave unasked. “Where is Gryszkiewicz, Bernie?”

  Mendelsohn lay back against the gravestone and gave him a long, searching look. “Michael, I don’t want jail. And I don’t want hospitals and machines and people not letting me die. I want to stay here with Lydia. This is where I belong. It won’t be long now.”

  Green studied his hands. He could feel the old man quivering beside him, whether from cold or fear he couldn’t tell. He sensed Mendelsohn was right, that he didn’t have long. In this cold and with the disease closing in, maybe only hours. It took Green mere seconds to reach a decision. “There won’t be any jail, Bernie. I wasn’t even here. I’ll have to report what I learned from Howard Walker, and the whole police force knows I’m looking for you, because I was afraid you were in danger. But no one has any idea where you are, and it may take a day to figure that out.”

  Mendelsohn stared a long time into the mist. “A day is enough. I have my pills. I want to sit awhile with Lydia. If there is a God, where I’m going I won’t see her again. When I have said goodbye, I will take them.” He shut his eyes and took several breaths as if gathering strength. “I shot Gryszkiewicz. It was very easy, and I don’t feel bad about it. I was afraid I would. Maybe I should be afraid, because I don’t. But he showed no regret, Mishka. That was why I did it. When I went to meet him, I didn’t think I would kill him. I planned to tell the RCMP when I was sure who he was. They had the name Fritsch, but not his real Polish name. So I phoned Fritsch, I told him I was Walker and we had to talk in secret. I took the train to Hamilton, and I met him behind a small warehouse that was closed for the winter. He looked at me, and he said I was not Walker and so I told him that I was in Lodz and that he had shot my family, and he said ‘What do you think you can do about it?’ So I said ‘This’ and I pulled out the gun and shot him. I had the gun for years, I had never shot it, but I didn’t give one thought. Just—bang.” Mendelsohn shook his head in wonder. “I killed two people, Mishka. I’m eighty-four years old, I just killed two people and I feel…nothing.”

  Green looked at the gaunt spectre before him and remembered the man he’d known in childhood as Irving’s father. A taciturn, unyielding man who sat on his front balcony buried in his newspaper and trading insults in Yiddish with the old woman across the way. A man who shouted at the boys for running over his tiny lawn and who turned off all his lights on Halloween. A man in whom joy had been eclipsed for so long that when the rage was expunged, he felt…nothing.

  Green pushed himself to his feet. “Bernie, I promised you no jails or hospitals. But come back to my father’s place with me, where you can be warm and taken care of till the end. You can’t stay here.”

  Mendelsohn remained where he was. He was tiring rapidly, and he leaned his head back against the tombstone and shut his eyes. “This is where I belong. Where I want to be.”

  It took all Green’s strength to walk away, not because he was turning a blind eye to murder, but because he was leaving a man to die. As soon as he reached his car, he pulled out his notebook, checked a number, and punched it into his cell phone.

  “Irving,” he snapped, abandoning all pretense at professional protocol, “Mike Green again. Your father is sitting in the cemetery by your mother’s grave waiting to die. If you’re any kind of a son—”

  “Green!” Irving roared, and his tone stopped Green short. It was brusque but bewildered, like an unaccustomed call for help. “I got a strange package from Ottawa in the mail today. An old ratty notebook, all scribbled in Yiddish. Looks like a bunch of poems. Did you send it?”

  “No,” Green replied in surprise. “It must be your father’s.”

  Mendelsohn sighed. “Isn’t that typical. No hello, son. No how’s my grandson. No explanation.”

  “He obviously thought it speaks for itself.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to get it translated, then.”

  Green thought of Walker and the grimy toolbox he had hung onto
for sixty years. “It’s probably the most important thing he owns.” He had heard the perplexity beneath the nonchalance in Mendelsohn’s voice and was reluctant to help the man understand, when he’d done nothing to earn it. Yet there had already been too much left unsaid. “Maybe his way of explaining.”

  “Explaining what?”

  “Why don’t you get your ass on a plane up here and ask him.”

  * * *

  Green felt marginally better as he put the car in gear and headed towards home. A balance had been struck after all. Perhaps the only one possible. He knew his decision to walk away from the graveyard might generate some complications once Gryszkiewicz’ body was eventually found. He didn’t know what forensic or eyewitness evidence the Hamilton police would unearth nor how clearly that evidence would point to Mendelsohn, but their investigation would surely lead back to Ottawa. Several people knew Green considered the two cases linked, but they had only bits of the picture. Howard knew Green suspected Mendelsohn of killing Walker, but didn’t know Green had found Mendelsohn in the graveyard. Irving knew Green had found Bernie, but didn’t know he suspected him of murder.

  The only person with the whole picture was himself, and no one was going to question his call on the case. Mendelsohn was a feeble old man who barely had the strength to raise his cane, let alone kill a man. Never mind that the rage of half a century had probably given Mendelsohn the strength to kill an elephant. Let MacPhail’s verdict stand: death by natural causes. God knows Walker’s family would be happy enough, Gryszkiewicz’ family would be happy enough to leave the past buried, and Mendelsohn would be dead within hours. The crimes, past and present, would remain undetected, and yet in the final reckoning, justice of a sort would have been done.

  As for Gryszkiewicz’s murder, let the Hamilton police make whatever case they could, without, Green suspected, much cooperation or disclosure from the dead man’s family. No one knows about Bernie’s confession but me, he thought. The old man is dying, and this is how he wants to die. After all he’s endured, that simple wish should not be too much to ask.

  With an effort, Green tried to put the image of the dying man aside and turn his mind to the next crisis of the day. He glanced at his watch. Three-thirty. If he broke all the speed limits, he could be right on time for the party. Maybe even on time to help Sharon prepare the house and blow up some balloons. Just what he needed—fun, family and the chance to keep dark thoughts at bay.

  He dialled home and a rushed, frazzled Sharon answered. He spoke quickly before she could unleash a diatribe. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m half way home now, on my way to buy wine and bagels.”

  “Have you bought Tony’s present?”

  He bit back a curse of dismay. “Just picking it up,” he replied and glanced out the window to get his bearings. Nothing but car dealers and fast food outlets, and up ahead the sign for the airport parkway, which in the other direction led downtown. What the hell could he get at the boutiques and novelty shops downtown? Suddenly brilliance struck.

  “What did you get?” she demanded.

  “It’s a secret,” he said and steered the car up onto the ramp.

  * * *

  Six hours later, the last straggling guest had left, and the centre of the party had long since been put to bed, cranky and exhausted from a surfeit of cake, noisy laughter and mauling hands. When Green arrived back from driving his father home, the stuffed toys, books and trucks had been piled in the corner of the living room, and Sharon was slumping around picking up paper plates and wrapping paper from the floor.

  Her eyes were at half mast, but they mustered a little sparkle when he took her into his arms and kissed her.

  “It was a great party, darling. And all your doing too. I’m sorry.”

  “You should be, and believe me, I’ll collect. But it worked out. Our very first party as homeowners.”

  “Yeah.” He glanced around the living room which, despite its fresh new blue paint, was featureless. His antipathy must have shown, for her enthusiasm faded and she leaned into his arms with a sigh.

  “You hate it here, don’t you?”

  He opened his mouth to deny it, then stopped himself. “Yes.”

  “They’re not really your kind of people, are they?”

  “Do my kind of people even exist?” he asked. He’d kept himself sober so that he could drive his father home, but now he longed for a brandy to stave off the disquiet that was stealing back in. Outside, the chill of night had settled in, and he thought of Bernie. Sullivan hadn’t called, which meant neither old man had been discovered. Green prayed Irving had heeded his call in time.

  Sharon seemed to read his mind, because she disengaged herself and went to pour them both a small snifter of Remy Martin. “Here’s to our little boy. One year old and showing every sign of being a miniature you.”

  The cognac spread its warmth through him and he smiled. “What a curse.”

  “You never did give him his present. Did you even get it?”

  He feigned insult and went into the front cupboard, returning with a square box elegantly wrapped in silver paper. “I waited till after the guests left, because it’s kind of private.”

  “But now Tony’s asleep,” she protested. “Shouldn’t we wait till morning?”

  “We’ll put it by his bed. It’s not a gift he’ll appreciate right away anyway.”

  She cast him a puzzled look and reached to grab the box, but he held it out of her reach. He led her upstairs to Tony’s room, where he opened the box and unrolled its contents from the tissue paper. Carefully he stood the antique candlesticks on the dresser and stepped back to let her admire them.

  “There are six million stories to go with these. One day, maybe I’ll tell him a few.”

  She slipped her arms around his waist. “Green, sometimes out of the blue, just when I’m about to lose hope, you get it just right.”

  Barbara Fradkin was born in Montreal and attended McGill, the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa, where she obtained her PhD in psychology. Her past work as a child psychologist has provided ample inspiration and insight for plotting fictional murders.

  Her dark amd compelling short stories haunt several anthologies and magazines, such as Storyteller, Iced (Insomniac Press, 2001), and the Ladies Killing Circle anthologies, including Fit to Die (RendezVous Press, 2001).

  The first Inspector Green Mystery, Do or Die, was published in 2000. Once Upon a Time is inspired by her husband’s work as a war crimes prosecutor.

  An active member of Canada’s crime writing community, Barbara is currently on the executive of Capital Crime Writers as well as the Ottawa Chapters of Sisters in Crime and Crime Writers of Canada. She resides in Ottawa with assorted pets and children, and in her spare time she enjoys outdoor activities and travelling.

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  Inspector Michael Green is absolutely obsessed with his job, a condition which has almost ruined his marriage several times. When the biggest case of his career comes up, his position, his relationships and several lives are put into grave danger. A graduate student is found expertly stabbed in the stacks of a university library. But as Green probes into the circumstances of the young man's life, a tangled web of academic jealousy and ethnic intrigue is revealed. When the murderer strikes again, Green realizes that he must waste no time in solving the case, no matter what the consequences may be.

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