“And,” she continued coolly, “I read recently that the only other woman ever condemned to death in a federal court was Mary Surratt, for her disputed role in the assassination of President Lincoln. Rather stellar company, wouldn’t you say?”
But this dark humor masked self-pity.
“As I explained to your husband,” I said, “I was hired only recently and have had less than a week to read court transcripts and other materials. So forgive me if my questions cover what must be very old ground to you.”
Her head cocked, her eyes narrowed. “What is the focus of your inquiry, Mr. Heller? The thrust, if I might ask?”
“Other than clemency, your best bet is new evidence turning up. That is, me turning up new evidence.”
A small half smile now. “Best bet or only hope?”
“I’m not the only one working in your interests, Mrs. Rosenberg. But new evidence is the path to a new trial.”
No smile now, and the eyes went distant. “How sad that facing such an ordeal again is the happy ending we seek.”
“Yeah, well, it beats the unhappy one.”
She only nodded at that sage observation. Like her husband, she could take a punch. And like her husband, she was winning me over right away.
I explained that I’d be taking notes. With that matron down the hall, I couldn’t provide the prisoner with the option of private communication via ballpoint that her husband and I had enjoyed.
I shifted in the unforgiving chair. “We only have limited time here, Mrs. Rosenberg, so—”
“Excuse me, but would you mind calling me Ethel?” Damn, if there wasn’t a twinkle in those dark eyes. “I believe we’re about the same age, you and I, and if we’re going to be friends in this, why stand on formality?”
“Well, that’s fine. That’s nice of you … Ethel. Though I’m sure you’re much younger.”
She liked that. “And do you prefer ‘Nate’ or ‘Nathan’?”
“Six of one.”
She gave me an emphatic nod and folded her hands in her lap. “We’ll make it ‘Nathan.’ Preserve just a hint of formality at that.”
I gave her a restrained grin. “All right. Now, because of the time constraint, I’m mostly going to skip things I already discussed with Mr. Rosenberg.”
That twinkle again. “‘Julie’ didn’t suggest first names, did he?”
“No he didn’t.”
“That’s like him. He can be too serious, at times.”
“I thought he had a nice sly wit. And we really hit it off.”
“So are we, don’t you think? Hitting it off?”
She leaned in through the bars to where she could see the matron down the hall; the woman was reading True Romance magazine.
Then the prisoner slipped her hand through the bars and touched mine, squeezed momentarily, and withdrew it. She smiled at me and I smiled back. We’d gotten away with murder.
“Ethel, can we start with your sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass?”
The arched eyebrows arched farther. “You mean the sister-in-law who hasn’t been charged with anything because she sold Julie and me down the river? That sister-in-law?”
“Yes. That one.” She had been so charmingly spunky about it I couldn’t bring myself to point out that Ruth had really helped send her and “Julie” up the river.…
I said, “Ruth claims that in November of ’45, before she left for New Mexico to join her husband…”
“My brother. Yes.”
“… that she visited you at your apartment.”
“She did drop by.”
I looked up from my note-taking. “But did you and Julius try to persuade her, against her will, to join you in espionage work? And to enlist her husband in the same, when she got to New Mexico?”
The eyebrows rose again but not so high this time; that haughtiness had kicked in. “It’s difficult, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Keeping a straight face, asking that. Poppycock. Twaddle. All of it.”
I sat forward a bit. “Were you aware your brother was working on the atomic bomb project?”
Chin up. “Certainly not.”
“But eventually you knew.”
“Not till much later, when he came out of the Army, and wasn’t working in Los Alamos anymore. And, Nathan, anyone who tells you Davey might have remembered things he saw there, and written them down, and made sketches that meant anything? They don’t know Davey. Preposterous. Silly on the face of it.”
“And why is that, Ethel?”
“He’s just not that bright, Nathan.”
That got a smile out of me. “You had no hint of it, his proximity to the atomic bomb.”
Her forehead crinkled and she raised a finger to a plump cheek. “Well, he mentioned on one furlough or another that he was involved with a ‘secret project.’ Kind of bragged about it. Davey can be such a braggart.”
“Braggarts often say too much.”
“That’s true. But all I recall is ‘secret project’ and a lot of puffed-up nonsense.”
“And that’s as far as it went?”
Chin up again. “He said nothing about atom bombs in front of me, I can tell you that. To me it still sounds like science fiction.”
The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have a different opinion; but I let that pass.
“Ethel, what about this Harry Gold?”
She shook her head. Firmly. “Never met the man. Never saw him till he tramped into court that day.”
“Gold admits to passing secrets to the Russians. Did you ever know any Russian?”
“The language? No.”
“I should say, ‘Russian people.’ Russians.”
“I don’t know any Russians. I don’t think Julie does either. Well, second- and third-generation possibly, if I think about it.”
I pressed a little. “Your husband never said he was engaged in spying or espionage work or giving information from various sources to the Russians?”
“He was doing no such thing!”
“You seem very sure of that, Ethel.”
She leaned toward the bars, intimate. “We’re very close, Julie and I. I think I’d know.”
“He might have been protecting you.”
“He never mentioned it to me. That kind of thing, it would be hard to hide from a loving spouse, don’t you think, Nathan?”
Her hand darted out and touched mine again and withdrew just as fast.
Was Ethel Rosenberg flirting with me?
“There was this business of passport photos,” I said, getting into something I hadn’t gone over with her husband. “In May or June of ’50?”
Chin back up. “They were not passport photos. They brought that photographer into the court, but I didn’t remember him. I don’t remember him.”
“Was the man lying?”
“A lot of lying was going on in that court. But Julie and me, we were always kind of, you know, snapshot hounds—got our picture taken all the time. We have scrapbook after scrapbook.”
I moved on. “Ethel, what’s this about your brother stealing uranium from Los Alamos?”
The little mouth smiled as big as it could manage. “That’s almost as big a farce as that silly Jell-O box thing! Only in this case there’s some truth to it.”
“How so?”
“A lot of the soldiers working at Los Alamos—this is what Davey told me, at least—took little uranium samples home, little hollow rocks, as tiny souvenirs. Used the bigger ones as ashtrays and paperweights. When the FBI first came around asking my brother questions, that’s what Davey thought it was about. He told Julie, and we thought that, too.”
“No idea the FBI inquiry might relate to the atomic bomb project?”
“Not at all. Of course, we were not in close, day-to-day contact with Davey and Ruth right then, because things had gotten, well … relations were deteriorating.”
I nodded. “The business squabble between Davey and Julius, you mean.”
&nb
sp; “That’s right. And after Davey got arrested, the FBI came around asking things, and hinted to Julie that Davey had implicated him. Tried to manipulate us into giving them information about Davey. Which we didn’t have. Anyway, I would never have done anything to hurt Davey.”
I let her bask in moral superiority for a few moments, then said, “Ethel, I have to bring up a sticky subject.”
The little pursed smile again. “Nathan, this is no time for niceties. Ask.”
“When you appeared before the grand jury, in August of ’50, you refused to answer any number of questions on the grounds of possible self-incrimination.”
Several nods. “Yes. That is true.”
“You did this regarding questions concerning your brother’s two furloughs, about whether you knew Harry Gold, various things that you later answered fully at the trial itself.”
Chin and eyebrows up now. “When one employs the constitutional right of self-incrimination, one is not affirming or denying anything.”
I patted the air gently with a palm. “I know. But in this nasty climate, taking the Fifth has come to mean an admission of guilt to many.”
“To many fools.”
“I don’t disagree. But I’m curious as to why you did answer those same questions at the actual trial.”
She shifted on the steel chair, gathering thoughts for a moment or two. “When I testified for the grand jury, Nathan, the ground under me was not firm. If the government had presented false evidence or false witness against me on those questions? Why, I could have faced perjury. Whatever lie my brother or his wife said against me, no matter how false, it would incriminate me.”
I risked asking, “Do you still love your brother, Ethel?”
Chin up just a little. “Let’s just say,” she said, “I once had a love for my brother. A great love for him.”
Was there the faintest tremor in her voice?
“And now?”
For the only time during the interview, her face went ice cold. “It would be pretty unnatural if that hadn’t changed.”
Down the hall, the matron rose from her love story magazine.
“I’m afraid our time is up, Ethel.”
The hand darted out and back again. “Nathan, please see what you can do for us … till my time is really up.”
“I will. Oh, and your husband sends his love.”
“I’m sure he does.” This time the smile was wistful, nothing at all flirtatious in it. “Do you know they let us see our children now and then?”
“Yes, Julius mentioned that.”
“It’s quite terrible.”
She might have said, Pass the salt.
I said, “Oh?”
“We meet in the counsel room, on the other side of that steel door down there.”
I nodded. “That’s where your husband and I talked.”
“Awful room. Such artificial conditions. I do my best. We sing songs, my boys and I. Growing boys. The first time they came, after we’d been separated for so very long, they wondered how it was possible that I’d gotten so short.”
Her chin crinkled under a pursed goodbye kiss of a smile.
The matron was there.
Ethel and I exchanged nods, and she returned to her cot and Saint Joan.
The matron walked me down the corridor.
I said to her, “She’s strong.”
The matron’s face was impassive but her eyes betrayed humanity. “During the day. Cries herself to sleep at night, though. Every single night.”
And she unlocked the gray metal door.
CHAPTER
6
My cell—at the Waldorf Astoria—was better appointed than Ethel Rosenberg’s; but then I was on Drew Pearson’s tab, not Uncle Sam’s. I had asked at the desk if there was a preferred suite that Pearson booked when he was in town—wouldn’t be fair to outdo the boss—and it seemed there was.
And what do you know—turned out the columnist liked to live well.
The suite was modern yet lush, all corals and light greens. At right—through the entryway and into a long narrow marble-floored living room, nestled on a fluffy white rug—a pair of lime leather couches faced each other over a glass coffee table near a marble fireplace with a bronze-framed mirror over its mantel. Down at left, a dining room yawned behind French doors; at the far end, a picture window with drawn drapes of a geometric pattern looked onto the city, while beyond the fireplace sitting area was a closed bedroom door. I wondered if anybody as famous as the Honeymoon Killers had ever slept there.
The Rosenberg material was piled on the dining room table—a small but complete kitchen nearby—but I mostly camped out by the fireplace, going over the stuff and taking notes. That’s where I was right now, checking back over things I’d discussed with Julius and Ethel.
I’d intended to stop by the A-1 office in the Empire State Building and talk to Robert Hasty, who I’d stolen from Bradford Investigations in D.C. to head up my Manhattan branch. We’d only opened shop a few months ago. But it was early evening by the time I got back from Ossining, so that was out.
The Copa had Sinatra headlining—maybe I could pull strings for a table and possibly snag a date with a Copa Girl, as the beauties in the club’s chorus line were called. But seated on the edge of my bed—after hauling a phone book from a nightstand drawer and nearly getting a hernia—I decided to take a flier, and looked up Natalie Ash.
Luckily there was only one listing by that name, though there were several listings for “N. Ash” and two more for “N. Ashe.” And 65 Morton Street meant Greenwich Village, not Knickerbocker.
I tried the number anyway.
No answer.
Shrugging, I called the Copacabana, asked for manager Jack Entratter, got him after a little name-dropping (“I do jobs for Frank—ask him”), and wangled a table for 9 p.m. They served till ten and the show started at eleven. Nothing ringside available, even for a name-dropper, but I’d get backstage later and Frank would fix me up. He spilled more girls than most guys ever caught.
I showered and shaved and then, in a what-the-hell moment, sat back down on the bed in my boxers and black socks and tried Natalie Ash again. This time somebody answered. Somebody female.
“Hello,” a husky alto said. No attitude of any perceptible kind, no identification either.
“Miss Ash? Natalie Ash?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Nathan Heller. I’m an investigator working on the Rosenberg case. Are you the Natalie Ash who was their neighbor at Knickerbocker Village?”
A pause. “You’re a little late to the party, aren’t you?”
There was a lilt in her voice that emboldened me.
I said, “If you mean the Communist Party, I’m strictly a capitalist. But I am trying to save those two crazy kids, even if it is for money.”
Her laugh was easy and sultry. I wondered if something as attractive as that voice was attached to it.
“Heller, is it? Jewish, right?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether that’s a plus or a minus.”
A throaty laugh. “It’s a plus where I come from,” she said. “Look, I just got in from work, but I was about to head out for a bite. I’m not meeting anyone or anything. What are you after, just to interview me? Talk to me?”
“That’s right. Ask a few questions.”
I could almost hear her narrowing her eyes as she asked, “So who pointed you in my direction?”
“Julius Rosenberg. I visited him at the death house this afternoon. Talked to Ethel, too, but your name didn’t come up.”
This time the pause was longer.
“Sounds like you’re for real, Mr. Heller.” And a short pause. “I guess it’s early enough that we could get together tonight, if you like.”
“I would like that very much, Miss Ash. Maybe we could meet for that bite you were going out for. My treat. Might take the sting out if any of the memories I stir up are unpleasant.”
“Well … I guess that would be all right.”
“Or you could come to me. I’m at the Waldorf.”
No pause at all: “No kidding? You really aren’t a Communist. You’d buy me supper there?”
“Why not? I’m on expense account.”
“That’s inviting. But I don’t have anything to wear suitable for the Starlight Roof, I’m afraid.”
If she was a Red, she was one familiar with the Waldorf.
“We could meet in the lobby,” I suggested. “Just outside the Tony Sarg Oasis? Come by cab and I’ll square it with you later.”
“How will I know you, Mr. Heller?”
“I’ll be the handsome devil with reddish brown hair and silver at the temples. In Botany 500.”
“No carnation?”
“None. How will I know you?”
“I’ll be the good-looking light-brunette looking for a handsome devil with—”
“Reddish brown hair? Check. Shall we say nine?”
“Nine is fine.”
So much for Sinatra, I thought, but I was smiling as I hung up. Who needed a Copa Girl, anyway? I was meeting a real woman for a late supper and a promising interview.
* * *
She was tall, in that sharply slender Lauren Bacall way, hair falling to her shoulders with a confident bounce and an uncaring arrogance as to whether it was dark blond or a golden brown. Everyone in that part of the lobby gawked at her because she was both stunning and (for the Waldorf anyway) oddly dressed—a fashion-model beauty in an oversize black turtleneck sweater, ash-gray slacks, and white-laced black oxfords, carrying a small black purse.
She saw me standing near the restaurant entry and came to a sudden stop to beam at me like we were old friends, displaying a nicely toothy smile. Then she came quickly over and held out a hand to me: no rings, no jewelry, of any kind.
“You must be Nathan Heller,” she said.
Her big wide-set eyes were a chocolate brown under thick well-shaped brows, her nose suspiciously well carved, her cheekbones so sharp you might get cut on them. The only makeup, besides maybe some light face power, was bright red lipstick. Disturbingly, it was the same color as Ethel’s.
Taking her hand but not shaking it, I said, “And you’re obviously Natalie Ash. But I’ll just call you Natalie. ‘Obviously Natalie’ sounds too formal.”
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