“Before you go,” he said to me (I’d already slid out of the booth), “be my pleasure to stake you to a haircut and shave.”
This is where Sam Spade would say, No thanks, Frank. I’ve had enough close shaves for one day already.
Checking my watch, I said, “Rain check, thanks. In about five minutes, I’m meeting a girl almost as cute as Mildred here.”
I’d deduced the redhead’s name by checking out the plastic name tag on her left breast. I’m a professional detective.
“Well, then, make yourself an appointment on the way out,” he said magnanimously, as the girl withdrew his right hand from the water, “and tell them to put it on my tab.”
“Thanks, Frank,” I said.
And I did.
* * *
Washington Heights, extending from 155th Street to Dyckman Street, was bordered on the west and east by two rivers, the Hudson and Harlem respectively. Built upon a series of bluffs and cliffs, the immigrant neighborhood—with its steep concrete staircases connecting different areas—had seen an influx of European Jews fleeing Nazism in the 1930s and ’40s.
Approaching by cab in the early evening, I watched block after block of apartment buildings appear against the sky like battlements of long-ago European villages. The ten-floor hillside apartment house where Natalie and I were dropped wasn’t far from City College, where Sophie Rosenberg’s boy Julius had once gone, though at the time she’d lived nowhere near.
Mrs. Rosenberg sat across from us on her wine-colored flocked sofa in her modest living room with its busy wallpaper clashing with busier drapes. She wore a black dress—in advance mourning?—with a floral brooch and round, wire-rimmed glasses a bit too large for a face reminiscent of her son’s. Her dark hair, up in a bun, had heavily grayed and her eyebrows seemed raised in perpetual bewilderment, bony hands with parchment skin clasped in her lap. In her early seventies, she looked at least that, the many lines in her face like deep cuts, her short compact frame having once supported a rather stout body whose flesh had been whittled by grief.
She insisted on getting us coffee and cookies, a tray of which rested on a small drop-leaf table by a street-side window, over to our left as we sat on a pair of mismatched English armchairs about as comfortable as what awaited her son and daughter-in-law.
I had traded in my latest Botony 500 for a custom charcoal number from Richard Bennett Custom Tailors in the Loop, a nice and smooth fit despite the nine-millimeter under my left arm. Natalie was all in black—sweater, skirt, tights, sandals.
“This much space I don’t need,” Sophie Rosenberg said with a dismissive shrug. I had complimented her on her tidy apartment. “Four rooms is too much. But I have the boys with me at first, you know, before they get too much for me.”
Her grandchildren, she meant.
She’d recognized Natalie as a friend of her son’s, but when I questioned her about her in-laws, David and Ruth Greenglass, she had little to say.
“Ethel’s family, they don’t have much to do with us,” she said. “Tessie—Ethel’s mama—not a nice woman. She brings Ethel up too strict, David too soft. Ethel, she tries to do better. That’s why the boys, they such wild ones. You spoil a boy, you know, and later they go wrong sometimes.”
The irony of that was unintended, of course. I doubted she’d know irony if she tripped over it.
“Oh, Doovey and Ruth? Always talk kind to me. My heart, it breaks thinking about what they do to Julie and Ethel. You think you know people.”
She was vaguely aware of the business disagreements between Julie and “Doovey” at their machine shop, but never overheard any real arguments.
“I so wish I could help, Mr. Heller. But this, it is hard for me. A educated woman, I’m not. I don’t follow this sad story in the papers. I turn off the radio. I don’t go to the court for the trial, not one day. Nobody in the family goes. Just too hard. Too sad. Too tragedy. Visit Julie, this much I can do. Mr. Bloch drives me over, kind man.… Drink your tea, Mr. Heller. Natalie, you too, eat some cookies. Help yourself. I make them this afternoon.”
I went over to the table for a macaroon. Looking past the tablecloth, I noticed the wood was mahogany, the style spare and modern, nicer than anything else in this place, with its older furniture, probably sometimes secondhand.
No, I thought. Not possible.…
I refilled my tea and collected another macaroon and returned to my uncomfy chair, trying not to indicate any excitement. “Delicious, Mrs. Rosenberg.”
“Trick is the coconut. Always at Passover, I make dozens and dozens.”
Was this Passover? A question that revealed just how Jewish I was …
“That’s a nice table, Mrs. Rosenberg,” I said offhandedly, between nibbles. “Where did you get it?”
“Oh, that table belongs Julie and Ethel. If … when they get out, back it goes.”
Natalie’s big brown eyes swung to me.
I said, “I understand all the furniture in the Knickerbocker Village apartment was sold to a junk man.”
“Yes, this I handle personal. Those things, they bring five dollars.”
“Was that all of Julie and Ethel’s things…?”
Her tiny shrug seemed to require big effort. “All but this and that, like toys and bicycles and some chest drawers for the boys’ bedroom—not here now, boys or chests—and that table. It’s a very nice one. From Macy’s, it is.”
I turned to Natalie, her eyes wide, her mouth poised in mid–macaroon bite.
“Mrs. Rosenberg,” I said gently, “are you aware of a console table that your son owned that was—”
“Right there,” she said, frowning and pointing to it. Was her guest crazy? We were just talking about that!
I tried again. “Didn’t you know that the table in your son’s apartment was said to be a special one used for microfilming?”
Small dark eyes blinked behind big round lenses. “Your what?”
“You didn’t know that anyone was looking for that table?”
She shook her head. “Nice enough, that table. But who would make a fuss finding?”
“You mind if I take a closer look?”
“Be my guest.”
I rose. “Could I impose on you to clear it? Move the tray to the kitchen?”
Rising quickly, Natalie said, “I can do that,” and Mrs. Rosenberg just looked on as if wondering whether she’d admitted two lunatics to her apartment.
The table was a small, ordinary drop-leaf affair designed to rest against a wall. Nothing rigged for spying or anything else. No ornamentation. On the underside were grease-pencil numbers—1997—possibly indicating its price, $19.97. With tax, that would add up to just about what Julius said he’d paid Macy’s for it.
I was trembling a little. I admit it. You work very hard to bring thorough established procedure to an investigation, and the only part of my training that I’d applied this evening was noticing something right in front of me. So that didn’t make me Sherlock Holmes, but it also didn’t make this discovery any less exciting.
Natalie was crouching down and getting a good look herself.
“It fits the way Julie described it in court,” she said, “and with none of the special spy attributes Ruth reported it having.”
I raised a waist-high hand and gave Natalie a look that said, Calm cool collected, now.
We returned to our armchairs.
I asked, “Other members of your family come visit you here, I assume?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You have … two daughters, is that right?”
“I do. Lena and Ethel—the other ‘Ethel’ in the family.” She smiled. “Sometimes at family gatherings, things they get confusing, two Ethels.” The smile faded.
“Have either of your daughters commented on the table?”
“Oh yes.”
“What have they said?”
“Nice table!”
“You said the members of your family didn’t go to the courthouse to attend the t
rial.”
“Too hard. Too painful.”
Was it possible none of the Rosenberg family, beyond Julius and Ethel, knew of the significance of the missing console table?
“Forgive me, Mrs. Rosenberg,” I said, “but … do you read and write?”
She paused, clearly embarrassed. “Not English.”
“But your daughters do?”
“Certainly!”
“Did they follow the trial in the papers?”
“No, no, no. Too upsetting. Why put yourself through this kind pain?”
“Did they visit their brother where he was being held?”
“Yes. Good sisters.”
“Did they keep up with the court proceedings in that way, do you think? Getting reports from Julius?”
“Oh no! They speak of personal things. Family things. Why talk about sadness? Why get more shroyft?”
Right. Why get more shroyft?
I said, “You mentioned your son’s attorney, Manny Bloch.”
“Nice man. Lovely person.”
“He’s been in this apartment?”
“Yes, he would come to take the boys to see their mama and papa at … where they stay.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say “prison.”
“So Mr. Bloch didn’t linger?”
“Didn’t what?”
“Didn’t stay long?”
“No. Not long.”
“You said he picks you up to take you to visit your son.”
“He does this. Very nice.”
“You never had him here for a meal, say.”
“No. Do you think I should have?”
“So he never mentioned your nice table, said anything about it.”
“Why would he?”
I sat forward. “Mrs. Rosenberg, I think that nice table of yours may be a key missing piece of evidence.”
“Piece of what?”
“A clue. Something to help your son and his wife.”
“This is possible how?”
“It just is. If I’m right, I’ll explain further, in as much detail as you like. For now, I’d just like your permission to take some pictures of the table tomorrow. And possibly—and this is important—to take it away and keep it somewhere safe.”
She had been quietly nodding all through that, even as she looked ever more bewildered. “All right, Mr. Heller. If that would help Julius. But if it does?”
“Yes, Mrs. Rosenberg?”
“You have to give it back to him and Ethel. It is their table.”
* * *
We excused ourselves and Natalie and I had a quick powwow near our discovery.
“What now?” she asked.
“I’ll call my local man at the A-1 branch office,” I said, “first thing tomorrow. Honey, this is really heating up.”
She nodded, excitement dancing in the dark eyes. Then she frowned in thought, and gave a finger snap. “There’s something else we can try. I know it’s been a long day, but if you’re up for it…”
“What?”
She raised a cautionary hand. “Let me just see first, before I get you all excited.”
I grinned at her. “And you know how easy it is for you to get me all excited.”
She gave me a crinkled-chin smile in return, then called out to our hostess, asking if there was a phone in the apartment. There was, in the kitchen, and Natalie went off to use it.
I helped myself to another macaroon and some tea, then returned to my armchair and told Mrs. Rosenberg that we’d call her before coming by tomorrow morning, and that I would probably not be alone for the visit. I explained that Bob Hasty ran my local branch office and that he would likely accompany me and possibly bring a professional photographer.
Five minutes or so later, Natalie returned, golden-brown hair bouncing on her shoulders; she wore a small, self-satisfied smile. She gestured to me to rejoin her at the drop-leaf table and I excused myself to Mrs. Rosenberg and went.
“So excite me,” I said.
“What’s this do for you? Ruth Greenglass has agreed to talk to us.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not a bit.” Natalie reached in her small purse and withdrew a tiny address book. “I just called her. She’s still at the same number on the Lower East Side. Thought she might have changed it after all the publicity, but no.”
“When can we see her?”
“Right now.”
CHAPTER
11
Natalie had said Ruth Greenglass would see us “right now,” but getting from Washington Heights to the Lower East Side took forty-five minutes. When no cab had availed itself, Natalie and I made the trek by subway, where in my Dobbs hat and tailored suit I must have been an invitation to dine to prospective muggers. With the nine-millimeter under my arm, however, I felt I could risk it.
The ground floor of the shabby Rivington Street tenement—with its mask of fire escapes and checkerboard of lit and unlit windows—was home to an electrician’s shop and a neighborhood grocery. Both were closed at this time of night—it was going on nine-thirty—though nearby bars provided the street with some rowdy milling color. Natalie commented idly that David’s mother lived around the corner on Sheriff Street and Ruth’s father’s dry-goods store was just down the block.
Four creaking flights of barely lighted stairs took us to the spongy landing where Ruth’s door awaited, but it took only two knocks to summon her. And she was something of a surprise, considering the surroundings.
Ruth Greenglass had taken the opportunity to spruce up, knowing how long the trip from the Heights would take. Her deftly applied makeup included bright red lipstick, not unlike Natalie’s, and she wore a long-sleeve filmy white rhinestone-buttoned blouse (slip peeking through), a black patent-leather belt, and a black-and-white horizontally striped skirt, presumably an unintentional echo of old-fashioned prison uniforms.
I’d expected a dowdy housewife, but this was a good-looking woman, buxom but petite, nearly pretty in an Andrews Sisters kind of way; her dark hair was fashionably styled, upswept waves in front, rolled bun in back. Her smile was surprisingly warm as she offered me a regal hand, which I clasped briefly, though for a fraction of a second I considered a half bow.
She raised a red-nailed finger to her full red lips and whispered, “Little angels are sleeping.”
She opened the door for us and we stepped into a living room that seemed ill-suited for such a nicely dressed, well-groomed hostess. The secondhand furnishings in this dismal, paint-peeling space made Sophie Rosenberg’s apartment, with or without a drop-leaf table, look palatial. The narrow kitchen she walked us to was primitive at best: exposed pipes, bare sink, ancient stove, and a claw-foot bathtub. Having grown up on the West Side of Chicago, I knew in a cold-water flat the proximity of the tub to a hot-water source was a necessity.
The smell of coffee greeted us. She led us to a small scarred table—one of its sides snug to the wall—covered by a simple white cloth with red trim; an ashtray, book of matches, and pack of Chesterfields served as a centerpiece. No door separated us from the hallway, so we kept the volume low. Kiddies were sleeping, and the youngest one—a girl—probably wasn’t school age yet.
The small attractive woman stood between Natalie and me where she’d seated us and rested a friendly hand on our nearest shoulders.
“You’re Mr. Heller,” she said pleasantly, her voice a low timbre.
I said I was and nodded.
To Natalie she said, “A surprise hearing from you, dear, after all this time.” Not chilly but not warm, either.
“I’m sorry to be such a stranger,” Natalie said with a nervous smile. “I bet those two of yours have grown.”
“Like weeds. Something David is missing out on, I’m afraid.” She swung her dark-eyed gaze around. “Coffee, anyone?”
We were all in favor of that and she served us up. I put sugar and milk in mine, Natalie the same, our hostess taking it black. She finally sat, offering us a smoke that both Natalie
and I turned down. Our hostess lit up a Chesterfield, inhaled deep, held it, then thoughtfully exhaled a gray-blue cloud away from the table.
“It’s generous of you, Mrs. Greenglass,” I said, “to see us at such short notice, and at this late hour.”
“Actually this is better than earlier,” she said. “Barbara and Steve can be handfuls, and Stevie has homework while Barbie has to be kept amused. Being a parent is a full-time job, and I already have another one.”
Natalie said, “You’re working?”
She exhaled smoke through the teeth. “Typist in a secretarial pool. Somebody has to support the family.”
That was the opening I was hoping for. “Must have been a terrible shock,” I said, and sipped the coffee.
“Excuse me?”
“When they sentenced your husband to fifteen years.” I gave my head a single sympathetic shake.
Her pleasant expression hardened at the thought of the injustice of that. “I didn’t expect it, I admit,” she said. “Fifteen fucking years—Steven will be twenty, Barbara sixteen! So unfair. So very unfair.”
But maybe not, I thought, as unfair as railroading your sister-in-law into the Sing Sing death house.
I said, “It may not be that bad. There’s always parole.”
Her glistening red upper lip curled in contempt. “Our attorney told us that if we told them what we knew, and fully cooperated? Then David would get a suspended sentence. If the judge was in a bad mood, he said, the worst we could expect was David getting maybe three years.”
“No question about it,” I said with a small matter-of-fact shrug and sigh. “You were double-crossed.”
“But what can I do about it?” she asked, the hardness gone.
She was attractive. I could see why she was apparently the only person on the planet that David Greenglass gave a damn about, besides himself and maybe those slumbering kids down the hall.
“Well, Ruth,” I began, then stopped as if afraid I’d overstepped. “May I call you Ruth?”
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