My Darling Detective

by Howard Norman

  “How about Elizabeth Nora—?”

  “The music of that is clunky. I prefer Nora Elizabeth.”

  Letter from Bernard Rigolet

  April 14, 1945

  Darling Nora,

  I have been with the First Army for three weeks now. Germany is cold as hell. It feels more like winter than spring. I wear double socks and still my toes hurt. I had a dream in which I put my bare feet in a cauldron of soup. My CO says a man experiences “like a blow to the heart the entire war during the first minute of combat, even if it’s just a skirmish, but right after that, every minute feels like an entire life, and by the way, forget sleep.” What he said turned out to be true, my dearest Nora. I hope to tell you all about this one day, at home in our house. I have your photograph with me of course. A few days ago a war photographer named Capa—Robert Capa—joined us. I heard mention he’s working for Life magazine. He’s a big deal that way. He’s a handsome fellow, all right, and the first time he held forth about where he’d been and what he’d seen, a great sorrow filled his eyes. He referred to a woman, obviously his great love, named Gerda Taro. Also a photographer. The way he spoke of her, he called her his “wife,” it felt like he’d be reunited with her any day now, except the truth came out: she was killed during the Spanish Civil War, run over by a tank, and she died in a hospital.

  I can’t really remember more. But he broke down then. You see, Nora, we really didn’t know the man at all. But here is something: his Gerda Taro was raised in Leipzig! The very city we are marching to liberate. And it occurred to me, maybe that has something to do with why this Capa has joined us—not just for Life magazine, but maybe for more personal reasons too.

  I am heartbroken with regret that we parted in Halifax on such a sour note, my darling sweetheart. It was all my fault, really it was. In part it was knowing that I was shipping out so soon and that there was some chance I would not be returning to you. Well, I could not stand being around that, and so I needed to quarrel and make it seem like it was somehow your fault that I was leaving, when of course it was anything but that. How could I do such a thing? Truly, I am sorry. Shakespeare may have said “parting is such sweet sorrow,” but I did not and cannot feel any sweetness to it, not in these horrid times. Horrid what I have seen over here, what men are capable of doing, which I know is nothing new in the world, but being so close-up to so much death is new to me, Nora. I have been splattered by the entrails and blood of a man not two meters away from me—his name was Marco Fionella. He was from San Francisco. Had the German machine gun been pointed ten inches or so to the left, it would have been me. But I will spare you more of such scenes. There have been many.

  I close my eyes and see you in the library, wearing your knee-length button-down sweater into the cold wind off the harbor, the time I showed up unexpectedly and without hesitation we went out for a coffee. Such a moment I can’t imagine happening again, Nora. Then again, it is the only thing I wish to imagine happening again—tomorrow, please.

  I have been “assigned” Robert Capa. That is, I’m to keep as close to him as possible as we move toward Leipzig. I’m to talk with him and talk about what is going on as it occurs, and provide whatever protection I may be able to provide, which in reality is probably very little, and he knows this and has said as much. He will take care of himself, he says. Still and all, I am assigned to Robert Capa. He has even given me a few tips on taking photographs. Maybe when I am back home I’ll buy a camera, who knows? In three days, tops, we’ll be in Leipzig.

  Strange world where courage masquerades as duty, or vice versa, but what philosophy I can muster up sounds hollow, especially when drowned out by artillery. The crackle of the walkie-talkie near me as I write is enough philosophy for a day, I suppose, the disconnected voice telling us what we might expect just up the road. But no information over the walkie-talkie is ever what it turns out to be. We have stopped by all sorts of villages and seen all sorts of people, and all I can say is, if I never hear a word of German spoken again in this lifetime I will not feel anything but grateful. Tedium, waiting, marching, chocolate bars, no sleep no sleep no sleep, burst eardrums all down the line, so that many of my fellow soldiers shout for lack of being able to hear their own voices. But just now, what I hear is what we wrote ourselves for our wedding vows, “Until the end of the world and forever.” I stick to that. That alone will get me through, if I get through. I close my eyes and can see you in the library. That time I mentioned, no excuses necessary to your colleagues, even though you were new to the job. You just stood up and off we went for that coffee.

  Nora, it’s damned hard to write you a spontaneous letter. I only mean because I know it might take weeks, even months to reach you, and what is happening here in Germany, day to day, can’t be summed up, and it’s difficult to actually know, let alone articulate, what I’m experiencing. I’m a jumble of half-thought-out thoughts in the face of things. I have only what’s right in front of me. I was thinking this morning, in the minute or two I had to think, about how before I shipped out, when I stood at the Halifax wharf and stared out toward the Atlantic as far as I could see, that at the same time I was staring into myself equally as far, or something like that. But here in Germany I look only ten or twenty meters out ahead. My fear is that I will be so far away for so long, and not only that, but tasting death for so long, that I will begin to look at you—to look at us—as a figment of my imagination. I am terrified of this. This is all to say that a letter from you will help this in not happening. So I hope you have written me a letter and that I receive it.

  Well, I’ve got to go find this Robert Capa fellow again. He’s giving me a photography lesson.

  I feel blessed in our marriage. All my love,

  Your Bernie

  Questioning Robert Emil

  Part One

  On October 17, Detective Tides arrested Robert Emil at Deep Water Terminus on Halifax Harbor, where he was working as a forklift operator under the name of Vincent Rose. He owned up to being Robert Emil right away, and was taken into custody without protest. I was at home studying for an exam when the phone rang, and Martha said, “We’ve got your original father here”—the word “original” struck me as both comical and discerning—“and I got the okay from Tides and Hodgdon if you want to come down and have a look at him through the glass.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “First time is once in a lifetime.”

  “Okay, I’ll come right down.”

  When I arrived it was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Martha and Detective Tides were standing in the viewing room. I stepped in. Tides pointed to a chair and I sat down in it. My whole life I had thought of Bernard Rigolet as my father. But here was Robert Emil.

  Emil looked haggard. I think that’s the right word for it, haggard. Yet when Martha came over and whispered, “You have his eyes, my darling,” I could not disagree. Knowing Martha, she said it to make sure I was looking directly at the truth of things, not in any way to be hurtful, of course. Emil was sitting in a chair at a gray metal office desk. He was dressed in blue dungarees and a black sweatshirt, with a gray T-shirt showing at the neck. He had work boots on. His brown hair flecked with gray was unkempt, and he had a white-flecked growth of dark beard, maybe two or three days’ worth. But I could see that, though he now exhibited a seedy look, he was basically a quite handsome fellow. I tried not to think of my mother’s attraction to him, nor his to her, and just concentrate on what was being said in the interrogation room. And I mostly succeeded at that. Mostly.

  Detective Tides dropped a thick file of papers on the desk with a loud thud. He picked it up and dropped it again for effect. “What a fucking stupid goddamn life you’ve had, ex-officer Robert Emil,” he said. “Disgrace to the police department. Disgrace in the eyes of God. Why haven’t you drowned yourself in Halifax Harbor by now?”

  “Oh, I get it,” Robert Emil said. “Good cop, bad cop. You’re the bad cop.”

  “No, I’m the good co
p,” Detective Tides said, and Emil, just those few sentences in, winced as if in pain. “Let’s you and me take a magical mystery ride back, ex-officer Emil, to April of 1945, the eighteenth of the month, to be exact.”

  “I can hardly remember yesterday,” Emil said, tipping his thumb back like it was a bottle of whiskey, “let alone 1945.”

  Tides picked up the file again and let it drop to the desk. “This whole file will refresh your memory, ex-officer Emil.”

  “Stop with that ex- shit, will you? I served commendably in the Halifax police.”

  “You were commended for the fuckup sewer-rat citation. You disgraced the badge. You disgraced the uniform,” Tides said. “It may have been before your time, but today we’ve got something called a cold case. Know what that is?”

  “Not familiar,” Emil said, staring at the desk.

  “It’s an old case, but everyone’s suddenly got a brand-new interest in it,” Tides said. “It’s your worst nightmare—your worst nightmare, ex-officer Emil. Because me and my detectives are going to put you in prison for the rest of your days for the murder of Mr. Max Berall.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  At which point Detective Tides whacked Emil on the side of his head with a telephone book. I had seen this done once on television. “Lucky for Emil that’s a twenty-year-old phone directory,” Hodgdon said. “Not so many people in it as the one from this year. A little lighter, the old one.”

  “Jesus,” Martha said. “Tides really likes doing that, doesn’t he?”

  Emil said, “Okay, you got me to remember Max Berall.” He was rubbing the side of his head. “Hebrew piano player, right?”

  “Person of the Jewish faith, very prominent in the Baron de Hirsch Synagogue. Person of the Jewish faith who had a wife and four children you half orphaned.”

  “I didn’t murder anybody,” Emil said. “But now that I think of it, I remember the murder. That was 1945, you say?”

  “April 18, 1945, you shot him after midnight, so officially it’s April 19. This is weighing on you thirty years, Emil. Just tell the truth. Some playwright or other said, Tell the truth, it’s the easiest thing to remember. But I say, Tell the truth, ’cause when a sack of shit like you lies, everybody knows it.”

  “Get me a lawyer, you fucking idiot,” Emil said, and Tides whacked him again with the phone book, even harder this time.

  “All the attorneys in town are at the movies,” Tides said. “But we left messages for them.”

  Tides put the phone book next to the file and left the room. Hodgdon went in with Robert Emil. Tides said to Martha, “You’re up next.”

  Hodgdon reached out his hand and said, “Detective Hodgdon,” and Robert Emil slapped his hand away and said, “Fuck you.”

  “Do you want to know something personal about me, Mr. Emil? I don’t sleep. I do not sleep. I haven’t slept since last Christmas. Want to know why?”

  “I can’t wait,” Emil said.

  “Because back then I heard a record. Right here in the station, Christmas party. Someone put on this record, it was a beautiful rendition of ‘I Wish That I Could Hide Inside This Letter.’ A sweet little fox-trot written by a fellow named Charlie Tobias, and this was a very special record. Only one copy of it in all the world. One copy. Imagine that. One copy, and you know why? Well, hell, I’m just going to play it for you. Why not?”

  Hodgdon left the interrogation room, went to his desk, picked up a small record player, and started to walk back. During this brief interlude I looked at Robert Emil again. Martha stood next to me, her arm around my waist. “I know, I know,” she said. “You can leave anytime, Jake.” But I didn’t want to leave. I was lost in it now.

  Back in the interrogation room, Hodgdon set the record player on the desk and plugged it into a wall socket. The record, which was already on the turntable, spun. He set the needle down, and the musical prelude to “I Wish That I Could Hide Inside This Letter” began.

  “I hate Lawrence Welk,” Detective Tides grumbled, “but Hodgdon, there, this is one of his favorites. Me? It’s fingernails across the blackboard.”

  Once the singer began, My heart’s in this letter I’m sending, Hodgdon stood on his chair, held his right fist to his mouth like a microphone, and sang along like a crooner. The record was scratchy; Robert Emil stood and pressed himself to the wall and looked at Hodgdon like he was a madman.

  “The song’s already working its magic,” Detective Tides said.

  The bouncy Lawrence Welk accompaniment, the light, plaintive, sincere voice of the woman singer, not exactly belting it out, more a stylish lament: I wish that I could hide inside this letter / And seal me up and send me out to you—

  Detective Hodgdon loosened his tie, threw his suit coat to the floor, jumped down from the chair, and moved within a few feet of Robert Emil. I thought Emil was going to cringe to the floor, especially when Hodgdon planted a kiss on Emil’s forehead and quickly stepped back, still singing: What a surprise in store / They’d bring me to your door / I’d pop right out and kiss you / Like you’d never been kissed before / We’d be so happy we could cry together / And then we’d love the way we used to do. At the last second, quick as a cobra, Detective Hodgdon made a grab for Robert Emil’s crotch, snapping his hand back. Emil crouched protectively like a child. Leaning against the desk, Hodgdon sang, I wish that I could hide inside this letter / And seal me up and send it off to you.

  Music, and when the second verse began, Hodgdon took off his tie, whirled it around his head, and threw it at Robert Emil as he sang: We’d be so happy we could cry together / And then we’d love the way we used to do / I wish that I could hide inside this letter / And seal me up and send me off to you. Hodgdon got down on one knee, closed his eyes, and raised his voice an octave or two. Special delivery / I’d V-mail this female to you-u-u-u-u-u.

  The record kept turning until Hodgdon pulled the plug. He looked at Robert Emil, who had now sat down in his chair again, and said, “Now that I’ve declared my love, ex-officer Emil, my partner Detective Tides is going to come in and demonstrate with that telephone book that he’s a very jealous man. Give it some thought.” Hodgdon left the interrogation room.

  The four of us watched through the glass. I don’t believe Robert Emil knew it was a one-way window. He seemed to be trying to regain some composure and fell short. He suddenly tore the cord from the record player and tied it around his neck, but the cord was far too short to throw over the heating pipe near the ceiling and hang himself, so he tried to twist it around his throat. Martha said, “Let’s get in there,” but Detective Tides said, “No, this is good, this is good.”

  “Yeah, he can’t off himself that way. It just goes against instinct not to breathe,” Hodgdon said. “Just watch.” And then Emil gave up and threw the cord to the floor. “Jeez, what a half-assed attempt,” Hodgdon said. “I’ve lost all respect.”

  Detective Tides went out to the main office and came back holding at least ten telephone books. Hodgdon opened the interrogation room door and in walked Tides, who set the phone books on the desk. He picked up the record player’s cord, set it on the desk. Emil coughed up a little blood. “You can’t do anything right,” Tides said. “Ex-officer Emil, your whole life’s a sack of shit.”

  Tides then started to sort through the telephone books, lifting each one as if testing it for heft and potential, setting one on the desk, tossing another to the floor. Robert Emil watched closely.

  Tides sat down in the chair opposite Emil and said, “‘I Wish That I Could Hide Inside This Letter’—what a song, eh? Recorded in 1945. Yeah, we’ve been listening through the one-way glass, there.” Tides gestured over his shoulder. “Know where Detective Hodgdon got the phonograph record from? From the evidence box, police warehouse, just down the block. It belonged to one Mrs. Estelle Yablon, a very close friend of the deceased in question in our cold case, Max Berall. Let me be direct. Everything about these fine, upstanding Jewish Canadian citizens Max and Estelle was like having y
our own police badge shoved up your motherfucking Jew-hating ass—”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. The night Max Berall was killed—”

  “Oh, so now you remember it?”

  “It came back to me. That night, I was security at Baron de Hirsch, some Hebrew holiday of some sort. There’d been some threats. The war had got everyone twisted all around. There’d been some threats.”

  “Yeah, we know all about the atmosphere,” Hodgdon said.

  “How’s that?” Robert Emil said.

  “Because me and my partners are crack researchers, Emil. Crack. Researchers. We know all about incidents against Jews and synagogues in 1945—the atmosphere. And you personally were part of the putrid air that year, ex-officer Emil. You personally. You were a putrescence in 1945, and you’re a putrescence now.”

  “I was trying to protect those Jews.”

  “See, what we are looking at here is the murder of Max Berall and the disappearance of Mrs. Estelle Yablon, who identified you in a lineup as the man who ran from the alley where they found Max Berall, two bullets to the head. The back of the head, ex-officer Emil. You got rid of the weapon.”

  “They checked my police revolver—”

  “But it wasn’t your police revolver the two slugs came from.”

  “I never heard of Mrs. Yablon. I take it the name’s Hebrew.”

  “She didn’t show up for services the next Saturday at Baron de Hirsch. Which she never once missed in twenty years.”

  “Maybe she had a cold.”

  “Maybe she was deposited in Halifax Harbor. Like a savings account against you being in prison for the rest of your life.”