Manhattan 62

by Nadelson, Reggie

  “You’re friends with a Maxim Ostalsky?”

  “Yeah, so what? I know him a little from around, is that a problem?”

  “We think he’s dangerous.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to me in the first place, instead of wasting some poor slob of an agent?”

  He looked pissed off, possibly at the way I had described one of his men, but I didn’t care. I ate my sandwich when it came and gulped down the black coffee, followed by a Coke.

  When I made to get up, O’Neill said, “I think you should hear me out. Some of our younger agents are not subtle, and I apologize, but one of them had this idea that he could find Ostalsky by following you. Where were you coming from?”

  “Jesus, Rush, the Impala was on me, he must have known where I was. Just stop blowing smoke up my ass. I’m going to level with you, because I admire you people.”

  “Good.”

  “I was working on finding Ostalsky myself. I had intended to pass on anything I learned to your people. In fact, maybe you heard, I already called my brother-in-law who works at your New York Office. Brennan? Seamus Brennan. I knew exactly what Ostalsky was from the beginning. He wanted a friend in New York, and made friends, it seemed a good idea since I was attending NYU.”

  “You spent a lot of time with him.”

  “What does that mean? I fought those dirty Reds in Korea, you think I don’t want to stop them? Jesus Christ, man. I got a purple heart, and my best friend was blown to pieces. Do you think I could really be friends with one of them? Dammit, Rush.”

  O’Neill was confused because I had grown testy; after all, I was a cop, a vet, a patriot.

  “I understand,” he said. “I’ll let the bureau know they can leave you in peace. By the way, have you seen Ostalsky lately? Probably not because, as I heard it, you’re on leave, isn’t that right?”

  Slowly, he put away the pipe and opened a box of Viceroys, a fussy sliding box made for women.

  What did he want? What was he waiting for? When I looked over at the counter the other agent had gone; the waitress was nowhere in sight; the big clock on the wall ticked the minutes. Tick. Tick. Tick. From next to the clock, the President smiled, handsome, strong, assured. O’Neill followed my gaze.

  “Thank God for JFK,” I said.

  O’Neill was silent. “Excuse me a moment, won’t you?” he said finally. “I have to use the head.”

  “Sure.” I thought about leaving. It would make O’Neill suspicious. He might put a car on me again. The first place any agent would show up was my apartment where Max Ostalsky was waiting. I hoped to God he was waiting.

  Outside the city was dead quiet. At five minutes past three, O’Neill emerged from the bathroom.

  I got up and put a dollar on the table. “What do you want?”

  “I want to believe you’ll contact me the next time you see Ostalsky.” He handed me my dollar. “This is on me. We’re at war, Wynne. We’ve been at war with the Reds a long time now.”

  “You don’t need to say it. Just one question. In your law enforcement career, I’m wondering if you’ve come across a Captain Homer Logan?”

  O’Neill‘s expression remained exactly the same. Only a tiny, almost invisible muscle twitched at the edge of his mouth, a womanly mouth with heavy, pinkish lips.

  “Can’t say I have. Sorry about that, Pat, shall we go?”

  I picked up a matchbook. Inside was an ad for an art school. Maybe I should learn to draw. I could quit being a cop and go in for art. I tossed it down again.

  “Why don’t you walk with me to my car,” said O’Neill, as he put on the English raincoat, buttoned and belted it, replaced his hat, and went out to the street. I followed him.

  “Where?”

  “What?”

  “Where did you leave your car?”

  “Charles Street.”

  Near my precinct, I thought. Had he been talking to Murphy? The streets were empty, silent, dark, as we walked east on Christopher and across Bleecker Street.

  “Pat, there’s a girl I believe you know, name of Nancy Rudnick. Father’s a committed Communist, a Party member, did time for it.”

  I inserted a toothpick between my teeth. Easy does it, I said to myself; Nancy was in trouble, and me getting riled up at some Fed wasn’t going to help. “Sure, I know Nancy. She’s a grad student at NYU. Nice enough girl.”

  “We worry about the likes of Rudnick. It threatens our country when these so-called peace-loving radicals are in every Communist-front organization. My God, they have Pete Seeger at their house, they support Fidel Castro and give money to Martin Luther King. We have files on him you wouldn’t believe. The boss has a bug up his ass about King.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Some people think we keep files on people out of malice, but we’re only protecting the American way of life.”

  “I thought Rudnick did time when he refused to testify.”

  “It didn’t change the bastard one bit.”

  “Rush, is Ostalsky your real focus, because I can give you a list, places he likes to go, people he meets, Café Figaro, Gerdes Folk City, he talks with writers there, he plays chess in the park, he attends meetings, and square dances at Judson Memorial Church.”

  “I’ve never cottoned on to the idea that the revolution would take place during square dancing, between you and me,” said McNeill with his idea of a chuckle.

  “You see, Rush, I’ve been on this,” I said.

  From his back pocket McNeill removed a notebook and pencil. “Any specific names?”

  “Rush, you’ve been pretty frank with me, so let me repay the favor, what you may have thought about me is not exactly what it seems. You catch my drift? If you need to know more about Max Ostalsky and pals, I’m always willing to help. But I’d like to keep it quiet, at least for now. For instance, did you know that he has developed quite a liking for American whisky?”

  “That so? Are you saying what I think? You’ve been working this from another angle? I parked across the street.” O’Neill groped in his coat pocket for his car keys. “I’m glad. I really am.”

  “Nobody knows, not even my boss,” I said. “I report only to, well, you can imagine, I’m not even talking about the New York office.”

  If he bought it, it would give me a day or two. Chances were we’d be in a war, and then dead; suddenly, I felt released from the creeping fear I’d felt when the FBI started tailing me. I began to embroider. “So to put your mind at rest, I haven’t been hanging out with the Russki for the hell of it.” I said. “Why don’t you give me your private number, Rush, I’ll keep you in the loop best I can, but if word gets out, I’ll lose my sources. You know how useful those damn student radicals can be.”

  “You’ve been able to mix easily with the students at NYU, is that right?”

  “Jesus, I must have been to more damn peace meetings, and the lectures, and the fights about Trotsky, and Stalin. Look, when I get the goods, you’ll be the first to know. You can pick him up. Take the kudos,” I said. “You mentioned Nancy Rudnick?”

  “What about her?” said O’Neill. “It’s the father we want, like I said.”

  “I see.” Even now, I worried about her. Even now I wanted to take care of Nancy, to protect her from this slimy bastard O’Neill.

  “You’re Nancy’s friend, isn’t that right?”

  “I see her in the park. Sometimes I give her a lift.”

  “I’m glad, she needs a real friend, not those pinkos she seems to be chummy with.”

  Seems? Seems?

  “She mentioned you to me, so I’m going to share something with you. Nancy is a fine young lady, and a true patriot. I’m telling you because I’d like you to help make sure she’s OK. She is vigilant, and helpful to us, but I feel in my heart Nancy needs the right fellow to look after her. These girls are too easy, too free with themselves. I was worried at first that she might fall for Ostalsky, you know? With some of our young ladies, we run the risk of them romanticizing the su
bject.”

  Vigilant? Helpful? My heart was pumping so erratically, I thought I was having a heart attack; I had begun counting the blocks to St Vincent’s.

  “Take good care of her, Pat. She is one of our best sources. She’s bright. She has an excellent memory. She knows what’s needed. The way she’s involved in the Peace Movement and Civil Rights, she has real access. Half the Reds in New York show up at her father’s parties, as you may know. I wanted to share this with you because I know you’re her friend.”

  He took his card from a pocket, handed it to me, put his key in the door of his car, which turned out to be a two-tone Chevrolet ’59 Impala, blue and white with modified fins. “I’m afraid it’s my car,” he said. “I’m sorry I was on your back, you won’t see this car again any time soon. And don’t worry, my wife hates the damn thing,” O’Neill added, and left me on the sidewalk not knowing if I should laugh or cry. Nancy was working for the FBI. She had been using Max Ostalsky. She didn’t love him, after all.

  Poor Saul Rudnick, I thought suddenly. I hated a lot of his views, but he said what he thought, and he loved his daughter. God help him now she was working for the FBI.

  CHAPTER THREE

  October 25, ’62

  IN MY APARTMENT, OSTALSKY sat on the couch beside Tommy, gently mopping the blood on his face. Tommy’s eyes were closed. He had been badly beaten, face and hands bruised, eyelids black.

  “What happened?”

  Tommy tried to push Max away, failed and slumped back onto the couch. “He’s a Russki, Pat.”

  “He’s a friend.” I took the cloth from Max and sat next to the kid, whose front teeth were missing.

  Something occurred to me. I lowered my voice and said, “Is he the man you saw on the pier?”

  “The devil man, you mean. I don’t know. I can’t say for sure, but I seen him in the papers. He’s a Red. He’s a dirty friggin’ Red, get rid of him.” Tommy’s words were blurred as he forced himself to sit up.

  “Lie down and stop talking, kiddo. I’m calling an ambulance.”

  He didn’t protest, and I knew it was bad.

  The lines were all tied up. I said to Tommy, “What happened, can you tell me?”

  Breathing hard, he said that a big guy he never saw before banged on his door. His father had been at work; Tommy let the man in.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Few hours, maybe.”

  “Did you pass out?”

  “I dunno. Maybe.”

  “Anything else you remember? Don’t talk if it hurts too much, but if you tell me, Tommy, I’ll get the prick.”

  “Pat, he asks me questions about you. Stupid stuff I don’t understand, but I won’t tell him, he punches me in the face. Pat, I can’t see you right. Like everything’s blurry. Am I blind? I don’t wanna be blind.”

  “OK, that’s enough talking.”

  There was blood in Tommy’s mouth. I couldn’t wait for an ambulance. I couldn’t risk being seen with Ostalsky and I got him into the kitchen, told him where to meet me, figured he was smart enough to make his way—he’s a goddamn agent, I told myself. “You’ll do it?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Help me down the stairs with Tommy, then go through cellar door, it leads out into the backyard, and from there you can get into the next building and out that way. Nobody will be watching for you there.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Ostalsky.

  By some miracle, we got Tommy into the car. I was grateful I was still driving Clay Briscoe’s Buick, which had a backseat big as a bed.

  “Pat?”

  “Stay quiet, kiddo,” I said, but I couldn’t stop him talking as I drove to St Vincent’s.

  “I have to tell you this, Pat, this creep, he hits me, he says, ‘You’re Wynne’s kid, we know he’s a fucking Red, so you better talk.’ And I’m so mad, I say, ‘Yeah, I’m Wynne’s kid, whadya gonna make of it, he’s no fucking spy,’ and they keep shaking me, and then one of them picks up my baseball bat, the one you got me at Joe DiMaggio Day at the stadium, geez, he almost killed me. He just kept whacking me with the bat.”

  “Was he a Mob guy? Did he look like one of them?”

  “No.” More blood was seeping out of Tommy’s mouth and nose. “I don’t know what he was. Fucking Commie, you know, or something, I can’t remember, maybe he was talking some stupid foreign lingo, or maybe he was just cursing, I’m not sure,” he said, and then he was silent.

  By the time we got to St Vincent’s, Tommy was unconscious. He had suffered concussion and lost a lot of blood and I waited until they took him upstairs from emergency. One of the sisters on his floor gave me her name and a phone number. I tried to reach Tommy’s father, who wasn’t at work, or at home. I called his sister in the Bronx and gave her the message to call St Vincent’s.

  I couldn’t leave Tommy. I couldn’t do it. What difference did it make if some damn spies blew each other’s brains out; who cared. I thought, fuck everything, I’m staying, and so I smoked a pack and drank four cups of coffee and sat, looking like a bum, not having slept all night, in the waiting room.

  I must have dozed, and around ten in the morning a young doctor touched my shoulder, woke me up and told me Tommy was dead. His father had phoned to say he was on his way.

  The concussion meant a blood clot had developed; it went to his brain. Too much damage to his skinny body, too many internal injuries.

  Tommy was just twelve. He had been wearing the sweater I had given him; it was so drenched in blood the nurses had to throw it away. I waited for Tommy’s old man, and then I left.

  In my car, I started thinking about Tommy, how he told the bastards he was my kid, and I started to cry.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  October 25, ’62

  “OSTALSKY? YOU THERE?”

  He wasn’t there, wasn’t at Uncle Jack’s house on Mott Street when I got there from the hospital. It was noon. He wasn’t there. I had told him where to find a key.

  So far no blue and white Impala had appeared. Maybe Rush O’Neill had believed me. The TV played news, the crisis, the ships, the necessity for civil defense drills, how to stock our fallout shelters with canned goods.

  I thought about people I loved, and some I liked, and I knew, by the next day or the day after, I’d never see them again. Even if the Russkis turned the damn ships around, there were still the nukes already in Cuba. If I knew about it, if Rica Valdes had known, for sure our government would see this—see there were nukes aimed at Guantanamo.

  “I’m sorry I just got here, Pat.” Ostalsky had entered the house without me hearing him, and he was standing now in the doorway to the parlor, wearing a black overcoat and a gray hat. They were mine. Max looked like a priest. “I apologize for borrowing your clothes, but my own had probably been noted. I went back to your apartment to get them, forgive me, Pat.” He removed the hat and coat, and put them neatly on a chair near the door, along with a paper bag that contained his own clothes. “How is young Tommy?”

  “He’s dead. The bastards banged his brains out with a baseball bat.”

  “I am very sorry,” said Max, and I saw his eyes fill, although maybe he was just weary.

  “Where were you?”

  “Do you think your aunt would mind if I ate something?”

  “Help yourself.”

  He returned from the kitchen with bread and cheese, salami and cookies, and a bottle of Coke.

  “You’re addicted. I have to make a call.” In the bedroom I called Jimmy Garrity on Aunt Clara’s powder blue telephone.

  “Anything?” I said.

  “I can’t talk.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “I’m on my way out, I’m going to meet up with my brother who’s a firefighter. He’s saying the Commissioner is asking for almost fifty thousand volunteers to register, in case of an ‘attack’. We have to get ready. I’ll call if there’s anything.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “I can’t talk now.” He hung up in a hurry.<
br />
  “Don’t you think we should be doing something instead of watching TV,” I said to Max who was in front of the TV, finishing his bread and cheese.

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Finding the goddamn assassins. You people must know about that. Didn’t they train you?”

  “Where would we begin?” Max smiled. “Can I turn the TV louder?

  “How did you get into the house?”

  “You told me where the key would be.”

  “Christ, it’s in three goddamn days, if Valdes was right. I need some kind of weapon.”

  “You have your gun.”

  “I meant something a little more effective.”

  “This means, you would like a surface to air missile? What kind of weapon can help us, Pat? By the way, I removed the bug from your telephone. I hope that’s all right.”

  “What damn Russian put that in?”

  “I’m sorry to say, but it was an American wire.”

  It’s what I had thought. It scared me more because it was our people; it meant you couldn’t trust even your own.

  “Pat, look at the TV.”

  Placid, balding, decent Adlai Stevenson had always been considered overly cautious, even a bit of an old lady. I’m a Democrat; I voted for Adlai; I still had a Stevenson campaign badge, a shoe with a hole in the sole. He wasn’t JFK, though. “He’s not going to get anything done, he’s a decent man but he’s weak. What can he do?”

  “He is a good person,” said Max. “Watch the goddamn TV,” he barked. “Maybe something will come of this.”

  At his desk at the United Nations, Stevenson sat, hands folded, face growing tighter and angrier. The Russians stared back.

  “I don’t take orders from you, man.”

  “Sorry. I thought I saw somebody. Forget it.” Max reached for a can of Planters peanuts my uncle had left on a side table. He took a fistful and put them in his mouth. “I like these nuts.” He chewed them slowly, swallowed and lit a cigarette.

  I went to the window again. The big Plymouth was outside. The Russians again, I thought.

  But Max Ostalsky was on his feet. He hurried to the television, and squatted up close. His eyes were not good, and his glasses half-broken, and it made him squint and put his face almost on the screen. “My God,” he whispered.