by David Grand
“It was the man in that office who made the report?” Harry asked.
“That would be my guess,” the woman said.
Harry looked at the concierge and then looked across the air shaft. As he looked at the man, a vertiginous feeling overcame Harry, as if the Beekman Hotel had been rapidly submerged into the earth. “What building are we looking at?”
“The Fief Building.”
Harry’s heart started to feel as if it were engorged with blood; he felt a shock break through his body. “I’ve seen all I need to see,” he said.
The concierge looked at Harry with concern and followed him out of the room, down the hall to the elevator. Harry wondered why he hadn’t realized it before. If he had been walking from downtown and not uptown, it would have occurred to him sooner where he was. He rang for the elevator. As he watched the moving wand above the elevator’s doors, Harry suddenly felt a sense of loneliness that he had never felt before, the feeling of being trapped in the middle of an unsolvable paradox.
“The stairs, where are the stairs?” Harry asked the concierge with a sense of urgency in his voice.
“Right there,” she said, pointing a few doors down from the elevator. “But the elevator will be here in just a minute, Mr. Commissioner.”
Without another word, Harry left the concierge waiting at the elevator and made his way down the stairs with a red panic on his face. In his haste, he sent a shock through three women as they entered the stairwell on the third floor. Without apologies, he continued on his way down to the lobby, and through the lobby onto the street. He walked the short distance to the Fief Building, entered its lobby, and after looking at the directory, rode the elevator to the ninth floor. When he reached the ninth floor, he walked along the curve of the display floor, along the edge of the rotunda, and turned down a corridor leading to Julius Fief’s office.
Harry removed his badge and ID from his coat pocket and said to Julius Fief’s secretary as he approached her, “Please tell Mr. Fief that Harry Shortz is here to see him on official business.”
“I’m afraid he’s not in, Mr. Shortz.”
Harry leaned his hefty torso over the desk. “Let him know I’m here.”
The secretary, visibly intimidated by Harry, stood up from her chair and stepped back a few steps. “As I said, he’s not in.”
Harry walked passed the secretary’s desk and entered Julius Fief’s office. All along the floor were various Fief products mounted on pedestals. On the walls, ammunition, assorted by size, as if itemized like a taxonomy of cocoons, hung suspended from metal prongs. Frames, in assorted sizes, held photographs of battle scenes, of barbwired trenches, gas masks, exploding mortars, soldiers marching onto battlefields, into rivers and streams; wounded marchers marched passed roadside carnage, mass graves, fields blurred with white crosses; liberation marchers; celebratory marchers; marchers on ships; ancient marchers, intricate etchings of thumb-sized, palm-sized marchers, marching onto Troy.
As Fief’s secretary said, Julius Fief wasn’t in.
Harry turned around and walked past Fief’s secretary in a silent rage. He made his way around the rotunda, back to the elevator bank. He rode the elevator to the lobby and started back downtown to his office through the dense crowds spilling into the street and fighting for a place on the sidewalk like scared zoo animals afraid to run free from their cages.
Chapter 14
When Gloria Lime returned home from Jack’s Basement Tavern, Boris Lardner’s brother, Sidney, a disheveled man wearing a couple days’ growth on his face and a loosened coffee-stained tie, stood in her apartment doorway reading The Kaiser’s Cat: A War Memoir, by Harry Shortz.
“I seen that book in the store window the other day,” Gloria said when she walked up and saw what Sidney was reading. “Is it true the Kaiser used to look for advice from his cat?”
“If he’d only talked to his cat, Shortz wouldn’t be the man that he is today, and Hitler would probably be some second-rate stooge somewheres.”
“I don’t get it,” Gloria said. “Is it true or isn’t it true?”
“It’s true, it’s just that the cat ain’t the cat. The Cat was Harry Shortz.”
“Harry Shortz was the cat?”
“The Cat, Glory. The Cat. The sneaky Cat who shnooked the Kaiser.”
“What? Shortz is all of a sudden a confidence man?”
“Yeah, a confidence man, a spy, whatever you want to call him.”
“The Cat?”
Sidney nodded by jutting his chin into his chest and raising his hands a little.
“I get it—the Cat. . . . I still don’t understand what he’s got to do with Hitler.”
“Never mind.”
Gloria opened her door and let Sidney Lardner follow her in. Sidney took a seat on Gloria’s sofa. Gloria lived in a small two-room apartment upstairs from her sister and brother-in-law’s candy store. She always had an ample supply of chocolate-covered cherries in a bowl when she knew Sidney was going to be by. Sidney liked to snack. He had a belly.
“Help yourself to the chocolates, Sid. I’ll only be a minute.”
Sidney stuffed a whole cherry in his mouth and wiped his fingers on his pants. “You see, this is the way it is,” he said as Gloria went into the other room and got undressed. “They never mention the invisible men. They only talk about the ones who had honorable duties and didn’t get killed. They never talk about the shameless orders. Those things they say once, then hide forever.”
“What are you going on about?” Gloria said from behind the half-open door.
“I said this book is nothing but a bunch of lies is what I said. To make a hero out of the bum, so he comes off good. So when he’s running for the Senate, he makes a big splash.”
Gloria came out in a black Chinatown robe with gold dragons running down the sleeves. She took a seat on the chair opposite Sidney, lit a cigarette, and crossed her legs.
“Over there, overseas, they accept invisible men,” Sidney continued, chewing. “The next-door neighbor’s an invisible man. The milkman’s an invisible. Groups of people are invisible crowds.”
“Sidney, what are you talking about?”
“I’m saying they’re used to it. They’re used to everybody not appearing to be what they are. People speaking out of two sides of their mouth. People saying they’re going to do something for you and then getting you arrested or kidnapped or killed. I mean, people’s people, but they’re used to people being like that over there.”
“C’mon, Sidney—the point.”
“That is the point. Over here . . . over here it’s the same story, but we think it’s a different story, see. Over here we think we can say anything we want, but the truth of the matter is . . . the truth of the matter is that a guy like Harry Shortz—war hero—big shot—can come along and turn you into something you don’t want to be. I mean, my brother, and don’t get me wrong . . . my brother was a little mixed up, but Harry Shortz, Herr Commissioner, helped make him into a bigger puzzle than he already was.”
Gloria Lime raised her eyebrows as if to say, Tell me something I haven’t already heard a million times. “I don’t want to hear it tonight, Sidney. I know the story. I don’t want to hear it. Not tonight. Really!”
“Yeah yeah,” Sidney said pathetically, waving her off with his hand. “But like I say, he wouldn’t have been so mixed up if it weren’t for Shortz. He wouldn’t have never gotten mixed up with the likes of Roth and Mann if he weren’t forced into that. If he weren’t forced into being one of Shortz’s seeing-eye dogs, he wouldn’t have done that.”
“You can’t prove that, Sidney, and you know you can’t.”
“I can’t prove it, but I knew my brother. He was mixed up, but he had smarts.”
“C’mon, Sidney, even if I can’t get you to shut up, it’s been too long already to be going on about this. And besides, you know I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth. You don’t see what’s in front of your face. Forget what’s invisib
le.”
“No, you listen here. My brother wasn’t the kind of man they made him out to be in the papers.”
“How do you know? How do you know what anybody really is?”
“I knew my brother. And he wasn’t no third-rate stooge that’d turn on the likes of Mann and Roth, even with the likes of Harry Shortz breathing down his neck. He wasn’t that stupid. Ever since we were kids, he knew what was what.”
“You known me since we were kids, right? You think you know me?”
Sidney paused and looked into Gloria’s face through the cigarette smoke. “I like to think so, Glory.”
“Suppose I said I got strong feelings for the communists? Suppose I said that?”
“You got feelings for communists, Glory?” Sidney said with his voice pitched high on “communists.”
“I’m not saying I do or don’t, Sidney. I’m saying, suppose. Then what? Then that might make me what? What would that make me in that crooked mind of yours, Sidney?”
Sidney didn’t say anything. He just looked at Gloria with his sad eyes. Sidney did have sad eyes, big bovine eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Sidney! You’re the most ridiculous . . .” Gloria Lime snuffed her cigarette out and walked to the kitchen. She poured a drink from a bottle on top of the icebox and then walked back into the living room.
“Look,” she said, standing before Sidney with her drink in hand, “you want to know what happened, or what?”
“Yeah, I want to know what happened,” Sidney said. “What do you think I’m here for? But Glory . . . Glory, you ain’t no communist, are you?”
“No, Sidney, I ain’t a communist. I’m Gloria Lime. I live on Bauer Street above my sister’s candy store and I haven’t had a date in over six months. That’s who I am, Sidney, I’m a lonely girl living above a lot of chocolate-covered cherries, all right?”
“You ain’t had a date in six months?” Sidney said, as if he were heartbroken.
“No, I ain’t had a date in six months. And you can drop it now, thank you.”
“I’ll take you somewheres, Glory.”
“Sidney! You heard me.”
“Yeah, all right.”
“So anyways . . . Where was I?”
“You weren’t anywhere yet.”
“I was down at Fuller House this morning is where I was when I saw Victor coming down the stoop.”
“Did he see you?”
“No, he didn’t see me. I stood in the doorway where you told me to stand and I kept my distance. . . . But I wasn’t the only one following him. He had a couple of big lugs after him too. I think he seen the two of them.”
“Who were they?”
“How am I supposed to know? Big dopey-looking guys in suits. They had anvils for heads. I never seen ’em before.”
“Did they see you?”
“I don’t know, Sid. I know for pretty certain that I ain’t invisible like the rest of the nobodies in your head. But what I did was—they followed him, so I followed them.”
“So where’d you all go?”
“It’s all here,” Gloria said as she reached for her purse. She took out a piece of paper with all the stops written on it.
Sidney looked over the list.
“He went over to Jack’s?”
“Yeah, the two of us.”
“You let him see you?”
“Yeah, I let him see me. I was freezing my behind off the way this crazy bum was walking around like a zombie in the bitter cold. . . . Besides, Jack knows me there. Everybody knows me there. It’s not like it was anything suspicious that I’d show up for an afternoon drink.”
“What happened to the guys who were following him?”
“I don’t know what happened to them. They disappeared all of a sudden. But then these two new dopes came in as I was leaving to meet you.”
“What they look like?”
“Cops. They were Narcotics. I seen ’em up at the club.”
“You catch their names?”
“No.”
“They talk to him?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I was on my way out.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No, I didn’t talk to him. But I did run into Freddy Stillman.” Gloria uncrossed her legs, recrossed them, then smiled. “Freddy I talked to.”
“What did Victor do?”
Gloria rolled her eyes. “Nothing. He just sat there. That’s all he did all day. He wandered. He talked. He wandered. He sat. End of story.”
Sidney sat with his legs open and his hands on his thighs, shaking his head. “That’s it? That’s all you can tell me?”
“What . . . you’re disappointed?”
“I just don’t know what to make of it. The old man, the cops, the woman, and the kid?” Sidney squeezed his nose with his fingers.
“I don’t know what you expected, Sid. The poor slob just got out. He’s got a lot of catching up to do. You’ll figure it all out, I’m sure. In the meanwhile, put the money on the table and scoot. I want to get some rest before I go to work.”
“All right,” Sidney said, reaching into his pocket. “All right. Take the money. Go ahead.” Sidney reluctantly spread some cash out on the table.
“If you don’t like parting with your doubloons, Sidney, I don’t know why you didn’t just do it yourself.”
“I got my reasons.” Sidney stood up, still looking at his money. “What did Freddy have to say?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
“He didn’t say nothing about nothing? You said you talked.”
“He’s taking me out tomorrow night, if you really want to know.”
“I figured.”
“Dinner and a movie at the Castaway.”
“Fancy that.”
“It was my idea.”
“So then, you still have it for him after all this time?”
“It’s none of your business, Sid.”
“Even with that ex-wife of his on his mind? Even after all the trouble you caused him with his ex-wife? Breaking up his marriage the way you did?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m just lookin’ out.”
“You’re just jealous is more like it.”
“I can’t be jealous?”
“C’mon, already.” Gloria laughed. “You and me, Sid? Get it out of your head already. You’ll live longer. Besides, I could never fit in there with all the invisible men running around.”
“Fine, all right, you go ahead and laugh, Glory.” Sidney’s eyes began to swell a little. “But one of these days . . . one of these days you’ll come to your senses.” Sid nearly started to choke up.
“Oh, Sid,” Gloria said more compassionately. “Really, you gotta get it out of your head, honey. You’re tormenting yourself. With me. With Boris . . .” Gloria stopped speaking and looked at Sidney with some concern. “It just doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I am what I am,” Sidney said. “I can’t help feeling what I feel.” He turned away from Gloria and walked to the door. “I’ll talk to you soon, Glory.”
“All right, Sidney. Good night.”
Gloria went to the door and watched him walk down the dimly lit stairs until he was out of sight. When she shut the door, she reclined on the couch, popped the last chocolate-covered cherry in her mouth, and then counted her money.
When Sidney stepped out in front of the darkened window of the candy store beneath Gloria’s apartment, he walked down the quiet tree-lined block of Bauer Street to the corner, where he took a seat at the counter of Ledig’s Coffee Shop. Right as he sat down, a thick man with doltish features stood up from a nearby table and sat down next to him.
The man was well-dressed and well-manicured, his hair combed back with a healthy serving of brilliantine that made it look like he was wearing black leather on his head.
He placed an envelope on top of the counter and smiled at Sidney. Sidney, seeing the man smiling at him, swiveled around on his stool to see if there was someon
e behind him, then looked back at the man. “You the one who called and told me Ribe was out of jail?” Sid asked.
“That’s me,” the man said in a strikingly damp guttural voice. “Benny Rudolph.”
Sid shook his hand. “You don’t sound so well,” Sid said.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“You said you had something interesting to tell me, about Boris’s murder.”
“I surely do,” Benny Rudolph said, his eyes keen, studying Sidney’s face as though he were sizing him up. “But first things first. You like doughnuts? The doughnuts are good. You want a doughnut?”
Sidney’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m getting you a doughnut and some coffee. I think you need a doughnut and a little coffee before we get started. Miss . . .” Benny waved down to the end of the counter by the cash register. An old waitress with a stacked head of hair and a cranky look on her face walked over. “Give us a few chocolate doughnuts. . . . Coffee?” he asked Sid.
Sid nodded.
“And two coffees.”
“Who are you?” Sid asked as the waitress stuck her pen in her hair and walked away.
“Don’t concern yourself with that,” Benny Rudolph said, smiling.
“Why shouldn’t I if I’m going to trust whatever it is you have to say to me?”
“Because what I’ve got to say to you doesn’t require anything from you other than that you listen and look and use a little common sense, that’s why. You knowing who I am would only get in the way of that. Understood?”
The waitress walked over with the doughnuts and coffee. Sidney grimaced at her as he attempted a smile. He ripped one of the doughnuts in half and started eating.
“Today’s kind of a big day, Sid,” Benny said, smiling again, this smile a bit of a revelry. “It’s the kind of day that all of a sudden makes everything you believe, all the truth that you’ve held close to your heart, change into something you don’t recognize.” Benny started talking with his hands, as if he was polishing a car. “It’s kind of like a rose ain’t a rose after all, it’s kind of like all the furniture getting rearranged in your apartment and you can’t find your favorite pillow to rest your head on.”
