“That was just to break the news. This time they’ll bring their paper and pencils.”
A voice could be heard squawking over the intercom. “All right,” Barbara said, then looked to me and nodded.
Kurt Weissman leapt to his feet; he looked ready to scurry into Anne Frank’s attic. “We should go, Ilse. Soon … now.”
And then the doorbell sounded.
They were plainclothes, Homicide. Lieutenant Eddie Breen and Sergeant Dick O’Malley. I figured Breen to be about forty, although his bland pockmarked kisser could have been ten years older or younger than that. It just didn’t matter. O’Malley thought he was a young blond dreamboat, and would have qualified but for a left eye that wandered and some persistent acne on his forehead. He wore a handkerchief in the pocket of his houndstooth jacket, which he straightened as soon as he got a good look at Barbara Stern.
Breen cleared his throat. “I apologize for the intrusion; I realize it’s terribly early in the morning and you folks have been through a great deal already.”
The Weissmans introduced themselves, Kurt again emphasizing his bona fides as a dry cleaner, his concern for the welfare of the Stern family, and his need to get adequate rest before another day of Martinizing. He and Use backed out of the apartment like Abbott and Costello in a ghost picture, Kurt never taking his eyes off the cops. Use shook her head at me as if we had a secret compact, then loudly shut the door. I could hear their footsteps echoing down the hallway, and then Use’s raised voice as she railed against her overmatched mate.
The two cops took their coats off and helped themselves to coffee, before seating themselves in a most gingerly fashion on the cane-backed chairs that flanked the couch. The chairs appeared fragile; the two homicide bulls did not. Hilde and Barbara huddled close to each other on the couch, and I remained standing, as I usually do in the presence of trained law enforcement professionals.
“We know this is a terrible ordeal for all of you,” O’Malley added. He and Breen were playing good-cop/good-cop. “So we don’t want to overstay our welcome. We’d just like to pull together a few facts to help us get started on our investigation and then we’ll be out of your hair and on our way as quickly as possible.”
Hilde shrugged. “Who can sleep anyhow? You ask what you ask.”
The cops didn’t quite know how to play that, so they simply nodded. O’Malley looked over at Barbara and nervously rubbed his wedding band, as if hoping it would disappear. Breen straightened the crease in his pants and eyeballed me.
“And you’re …?”
“Jack LeVine, capital V. Private investigator, 1630 Broadway. If you’d like my card …” I fished through my sports jacket.
Breen threw an inquiring look Hilde’s way.
“Mrs. Stern, there was really no need to hire an investigator.”
“She didn’t hire me,” I told Breen. “Her husband did.” I found a card and handed it to the pockmarked cop. “Earlier this week.”
“Why?” Breen asked me, then regretted it. He looked uneasily at Hilde, as if assessing, and immediately dismissing, the possibility of marital hanky-panky.
“He had a professional concern.”
“Things were good between you and your husband?” O’Malley asked Hilde.
“Things?” Hilde looked as blank as if O’Malley were speaking in Swahili.
“Your marriage.”
“He was my husband. Of course I loved him.”
“Recent arguments, disagreements?”
Barbara jumped in with both feet.
“Are you joking?” she asked the hapless homicide dick. “My father was shot to death! This wasn’t some domestic squabble, for crissakes!”
“Barbara!” Hilde was clearly appalled by her daughter’s fearlessness. She glanced nervously at the door. Like her late husband, she was always on the alert for the sudden, spectral arrival of storm troopers.
“You see my mother,” Barbara continued. “I mean, do you actually think for one instant that she’s capable—”
“Certainly not”—O’Malley wanted to stay on Barbara’s good side, which was every side—“but there’s a certain routine we have to follow….” He looked hopefully toward me for confirmation of his methodology, but I just examined my tie for gravy stains.
Breen continued applying the soft soap. “No matter how outrageous or obvious the questions may appear—”
Hilde finally tuned in to the line of questioning, as if she had just located her favorite radio station. “You think I have something to do with this?” she asked. “With a shooting?” She wasn’t angry; she just couldn’t comprehend what they were talking about,
I grabbed a jelly-filled cookie off the tray. “No they don’t, Mrs. Stern. Everybody knows what kind of a marriage you and Fritz had. They wouldn’t suspect you in a million years.” There wasn’t a nicer guy than me, not anywhere in New York at six-eighteen in the morning. “The police just have a certain protocol they have to follow. But I think, fellas, I’d wrap up the domestic strife angle pretty quick.”
Neither Breen nor O’Malley appreciated my analysis, but you could tell they weren’t going to call me on it, not right now.
“As the man said, it’s basically just a matter of protocol,” O’Malley said, glancing over at me with no great affection. “Now.” He flipped through his spiral notebook. “You mentioned earlier that your husband received a phone call at approximately nine-thirty last night and he stated that it was from a colleague. He didn’t say which colleague, did he?”
Hilde shook her head.
“No.”
“Didn’t make any indication? A name, nickname?”
“No. Nothing. He said …” Hilde looked a little vague. “It was something like, ‘Hello? Yes. Okay. If it has to be now, it has to be now.’ That he said, I definitely remember.”
“‘If it has to be now, it has to be now.’” O’Malley looked my way, as if I might have something to add. I didn’t. I rubbed my jaw and realized that I had never gotten around to shaving. The cop forged on.
“Now, it wasn’t generally a habit of your husbands to go out at all hours, was it?”
“Fritz?” Hilde just waved her hand. “Of course not. He worked nights, naturally, when the orchestra played. But when he was home, he was home.”
“He wasn’t the type of person to just step out at night, like for a walk, or to get the paper?”
“No.”
“He would usually come right home and stay home.”
“Yes,” Hilde said with some force. “That’s what I thought I said already.”
O’Malley abruptly put his coffee cup down and rose, as if suddenly restless.
“How did he appear when he left?”
“Appear?” Hilde asked.
“His manner,” Breen added helpfully. “Was he maybe a little nervous or agitated?”
“I would say he was generally a nervous individual,” Barbara said.
“Ach!” said her mother impatiently. “He wasn’t always nervous. Come on, Barbara.”
“Maybe a little subdued, then. Maybe that’s what I meant.”
“Subdued?” asked Breen. “Like down? Something troubling him recently?”
“Not down.” Barbara brushed her bangs back from her forehead. O’Malley leaned forward, his hands gripping the back of a chair; he was just hypnotized by this girl. “And understand I hadn’t seen him since I went back to school at the end of the summer. He just sounded on the phone recently …” Barbara thought better of it, sat up, and straightened her dress. “I don’t know. Stick with subdued.”
“Your father have any enemies that you know of?” Breen continued.
“Enemies? Fritz?” Hilde was incredulous. “Please.” She arose somewhat abruptly and walked into her bedroom.
“My father,” Barbara told Breen, “was really not capable of making enemies.”
“So you think this was just an accidental—”
“Let me finish.” It came out a little rougher than
Barbara had intended, and she knew it. “I just mean I want to complete this thought while it’s fresh in my mind, because I’m awfully tired and upset.… I wasn’t trying to be sassy.”
“We understand,” Breen said, and checked out his partner. O’Malley nodded with the dumb frozen attention of a farm animal.
Barbara crossed her legs and sighed. “Mr. LeVine, could I trouble you for another cigarette?”
“I got one,” O’Malley said automatically, pulling a pack of Pall Malls from his jacket. Breen instantly reached for matches, and together they serviced her, like a pair of chorus boys doing some half-assed number in a musical. She really was awfully good, I had to say, and not just for a twenty-one-year-old.
“You have to understand something about German Jewish refugees,” she began, taking a drag on her cigarette. “As far as they’reconcerned, they’ve made all their enemies already, okay? Made them for life. From an accident of birth. The ones who were lucky enough to get safely out of Europe never wanted to make another enemy again in their lives, sometimes to a fault. In fact, often to a fault, I would say.”
Hilde came out of the bedroom holding a photograph and a glass of water.
“Here.” She handed the photo to the two cops. “Here is the big criminal with all his enemies.”
“We didn’t want to imply …” O’Malley sat back down and examined the photo with Breen. I walked over and eyeballed it over their wide shoulders. It was a snapshot taken somewhere in the country, the rolling hills in the background indicating a Catskill or Berkshire setting, and it showed Fritz Stern seated in an Adirondack chair, a small and wary smile on his face, his right hand wrapped around what looked like a glass of lemonade.
“That’s fresh lemonade,” Hilde said, as if reading my mind. “I made it every afternoon. It made him so happy, why not do it.”
“Looks like a very fine man,” Breen said.
“I can vouch for that,” I said. “He was modest, mild-mannered. An Old World gentleman. Described himself to me as ‘high-strung,’ his little joke being in that he was a fiddler.”
“He was too good,” Hilde said, taking the photograph from the cop’s hands. “Too good for his own good.”
Fritz Stern’s widow headed back to her bedroom, walking more quickly than before. This time she closed the door, and then we heard some crying. Not wailing, nothing too operatic or Mediterranean; just an icy gust of misery blowing across Hilde Stern’s life as this new and altogether frightening day began. Barbara listened in silence for a few moments, as if considering whether or not to go comfort her mother, then just sighed and continued her narrative.
“What I’m getting to is that these people, these refugees, are virtually incapable of making enemies because they’re incapable of any kind of confrontation. Their experience of anger and what it might bring was so terrifying, so permanently terrifying, that they can only think this: ‘If I make someone angry—’ Forget that. ‘If the wrong person even knows I’m alive, I could get myself packed into a boxcar and sent off to a concentration camp.’”
“I know it was rough,” O’Malley offered. “I saw the newsreels.”
Barbara stared at him as if awaiting a translation. “Yeah,” she finally said. “It was very rough. So there’s no way most of these people wanted to get themselves even noticed, much less start pissing other people off. That’s what I’m getting to in terms of enemies. My father was not a mouse, that’s not what I’m saying, far from it”—her eyes started brimming over again—“but he was not a man who could go out and actually make an enemy. Okay?” The tears ran down her cheeks. From her bedroom, Hilde’s crying grew louder; in the other bedroom, Linda lay in her own grief. There wasn’t much that either I or the two homicide dicks could say to make any of this better. I turned to the two bulls and made a clerical gesture with my hands.
“Fellas … this has been a very long night for these folks.”
Breen and O’Malley shook their heads solemnly and stood up.
“Yeah,” said Breen. “Ma’am, this is where we can be reached. Anything comes up, anything you need.” He handed Barbara his card. “Anything,” he repeated significantly.
“We both can be reached there,” O’Malley added, patting Barbara’s hand. He was about as subtle as a rash, but Barbara didn’t seem to notice.
“Thank you.” She took the card and dried her eyes. The two cops went to the door and looked at me as if I were supposed to leave with them; when I didn’t make a move to go, Breen threw me a little nod and I walked over to him and his partner. They both held their hats in their hands and spoke in the general direction of the floor.
“I don’t expect you to tell us everything you know, pal,” Breen said, “but let me remind you that this is a murder case.”
“Hey, I’m as anxious as you to find out what the hell happened,” I told them. “This was a good guy with a good family. But I just got here myself, believe me. Maybe you can help me—where exactly was he shot?”
“They found him in a stripped Mercury coupe on Tenth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street,” O’Malley told me. “Two shots in the head at close range.”
“Sounds like a professional job.”
“Most likely.” Breen raised an eyebrow. “Any mob connections here? Somebody he knew, an associate …”
“Fellas, far as I know the guy was as clean as my grandmother. Maybe cleaner. He was a violinist, for crissakes.”
“What he hired you for …”
“Wouldn’t lead me to think about a mob hit in any which way.”
“But it wasn’t a domestic thing.”
“Guys …” I tried to shrug helplessly.
“Okay,” Breen said. “You can play this as cute as you want right now. But sooner or later you have to help us.”
“I’ll say what I always say in these circumstances—and you can ask around about me, call Joe Egan in the Sunnyside Precinct—I’ll help you when I have something to help you with. Okay?”
The two palookas looked at each other and put their hats on, just like they learn to do in police school.
“Okay,” said Breen. “You’ll be hearing from us.”
“I’ll put out my best china.”
They reluctantly exited on their own, taking a last longing look at Barbara Stern. When the door closed, I walked toward the living room window.
“I’ll be on my way shortly,” I told Stern’s daughter. “I just want to make sure those two yokels aren’t hanging around outside.”
“No rush,” Barbara said. She reached around and tied her hair into a ponytail, fixing it with a rubber band. I was always awed by how easily women could do that. “You don’t feel like jousting with them any further?”
“I’m not sure that was jousting. It was more like free-style wrestling.” Breen and O’Malley were down the street now, stretching their arms and backs, as if they had just completed some enormous physical task. O’Malley opened the door to a black Ford; Breen, the senior of the two, took the shotgun seat, after taking a final peep at Fort Washington Avenue. “I’m too tired to play with them. Also, I have nothing to tell them.”
“Nothing you’re willing to tell them,” Barbara said.
“If you want to be a stickler about it …”
“You don’t want to tell them about Toscanini?”
“Those two? It would only confuse them.”
She managed a smile, a small one, but still sufficient to reduce any heterosexual male to eternal servitude.
“Trust me,” I told her. “I’ll handle the musical end of this.”
“Mr. LeVine …” She started to speak, then bit her lip, strolled over to the window, and stared out onto the street, holding on to a lace curtain.
“What?”
“I’m just thinking, and maybe this is stupid … should we stay in this apartment? My mothers going to be frightened, and Linda, too. Frightened to death.”
“You can’t blame them,” I told her.
“But is there any reason
in fact …?”
“No.”
“You really don’t think so.”
“If I thought so, I wouldn’t let any of you stay here. I recommend, however, that you know as little as possible.”
“Because what I don’t know can’t hurt me.”
“Precisely. Ignorance is your shield at the present time. You’re going to have enough on your plate here; your mother, your sister, they all need your strength.”
“I know.” Barbara looked tired and I told her so. She nodded, a little absently. “I better take something or I’ll never sleep. My mind is so crowded, is the thing. Every time I feel tired, these images appear in my mind, these thoughts.… I can’t stop them.”
“I’m sure …”
“What was he thinking those last few seconds, what did he look like when he saw the gun, what was his exact expression, was he terribly frightened, did it hurt?” She took off her shoes. “It’s just so goddamn unfair, that’s what I can’t stop thinking about. Of all the people, my poor father….”
“It stinks, no question. But it happened, so we have to deal with it.” I walked to the door, hat in hand. “Get some rest.”
“You’ll keep me posted?”
“How long are you going to be around?” I asked her.
“Till you figure this out. No way I go back to school until you do.”
“Well, that’s an incentive for me, then. You gotta get your degree, right?”
She stood up, her shoes in her hand, a gesture that stirred both lust and longing: a woman, a home, a hearth.
“I suppose. College seems really irrelevant right now.”
“I’m sure, but that feeling won’t last forever. What are you, a senior, a junior?”
“A sophomore. I took a few years off after high school; there was a big world out there and I wanted to see it as soon as possible.” I had the feeling there were volumes left unsaid, with copious illustrations. “I was in a hurry, I suppose. I don’t regret it.”
“You were born in Germany, I take it?”
“Yeah. No accent, I know.”
“None. I never would have guessed.”
“I took acting lessons for a few years, got rid of whatever trace there was.” She pretended to yawn. “I’m awfully tired.”
Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 5
