Eye Wit

by Hazel Dawkins

  Alerted by the Germans, Brazilian authorities followed through quickly, locating families who had sheltered Mengele and discovering the aliases under which Mengele had been living. Eventually, their investigations led them to Mengele’s grave at Embu das Artes (Land of the Arts), with its headstone that read: “Wolfgang Gerhard.” The remains in that grave were exhumed and identified as Mengele’s by comparison to his dental records, an identification made certain by subsequent DNA testing of the remains in 1992.

  Interestingly, none of Mengele’s surviving family members have ever claimed Mengele’s remains. To this date, even to his own family, Josef Mengele remains a pariah.

  Not so with Mengele’s possessions, however, which were sought after—not by his family, but by art collectors and ghouls alike.

  Sometimes, as my Brigitta and I later discovered with Marco Fellini, a collector and a ghoul are one and the same.

  23

  “We should wait for forensics,” Zoran said to Yoko, after they had exited the Fellini townhouse. “I also want to take another look at the archery run on the roof.”

  “Okay,” Yoko said. “I’m sure forensics can find Marco Fellini’s study on their own, though. What is it you want to see in the archery run?”

  “I will explain when we are on the roof,” he replied, heading back up the steps to the front door of the brownstone and pressing the door buzzer.

  “Yes? Who is it?” Sophia Fellini said over the speaker. “What do you want?”

  Yoko noted that the speaker reproduced Sophia’s voice with remarkable clarity. Did Bose make intercoms too? She looked up, expecting to see a camera focused on the doorstep, but didn’t locate one. Perhaps they’d installed an incredibly small unit, cunningly hidden in a strange place. She glanced around but couldn’t spy a lens.

  “Detective Zeissing, Mrs. Fellini. May Doctor Kamimura and I come in again?”

  The door lock clicked, and Zoran opened the door. He and Yoko entered the hallway and saw Sophia Fellini standing at the top of the stairs. “I thought you were done, Detective. What is it? I’m really quite busy.”

  “I require another visit to the archery run, Mrs. Fellini. Also I need to be here when the forensics team arrives, which should be very soon.”

  Right on cue, the door buzzer sounded. Yoko looked questioningly at Sophia Fellini, who shrugged. “Oh, go ahead, Yoko. See who it is. If it’s Mormon missionaries, please shoot them.”

  “I am certain that will be the forensics experts, Mrs. Fellini,” Zoran said.

  Yoko opened the door and greeted the new arrivals. “Glad you could make it so quickly, guys,” she said to Amy Claussen and Kohichi Horiuchi, two of her favorite CSI types. As always, Amy was the leader of the team. Amy’s partner today, Kohichi Horiuchi, wasn’t her usual partner. Kohichi’s specialty was reconstructing crime scenes for the one-three, and other precincts as well, rather than field forensics. Still, Yoko knew Kohichi liked to keep his CSI credentials current and sometime filled in when the other CSI techs were tied up.

  Perhaps, Yoko thought, he just wanted to be around me. Kohi-san’s crush on Yoko was pretty much one-sided these days. They’d had a few dates when Yoko had broken up with Dan months back.

  “I’m not sitting home twiddling my thumbs if you’re so involved with work you can’t call when you’re canceling,” Yoko had warned Dan. “Forget your non-dates. They’re worse than any date from hell.”

  A week later, Dan blew it.

  Yoko didn’t hesitate. Hell, she’d never been sure if Dan was Mr. Right. She wasn’t sure he was Mr. Wrong but she’d had enough. Dan wasn’t going to charm the socks off her any more with his Irish blarney.

  “We’re done, Daniel Riley.”

  The one-three grapevine didn’t waste time sharing the news with Kohichi, whose yearning for Yoko was known to every guy at the precinct, a few of whom shared his feelings.

  “She’s madder than a wet hen, Kohichi. Here’s your chance.”

  Ever the diplomat, Kohichi waited a day then telephoned Yoko’s office.

  “If you’re free on Thursday,” he’d asked, not making any reference to the split with Dan, “I’ve tickets to a concert in the park.”

  Kohichi was a really nice guy but the chemistry wasn’t there for Yoko. The grapevine relayed that news as well, this time to Dan. The wily detective didn’t start by begging in person for another chance. First, a bike messenger brought a massive bunch of flowers. The next day, two jars of South River miso, aduki bean and red pepper, two of Yoko’s favorites, arrived. By now, the bicyclist was grinning. Each delivery had the same note.

  “Forgive the fool who thinks you’re the bee’s knees. Change is possible and it’s here to stay.”

  The next evening, Dan arrived at Yoko’s apartment with a bottle of sake and a tray of freshly made sushi.

  “It’s California roll,” he said. “Imitation crab, no raw fish, but it’s a start.”

  It’s true what they say about make-up sex.

  The one-three didn’t have to be told Yoko had relented and taken Dan back. Maybe it was osmosis, maybe Dan’s switch from hangdog to happy. Even so, for the longest time, Kohichi’s dreams had clearly not wavered from Yoko. Had he now shifted his crush to Amy Claussen? That would be nice, Yoko thought. Then felt just a tiny pang of jealousy—no, not jealousy, a pang of loss.

  Kohichi carried a large aluminum case containing the tools and chemicals the team would need to dust for fingerprints and collect latent fibers from the Ishi display case in the study.

  “I’ll show you the way, guys,” Yoko said, all business now. She led the two technicians up the stairs.

  Sophia Fellini stood aside as they passed. Zoran trailed the crew up the stairs, nodding to Sophia Fellini as he reached the head of the stairs, then turned towards the stairwell to the roof. “I do not expect to be long, Mrs. Fellini. In all probability, I should be finished in five or six minutes.”

  Curious, Sophia Fellini followed him, pausing at the side door of her husband’s study just long enough to hear Yoko instructing the forensics team to be sure to include the brackets that once held hunting arrows. The widow continued on upstairs, reaching the roof just as Zoran finished dusting his shoes with a wipe. She watched him fold the dirty wipe into a tiny square which he then wrapped with a clean wipe, tucking the packet in an outside suit coat pocket.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing?” she said.

  “These are very nice shoes,” Zoran replied. “I wish to keep them clean. It is difficult.”

  “You’re a very strange man, Detective.”

  “I do not see what is strange about keeping oneself tidy,” he replied, turning and walking towards the archery run. “The world is quite dirty, and cleanliness is…” He looked down at his shoes and spotted more dust accumulating on them, “…next to impossible.”

  “I will leave you to your tidiness, then, Detective.” Sophia walked towards the small building that housed the stairs to the roof. As she reached for the door, she glanced back and saw Zoran staring out into space from a location about halfway between the entrance to the archery run and the shooting position. His hands opened and closed at his sides as if he was grasping something. The detective was oblivious to her staring.

  The door swung open, bumping Sophia’s arm as she reached for the door herself. She teetered for a second or two then recovered her balance.

  Yoko stepped out onto the roof. “Sorry, Sophia. I didn’t know you were here. Did the door hit you?”

  “My fault,” Sophia said. “I was just on my way down. Do you think you and this…this strange little man will be finished soon? I really do need to get on with my day, so much to cope with, now that Marco’s…” she hesitated but finally got the word out, “dead.”

  “I’m sure Detective Zeissing will be done soon. He said he just wanted to verify a couple things.”

  “Like what? What on earth is he doing?”

  “I have no idea, Sophia. But I’m sure it’s importa
nt.” Yoko looked past Sophia to see Zoran walk quickly over to the parapet at the northeast corner of the roof, where he gazed at the balloon wreckage that was still hanging from the face of the SUNY Optometry College.

  “Honestly, Yoko. I don’t understand how all this aimless wandering is helping anyone find my husband’s killer.”

  “I assure you, with Detective Zeissing, nothing is aimless. He has a national reputation for figuring things out. Believe me, he knows what he’s doing.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Sophia said. “Do tell me what he finds, besides dust on his shoes.” She watched, a critical expression on her face, as Yoko turned away and joined her OCD colleague.

  “Did you find what you were looking for, Zoran?”

  “Yes, I did.” He looked down at his shoes, frowned, then smiled. “Now I know exactly what happened.”

  24

  I must tell you more about my Brigitta, but it is difficult. When I stammer and falter, bear with me. I’ve not come to terms with losing my love. I cannot do that. And will not. That I will join her soon is my consolation.

  Where to begin? How can I help you understand the excitement, the satisfactions, the shared joys and sorrows—twenty-three years of our souls united? To say they were the best years of my life is but a cliché, however true. The cliché holds for her too, I think. I must assume that, I have to. Do you understand?

  Even Brigitta’s last days, those thirty rapid days between diagnosis of her esophageal cancer and the moment her eyes closed and her breathing stopped on January 5th, were vital to us. Dominated as they were by sorrow and longing, those last days encapsulated our marriage, as if we were in fast rewind and replay mode. They defined us, and they set in motion the final acts of my life.

  So let us speak of dance. Dance brought Brigitta into my life, and dance was still there at the end, right up until her final hospitalization in Lucerne on January 1, 2009. On the eve of that cruel New Year’s Day, we listened to Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances at home. When Dance #10 played—the beautiful “allegretto grazioso” (rapidly, gracefully)—we joined hands and waltzed ourselves into the new year, our living room our dance hall.

  “I’m still here, Hans,” she said. “I’ll always be with you, meine liebe.”

  Dance formed the core of my Brigitta’s soul. All kinds of dance, but especially dancing to the driving beat of fast jazz, of rhythm and blues, the joyous abandon of swing in particular. That night in Lucerne, we managed a final rapid and graceful waltz.

  When I had first met Brigitta on that wonderful mid-winter afternoon twenty-four years earlier, she too was a student at NYU, studying music and art history to fortify her degree in education. She was in her second year, I in my fourth. I would graduate in June with a B.S. in mathematics and a teaching certificate, and I planned to support my bride by teaching in a New York City public school while Brigitta finished her degree. If we needed more income, I would play my fiddle in Soho clubs.

  It was a good plan, level-headed and sensible for newly-weds: I would win our bread and in two years Brigitta would join me as a teacher, showing junior high kids there was so much more to music and dance than Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Ice T’s gangsta rap. All in all a very good plan that didn’t stand a chance. Life had other plans for us.

  For the next ten years, Brigitta danced, every day and nearly every night, losing interest in her classroom studies. Why would she waste her time learning how to teach kids about dance when she was already teaching dance at the Cat Club with Frankie Manning?

  Who was I to argue? I was right there with her, playing my fiddle instead of teaching math. To tell the truth, we didn’t really need any teaching income from me. Frankie was generous as an employer and disbursed his instruction fees more than fairly.

  Brigitte became Manning’s most favored dancing partner and his number one assistant for his choreography commissions. To this day, “Black and Blue,” co-choreographed by Manning and five others, is acclaimed as the high-water mark of Swing. The musical opened to wide acclaim in Paris in early 1985, then opened on Broadway later that spring to rave reviews, its choreography only slightly revised.

  Frankie Manning and the other four co-choreographers all received Tonys that year for their work. Brigitta didn’t, because her help with the Broadway revisions wasn’t credited anywhere, but Frankie knew the value of her work.

  In 1992, when Spike Lee called upon Manning to teach Denzel Washington’s “Malcolm X” some Lindy hop moves for a dancing scene, Brigitta was Manning’s dance partner—and Denzel’s—during Denzel’s lessons on the sound stage.

  In 1995, Brigitta and I left New York, summoned home to Lucerne, Switzerland, by my mother, Luminitsa, and my ailing father, Jurgen. Papa and Mama wanted to turn the family business over to me and Brigitta. It was a family thing. A Gypsy family thing.

  When we arrived, Mama was even more insistent. “We need you, Hans. Ist time, und no one else will do so well,” she said. “Your English ist more fluent than Jurgen’s and mine own, und your German ist annähernd so gut (nearly as good).”

  She paused a moment, smiled at Brigitta and me. “Your Français, well… You und Brigitta will work on your Français, no?”

  Brigitta jumped in. “I would love to learn French.” She smiled at me. “Und Hans too. Right, meine liebe?”

  Then, the clincher, from Mama. “You always did love the flying, remember, Hans? Und the apartment in Château-d’Oex ist big enough for all of us—und our home here in Lüzern ist, too.”

  Mama turned to Brigitta. “You’ve seen the Prix de Lausanne and the Béjart Ballet Lausanne? Such beauty, those dancers. The Prix is in January, also the balloon festival.”

  So that’s how we came to live in Switzerland, how I resumed my life as a Swiss Gypsy and how Brigitta and I began to create a new life for ourselves as impresarios of the hot-air balloon. We owned forty-eight of them and earned a good living for ourselves and for Mama and Papa, providing rides to tourists year-round in Château-d’Oex. Our grandest balloons always were aloft during the big festival in January. Balloonists from twenty countries—nearly a hundred aerostiers in all, plus thousands of enthralled enthusiasts—participated in ballooning’s premier event each January, all of them marveling at the incredible son et lumière, the nightly sound and light show.

  Château-d’Oex is in the Guinness book now. The first balloon to encircle the globe non-stop? It launched from Château-d’Oex in 1999. It took twenty days for the Breitling Orbiter and Betrand Piccard and Brian Jones to set the record. Brigitta and I helped launch them on their way.

  Ballooning has provided a bountiful life for me and my beloved Brigitta, and for my Gypsy family. We’ve kept the family business intact, even grown it. Brigitta wasn’t born a Gypsy, but she took to my heritage just as quickly and completely as she’d taken to dance. Some would say dance, like Gypsy culture, is colorful and outsized. Gaudy, even. I would say they are right, and Brigitta would agree. Isn’t that the point?

  It was difficult for Brigitta and I to leave Frankie Manning in New York, but we still saw him at least once a year for his birthday party, the annual “Frankie Fest,” held over the Memorial Day weekend for many years. We were there for his 85th birthday celebration in 1999—a sold-out party at New York’s Roseland Ballroom. A pair of his dancing shoes were placed in a showcase alongside Fred Astaire’s that year. The next year, we joined him in Tokyo. We missed Frankie’s 89th birthday, a cruise ship celebration, but we were on the ship for his 90th, when Brigitta was one of the ninety women he partnered with on the dance floor—his long-time birthday tradition of dancing with a partner for each of the years he’d been alive.

  This year, we had planned to help him celebrate his 95th birthday party, which would be the best Frankie Fest of all: a Lindy Hop over Memorial Day weekend, but neither Frankie nor Brigitta made it. Brigitta died on January 5th, Frankie on April 27th. Both Frankie and Brigitta would be happy to know that Frankie’s Fest went on as scheduled anyway, and on S
unday, May 24th, those attending tried to set a record for the Guinness book: the most people ever to dance the Shim Sham in one place.

  As I write this, I don’t know whether the Shim Shammers set the record; the folks at Guinness take a long time to ratify attempts at records.

  I don’t know if what I am about to do will get me into Guinness’ book or not, but it would be a nice bonus if it does. They would have to create a brand new category: “First person to illegally pilot a hot-air balloon across Manhattan in the wake of 9-11, killing a disciple of Satan en route.”

  25

  Yoko knew that Zoran would tell her “exactly what happened” eventually, but God, it was frustrating, tagging along behind him in silence as they followed Sophia Fellini down the stairs from the roof. When he was a kid, Zoran must have read too many Stan Lee comic books with their cliffhanger endings.

  She bit her tongue. Zoran had some reason to hold off telling her about his theory. He never did anything without a reason, like a chess master peering ten moves ahead. Yoko saw Sophia Fellini start down the flight of stairs leading to the brownstone’s first floor. Probably headed to her yoga studio.

  Zoran turned left, into Marco Fellini’s study, where Amy Claussen and Kohichi Horiuchi were still going over the Ishi display case. Yoko watched Amy apply a length of tape to a flexible prong that once secured a hunting arrow. Amy pressed the tape against the prong then carefully lifted it off and affixed it to what looked like a microscope’s slide. She tucked the slide into a slot in a plastic case and put the case in the aluminum carry case.

  “There, Kohichi,” Amy said. “I think that’s got it. Good sharp partial.”