by Lee Harris
Not that I mind it. I got Eddie ready for the rest of his day and took him down to see his daddy; then we went out. My phone calls could wait till later.
I suppose Saturday night isn’t the best time to call people but it was the only time I had left. Bernie Reskin, the teacher, was still not answering so I tried Dr. Ernest Greene. He answered the phone himself and I explained who I was.
“Yes,” he said, “Mort Horowitz said you might call. I’m afraid I don’t have much time, Ms. Bennett. And my wife and I are just going out so I can’t help you right now.”
“I’d be glad to see you at your home or at your office,” I said, “whatever is convenient for you.”
“I wish you’d just cross my name off your list. I don’t know anything. I’ve known Artie Wien all my life, but he wasn’t a special friend of mine and there’s not a lot more I can say about him.”
“If you could just spare a—”
“I’m very sorry. And I’ve got to go.”
That ended the conversation. I was disappointed, but I knew the doctor had no obligation to talk to me. His only obligation was to the police. At some point I would let Dr. Horowitz know what had happened but I didn’t want to bother him right now. Tomorrow, when I was driving through the Bronx with David Koch, I might be able to get some information out of him. And anyway, I had a full day tomorrow.
We ate breakfast early Sunday morning as we always do, and then I picked up my cousin Gene to take him to mass. Gene lives here in town at a residence for retarded adults. We’ve been buddies since we were Eddie’s age, and I try to have him to the house on weekends if I can manage it. Today wasn’t a good day for dinner, but I took him to mass, took him home and chatted with him for a while, and then went home myself. I left lunch for Eddie, knowing Jack was better at putting together food for himself than I was, and he said he would make dinner if I promised to be home for it. I promised.
I got to the Koches’ apartment house before noon, and David Koch and I went back downstairs to a waiting car. It was just a plain old black car, a Ford, I noticed, and we got in the backseat, assisted by the doorman.
“Chris, this is Sergeant Harry Holt of the NYPD.”
We exchanged hellos and I told him my husband was also a sergeant on the job.
“Oh yeah? What precinct?”
“The Six-Five.”
“Brooklyn.”
“Yes.”
“I think I ran into him at a class last year or maybe the year before. Tell him hello for me.”
I promised I would.
He drove over to the East River Drive, otherwise known as the FDR Drive, and headed north. The drive runs along the East River and changes its name to the Harlem River Drive when the river changes its name. But we exited just before all the changes, taking the Triboro Bridge to the Bronx. Mr. Koch told Harry to take the Grand Concourse instead of a highway, and we drove north along the beautiful, wide boulevard with apartment houses along both sides.
“This was once one of the finest places to live in New York,” Koch said. “It was very beautiful.”
“It looks very nice right now,” I said.
“Over to the left there is Yankee Stadium. I don’t have to tell you we were all Yankee fans. In the summer we lived and breathed baseball, even when we went away. The best thing was to find someone who lived in one of the apartment houses that overlooked the stadium. The stadium was lower in those days. They’ve added a tier on top. So you could sit on an apartment house roof and watch the game free.”
“And feel you were getting something for nothing.”
“Oh yes. We always tried. You can turn right at the next block, Harry.”
We zigzagged a little and then there we were on 174th Street and Morris Avenue, the corner they all remembered.
“Harry, turn right on Morris Avenue and see if you can park.”
Harry made the turn and slid into the only vacant spot on the block.
“That’s where Mort and I lived, right in that building across the street on the corner of 174th,” David Koch said.
It looked very ordinary, a prewar building of not very clean yellow brick. There were two women standing around and talking, but not the women of David Koch’s memory. One way or another they were all gone.
“I’ve never been up here,” Harry said.
“It isn’t much to look at any more. Back there,” he pointed to 174th Street, “everything’s changed. That used to be a bustling street with stores on both sides. In the late fifties, they built the Cross Bronx Expressway, cutting through the rock so that it’s way down below the level of the street. To do it, they got rid of half of 174th, so it’s just a shadow of what it used to be. At this point, it’s one way going east. It used to be a wide, two-way street. Drive up to the corner, Harry.”
We passed some single and two family houses, neat and clean, made of brick. At the corner of 173rd, there was Mt. Gilead Baptist Church.
“That was the Mount Eden Jewish Center across the street,” Koch said, pointing to an imposing stone building with colorful graffiti along the side. “Take a left, Harry. Go up to your next left turn and take it. This was our school when we were small, P.S. 70,” he said as we passed it on our left. “Nice modern school. We even had an indoor pool.” He sounded wistful.
“This is like a little village,” I said.
“That’s just what it was. There’s a Yiddish word my mother used to use, shtetl. It means ‘little village.’ We were self-contained here. We had everything we needed. There was a candy store, a dry cleaner, drugstores, grocery stores, bakeries, a locksmith, a barber. If you didn’t like the bakery on one side of the street, you could go to the one on the other side. Park here, Harry.”
We were on Weeks Avenue, which had become a bridge after it crossed what was left of 174th Street. Koch opened the door and we got out. Railings and fencing enclosed the bridge on both sides; the fencing was to prevent people from dropping objects onto the moving cars below, a frequent New York problem. We stood at the edge and looked down onto the traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway. Even on Sunday there were trucks; even on Sunday traffic was backed up.
“This is what they did to our community,” my host said, indicating the highway far below. “They destroyed our street so that people in cars and trucks could get out of the city faster. What you’re standing on used to be the other side of 174th Street.”
We got back in the car and Harry drove to the corner, which was marked Cross Bronx Expressway although it was far above it. We went down to Morris Avenue and turned left, then left again at 174th. A Spanish flavor predominated. There were Spanish groceries, a Spanish restaurant, a Spanish travel agency. Harry stopped at a hydrant.
“In the block behind us was Gleitz’s Kosher Butcher, where my mother bought her meat. Strasberg’s Luncheonette was back there, on the corner of Selwyn Avenue. Across the street on the corner of Morris Avenue,” he pointed to the memory of the other side of the street, where now the fumes from the traffic rose in the emptiness that had once been gentle commerce, “was Ernie’s Kosher Deli. Once a week my mother would serve deli. We lived for that night. She was a great cook, but what we loved best was the salami and corned beef and hot pastrami on the best bread ever baked.”
“Did you go into Manhattan much?”
“Not much, no. My mother would take us downtown for clothes and sometimes a play on Broadway. But the truth is, we were a very provincial group of boys. We lived in the biggest city in the world and all we knew was these few square blocks. If we came from some little town in the Midwest, we couldn’t have been more unsophisticated.”
“What about Arthur Wien?”
“Yes, I guess Artie was a little different. He always seemed to know there was a world out there, a world that started with the D train and kept going.”
Harry had driven the rectangle again, crossing over the expressway, and had pulled to the curb across from David Koch’s old home on Morris Avenue.
“Where di
d he meet his first wife?”
“At City, I think. Maybe after he graduated. They were married at the Concourse Plaza. It was a great place once. It was a beautiful wedding.” He sounded depressed. Everything that was good was in the past tense. “Want to get out and walk?”
“Sure.”
We all got out, Harry staying slightly behind us. We crossed Morris Avenue to the entrance to the building he and Morton Horowitz had grown up in. He looked in the front door but all you could see was darkness. We walked to the farthest windows on the first floor to the right of the door.
“This was home,” he said. “A beautiful home in a small village.” He touched the window frame, which was not very far from the street level. “That’s my bedroom.” He stared at the curtained window for a few silent moments. “My friends used to crawl in through this window in the summer.” He smiled. “Claremont Park is up that way. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Very nice. On a day like this you would all have been out playing in the street.”
“You’re right. We played stickball and curb ball out here. We used those sewers in the street as our bases.”
“What’s stickball?” I asked, feeling uninformed.
“You don’t have a pitcher. You toss the ball in the air and whack it with your stick. At school we played softball, but not in the street. And every now and then somebody’s mother would stick her head out of the window and call for her son who would die of embarrassment. That was a very Bronx thing to do. You don’t find mothers on the East Side of Manhattan calling out their windows.”
“A cultural change, perhaps.”
“Right there across the street in front of that apartment house is where the famous picture was taken. One of the boys lived there, and his father came out with the family camera and arranged us with the tall ones in back and the short ones in the front.”
“They didn’t all stay that way,” I said. “Fred Beller was in the front row but he’s a very tall man now.”
“Fred Beller? When did you see Fred Beller?”
“Yesterday. I had lunch with him after I talked to you.”
He frowned. “Fred was in town? In New York?”
“He spent a week here. His son gave him the trip as a Father’s Day present.”
“I see.”
I was sure he hadn’t heard the news before. “He doesn’t like New York very much. He said he fell in love with Minneapolis when he visited with his future wife.”
“That’s what I heard. I haven’t seen him in years.”
I decided to drop it. “What happened to the parents, Mr. Koch? Did they stay here after their children left?”
“Some did. Some began leaving in the fifties. A couple finally bought a dream house in the suburbs; one or two got an apartment in Mount Vernon, which is just north of the Bronx; some of the older ones retired to Florida or went down to Florida and started new businesses down there. One or two stayed until their children insisted they leave. After my father died, I got my mother into a co-op in Manhattan and later she went to Florida.”
Across the street a man carrying a worn leather bag, its contents poking out, walked slowly by. Although it was a warm, breezy day, he wore layers of clothes, baggy pants, a filthy jacket. His face was hairy and dirty, his hair long and unwashed.
Koch sprinted across the street and talked to him. He reached into a pocket, took out bills, and handed them to the man. Peripherally, I saw Harry Holt follow him across the street but remain behind, as good a bodyguard as anyone could want. But Koch was back on my side of Morris Avenue before Harry moved in.
“There were no homeless in those days,” he said. “The word was unknown. I hope someday it becomes unknown again, but I’m not optimistic.” He watched the man walk toward Claremont Park. “Have you had enough?”
“It’s been very interesting. Thank you.”
Harry was standing beside the car, ready to open the door for me. “You take a lot of chances, Mr. Koch,” he said.
“Not as many as he takes.”
“I guess that’s the truth.”
“Let’s drive by the park and then go back the way we came.”
When we were back on the Concourse I said, “Did Arthur Wien ever ask you for any favors or borrow money from you?”
He smiled. “I lent someone money once in my life. When I was about eighteen I worked as a waiter in the mountains. The mountains means the Catskills for anyone who comes from New York. It was tough work and not a huge amount of money, although there were nice tips. During the summer, the headwaiter asked to borrow fifty dollars from me. If I tell you that five hundred dollars today wouldn’t buy fifty dollars then, you’ll understand how much money that was. He never paid me back. I found out later that he ‘borrowed’ from all the waiters. It was how he increased his income. For me it was a rite of passage. After that summer I never lent anyone more money than I could afford to lose. And I never lent money to Artie. I don’t remember his ever asking for any.”
That seemed to put that question to rest. “Tell me about Arthur Wien’s first wife,” I said.
“I have her address if you want to see her. She lives on the West Side. Come upstairs when we get home and I’ll give it to you.”
“Mr. Koch, you’re a lawyer. You know that the way Arthur Wien was murdered wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment whim. You don’t walk around with an ice pick in your pocket if you’re not planning to use it.”
“That’s what I would argue if I were the D.A.”
“Someone hated him. Assuming it was someone in your group—or a wife—it’s hard for me to believe no one outside the victim and his killer knew what was going on.”
“I can tell you I didn’t know.”
“Then who would?”
“You’ve got me. What my wife said to you yesterday? That Art was having an affair with a wife of one of the group? That was the first I ever heard of it.”
“Then I guess it’s the wives I should be talking to.”
He looked at me and smiled. “Maybe you will do better than the police.”
I certainly hoped so.
8
I went down to my car with the address and phone number of Alice Wien in my purse. Once again, my parking bill had been taken care of, and as it turned out, I was able to cross town and get to the Meyers’ apartment on West Eighty-sixth Street by two-thirty. I had taken an apple with me in lieu of lunch, and I ate it while sitting in the car in a free parking space on the street.
When I was finished, I wrapped the core in a tissue and walked over to Broadway to find a litter basket. Then I retraced my steps to the Meyers’ building and rang the bell.
The Meyers’ apartment was one of those huge places they built before the start of the Second World War. In New York, where rent controls from that war are still in effect, an apartment like that, if occupied by the same family since the fifties, might be less expensive than a tiny studio in a new building.
Mrs. Meyer, a small, trim woman in a black suit, the jacket open on a gray blouse, took me into an almost cavernous living room where her husband was sitting near a window, his feet up on a small ottoman. It didn’t take any medical expertise to see that this was a sick man, but the smile he gave me was healthy and genuine. He held out a hand and I shook it.
“I’m Joe Meyer. Come and sit down and make yourself comfortable. Mort told us you’d be coming. I’d get up but I’m trying to save my strength.”
“Please stay where you are. It’s a pleasure to meet both of you. I understand you’re both musicians.”
“Our whole family is,” Mrs. Meyer said.
I had gathered as much walking through the foyer. A dark, windowless area, it displayed photographs of all the Meyers together with more famous people in the music world. There was one photo of Mr. and Mrs. Meyer together with Leonard Bernstein, all three in formal dress, the bottom signed by the great conductor himself.
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “I’m afraid I missed music as
a young person.”
“It’s never too late,” Mrs. Meyer assured me. “I remember my grandfather in the last years of his life. His eyesight was terrible, but he kept a radio tuned to a music station and he was always happy.” She smiled, as though the memory gave her pleasure. “I have a little afternoon tea in the kitchen. Why don’t you two get started while I bring it in?”
Joseph Meyer watched her go. Then he turned to me. “Mort says you’re an amateur detective who does better than the police and you’re looking into the death of our friend a week ago.”
“I’ve had some success,” I admitted. “And this is a very intriguing case. It would appear that one of your group killed Mr. Wien, and from everything I’ve heard, it’s impossible to believe.”
“Absolutely impossible. We were friends. We cared about each other. We’ve known each other all our lives or practically that long.”
“What was your personal relationship with Mr. Wien, Mr. Meyer?”
“Please call us Joe and Judy. We’re very informal people as you can see from this room.” The room was surely informal. The furniture was old and comfortable and had never seen the hand of a decorator.
“Thank you.”
“Artie and I. Well, we go back to about third grade. Artie was always the one the teacher would use as an example of how the rest of us should write. You know, you’d get an assignment: ‘How I Spent My Vacation,’ and we’d sit and write some dumb, boring paragraph about where we went and what we did when we got there. Artie didn’t do anything that was more interesting than what the rest of us did, but it sure sounded good when the teacher read it back to us.” He smiled. “He had the touch. The words just did what they were supposed to do; they flowed.”
“I’m an English teacher myself,” I said. “But I’ve never taught children.”
“Well, I’ll have to watch my grammar then.” He stopped and took a breath, as though the talk had tired him.
“Were you special friends with him?”
“I’d say we were. He came to my concerts and I read his books.”
