by Lee Harris
“I can’t believe this has happened.”
“Alice, something in those pages may give us a clue to the person who killed Arthur.”
“How is that possible? This was written forty years ago. We’ve all lived two-thirds of our lives since then.”
“I’d like you to try hard to remember what was in those pages.”
“It’s impossible. I can’t do it.”
“You don’t have to do it now.” I stood. The time for me to leave was right now. Alice needed to be alone, needed to calm herself and restore her self-confidence. “Just think about it. No one knows that book the way you do. You lived and breathed it. You told me yourself you were able to quote pages of it at a time.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you can read over these last hundred pages or so and the missing incident will come back to you.”
“Maybe, yes.” She pulled another chair from the table, the chair at the head, and sat down. “I’m sorry, Chris. This is so upsetting for so many reasons. You’ve been very nice and I know what you’re doing is important. I can’t explain how I feel. It’s as if Art cheated me and I’ve just found out about it.”
“He didn’t cheat you. I think before the book was submitted he called the person that he wrote about and said, ‘Do you mind if I put in that time that you did so-and-so?’ And the man said, ‘Don’t you dare.’ That’s what happened. And for whatever reason, he didn’t tell you.”
“He didn’t want me to know. That’s why he didn’t tell me.” She was half angry and half hurt.
“Did you ever read the book after it was published?”
“No. The last time I read it was when I went over the galleys with Art. He read them first and I read them afterward. I was a better proofreader then he was, and I picked up typos he had missed.”
“And you didn’t notice these missing passages.”
“The editor had taken a lot of things out. Whatever this was, it was just one of those things to me, something that slowed the story down or wasn’t relevant.”
“I’m going to go now.” I started to put the pencil manuscript together when she stopped me.
“Leave it. I’ll read at the table tonight. I’ll do it.”
“You’re the only one who can,” I said. “No one but you and Arthur read those missing pages. You’re the only person alive who knows what was in them.”
“Except whoever he wrote about,” she said. “Did you think of that?”
I had, and I wanted to find out who he or she was.
18
Jack came home with another carton, this one containing the last of the things he wanted to preserve. The blue-covered notebooks that he kept as a detective would be returned to his lieutenant on his last day. They were the property of NYPD and would be retained virtually forever. If any questions arose at some future time about a case that Jack had handled, they could not only read the D.D. 5s in the file but also look at his original notes, the source material that he had used to type the 5s. Even closed cases were occasionally reopened and the detectives who had worked on them called back to testify.
While he was sorting through his things, I called one after the other of the Morris Avenue Boys. I asked each of them if Arthur Wien had written something in The Lost Boulevard which they preferred not be published and which he had deleted from the final manuscript.
To a man they seemed confused. Not one of them, and I managed to reach all of them except Fred Beller and George Fried, would admit that he knew what I was asking about. I didn’t call Fred because I decided I’d made enough calls for one night, and I made a note to ask George Fried when I met him at Newark Airport tomorrow.
But I was sure I had stumbled on something important, perhaps important enough to account for the murder of Arthur Wien forty years later. And Jack concurred.
“That’s good detective work,” he said. “Think of how many years those two documents have been around and no one picked up on the missing pages.”
“It’s not the sort of thing you go back to,” I said. “For Alice it’s a potential financial disaster. That pencil copy was like the family jewels stashed away in a safe, waiting for a rainy day to be sold. I don’t know anything about original manuscripts, but these omissions must diminish the value considerably.”
“But that’s her problem. For you it’s a real opening in a case that looked impenetrable.”
“While you were going through your souvenirs, I called all the men I’ve spoken to and asked if there was something they didn’t want Arthur Wien to publish.”
“And they all said no.”
“Not surprisingly, they all said no. But maybe one of them knows that I’m onto him. And maybe he’ll do something or say something that will give him away.”
“What about that guy in Minnesota?” Jack asked.
“I haven’t called him yet. And tomorrow I’ll ask George Fried.”
“Your dead man.”
“My dead man, right.”
“And then it’s off to see Sister Joseph.”
I smiled. “I think it’s time for a visit. The convent will look beautiful and Eddie will have a good time running around.”
“Let me know how your interview with the dead man goes. It’s something I’ve never done.”
* * *
The interview went very well. I got to Newark Airport about twenty minutes before his flight from Chicago arrived and parked my car in the hourly lot. I had my silly sign with me, G. Fried in big black letters obviously drawn by an amateur. I went to the carousel his luggage was arriving at and stood outside the perimeter among a group of men holding signs better lettered than mine and a handful of friends and family of the incoming passengers.
He was a big man with a big smile, pulling a black weekend-sized suitcase on wheels. “This I like,” he said, taking the G. Fried sign from me. “Nice to meet you, Chris. I’m George.”
We went upstairs to a restaurant and sat at a table near a window. He ordered a Scotch and I asked for a Coke. Then he turned to me. “Start asking. I gotta be in New Brunswick in a couple of hours so get what you can while there’s time.”
“Where did you meet your first wife?” I asked.
“That’s an interesting question. What does that have to do with Artie Wien?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was a blind date. Somebody fixed us up.”
“When did you meet her?”
“After college. Artie I think was already married. Why?”
“Had she dated anyone else in your group?”
“Iris? I don’t think so. I didn’t see too much of them after I left the Bronx.”
I had thought perhaps Iris had been the girlfriend of someone else in the group, but that didn’t look productive. “How long were you married to her?”
“Too long. Maybe thirty years.”
“Whose idea was it for you to ‘die’?”
“It just came to me one night. I had a new wife, a new home. I was just trying to make my life a little easier.”
“Did you stop answering the phone after you were supposed to have died?”
“Yeah, I did. We put the phone in Pam’s name. I never answered the phone anyway. It wasn’t that big a deal. A few of the guys wrote notes saying what a great guy I was. They didn’t mean it, but it was a nice thing to do. I’m sure they forgot me after a month or two.”
“Have your read Arthur Wien’s first novel, The Lost Boulevard?”
“I started it, I remember. I don’t know if I finished it.”
“Did Mr. Wien ever ask you whether it would be all right to publish something in that book that pertained to you?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I just wondered if he ever called you and described some event and asked how you felt about it. Or maybe you heard from another member of the group that he was planning on publishing some embarrassing fact or incident.” I waited. “Do you remember anything like that?”
“You mean
like if I wet my pants or something when we were kids?”
“Actually, it would have been something that happened when you were all in your twenties.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
So it was still unanimous. “Did you know about Bruce Kaplan’s embezzlement?”
“I heard about it. I heard he was covering for someone else.”
The waitress had put our lunch in front of us while we were talking. I picked up a triangle of my turkey club sandwich and took a bite. “I heard one of the wives of the men in the group had an affair with Arthur Wien.”
“No kidding! Which one?”
Not exactly the answer I had hoped for. “I’m trying to find out but no one seems to know.”
“Well Iris thought he was pretty cute, but I don’t think we were around him long enough for anything to happen. He married young, you know, in his early twenties. A lot of them did. Ernie waited till after medical school, but he had a big hassle with his folks.”
“Why?”
“His wife isn’t Jewish. Our parents’ generation couldn’t handle that. My generation doesn’t like it, but we know it’s happening. I think he married a pretty nice girl.”
“I understand she’s a psychiatrist.”
“Something like that. They met in medical school.”
“He sounds like a very busy man. He didn’t want to take the time to talk to me, but I dropped in on him at his research center and he was very gracious.”
“Ernie’s a nice guy. They’re all nice guys. I told you, I just got bored with the whole business. It’s nothing personal.”
“Have you seen Fred Beller in recent years?”
“I haven’t seen anyone. I’m dead, remember? And I hope you’ll let me stay dead.”
“I will,” I promised, “unless it turns out you killed someone.”
That got a belly laugh.
“George,” I said, “let me be honest with you. I’m looking for dirt. I’m looking for a reason that one of those men would have murdered Arthur Wien.”
“I wish I could help you. I told you, they’re a boring crowd. Boring people don’t commit murders; interesting ones do. I sit in the same room with them, I fall asleep. This one did this, that one did that, over and over. You tell me one of the wives had a fling with Artie? Maybe she got bored out of her skin.”
“Was Arthur Wien more interesting than the rest?”
“He had something the others didn’t have. Maybe it was imagination.”
I must have looked a little lost because he said, “I’m not helping you, am I?”
“Nothing seems to lead anywhere,” I admitted. “I can’t find any reason why one of those men would want Arthur Wien dead.”
“Well, maybe you’re looking in the wrong place. Maybe it wasn’t one of the boys. Maybe it was this wife he was having an affair with.”
“That’s a possibility. But I can’t figure out which of the wives that could be.”
“Well, Artie was pretty friendly with the Meyers, Joe and Judy, the musicians.”
“What’s the motive?”
“Who knows? Then there’s Morty’s wife—what’s her name again?”
“Robin.”
“Robin, yeah. She was a beautiful girl, a very beautiful girl.”
“Was she friendly with Arthur?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out.”
“Well,” I said, disappointment in my voice, “if you think of anything …” I handed him my scrap of paper with the necessary information.
“I’ll be the guy who doesn’t leave his name.”
19
I drove home feeling disappointed. About all I had learned from George Fried was that he found the Morris Avenue Boys boring and that boring people didn’t commit murders. It was an interesting thought, one that I tended to agree with as long as we were talking about a murder planned for a long time, which I thought this probably was.
The other thing was his comment that perhaps it was a wife, not a husband, that had killed Wien. This idea had been growing in me for some time. It was a little sticky, considering that the event took place in a men’s room, but the location didn’t rule out a female killer. She could have watched to see that no one was in the men’s room and darted in and out, the ice pick in her bag. Even a small evening purse would hold an ice pick.
But which one? Only Mrs. Horowitz had a provable relationship with Arthur Wien. I had spoken to all the wives except Kathy Greene. I suppose I am subject to many stereotypes and the beliefs that go along with them, but I had a hard time believing that a psychiatrist would murder her husband’s old friend.
The other wife I hadn’t spoken to was the present Mrs. Wien herself. I had the address of their New York apartment as well as their California home. I didn’t know where she was, but a phone call would tell me. I was down to my last possible suspects now and I couldn’t leave anyone out.
Eddie was in a giddy mood when I got him home. We played together outside after I checked my phone messages. There was one from Alice Wien and I wanted very much to call her back and see if she remembered what the missing pages had held, but I had been away from my son much of the day and decided to wait and call her later. As it turned out, Eddie wore himself out in the remaining light hours of the day and went off to bed without a whimper before Jack got home.
It was more or less the dinner hour, a time that seems to vary from family to family, but I called Alice anyway.
“It came back to me,” she said.
“The material in the missing pages?”
“Yes. It was nothing, really, nothing that involved Art.”
“But it must be important, Alice. It must have bothered or angered someone.”
“It was a love affair, a brief fling that one of the men had with another man’s wife.”
“Well I can see why the participants wouldn’t want it published. Do you remember who they were?”
“I really don’t. I’ve thought about it all day. I almost have the feeling he made it one couple first and then changed it. The truth is, the book is better off without it.”
“But it isn’t the book we’re talking about; it’s the people represented in it. Maybe one of the lovers was angry enough when he or she heard the affair was going to be in the book that they forced Arthur to pull it.”
“It couldn’t have been a she,” Alice said. “Art wouldn’t have talked to any of the wives about the book. He used to call the men once in a while to check something, you know, the name of a particular teacher or a Yankee game they’d gone to. The women couldn’t have told him anything. They weren’t there.”
It sounded reasonable. “Then it was a man. But which one?”
“I can give you eight names, but you know them already.”
“Alice, I’ve been trying to figure out since last Sunday which of the wives Arthur may have had an affair with. Maybe my information was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t his affair but someone else’s. Maybe he knew about it and was blackmailing someone.”
“Does anyone care about a forty-year-old affair?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Perhaps not. Look, I appreciate your putting so much time into this. If you wake up in the middle of the night remembering anything, please call. I just want to ask you one more thing. I haven’t talked to either Cindy or Kathy Greene. What’s your opinion of them?”
“Cindy’s a little ditzy. Art always went for that kind of girl. She’s been with him for a while although they weren’t married until a couple of years ago. I don’t know why she’d want to kill him. And with Kathy, you’re barking up the wrong tree. She and Ernie are two very cerebral people. I don’t think they had anything in common with Art except that Ernie and Art grew up together.”
“I see.”
“You’re out of suspects?”
“I never really had any. It was just my hope that I’d turn up a jealous husband or someone that Arthur owed money to. But I guess if he owed money, there
wasn’t much of a chance he’d pay off after he died.”
Alice laughed. “Hard to collect from a dead man if you don’t have a piece of paper.”
“Well, let me know if you think of anything.”
I left it at that till after dinner. Jack came home a little late—he still had a lot to clear up—and I told him about the dead man I’d interviewed. He seemed very taken with my discovery of the second life of George Fried, even if it had yielded little.
“He could be right,” Jack said over dinner. “It could have been a woman who killed Wien. I know you have no motive, but you don’t seem to have a motive for any of the men.”
“Except Dr. Horowitz.”
“NYPD’s favorite. You know, they may not get their man every time, but they’re not bad.”
I smiled. “I know. And what you told me about Mrs. Horowitz’s seeing Arthur Wien came from them. I didn’t dig it up myself. So I’m in their debt.”
“If it leads anywhere.”
“I’m going to see Joseph tomorrow.”
“Well, that should do it,” Jack said with a grin. “She’ll see something you didn’t and she’ll pull out the killer.”
“I hope you’re right. I’d like to see this settled, especially if the police are about to move on Dr. Horowitz.”
Joseph had never quite “pulled out a killer,” but she had the knack of seeing things that were right in front of me that I somehow failed to see or failed to take seriously. I’ve learned that there’s a great value in presenting information to an intelligent and perceptive human being who is interested in the intellectual challenge as well as wanting to get a killer off the street. Rather than point to a suspect, she tended to ask questions that I had overlooked or not thought worthy of asking. Of course, she entered every case after I had done the bulk of the information gathering, whereas I began with nothing. But even if it all came to naught, an hour or two in her company was a bonus in my life.
When we had finished our dinner, our coffee, our talk about tomorrow’s being Jack’s last day at the Six-Five, I pulled a chair over to the kitchen telephone and dialed Cindy Porter Wien’s number. She had a pleasant voice, and she seemed to know that I was looking into the murder of her husband.
