Dreams Bigger Than the Night

by Levitt, Paul M.

  “No passengers allowed,” he said in German.

  Dozens of people were dashing about: cooks preparing food, scullions scouring pots, pans, and dishes, and waiters and waitresses carrying plates in and out of the kitchen. Once again Rolf flashed his SS badge. The skeletal cook forced a smile, revealing a mouth of bad teeth.

  “A word, please,” said Rolf.

  The cook wiped his hands on his apron and walked to one side. “Be quick, the diners are waiting.”

  “Are you in charge?”

  “I am the head cook, Benedict Strassen.”

  “Herr Strassen, do any of the passengers require a special diet, for example, a kosher one?”

  “Why do you ask?” said Benedict suspiciously.

  “I am looking for a man . . .”

  “For this you interrupt me. No, we don’t serve kosher.”

  Rolf thought twice before he spoke again, wondering whether Herr Strassen could be trusted. “A Jewish killer. Perhaps two of them.”

  Without replying, the cook waved his hand to a meat cook preparing pork chops. As the man approached, Benedict greeted him as Friedl and repeated Rolf’s question.

  Friedl looked at Benedict. The head cook wiped his perspiring face with his apron. “Tell him,” said Benedict. “He’s with the SS.”

  “Some rooms, not many,” said Friedl, “have dumbwaiters. We can put the food on a tray and hoist it directly to the passengers.”

  Benedict added, “The shaft for the dumbwaiters was built to guarantee a person’s privacy, like royalty and diplomats and high government officials.”

  “And a Jew who doesn’t want to be seen.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” said Benedict.

  Rolf was convinced that one assassin occupied Room 218, but where was the other? Unless the cable from Palestine was in error, and only one killer, directed to kill Avery in New York, was on ship. He would have to be sure, lest he put himself and both Brundages in danger.

  “Do you serve anyone else using a dumbwaiter?”

  “No, only the one—who paid handsomely for the service.”

  Rolf was silent.

  “Ask the purser,” said Benedict. “Ach, look at the time. I have wasted precious minutes talking to you. If the passenger is a criminal, arrest the person. Don’t bother us.”

  The cooks returned to their work. Rolf decided that the steamy kitchen, with its chopping block and pots and pans suspended overhead, was an uncongenial place to glean any more information. He would confront the purser about the man in Room 218, and try to learn his name, his country of origin, his special arrangements. But he knew that the man was unlikely to be traveling on an English passport, even though Palestine was a British mandate. If the man knew German, then he probably came from an Eastern or Central European country. He would know in a minute, once he heard the man’s accent.

  Bernd Fuchs shook Rolf’s firm hand when Rolf introduced himself. Having worked as a purser for German cruise liners since he turned twenty, he thought that he knew the characteristics of passengers and their schemes. But he had never before met anyone like Rolf Hahne, who had materialized in a black shirt and black suit, and had assumed a stiff, resolute, and menacing posture. Fuchs always dressed in white for Atlantic crossings, even in winter: white gloves and a white hat with a black beak. He spoke several languages and particularly prided himself on his fluent English. Trained to be discreet, Fuchs was disinclined to reveal the identity of the passenger in Room 218, even when he saw Rolf’s SS badge and diplomat’s passport. Besides, he had no special love for the Nazis and, in fact, despised their arrogance and presumption of superiority.

  “A person is entitled to his privacy,” said Bernd.

  “Not when he intends to assassinate Mr. Avery Brundage.”

  “Where is your proof?”

  Rolf could hardly produce a cable that indicated some commandos might be aboard ship. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

  “Power is a trust, and I don’t intend to abuse mine.”

  Rolf glanced around the purser’s office. He took note of the filing cabinets, the combination safe in the corner, the desk strewn with papers, and the lock on the door. As part of his SS training, he had been schooled in breaking and entering. The lock on the purser’s door was a Schlage, difficult to work the tumblers but not impossible. Perhaps his dental picks could serve more than one purpose. His only fear was that the papers he wanted were in the safe and not in the filing cabinets. But . . . German officials were famous for putting the combinations of locks in files labeled “Snuff.” Why they had selected that name, he never could fathom.

  Fuchs felt uneasy in the presence of this SS man. To break the impasse, he suggested that he would call the ship’s main office in Bremen for instructions bearing on this matter. His superiors would know what to do.

  “The matter is secret,” said Rolf.

  “Then I can’t help you.”

  At that moment Rolf was tempted to choke the man to death. It would have taken no more than a minute or two. The two were alone. No witnesses. But he chose to pursue another course of action. That evening, when he could try the door and the safe, he would know how to proceed.

  After midnight, Rolf made his way to the purser’s office and found to his raging impatience that he could not pick the lock. Had the purser shown up at that instant, Rolf would have killed him. The door to the purser’s office had a small window, fitted with thick smoky glass. Rolf went to his room and returned with a blanket, which he wrapped around a fire extinguisher that he used to break the window. Reaching inside the door, he disengaged the lock and entered. He would have to work fast, before someone reported the break-in. Every time he heard footsteps in the corridor, he gripped the pick and feared what discovery would mean. Unequipped with a flashlight, he had to risk turning on the lights. He moved quickly, rifling through the cabinets. No file marked “Snuff.” What did his SS trainers know? They were all working from manuals printed during World War I. The safe was locked. He had often heard it said in jest that all the safe combinations in Germany were set to Hitler’s birthday: 20 April 1889. He tried 20-4-89; it didn’t work. He tried 20-4-889. No luck. Then: 20-4-1889. His last attempt was equally unsuccessful: 4-20-1889.

  He entertained the idea, but only for a second, of taking a fire axe to the safe. But the noise would awaken the ship’s crew. After rustling through the papers on the purser’s desk and in his drawers, he knew that the information he wanted was in the safe. But if he had no way to access it, he would just have to assume that the man in Room 218 was an assassin—and kill him.

  In the morning, the ship’s captain alerted the passengers to an attempted robbery of the purser’s office. Everyone should take special care to guard his valuables. A malefactor was afoot.

  The dumbwaiter shaft ran from the kitchen to a cabin on the top deck, four levels above. Room 218 was on the second deck. If he could gain access to the shaft at level three or four, he could effect his purpose. He would have to discover who occupied Rooms 318 and 418. But first he had to gain entrance to the dressing room of the cabin crew responsible for changing linen, making beds, and cleaning berths. He confidently opened the door and confronted two young men. Before either man could speak, he flashed his leather identification case with its SS badge. Asking where the uniforms were kept, he removed a jacket and pants from the supply cabinet. Later that morning, he knocked on the door of Room 418. No answer. In Room 318, he could hear people stirring. An elderly couple were just preparing to go on deck to read. Rolf introduced himself as the new attendant in charge of preparing their room. When they asked what happened to their regular cabin boy, Rolf dangerously said that he’d taken ill. If the couple, having left the cabin, ran into the lad, Rolf knew he’d have some explaining to do. He therefore had to work quickly. With his Swiss penknife, he removed the small screws from the dumbwaiter panels. He c
ould smell the food being prepared down below. But what if the man in 218 didn’t eat lunch or had decided to forgo it today? Rolf was unlikely to have another chance like this one. He heard the sound of wheels. A trolley in the hall. Seconds later, a polite knocking on the door. The cabin boy with his supplies had arrived to make up the room. Muffling his voice, Rolf requested that the boy return after lunch. He waited. The trolley moved on.

  Several minutes passed, while Rolf opened and closed each blade in his knife. Then he fingered the vial in his pocket. He peered into the shaft and contemplated whether he had the space to lift himself, hand over hand, up the ropes. Strength was not a problem. He had excelled at rope climbing during SS training exercises. Suddenly, he heard the ropes moving. As soon as the platform passed the opening he had made in the shaft, he seized one of the ropes and stopped the dumbwaiter. Reaching for the vial, he could hear the cook’s complaint coming from the kitchen. But Rolf took less than a few seconds to empty half the vial into the cup of steaming coffee. He then released the rope to exclamations of relief from the cook.

  Once he had replaced the panels, he removed his uniform, opened the room’s porthole, and threw the clothes into the sea. He then went in search of the Brundages. Avery was in the gym using a treadmill. Rolf stripped to his shorts and entered the weight room. As he cradled the dumbbells, he imagined the following scenario. The elderly couple would see the cabin boy and ask about his health. The boy would say that he was feeling fine. “But another fellow showed up to clean our room with the excuse that you were ill.” The boy would say, “But you asked me to return after lunch.” The couple would say that no such conversation ever took place. “Perhaps it has to do with the attempted robbery,” the cabin boy would say in an effort to clear up the confusion. The captain would be summoned. He would ask the couple if they could identify the man if they saw him again. “Yes, of course.” The captain would then ask the couple to attend both sittings for every meal and scrutinize every person they passed. Rolf could not afford to hide himself lest he leave Avery Brundage unguarded. A second assassin might still be on the loose.

  When Room 218 stopped taking meals—first dinner and then breakfast—and had neglected to return the dishes from lunch the day before, the purser entered Room 218 and found the little-known, blonde Swedish actress Ingrid Paiken dead in a parlor chair, wearing only a dressing gown and a string of expensive pearls. A tray of rancid food stood on the tea table, and a coffee cup lay on the rug.

  The news electrified the ship. A promising movie star had been on board, had been traveling incognito, and had been found dead. No one knew the reason for the secrecy or the cause of death. But gossip, which is like a choir, gives rise to all manner of voices. The explanation most often repeated was that Ingrid had been traveling to America to meet a lover, and in fond expectation of falling into his arms, had suffered a heart attack.

  But the shipboard tragedies didn’t end with the young woman’s death. Less than a day before docking, the elderly couple in Room 318 had been reported missing. The only clue was traces of blood found on the frame of the porthole. Nothing of value was stolen. The man’s wallet and the woman’s purse were still in the room. Their passports were untouched. The few valuable pieces of jewelry the woman owned had been safely stored in the ship’s safe. When the question of motive arose, the cabin boy told his story of someone having replaced him to clean the room, and the cook related the trouble he’d had with the dumbwaiter. On close inspection of the shaft, a ship’s mechanic declared that the screws to the panel had been tampered with and suggested that possibly the same person responsible for the disappearance of the elderly couple was responsible for the death of the Swedish actress. The captain, aghast, wired ahead to New York requesting that a squad of detectives meet the boat.

  Sitting down for dinner with the Brundages the night before docking, Rolf was introduced to a pretty, dark-haired woman whom Elizabeth had become friendly with on the crossing. Her name was Elspeth Botinsky, an émigré from Ruthenia. As Rolf listened to the conversation between the women, he heard in Elspeth’s speech a few pronunciations that led him to speak to her in German. When she responded, he could hear in her Deutsche a Yiddish inflection. It was then that he realized his error. The commandos sent from Palestine were not men, but women. One was now dead and the other sitting across from him. Before the ship docked, would he be able to get Elspeth alone? If not, she would disembark in New York, lose herself in the crowd, and stalk Avery Brundage. For the moment, she was sitting just a few feet from him. He couldn’t squander his chance. Excusing himself, he returned to his room and took the vial of cyanide and a dental pick. Back in the dining room, the passengers were eating their desserts. He would have to wait.

  Later that evening, before the passengers retired to their rooms, the captain distributed champagne to toast the ship’s safe arrival, albeit under trying circumstances. The orchestra played some mood music, and several people took to the dance floor. As Elizabeth and Elspeth sipped their champagne—Rolf and Avery were teetotalers—Rolf asked Elspeth to dance. The Brundages followed. Rolf deliberately spun Elspeth around several times, until she pleaded dizziness, and he helped her back to the table, where she pushed away her champagne glass. Rolf eyed it hoping that she would take a last sip. When she lowered her head to the table, he spilled the remaining contents of his vial into the glass and urged her to finish it off—for good luck.

  “No, no,” she said, “I couldn’t. My head is spinning.”

  Lest anyone accidentally drink the poisoned champagne, Rolf leaped to his feet and tossed the glass over his shoulder.

  “An old German custom,” he said, apologizing to the waiter who came running to mop up the broken glass and champagne.

  After this public episode, Rolf decided that he would have to act below deck. With Elspeth feeling ill, he accompanied her back to her cabin. The next day, as the liner entered New York Harbor with all the expectant passengers crowding the railing and most of the steamer trunks and baggage neatly arranged for the handlers to move them by hand and by dolly to the dock, a coast guard cutter brought the ship to a halt short of its berth. Several policemen boarded and summoned all the passengers to the ballroom. Here each person was questioned as to the unhappy events that had occurred during the crossing. One person was missing, Elspeth Botinsky. Although her luggage had been brought to the deck, she was nowhere to be seen. The police made careful notes and then allowed the boat to dock and the passengers to proceed to passport control.

  Rolf showed his black-covered diplomatic passport, which allowed him to carry his luggage through customs free of an inspection that might have discovered his pistol and knife and dental picks. He then waited for the Brundages. When they arrived, they asked him if he had seen Elspeth.

  “One minute she was there,” said Elizabeth, “the next, gone.”

  “Strange, very strange,” said Avery, and turned to Rolf. “You saw her to her cabin. Did she say anything? Did you have any inkling of something amiss?”

  Rolf put his palms up gesturing innocence and said, “I saw nothing.”

  A redcap carried their luggage to the curb. The cabstand was crowded. As Rolf and the Brundages waited, Francesca Bronzina also waited, out of sight. When the next vacant cab pulled up, Rolf embraced Elizabeth and then Avery, promising to ring them at their hotel. If he was needed, or if they heard from Elspeth, he could always be reached through the German consul in New York. The Brundages bundled into the backseat of the taxi, which immediately turned into the flow of traffic. Rolf waved. The Brundages never saw him again.

  On leaving the pier and reaching the street, Rolf waited. Moments later, Axel Kuppler drove up, identified himself, introduced Rolf to the beautiful woman in the passenger seat, Arietta Ewerhardt, and opened the back door of the sedan for Rolf, who was delighted to learn that Axel had saved him the trouble of locating Fräulein Ewerhardt.

  Once Rolf had left, Signorina B
ronzina stepped out of the shadows, waited her turn for a cab, and handed the driver a piece of paper with an address in West Orange, New Jersey: the home of Abner Longie Zwillman.

  After all the passengers had disembarked, an unclaimed steamer trunk remained on the dock. When the customs officials forced the lock, Elspeth Botinsky tumbled out. Her killer had left behind the dental pick used to pierce her jugular vein.

  3

  A line of cabs waited to pull up at the curb to disgorge women in furs and men in camel-hair coats, fedoras, and mufflers. When Arietta and Jay stepped out of the Checker hack, a hatless, yellow-haired young man, wearing black jodhpurs, polished knee-high boots, and a swastika armband, shoved a flyer into his hands. “A Call to Aryans! The nigger ‘art’ of the Kinney Club is so barbarous and depraved that many a Negro would justifiably refuse to see his own race on stage or acknowledge any part in the performance of such filth. Do not enter!!!” Jay crumpled the flyer and tossed it, inciting the young Nazi to call them “Jew-Communists” as they brushed past and greeted the doorman.

  According to Puddy, Newark’s answer to the Cotton Club attracted underworld figures ranging from swaggering gunmen, gorillas, and gangsters to syndicate bosses and high-class pimps, prostitutes, gamblers, and hustlers. One look around and Jay knew that the joint also drew gawkers who came to see the demimonde. They paid no admission charge, climbed up a long flight of stairs, turned right, and walked back toward Arlington Street into a large dimly lit hall crowded with tables sporting red-and-white-checkered cloths. Jay slipped the headwaiter a buck, and he seated them near the door. Maybe for a fiver, thought Jay, he could have been seated at a table next to the stage. The club served no food, only booze, with beer going for fifteen cents a glass. Jay gathered, from the number of bouncers, this was a rough place, even though sprawled at a table were four uniformed cops, no doubt on the take. A dozen waiters and waitresses, who also sang, darted among the tables as deftly as ballet dancers. An emcee introduced skits and a small band accompanied the vocalists.