Brain Trust

by A W Hartoin

  Until I saw that picture, I had no inkling that anyone was aware of The Girls’ search. Heck, I only realized what they were up to recently. It’s funny how kids accept things. I never thought it was odd that we went to Europe and spent half our time searching through dusty records and talking to local historians. Most of the pictures The Girls had of me were taken in graveyards. It was creepy, now that I thought about it.

  Dr. Broszat thought Constanza was in the Resistance because Stella knew what happened to her and the Bleds clearly didn’t know what happened to the owners of the other pieces Stella had smuggled out. Occasionally, they were able to track someone’s descendants, but that was getting rarer as the years passed. The second reason was the more important one. Constanza Magdalene Stern didn’t exist before she turned up in the Red Cross center in 1945. The Nazis had been almost as good at destroying their records as they had been at creating them. Only about ten percent of the records at Auschwitz survived and Constanza was in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Constanza wasn’t in any of those records, but that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that Constanza wasn’t in any of the records from France either, where she was supposed to have been deported from. Big Steve had told me that she was deported through Drancy, but Dr. Broszat hadn’t found any record that she was or that anyone by that name had been arrested in all of the Third Reich. Of course, the records could’ve been destroyed or lost, as many were, but there was no wealthy Stern family with a daughter named Constanza or even a daughter her age. Dr. Broszat, who was apparently obsessive, went back a hundred years and couldn’t find any family that would match. He believed that Constanza Stern was an alias that she adopted when she was arrested, possibly to hide her involvement in the Resistance, and for some reason, she kept it.

  Dr. Bloom and Dr. Broszat could hardly stand it. They wanted to know who she really was and where the pieces she sold came from. I was curious, too, but more interested in the next tidbit Dr. Broszat had for me. He’d already researched Florian and Annika Witold, the Parisian art dealers, but he didn’t know that they were personal friends of the Bled family and had attended Stella’s small wedding. Dr. Bloom told him about Helmut Peiper being Stella’s enemy and he found a fascinating connection.

  I turned the page and there was a photograph taken at the Witold gallery in Paris in 1940. The image was familiar to me. I must’ve seen it somewhere, but I couldn’t think when. Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe and an avid art collector, was in the photo, smiling at the art he was confiscating in the name of the Reich. Members of the SS were taking pieces off the wall, but from the angle, I couldn’t tell if they were significant.

  I yawned and Fats stopped her donkey kicks to ask, “Anything good?”

  “More mysteries and a photo that’s important.”

  She came over to look. “Who are they?”

  “Nazis.”

  She punched my shoulder gently. “Even I know that. I mean, who are they?”

  “That’s Göring and the rest are just officers…oh, my god, it’s him—it’s Peiper.”

  Helmut Peiper was in the background, looking at a sheath of papers in his hand. I told Fats about the SS officer and Stella. This was a connection. Peiper had been on loan to Göring and Dr. Broszat didn’t understand why. He had no background in art. For some reason, Göring put him in charge of cataloging all the objects found in the gallery. Any paper pusher could’ve done that and Peiper was fairly high-ranked.

  “Why would he do it then?” asked Fats.

  “It doesn’t make any sense unless he was looking for something.” I explained The Klinefeld Group’s obsession with something we thought Stella had smuggled out of the country in 1938. I thought back to the photo of Stella and Nicky at the cafe with Amelie and Paul. They were in rough shape. Something had happened to them on their honeymoon. Maybe what happened was the Nazis. It’d be just like The Klinefeld Group to spring from that poisoned well.

  “Works for me,” said Fats. “Does everyone in the art world know each other?”

  “Yes, at least to some extent.”

  “So whatever they’re looking for is a piece of art. The Bleds, those art gallery people, and that nut job, Göring. What else could it be?”

  “It could be anything, but a piece of art is a good guess.” I turned the page to find another picture of Peiper in an over-the-top room that reminded me of the Louvre. He was watching paintings being carted away. He looked distinctly bored, dissatisfied to the extreme. The note on the photo said, “Palais Nathaniel Rothschild, Vienna, Austria.”

  The next page was another picture of Peiper in Vienna, still unhappy, but this time in the Block-Bauer house of The Woman in Gold fame. There were more pictures of Peiper confiscating Jewish art collections in several countries and, curiously, at a brewery in Germany. Dr. Broszat wanted to know if the Bleds were closely connected with the families and the brewery. The brewery was a no-brainer. I’m sure they were. The Bleds were famous brewers with connections everywhere. They’d helped European brewers get back on their feet after both world wars. As for the families, I didn’t know. The Girls had watched Maria Altmann’s struggle to reclaim her family’s Klimt paintings with keen interest, but it didn’t seem like they knew her personally.

  Dr. Bloom told Dr. Broszat about Stella’s portrait in the breakfast room at the Bled mansion. He told him not because he thought it was a great work of art but because he thought there was a chance he might know the artist, someone who was imprisoned in DH8. He didn’t, but he referred Dr. Bloom to Dr. Karina Bock. She specialized in Nazi interrogations and political prisoners. Dr. Bock had the most information on DH8, including extensive interviews with prisoners. Dr. Bloom knew her but not well, so he had Spidermonkey clear her before giving her the information I had.

  I dozed off after reading Dr. Bock’s credentials. University of Heidelberg, blah, blah, blah. Credentials are a cure for insomnia if there ever was one.

  A strange feeling came over me as I snoozed. One of those instinct things where you know something without having to look. Before I opened my eyes, I knew my father was there. No reason. I didn’t hear anything or smell anything. Tommy Watts had a presence and I felt it like someone had wrapped me in a warm blanket and sung the knowledge to me.

  I forced my heavy lids up and saw him at the foot of Mom’s bed, gripping the footboard and staring at her face with a most unusual expression. I’d seen my dad look every which way, mostly frustrated when it came to me, but this wasn’t anything I’d have expected from him. It took me a second and then I recognized it. Grief. Overwhelming, paralyzing grief. I’d only seen it once before when his partner, Cora, was murdered. Dad lost his mind, had to take a leave of absence from work, and drank so much the local liquor stores got worried.

  There was the look again, etched on his emaciated face and in the death grip he had on her bed. But Mom wasn’t dead. She could easily have died, but she was functioning amazingly well. She’d be released on Thursday to whatever rehab I got her into. We were on the stroke floor. All you had to do was take a walk and you’d know how amazingly blessed she was to be okay.

  I should’ve said that to Dad when we spoke. I should’ve said something more…I don’t know…comforting. I thought he understood. He talked to her. His wife was still there, different but there.

  Fats stood at the entrance to the room, her light brown hair loose around her face that held only uncertainty. I kept waiting for Dad to move, come to Mom’s side, and speak to her. He didn’t. He was barely blinking.

  “You can talk to her,” I said finally.

  He didn’t respond and Fats and I exchanged a look. “Perhaps we should go,” she said.

  “Do you want us to leave, Dad?” I asked. “We can leave.”

  Instead of saying what I expected—yes, get out—he straightened up slowly like he had rust in his joints and walked out of the room.

  “I’ve never met your father,” said Fats. “Is he normally like that?”

  “No. Usuall
y, you can’t get him to shut up,” I said.

  “He knows she’ll recover pretty well, right?” Fats returned to her chair and did some stretches.

  “I thought he did.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  Aaron sat up in his chair and said, “Go.”

  “Go where?” I asked.

  “After him.”

  I looked at the door. I so didn’t want to go after my father when he looked like that. When Cora died, Mom sent me to live with The Girls for a few weeks because he was so nuts. Mom said she could help him, that she knew what to do and she did. Dad came out of that extreme grief to become more successful than ever, absolutely driven to catch every criminal he came across. Come to think of it, maybe Mom wasn’t so successful. We saw less of him than before. We were lucky to eat a whole meal with him. He went to work with the flu. Once, he had a sinus infection so bad that he interviewed a suspect while lying on the floor because of the vertigo. That guy confessed and that never happened. His appeal said Dad used emotional manipulation to an unusual extent with the floor thing and the confession ought to be thrown out. The judge laughed and Dad landed in Newsweek for the first time.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said.

  “He’s your father,” said Fats.

  I put Dr. Bloom’s file on the windowsill and forced myself to stand up. “Yeah, but I don’t know him that well. It was mostly me and Mom.”

  “Somebody has to do it.”

  “I wish Grandad hadn’t left.”

  “Well, he did,” said Fats. “Suck it up, buttercup.”

  “That’s what Grandad would say.”

  “Go,” said Aaron.

  “Have you got any whiskey?”

  My partner shook his head and closed his eyes, immediately snoring. I took a deep breath and left the room. The hall lights were dimmed and I didn’t see Dad anywhere. The two cops at Mom’s door said he went left.

  “Did he say anything to you?” I asked.

  They shook their heads and looked like they’d rather get syphilis than question the great Tommy Watts, so I went to the desk. The nurse there said he’d walked past her, but she didn’t know where he went. At least, he wasn’t headed for the elevators. I didn’t fancy chasing my father down and dragging him back up to Mom’s room, but I absolutely would if I had to. I only wished I had a taser on me. I had my Mauser, but I wasn’t quite prepared to shoot him. Yet. But if he didn’t come back and comfort Mom, I might consider it. I’d gotten bitten by a psycho to get him back. He’d better give Mom what she needed. She always gave him what he needed.

  The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I marched around the floor, looking for my damn father. I was supposed to suck it up. How about he suck it up?

  I ended back at Mom’s room, fuming. Fats came out. “No luck?”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “He ran away. My father, a guy who watches full autopsies and chases freaks through dark alleys, ran away. I might kill him.”

  “I guess you can call Ace,” she said.

  “It won’t do any good if I can’t find my scarecrow of a father.”

  One of the cops cleared his throat and I gave him the stink eye. “What?”

  “Did you try the bathroom?” he asked reluctantly.

  “No. I didn’t think of it,” I said. “It’s down the hall. Go in there and see.”

  The cop backed up against the wall like I’d put a gun in his face. “I can’t leave my post.”

  “For crying out loud, I’m a girl. You’re a man. It’s a man’s bathroom. Go look in the bathroom.”

  Neither cop would budge. Fats rolled her eyes. “I guess I can go.”

  “You’re a girl, too.”

  “It’s three in the morning. I don’t think anybody’s in there taking a whiz.”

  I threw up my hands. “Fine. I’ll do it.” I marched down to the bathroom. I don’t know if I wanted him to be in there or not. There didn’t seem to be a good choice. The only thing I knew I wanted was for my know-it-all, large and in charge father to make an appearance. I wanted him to be with Mom and look at the evidence I’d gathered and bring his brilliance to the table.

  I didn’t hear anything, so I opened the door a smidge. “Hello?”

  There was something, a little sound, a hint of a presence, and it dawned on me that I couldn’t go in there. A bathroom. Alone in the middle of the night. That was a fast way to a quick death.

  I looked back at the cops and Fats, who were watching at the end of the hall. The dim lights wreathed them in shadows, so I couldn’t tell what they thought. If I had to guess, it was something like better you than me.

  “Dad, it’s Mercy,” I called through the crack. “Are you in there?”

  Nothing.

  “I can tell someone’s in there. If you don’t answer, I’m sending cops in. Exhausted cops with guns and no coffee. You seriously don’t want them.”

  “It’s me,” said Dad in a barely recognizable voice, all strained and deep.

  “Are you coming out?”

  “No.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do with that. Where was Uncle Morty or Grandad when I needed them? I rubbed my eyes and called to him. “I’m coming in.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not asking permission,” I said, flinging open the door.

  I marched in and surveyed the line of urinals and yes, it smelled, but not as bad as I expected. What I didn’t see was my father. I went around a tiled corner and had to peek under the stalls. His feet were in the far stall. I recognized the shoes. Dad wasn’t on the toilet, thankfully. He was standing sideways, most likely leaning on the wall. That was the good news. The bad news was that my father was crying.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I CAME OUT of the bathroom an hour later. Without my father. I don’t want to say he was hysterical, but he kinda was, completely torn up about Mom and useless to anyone, including himself. He blamed himself for what happened. He shouldn’t have left Mom. He shouldn’t have been a cop. He led a criminal to her. He shouldn’t have trusted the FBI. He shouldn’t have sent me to Hunt where I would eventually get my face bitten to get him out of airport jail. The whole nine yards. I tried to talk him down and get him to eat something. My father, like Grandad, was a terrible eater, but Dad would usually eat when he was away, if only to keep Mom from yelling. This time, he’d been so upset he hadn’t eaten since he found out. From the slackness of his pale, freckled skin, I’d say he hadn’t been drinking either.

  I never expected him to react like that. Sure. I starved myself after Richard Costilla, but I kept functioning, doing the minimum to keep my body going. Dad wasn’t doing the minimum. I talked about Mom, trying to focus him. My parents were super tight, the only parents I knew that still adored each other after twenty-seven years of marriage, but that wasn’t helping. Talking about catching the one who did this to her didn’t help. It was like he short-circuited and I was making it worse.

  Outside the bathroom, I leaned on the wall and called Grandad. I didn’t know what else to do. If I couldn’t move Dad, maybe his father could. Grandad was dead asleep and he wasn’t happy when I told him what was going on. Apparently, this had happened before when Dad was in high school and didn’t get a perfect score on the SAT. He holed up in the bathroom for three days, hysterical, and Grandma J had to threaten to burn down the house to get him out. I had no idea that my father was so emotional. He always handled things with charm and aplomb, except for Cora’s death. Even Gavin’s death last year hadn’t caused much of a ripple unless you counted excessive whiskey drinking.

  Once Grandad agreed to come and handle his nutty kid, I asked a nurse to keep an eye on my father and went back to Mom’s room, settling in my chair and pulling my blanket up to my nose. Fats followed me in and raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

  “He’s out,” I said.

  “Of his mind?”

  “That, too. But more importantly, he’s not going to be investigati
ng. We’ll be lucky if my grandad can get him out of the bathroom. It’s all us.”

  “Do you have a plan?” she asked.

  I yawned. “We’re going to interview Banging Bob’s mother.”

  “Why? He’s pretty dead.”

  “That’s the only Brain Trust case going on at the right time.” I closed my eyes. There wasn’t anything else I could do.

  I awoke to the smell of croissants and expensive perfume. I was six again, warm and safe. Then I yawned and pain zinged through my lower jaw. Not so much six or safe, for that matter.

  My eyes opened slowly and the first thing I saw was the last thing I wanted to see. Millicent’s favorite George Hobeika suit, a cream and silver affair with a peplum jacket and a crystal studded Peter Pan collar. It was pretty snazzy for a hospital visit, but that’s not what concerned me. Millicent was standing next to me, looking at Dr. Bloom’s file that I thoughtlessly left on the windowsill.

  The file was open. She was reading it. Didn’t take a genius to know I’d been investigating the Bleds, for all intents and purposes, my family. I held my breath and hoped I’d vanish or, at the very least, sink into the floor.

  “I know you’re awake, Mercy.” Millicent looked down at me. Her hair was in Marcel waves with a fascinator hat perched on the left side.

  “I’m sorry,” I said and I really was, in that moment anyway.

  She closed the file firmly. “We’ll speak of this later.”

  Let’s don’t and say we did.

  “Okay.”

  She gave me a fresh ice pack and I pressed it to my lip.

  “That’s much worse than I expected,” she said.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Sister Miriam told us.”

  I glanced up at the clock. Six thirty. Then I looked at Mom. She was still asleep and I wished she could stay that way until Dad got it together, but it could be days. “My dad—”