The Little Brothers

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Marks took up the record of savings first. The account had been opened in 1966 with a deposit of $2,900 in cash. The monthly deposits since, with accumulating interest, totaled $56,472.

  The deed to the building on Hester Street: Grossman had bought it from the Ambrose Corporation the same year. This particularly interested Marks because Alberto Ruggio worked for that outfit. Grossman had bought the property from them for $46,000, an amount conveyed to the company on Grossman’s behalf, by his attorney, Frank Gerosa of Weehawken, New Jersey, who was licensed to practice in New York as well.

  A brief study of the tax receipts showed that the property had been re-evaluated to a much higher worth three years before. It made for quite a hike in Grossman’s taxes. Marks checked the withdrawals in the bankbooks: none, even at tax dates. Nor did the deposits diminish at those times. The increase was passed on to either his customers or his employers; possibly to both.

  With a reluctance that could only have to do with Grossman’s having been a concentration camp Jew, Marks opened the citizenship papers. Benjamin Grossman had been born in Berlin on April 19, 1906. He had entered the United States at the port of New York in 1946. His sponsors were Anna and Frank Gerosa.

  Marks used the bank telephone to check out Gerosa with the Bar Association. He was still in practice, and his record was clean. The bank manager arranged to have the contents of Grossman’s box xeroxed. Marks addressed the envelope himself for the messenger. He wanted a man named Wescott, an imaginative detective, to work on the background of the Ambrose Corporation.

  By the time he got back to the stationhouse, the information had come through that according to his number Grossman had been an internee of Buchenwald.

  Marks called Gerosa’s office in Weehawken. The lawyer was out, but expected back in the late afternoon.

  Tomasino had traced the violinist story to one of the warehousemen at the Ambrose Corporation. The reporter who had picked it up first had been trying for something extra from Ruggio.

  “Let’s try that ourselves,” Marks said. “On our way to Weehawken.”

  “Weehawken,” Tomasino repeated. “Now that’s a country I’ve always wanted to visit.”

  Marks liked Tomasino, a self-assured, chunky young man of twenty-four with long sideburns and as modern a cut to his clothes as regulations would allow. All Marks actually knew of him was that he had grown up in Little Italy and that he was engaged to be married. He was very, very young to have made detective-first-grade, and Marks availed himself of the jammed traffic in the narrow streets to find out how it had come about.

  Tomasino was the son of a tailor. He had gone from Cathedral High School to New York University for a year and then to the Police Academy. After starting as a patrolman in his own neighborhood, he was promoted to detective under Regan. But when Regan went back to uniform, Tomasino had asked for Homicide and got it.

  “What got you out of uniform in the first place?” Marks asked.

  “Luck and a little pull.”

  “Tell me about the luck.”

  “My partner and I interrupted a jewel heist on Canal Street. I spotted the getaway car and commandeered a cab when they took off, seeing us. My partner stayed on the scene. The cab had a two-way radio. That was the luck. We caught the lot of them.”

  “I remember,” Marks said.

  “Big deal,” Tomasino said with a shy grin.

  A din of truck horns started, as though the drivers could blast their way out of the jam with noise. Marks waited until that wave of passion subsided. “If you had to pick an angle on Grossman, what would you say, Tommy?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Mob controlled?”

  “Controlled by someone outside,” the young detective said carefully.

  “By outside, what do you mean?”

  “Outside the neighborhood.”

  “Do you think Grossman had anything to say about the control?”

  “I got a feeling, no. But he’d have known something. Too much maybe.”

  “What are you going on, Tommy?”

  Tomasino shrugged and the color came up in his cheeks.

  “He was a smart Jew?”

  “I guess that went through my mind. I got my pride too.”

  Marks gave a grunt of amusement. “Look, Tommy, shit is shit. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Now that we got that straight, I’ll tell you what came out of the bank vault.”

  “Ambrose Corporation,” Tomasino repeated. “They’re supposed to be clean, lieutenant.”

  “So are the police, but if Grossman was in narcotics, there’d just about have to be a pay-off, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Marks interpreted the noise Tomasino made as his trying to say yes and no at the same time.

  “But you don’t want to start the flack.”

  “I don’t want to lead a scalping party, that’s the truth, Dave, which doesn’t mean I know anything. And Grossman’s death, the way he died—that’s not the way the mob would do it … I don’t think.”

  Marks had to agree with him. “Unless they imported international talent.”

  “I got the Immigration Bureau started on Ruggio if that’s what you mean.”

  “Good man,” Marks said.

  The warning light came up on the car temperature gauge just as the traffic began to move. The jam, as it turned out, had originated at the dock of the Ambrose warehouse. Marks and Tomasino drove up in time to see a tall, burly fellow with a heavy blue jaw getting dressed down by a man twice his age and half his size.

  “That’s Ruggio,” Tomasino said. “According to the boss, he doesn’t know his left hand from his right.”

  “He looks like somebody they’d have brought over in the old days to put in the fight game.”

  “Three heads,” Tomasino said, holding up his fists, “and not a brain in any of them.”

  Marks parked too close to a fire plug but it was the only available space. He watched the big awkward man who made his only defense in gestures. “Let’s see what the personnel office has on him first, shall we? It’ll give us a chance to look over the premises.”

  They walked through a huge arched warehouse that reminded Marks of a theater.

  “I’m not sure it wasn’t,” Tomasino said. “Maybe a hundred years ago. There’s one in here somewhere.”

  They passed stacked wheels of Romano cheese, cases of stringed provolone, sausages coiled like snakes in straw baskets giving off a fragrance tinged with garlic. The deeper they got into the building, the cooler it was.

  The offices were air-conditioned. Marks asked the personnel manager, whose name was Lavia, if they could see the employment record of Alberto Ruggio.

  “What’s the poor bastard done now?”

  “Just call it a character reference,” Marks said. He made a perfunctory show of identification.

  Lavia beckoned to a stenographer with his forefinger. “Ruggio, Alberto.”

  “What’s your hiring procedure where immigrants are concerned?”

  “Work permit, social security number—we’re glad to get immigrants if they speak Italian. We don’t claim to be an equal opportunity employer, lieutenant, but to our own, we’re a lot fairer than those who are.”

  Marks thought that over and avoided looking at Tomasino. When the file card came, he took out his pen, intending to note the vital statistics, birthplace, age, and so forth.

  “I got a better idea,” Lavia said. “Why don’t I have the girl make you out a duplicate card?”

  The stenographer plucked the card out of his hand without waiting further instruction. She sashayed back to her typewriter. He might wiggle his finger at her, but the wiggle of her backside was a more eloquent impertinence.

  “No references?” Marks observed when the card was given to him.

  “No, sir. With our firm the only reference a man needs is his day’s work.”

  When they got back to the loading zone, another truck was backing in, the foreman himself direct
ing the driver. Ruggio was not in sight. They waited a couple of minutes, Marks watching his time: he did not want to get caught in the height of the tunnel traffic to New Jersey. Finally he asked the foreman where the big fellow had gone.

  “He’s walked off the job for all I know, and I care less. He ought to be herding sheep.”

  Marks swore to himself as they went back to the car.

  “He’ll turn up home,” Tomasino said. “And with the wife and kid to support, he’ll be back on the job tomorrow.”

  “I took something for granted, Tommy, and I don’t like it.”

  “What?”

  “That you can judge a man by his looks.”

  They took the time to double back to Hester Street. The officer on duty outside the building assured them that Ruggio had not come home.

  8

  THEY HEARD GEROSA’S LAUGHTER before they reached the smoked-glass door of his office. Frank Gerosa, Attorney at Law: a one-man practice in a building that might well qualify among the historic landmarks of Weehawken. His curly white hair, faintly yellowed with the sun, and his bronzed brow proclaimed him the outdoors type, and his camaraderie with his tidy, middle-aged secretary suggested a loquacious, call-me-Frank exterior. He pegged Marks and Tomasino the minute they walked in the door. “Gentlemen. Manhattan Squad … what?”

  A short time later he slipped as lithely into his reminiscences of Grossman. “I had no use for the man before I ever saw him, and when I did see him …” He flung his hand out, a gesture of distaste. “A debt of honor is all right, but you don’t want to be spat on for paying it. He had saved a life in our family—my wife’s youngest brother, Anthony, who, it turned out, was a communist partisan. Anyway, before he could save him, he’d had to save himself, and considering his racial origins, that was more than, well, say a lawyer could have done for him. So if he’s dead—and I’ll take your word for that—you got to figure he’s twenty-five, thirty years up on the game.”

  “The game?” Marks was perfectly aware of his meaning, but he wasn’t taken with Gerosa. He hated having to dig for a man under the gloss. Also, the golf trophies all over the office were highly polished, the law books dusty. The place was full of chairs and ashtrays, like a clubroom. He practiced by rote and politics. But then, many lawyers did.

  “All right, lieutenant. There’s a lot of serious things I call a game. I’m not a solemn man. What I’m saying is, he was half a lifetime up on most of the other inmates of Auschwitz.”

  Auschwitz. Grossman’s number identified him as having been interned in Buchenwald. Marks said: “Auschwitz in 1945—a German Jew in that camp had to be pretty rare.”

  “One in a million,” Gerosa said, apparently missing a point that Marks did not press. “He was an arrogant bastard. But he saved Anthony’s life, and he did not hesitate to come to America to collect.”

  “To collect what?”

  “A life for a life, shall we say? That’s old testament, isn’t it?”

  Marks felt his temper quicken. “Let’s skip the scripture and keep to the facts, shall we, sir?”

  The lawyer smiled. It too was rote with him, getting under a man’s skin. Marks again felt his own judgment off in this interrogation. Gerosa was saying, “I myself prefer facts, but I don’t have many to offer. Will you have a drink, boys?” He swung round in his chair and opened a panel to an inset liquor cabinet. Marks thought instantly of the safe in Grossman’s shop. The buildings would be of an age. “My one modern accommodation, which would be impossible in the paper-thin walls they put up today.”

  “A beer if you have one, please,” Marks said. He wanted to cool off in more ways than one. “How about you, Tommy?”

  “That would go down good.”

  Gerosa closed the cabinet and went to the water cooler. He brought three cans from the ice and opened them. “Tomasino—a jewel heist, right?”

  The young detective nodded, the color rising to his face.

  Gerosa knew about that, Marks thought, yet he claimed not to have heard of Grossman’s death until now.

  The lawyer took a long drink and belched behind his hand. “The facts: I’ve said Tony was a communist, a political prisoner. When the war was over, he wrote and said his life had been saved by a man named Grossman. Since he could not come to America himself—which was Anna, my wife’s dream of course, but with the politics he was persona non grata—he wanted us to sponsor Grossman when he arrived. Now it is interesting, and I think you would call it a fact, Lieutenant Marks, how Grossman happened to save his life. As a kid, Tony learned the flute. He’d played for the Milano Opera. To find that out, Grossman would have had to have some kind of liberty—wouldn’t you say? That’s guesswork, not fact. But he got Tony into an orchestra. An orchestra in Auschwitz: how do you like that, lieutenant?”

  Marks was more upset than he had any intention of showing: “Where’s your brother-in-law today, Mr. Gerosa?”

  “Five years dead in an Italian grave. He died of cancer, not of the Boche.”

  “Could Grossman speak English when he arrived?”

  “He could get by. Look, I’m not trying to bait you, lieutenant. I’m an easy-going, friendly guy, but I could see the chip on your shoulder the minute you came in the office.”

  Marks turned to Tomasino. “Why the hell didn’t you brush it off?”

  They all laughed and the interview went easier after that.

  “Let us say we are both a little uptight: that is a word I learned from my grandchildren. They don’t use it anymore, but I’m stuck with it. You see, in those days we Italian Americans were pretty defensive. A lot of us had been proud of Il Duce before the war. What did we know? In Italy the trains ran on time. I don’t think they have since, by the way. Then they hung him upside down and some of us felt that way too. Upside down. So, when this arrogant gentleman arrives with the air of doing us a favor, our hospitality did not run over. I gave him the works myself—he should look for work in the needle trades, in the garment section, or maybe a Jewish delicatessen, the whole schmeer. I had friends, contacts, some of my best friends, etcetera. But Mr. Grossman would go out in the morning in sartorial splendor and come home at night unemployed. There was not a job good enough for him. At least, that’s what I thought then that it was all about. Afterwards, I wondered if he hadn’t been steering clear of the Jews.”

  “Afraid of them?” It had, of course, gone through Marks’ mind, too: had others died so that he could live?

  “Something like that.”

  “Did he live with you for long?”

  “For several weeks. The children were scared of him. He used to watch them, staring at them. When they saw him they’d run away and he’d scream after them, “Run, run!”

  Gerosa finished his beer and went on: “I used to say to myself, I wouldn’t want his dreams. But the funny thing was, I used to have his dreams. When you live with somebody and you see things in the paper, you take them in with your guts, where if he wasn’t there, you’d hardly even have noticed them. You know what I mean?”

  Marks nodded. It was the American experience—unless you were a Jew.

  Gerosa sat thinking and Marks left him to it. Tomasino offered a cigarette. The lieutenant accepted. Gerosa came to life and lit their cigarettes with a desk lighter. He stared at the flame until it flickered out of its own accord. “I owe that man something, son of a bitch or not.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a four-dollar word—integrity. How do you like that?” He got up and paced the room, repeating to himself, “How do you like that?” Suddenly he swung around on Tomasino. “How do you get ahead on the police force, a young wop like you? Your father makes suits.”

  “Maybe that helps me get ahead on the police force,” Tomasino said. The color rose to his face again.

  “How do you get ahead as a lawyer?” Gerosa went on, forgetting about Tomasino. “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Only if you’re Italian, you got to watch whose back you’re scratching. A law education
doesn’t come cheap. I could have made money, a lot of money. The law is above the law, you know. In those days, maybe I wasn’t hungry, but I was no fat cat either. I looked at Grossman and I said to myself, it isn’t worth it. Nothing is worth it. Sooner or later you got to face yourself. You know what truth is, gentlemen? Truth is self-justification. That is everybody’s truth, but that is not God’s truth. I thought I was telling God’s truth. Well, I have no regrets. That’s not right either: I have one: I prosecuted Grossman, I convicted him, and I would have sentenced him. I tried. What I was really doing, I was taking out on him my anger at my own people. I had to fight their money, the gangster money, the Family money. They had plenty for smart lawyers, and I was a smart lawyer. I had to fight them and I had to fight myself. So why don’t I feel good about what I’m telling you? Grossman was a shit, I have said it, but without him, maybe I wouldn’t have made it. He was a coward who wanted to live when I thought he should have wanted to die. Do you know what I did to him? I made him fiddle at my daughter’s christening. So much righteousness at a time like that. I got him a violin, and I said, Play!”

  “Did he?”

  “He played. And the sweat poured off him. Green sweat. Ever seen it?”

  “A time or two. I’ve even felt it.”

  Gerosa sat down again and wiped his face. He looked at the handkerchief as though expecting color to his own sweat.

  “What else about Grossman? Where did he go and why?”

  “Well, he played at a wedding now and then, people who got onto him at our party. It was a grandiose affair. You know us Italians. People talk about Victoria’s christening to this day. Then one day, when there was nobody in the house but him, he packed up and left. He left the violin on the cot he’d been sleeping on in the attic, only he’d put his foot through its belly. Some smart psychiatrist would tell you it was better than what he could’ve left us up there. I found out from a neighbor that he’d got a job on your side of the river. Before I heard from him direct, he was ready to become a citizen and he wanted me to be present. He wanted to pay a debt. He did: for the violin, and my legal fee, and you know what he said about the rest? ‘I assume the hospitality was on the house.’ How do you like that?”