A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  He liked the East River Drive, because it didn’t have any traffic. As of a few weeks ago, the highway was open all the way to 125th Street. This particular section, from Twenty-third Street to Thirty-fourth Street, had been constructed on landfill that was made from the rubble of the bombed-out city of Bristol, England. Bristol was bombed in March and April of 1941, and the rubble was brought over as ballast on merchant ships. Once the rubble got to New York, a bulkhead was constructed in the river, and the rubble was poured in, enough to make something like fourteen acres of new land, according to the newspaper. Lots of praise and fanfare had greeted this rubble re-use. Kreindler had even seen a picture of the plaque that was going to be put on the pedestrian bridge at Twenty-fifth Street commemorating the whole thing and praising the bravery of the people of Bristol when their homes were bombed. Kreindler didn’t think they had much choice in the matter. And he didn’t see anything to brag about: chunks of people’s houses, churches, and shops poured into the river to make landfill for a highway. Doubtless some body parts were mixed in with the rubble to boot, not on purpose, but when death’s all around, you can’t keep track of every finger and toe. He tried not to think about fingers and toes in the land beneath his tires.

  Instead he contemplated breweries. The river was on his right, and on his left were warehouses, factories, and yes, breweries. He caught a whiff of hops on the air. He was looking forward to enjoying a cold beer when he got home. He reached Thirty-eighth Street, and passed Consolidated Edison’s gigantic generating plant, dwarfing everything else like a monster. The plant was gone in a second as he entered the Forties. Here he was assaulted by the stench from the stockyards and slaughterhouses. His buddies who worked this district said you got used to the stench after a while. Didn’t even notice it anymore. The stench was accompanied by bleating, mooing, and oinking. Cattle, sheep, and hogs arrived in Manhattan on two-story barges that looked like floating paddocks. Four of these paddocks were docked right now. Because of the highway, nowadays the livestock were unloaded onto narrow, open waterside pens and then moved through tunnels that led under the highway and into the slaughterhouses. Yep, the animals were killed, processed, and eaten right here on the island of Manhattan. What a place. Once he’d had a homicide on one of those floating paddocks. It was arranged to look like an accident, guy getting trampled in a cow stampede. But hoof marks couldn’t hide a bullet in the back of the head. Soon there’d be homicides in the under-the-highway tunnels, he didn’t doubt.

  Now he was driving alongside the Fifties, the rich folks’ blocks…the River House and the River Club, Sutton Place and Sutton Square. The River Club actually had a dock for yachts to tie up. Once he’d seen a Chinese junk pulled up there, and it sure did look like junk. Now he was approaching the Queensboro Bridge.

  Kreindler spent so much of his workday at the waterfront, he’d started to think of New York City as Venice. Venice with cliffs. He’d never been to Venice, but he’d seen pictures in Life magazine. Most people forgot that in New York, water was everywhere, lapping into coves and inlets that lurked unseen until they became the crossing point from life to death.

  Like right here. He drove under the Queensboro Bridge into the Sixties and saw the Rockefeller Institute silhouetted in the red sunset at the top of the bluff. He signaled, pulled over, and stopped. He kept his signal light on as a warning, although it didn’t much matter. There were so few cars on the East River Drive that his stopping made no difference to the flow, and he didn’t care if it did. A couple of months ago he was in a squad car with an old buddy. They took a great deal of enjoyment in slowing traffic heading north on Central Park West by double-parking at Seventieth Street to eat their sandwiches. The drivers behind didn’t dare honk, just slowly maneuvered themselves into a single file and passed around. Traffic backed up all the way to Columbus Circle. That fifteen-minute experience still gave him an immense sense of satisfaction.

  “Happened to be driving north on the East River Drive” was incorrect. He had to face facts, because he amounted to nothing if he didn’t face facts. The Queensboro Bridge was his usual route home, and unlike the Triborough, it was free. But Kreindler was willing to toss his quarter in the bin at the Triborough for this view. His eyes followed a line from the top of the cliff down to the point where the body had landed.

  Only then it wasn’t a body, not when it was falling. Then it was a woman in the prime of life, with everything to live for, a great job (she was the type who wanted a great job, not just a way to earn money until she got married), lots of friends, men asking for her phone number. A future to look forward to. What did she think about while she was…Kreindler hoped it happened so fast that she didn’t have time to think of anything.

  Maybe it was an accident after all, like he was forced to say in his official report and what the coroner had ruled. So much of life was like that: one false step and it’s over. This past winter, Kreindler had slipped on the ice in front of his own house, needed twelve stitches on his chin and the doctor said he was lucky he didn’t break his jaw. He’d never have heard the end of it from the guys if, after forty years on the job, he’d broken his jaw on his own front stoop.

  Some instinct kept telling him that Dr. Lucretia Stanton’s death was no accident. But it didn’t strike him as premeditated either. Pushing a woman off a cliff—it was crude. Impulsive. Somebody with a grudge or a hope saw an opportunity and took it. Who? Someone from the inside, or from the outside? The day after she died he’d checked the entry log kept at the Institute gatehouse, but standing there for ten minutes he saw a half dozen well-dressed visitors gain entry with only a nod and a smile. The guard insisted he knew them all, became irate at a suggestion that maybe he didn’t, but even so.

  The problem was, Kreindler couldn’t forget her. He’d seen her, there at the bottom of the cliff, her full, wavy hair hiding her injuries. He’d learned about the unusual life she led. Some of his buddies would think her life was odd, eccentric, abnormal even. But Kreindler had seen enough abnormality over the years that he didn’t pass judgment against Tia Stanton. Instead his heart went out to her, as if she were his daughter. How had she ended up there, alongside the weeds and old newspapers and crushed seashells, amid the riverbank detritus of his city?

  Who stood to gain the most from the green mold and all the other colored mold he’d seen in her laboratory? Not a question he’d ever asked before. And yet, in essence it was the same question he asked in almost every case, if you replaced the word mold with the word money. Even he knew enough about science and business to know that growing mold in a roomful of jam jars and bedpans didn’t translate into supplying the entire nation with a life-saving medicine. A lot of middlemen had to be involved, each one taking his cut along the way. And that cut wasn’t necessarily money. It could also be fame and glory, love or sex, revenge, punishment for slights real or imagined.

  He didn’t discount the possibility of espionage of the Kraut or Jap variety. Tomorrow he’d spend some time walking around Yorkville, calling in some chits, seeing if anybody in the Bund had heard anything. Officially, the Bund didn’t exist anymore. Got themselves arrested, suppressed, banned, preaching their stupid Nazi slogans, marching around with swastika flags, strutting in their imitation SS uniforms. Bundesführer Kuhn had even gotten himself locked up for embezzlement.

  Unofficially, it was a different story. Scratch the surface, and they were still there. Every now and again Kreindler found the group’s hidden stalwarts useful.

  Besides, he liked walking around Yorkville. The neighborhood reminded him of his mother. She spent forty-six years, ages eighteen to sixty-four, working behind the counter at Heidelberg Candies on Second Avenue at Eighty-fourth Street. She came home every day smelling of the chocolates they made in the back. When he was a boy, they’d sit side by side on the couch while she helped him with his reading. The scent of chocolate from her clothes and her hair surrounded him. Kreindler’s father died young: he’d worked construction, stepped on a nail sti
cking out of a stack of wood, got tetanus, that was it.

  Kreindler liked to hear German spoken on the streets of Yorkville. He savored the scent of German cooking. Hard to admit to German ancestry nowadays—and in previous days, too. His actual name was Markus, but he’d changed it to Marcus during the last war. The Great War. The War to End All Wars. The idiots in the Bund trusted him because of his ancestry, never putting two and two together to see he was exploiting them.

  Tomorrow he’d enjoy a good meal of sauerbraten and Kartoffelklösse over at Hans Jaeger’s at Lex and Eighty-fifth. Just sitting there having lunch, slowly sipping a beer, he’d learn more than Andrew Barnett ever could from his desk at the highfalutin Carnegie Institution in Washington. He’d have Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte for dessert, in honor of his mother.

  Yes, it was wartime and everybody had their very important work to do. Well, this was his important work. He was sixty-five but he wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon. Not with the younger guys heading off to war, a lot of them volunteering, God preserve them, especially his partner Sean. Kreindler prided himself on being a patient man. Things came up in life. Strange coincidences. Opportunities that you never foresaw. He was prepared to wait a long time on this one, moving forward with his other work while keeping this in the background. He’d take the risk of a turf war. He’d operate on his own until the truth rolled itself out like a red carpet, the kind they used when big shots visited City Hall.

  It was getting dark. He turned on the headlights. Reversed the turn signal. Checked the rearview mirror. He pressed the accelerator, smoothly reentering the sparse flow of traffic. The cooling air carried the light ocean scent he loved at the end of a hot day. In the twilight, the highway looked almost beautiful in its gently curving path along the river. The river itself was smooth and black. The dimmed-out lights of the Triborough Bridge flickered in the distance like a delicate sweep of stars.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Claire sat in the backseat of a big, leather-upholstered military car while an attractive young military man named Anthony Pagliaro drove. Her official driver, her official car. She couldn’t help but feel pleased with herself for the small perks provided by Vannevar Bush.

  It was a good assignment, all things considered, driving through the New Jersey countryside in early July, on her way to Rahway, passing peaceful farms and woodlands, sunlight sparkling through the trees. Claire was traveling to the Merck company headquarters to photograph their penicillin production. The trip took longer than expected because the speed limit had been lowered to thirty-five miles per hour to conserve gasoline and tires.

  So she had plenty of time to appreciate objectively how attractive Anthony Pagliaro was, how good he’d look in an advertising photograph, say. She wasn’t attracted to him herself. She felt a generation older than he was. Every now and again she saw his eyes glancing into the rearview mirror, keeping track of her as well as the road behind, as she kept track of him. He had a sleek handsomeness, dark eyes, thick hair swept back. He carried himself with an edge of class resentment that added to his attractiveness.

  Claire now had security clearance, as did Anthony Pagliaro. After today’s shoot, she would send the film to Andrew Barnett via military pouch, and he would have it developed and locked in a cabinet until the story could be told. Anything interesting she heard or observed along the way, she was instructed to report to Barnett for evaluation.

  “So, Tony,” she said, trying to get to know her partner in espionage, “what did you do before you became a military driver?”

  “I drove a delivery truck for the family business.” The Brooklyn accent flitted in and out of his voice as if he were trying to coach it away.

  “What business?”

  “Bread. In Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.”

  “Pagliaro’s Bakery?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I’ve had that bread. So crispy. My son’s favorite.”

  “Yeah, it’s good. Brick ovens. Makes the difference.”

  “I’ll tell my son. That’s the type of thing he likes to know. Brick ovens. Interesting. So the military gave you the same job you had before.”

  “Except I didn’t join up to be driving around hotshots and women. No offense meant.”

  “None taken. What did you want to do?”

  “I wanted to drive a tank. And repair tanks. That’s what I told them: I’m interested in tanks and I have experience repairing trucks. This is the job they gave me.”

  “Maybe you can request a transfer once things are moving along. Probably they don’t have enough tanks manufactured yet to need someone to repair them.” The slow pace of military production—endless delays, confusions, and red tape—was daily fare in the newspapers.

  “Meanwhile, I’ll teach you about photography.”

  “Nothing personal, but I can’t say I ever wanted to learn about photography.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  In Rahway, the guard at the company gate found their surnames on his list, called the office, and waved them in. They turned onto a tree-lined lane that meandered through thick woods and eventually opened onto a wide, manicured lawn. Deer grazed in the distance.

  “What the hell is this?” Tony asked. “Some kind of Sherwood Forest?”

  “More likely the opposite. I don’t think we’ll be meeting any Robin Hoods here.”

  A circular drive led them to the company headquarters and laboratories. George Merck himself was waiting at the door. This was noteworthy. What did he find so important about her visit, to require a personal greeting? The press continually referred to him as Adonis-like, and Claire knew from more than one article that he was in his late forties, six feet four, blond and blue-eyed. Seeing him up close, however, Claire thought he was chunky and staid, too tightly buttoned into his vest and suit jacket. He and his family had made a fortune in the commercial development of vitamins. He regarded her with puzzlement.

  “Everything all right, Mr. Merck?”

  “We were expecting…”

  “A military man?”

  He smiled winsomely, and suddenly he did look as handsome as his reputation. “You could say that.”

  “I’ve got military clearance, so we’re okay on that count.”

  “With so many men going overseas, I understand how the magazines must be filling in with women for nonessential jobs.”

  “Oh, indeed. I’m even busier now than when I went on staff at Life four years ago.”

  Merck’s smile wavered, and beside her Tony Pagliaro hid a snigger.

  “Mrs. Shipley, welcome to Rahway.” With strained heartiness, Merck reached out to shake her hand.

  Between the two Adonises, blond George and dark Tony, Claire proceeded into the building.

  “Let me show you our operation. We’re proud of it, I don’t mind telling you.”

  He ushered them into a ground-floor lab. The gleaming, stainless steel counters and sinks looked bright and sparkling. The wooden lab tables were highly polished, shiny beakers arrayed upon them. The shelves were lined with glimmering, empty milk bottles.

  “This is our new lab for the testing and development of penicillin. I’ll bring in some scientists and you can photograph them with the equipment.”

  “This is an impressive lab, Mr. Merck. Has it ever been used?”

  “As I say, it’s our new lab.”

  “Mr. Luce’s arrangement with Dr. Bush is for me to photograph the work in progress.”

  “This is the work in progress.”

  “I need to see where you’re doing the penicillin research now.”

  “This is where we’re doing the penicillin research now.”

  “The bedpans and milk bottles that you’re already using. The old lab. The lab where you’re experimenting with submerged fermentation,” she added, using the rather impressive phrase that Barnett had bandied about during her briefing.

  “That initial work has been rendered obsolete. We want to show you only the latest developments.�
��

  “Forgive me, Mr. Merck, I believe there’s been a misunderstanding.” Andrew Barnett had been allowed to walk through the Merck facility the week before. He’d confirmed that extensive penicillin research was being done here. Obviously this new lab was nothing more than a display. Was Mr. Merck playing her for a fool?

  “Perhaps we should get Dr. Bush on the phone to discuss the situation.”

  “Certainly.”

  As luck would have it, Bush was in the process of flying to the West Coast and wouldn’t be reachable until late tonight. Shall I leave a message for him at the hotel? his secretary asked. Would you like to send a telegram?

  Flying to the West Coast was rare and impressive, the sort of thing Mrs. Roosevelt did. It was also time-consuming. Claire found herself with no alternatives. They returned to the lab, and two scientists joined them. The scientists wore well-pressed white lab coats over their dress shirts and ties. Their names were Dr. Frye and Dr. Rand, M.D. or Ph.D., Claire didn’t know. They were like twins, youthful and lighthearted, with blue eyes and blond hair like their boss. They greeted Claire with a playful attitude, pleased at the prospect of having their pictures in Life sooner or later. She took out the standard permission forms, and they signed.

  Pleading other obligations, George Merck turned the supervision of Claire and Tony over to the scientists and departed. With no other choice, Claire photographed the brand-new laboratory that might someday be used for penicillin or might simply be kept for show, while the real work went on elsewhere. She photographed the two jovial scientists in their starched lab coats, undoubtedly presented to them for this occasion, as they held test tubes of water up to the light and stared through microscopes at nonexistent slides. They were exceedingly cooperative, offering to pose in any way she liked, for fake shots that Claire knew could never run. The entire endeavor began to seem like a bad joke. Claire could only hope they might inadvertently reveal some useful information in the course of their performance.