Fear Itself

by Andrew Rosenheim

Nessheim explained what had happened.

  ‘Jesus,’ Fedora exclaimed, ‘we spent a lot of time setting this up, pal.’

  ‘You think I did it on purpose?’ Fedora hadn’t been chased by the O.D. and a German Shepherd. Nessheim felt bad enough about screwing up without the dressing down.

  He handed over the tape. Without another word, Fedora started the car and drove off.

  Guttman hadn’t tried to disguise his disappointment when Nessheim spoke to him three days later. ‘It’s not enough,’ he said of the contents of the tape.

  ‘Does it give any idea what they’re going to do?’

  ‘It sounds like they’re planning to take over a building on Labor Day. We don’t know which one, just that it’s in New York.’

  ‘Can’t we just watch Schultz, then grab him when he makes his move?’

  ‘No,’ Guttman said testily. ‘What good is nabbing Schultz if his thugs go take over the Empire State Building? Or blow up the British Embassy? We need more information. You’ve got to try and find out whatever you can before this goddamned camp ends.’ He didn’t sound sanguine.

  But then they got a break. A week before the end of camp, Schultz called him aside after lunch. ‘A word, Bitte.’

  They went into Schultz’s office, where the German signalled Nessheim to close the door, then pointed to a chair. Schultz himself remained standing, looking thoughtful. ‘Tell me, when camp ends have you any plans?’

  ‘I thought I’d head back to Chicago unless something turned up out here.’

  ‘You are expected there? Family?’

  ‘Not really. My aunt knows I’ll stay if I can find something else to do. When the weather changes there’s not going to be much need for a swimming teacher in Chicago.’ He managed a wan smile.

  ‘I might have some work for you in New York City. You remember the Bund rally in February?’

  Nessheim nodded; it had been all over the national press. There had been fights in the hall, bad ones, as Leftists had tried to storm the stage. The police hadn’t intervened, leaving it to the Bund’s own security to keep peace inside Madison Square Garden. The result hadn’t cast the Bund in a good light, since their own security force had been more eager to beat up the dissidents than expel them.

  ‘We’re holding another one.’

  ‘Really?’ In the light of the new Soviet-Moscow pact, this was a surprise.

  Schultz said, ‘We need to show our strength more than ever. I think record numbers will attend.’

  ‘Where will it be held?’

  ‘In Madison Square Garden again. I wonder if you would be interested in helping out the week before.’

  ‘As a volunteer?’

  ‘Of course not. Same wages as here. You would need to pay for your lodging at the hostel, but we would pay for your meals.’

  ‘I’d like that very much.’

  The hostel, he discovered, was a prim tall building on East 85th, designed for young German males visiting America. He ate supper there dutifully on his first night, sitting by himself as he consumed a solid, flavourless meal of Spätzle and minced pork. Looking around him, he thought he recognised some of the young men eating at a long table in the rear. The O.D. Some would have been his pursuers at Camp Schneider.

  Upstairs his room was a sullen single cell with a cross on the wall above his bed. Tacked on the inside of the door to his small room was a list of regulations – no women visitors, no liquor, no smoking, no radios.

  To hell with this, he decided, and went down to the lobby, where he changed a quarter with the desk clerk for nickels and went into the phone booth, drawing the accordion door behind him. Consulting the phone book he found P. Rourke listed on West 37th. He hesitated for a moment – Schultz had been insistent that he not go out at night. ‘Early bedtime. No roistering, ja?’ he’d said, with a wink that had become a habit since discovering Nessheim with his pants down in Frances Stockton’s cabin.

  After four rings the throaty voice of Peggy Rourke said hello.

  ‘It’s Rossbach. Remember me?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘You in town?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Then I remember. Where are you?’

  He told her. ‘But I can’t exactly wait outside the front door. It’s kind of strict.’

  ‘You in a monastery or something?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  Twenty minutes later, Nessheim stood on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 86th Street – the German-American Broadway – as Peggy roared up in a jalopy the colour of spring grass. Twenty minutes later, she parked off 125th Street, then led him around the corner where a shimmering marquee had in enormous letters the word Apollo. People were milling excitedly in front.

  Peggy led him through the crowd. ‘Hey, Jackson,’ she said, handing a folded sawbuck to the uniformed man at the door. He smiled and palmed the bill, then let the rope down to let them through. They went upstairs to the very top of the theatre, and found two empty seats in the gods. It was between shows, and the overhead lights lit up the vast theatre like a movie set. The audience was almost entirely Negro, and dressed to kill – the men in zoot suits, swaggering and drinking openly from hip flasks, and the ladies wearing brightly coloured dresses.

  Then the house lights dimmed, the orchestra in the pit began to play, and a handsome black woman in a dress of electric blue came out on stage. Her face was the colour of caramel, handsome rather than pretty, and she had a garland of white flowers in her hair. Gradually, the audience quieted down, until there was absolute silence in the theatre. Then she began to sing. For the next hour Nessheim could not have told you where he was, who he was with, or even who he was. The voice he heard was mesmerising.

  As the house lights went on, the trance was broken. Peggy squeezed his arm and he came back to earth. ‘You like that, Rossbach?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s incredible.’

  ‘They call her Lady Day. Let’s go now – nothing’s going to beat that.’

  As they made their way out to the lobby, Nessheim suddenly stopped. ‘I know that guy,’ he said, pointing to a Negro man in a wide-striped suit with padded shoulders. He was talking to two women, each wearing bright red lipstick, a taffeta gown and high heels. Where had he seen him before?

  He was about to go over and ask when Peggy took his arm. ‘Maybe you do, honey, but this ain’t the time to find out. We’re guests here, Jimmy. This is their place. If he wanted to know you tonight, he would have come and said so.’

  They went back to the car. She drove through Central Park, spooky with shadows this late – it was after midnight. She lit a cigarette with one hand, scratching a match like a bookie against her thumbnail, then rammed the window down and exhaled gaily into the still summer air. ‘I hope I’m not taking you back to your monk’s cell, kiddo.’

  She lived above a hardware store, between 7th and 8th Avenues, in a three-room railroad apartment. The bedroom overlooked the street, and was lit up by a neon sign flashing Liquors on the corner of the block. Peggy fried eggs and bacon on a tiny gas stove, and they ate hungrily on tin plates, squashed together at a table the size of a waiter’s platter. As they finished she suppressed a heavy yawn. ‘I’ve got an early start if you’re worried about getting back in the morning.’ She wiped up the remains of yolk on her plate with a heel of bread and grinned. ‘Not that we’re going to get much sleep.’

  She dropped him at six the next morning, a block from the hostel. ‘It’s been great,’ she said, patting his knee, but her attention seemed elsewhere.

  ‘How are you fixed tomorrow?’

  ‘Busy tomorrow,’ she said. ‘All week’s bad, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Jimmy, listen.’ She was looking at him now, and her expression was level-headed as a teacher’s. ‘You’re a sweet guy – I’ve already told you that. But I’m thirty-nine years old, three husbands down, and happy enough on my own. You deserve more than that. You need someone in your life, but that someon
e’s not me. Next time you’re in town, give me a call, and we’ll do the town again. But you ought to get yourself a steady girl. Okay?’

  Peggy leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Now beat it,’ she said lightly, ‘or I’ll be late for the breakfast shift.’

  Nessheim got out of the jalopy, and watched as she did a big U-turn on the street. Pushing down the window she blew him a kiss. ‘Be good, Jimmy. And be safe.’

  * * *

  He went to Schultz’s house later that morning. Mrs Schultz opened the door with a frown set like rictus on her face. After being found in Frances’s cabin, Nessheim was in disgrace.

  She led him through to a spic-and-span kitchen. Through its window he saw a little square of garden, bordered by the high wall of an apartment building behind. The Schultzes’ daughter Katrina was playing by an apple tree with a friend – it was Adele Kugel, wasn’t it? Both girls looked up, saw him, then promptly looked away. Well, he thought, we’re no longer in Vermont. Maybe that’s their problem.

  Schultz came in carrying a large mug of coffee. ‘Young Rossbach, you’ve made it.’

  ‘Ja,’ he found himself saying.

  ‘The accommodation I know is very simple. But healthy, clean,’ he added a little insistently.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Then where were you last night?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The hostel reported that your bed was not slept in.’ ‘They’re spying on me?’

  ‘I asked,’ said Schultz firmly. ‘So where were you?’

  He wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but he couldn’t afford to have a fight with Schultz now. He said with a sigh, ‘I was with a friend.’

  ‘I told you not to be in touch with people.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s a woman I met at the place in the Catskills.’

  ‘I suppose she’s a Yid then?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He did his best to look indignant. ‘Her name’s Rourke. She’s a waitress.’ Schultz looked sceptical so he added, ‘You can look it up in the phone book. West 37th Street. That’s where I spent the night.’

  Schultz still wasn’t happy. ‘If I were you, young Rossbach, I’d learn to keep your Pimmel in your pants. One of these days it’s going to get you in a lot of trouble. From now on I want no wanderings, is that clear?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Now let me explain what I need you to do.’

  The duties were simple, and simple-minded. Ahead of the rally scheduled for Labor Day, Schultz wanted Nessheim to distribute leaflets publicising the event throughout the immediate neighbourhood. House by house, street by street, in all of Yorkville, which as Nessheim discovered, stretched from the East River to 3rd Avenue, and from 79th up to 96th. It hardly seemed necessary, since posters promoting the rally were plastered on every streetlamp and every free wall space throughout the area.

  Was it for this that Schultz had brought Nessheim down from Vermont? It didn’t make sense; a ten-year-old boy looking for pocket money could have done the job. It seemed odder still when he soon learned that his work was being checked up on – a stout old German woman, whose apartment he’d knocked on one afternoon, saw him an hour later on 2nd Avenue. ‘Herr Schultz came round to ask if I had had my leaflet,’ she said. ‘I told him you had been already.’

  He felt sidelined and with five days left before Labor Day, he was getting nowhere fast. Each time he called D.C. – now every day – he could hear the strain in Guttman’s voice.

  He had to do something. For a lack of alternatives he decided to follow Schultz. To cover the time he would miss from his ‘job’, he worked late one evening passing out leaflets – he had just about done the entirety of Yorkville.

  The next day, he watched Schultz’s house from a stool in a German bakery on the corner that served coffee. He felt obliged to buy a Kuchen every hour, and he had eaten five when Schultz at last came out of the house, accompanied by Beringer. Nessheim gave them a block’s head start, and prayed they wouldn’t hail a cab. When he caught sight of them two blocks east, he saw that they had been joined by a pack of Ordnungsdienst a dozen strong. The paramilitaries now wore shorts, T-shirts, and light boots, a uniform which seemed out of place on the streets of New York.

  He followed the group for half an hour, as they walked en masse out of Yorkville, over to the sombre monumental apartment blocks of Park Avenue. There they headed south on the west side of the split avenue, drawing looks from passers-by. Then at 72nd Street on a signal from Schultz they dispersed. Schultz and Beringer were walking alone again, though from his vantage point two blocks behind, looking along Park Avenue as it tilted down towards Grand Central in the distance, Nessheim could see that all the Ordnungsdienst were within 200 yards of the pair.

  After a few further blocks, Schultz and Beringer stopped at a corner. Behind them, set back from the street, was a massive Victorian mansion of decorated red brick, with a crenellated tower in its centre. Nessheim wondered if it had been the fanciful creation of a nineteenth-century millionaire; it wasn’t clear what it was now.

  Schultz was looking around with an air of blameless curiosity – he could have been a Kansas farmer on his first trip to New York. Then he turned suddenly and with Beringer began to walk north again, retracing his steps. It seemed strange, and stranger still when at 72nd Street the O.D. regrouped around him.

  At 85th they turned east, moving back towards Schultz’s house along a thin side street of brownstones. Near Lexington, they passed of all things a synagogue, where two teenage boys were coming down the steps of the building. The O.D., stationed in front of Schultz and Beringer in advance formation, had already passed by, but Heydeman stayed close to Schultz on the street side, like a bodyguard. Nessheim saw that he was wearing a Bund armband around one bicep, with a red-and-white blazon that resembled a swastika.

  One of the boys, the smaller, imp-like in a little jacket and tie, pointed at Heydeman’s arm and said something. His friend next to him laughed. Suddenly Heydeman strode over to the pair of them. The imp fled, laughing, racing up 85th Street towards Nessheim. His friend remained. He was a tall gangly kid with an innocent look on his face.

  Heydeman shook his fist at the retreating boy, then turned to the other. Nessheim could see Heydeman square his shoulders and pull his arm back slowly, almost lumbering. It swung powerfully through the air and his fist landed flush on the gawky teenager’s nose.

  There was a sudden howl and the boy put both hands to his nose, lowering his face in obvious agony. The imp had stopped running and turned, looking back in horror. The O.D. men had stopped as well, and began to retrace their steps just as the doors of the synagogue swung open and a group of half a dozen grown men came out, all in suits and wearing yarmulkes.

  They took one look and rushed Heydeman, swinging. The big man punched one of them, and had lifted another off the ground with both hands when the others overwhelmed him, knocking Heydeman to the ground. But by then the O.D. were back, and they set upon the group of Jews with tactical precision. One of them even came over to push the wounded boy against a wall, where he began to hit him with a rhythmic series of punches – his face, then his body, then his face again.

  Nessheim was sprinting forward now, and grabbed the boy’s assailant by his shoulder. He was a heavy-set blond guy with a crew-cut, older than the others, and he turned with a look of cold rage on his face. For a moment Nessheim thought the man was going to square off with him.

  ‘I’m on your side,’ he shouted. ‘Forget the kid, and go watch Schultz.’ He pointed wildly towards the melee continuing on the synagogue steps. The O.D. man nodded, and ran back to defend his patron.

  The Jewish boy was leaning against the wall, moaning as he held his nose with one ineffectual hand – for blood ran down his shirt in a non-stop stream. His otherhand was massaging his lower back, where his kidneys had been subjected to a series of hammer blows.

  Nessheim leaned forward, and the boy flinched. ‘Get out o
f here, kid,’ said Nessheim. ‘I mean it. Run.’ At first the boy only heard the harsh timbre of his voice and not the meaning of his words. He cringed as if Nessheim were about to hit him, too. ‘Go on, get going,’ Nessheim said urgently, and at last the boy reacted. He stumbled, then ran to join his littler friend, and Nessheim took a half-hearted kick at his backside, and missed.

  When he went over to the synagogue’s steps he found the Jews had retreated inside. The Bund members stood bunched on the steps, blood up. As he approached Schultz looked at Nessheim with surprise, but Heydeman glared at him. ‘Why did you let the fucker go?’

  ‘I wanted to make sure they were all right,’ Nessheim said, pointing at Schultz and Beringer.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Heydeman angrily, but Schultz put a restraining hand on the big man’s arm. ‘Calm yourself,’ he ordered. He gave a short cynical laugh. ‘You should know by know that young Rossbach is a lover, not a fighter.’

  ‘Should we go in?’ one of the O.D. called to Schultz, pointing to the entrance to the synagogue. He looked eager, and Schultz hesitated. But just then a siren wailed from the direction of Park Avenue, then another. They were coming their way.

  ‘No. Now go! Schnell!’

  And they all ran, Nessheim using the excuse to peel off, turning up Lexington instead of heading east to Yorkville. Right then he would have happily lived up to Schultz’s description of him as a lover not a fighter, but Peggy Rourke had made it clear he shouldn’t phone again.

  He had arranged to go by Schultz’s house the next morning, and Nessheim knew he had to stick to the appointment. He reached Guttman at the Bureau, and described the events of the day before. To his surprise, Guttman was less interested in the fight than in the precise details of where Schultz had gone. ‘You say they walked down Park Avenue?’

  ‘That’s right. Then the squad all peeled off – though they stayed within range, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Sounds strange. Where was that exactly?’

  ‘I told you. On Park Avenue.’

  ‘Where on Park? It’s probably five miles long, kid.’