by Frank Deford
“I guess.”
Well, Teddy, Goldstein was silent for a while, mulling. That encouraged me. Somebody who mulls might not be quick on the trigger. Finally, he spoke up. “Did he say he’d call you again?”
“Yeah, actually, he did.” Goldstein brightened, but I took all the air out of that balloon. “He said he’d gimme a call when the war was over.”
He frowned. “And you don’t know anything else?”
“Look, I’m telling you, sir.” (I can’t believe I called him “sir,” but I distinctly remember I did.) “I loved Horst once, but that was long ago and far away, and I haven’t had any contact with him in years. He calls me, finds out I’m married, we talk for a couple more minutes, and then he’s gone out of my life again.”
Goldstein just glowered, so I thought maybe it was time to appeal to his better instincts—assuming that a Nazi might have any. I think you’d say now, Teddy, that I tried to play the sweet-little-thing card. I lowered my head and rubbed my eyes. “Oh, sir, please, won’t you just leave me alone? I don’t know anything else. I don’t know who you are. I can’t help you. Just please.” And I tried to cry. In fact, I began to cry. Well, not really, Teddy, but at least I made as much noise as if I was crying. I mean, I really boo-hooed to beat the band.
She smiled then, and did a little boo-hooing for my benefit.
You see, at just that instant I was sure I’d heard the kitchen screen door open, and I had a pretty good idea who it was who’d opened it, and I wanted that person, who must be Gentry Trappe, to hear me cry, and then I wanted to keep on making enough noise so that Goldstein wouldn’t hear the kitchen door close. Luckily, Teddy, Gentry Trappe never slammed a door in all his born days. He was the quietest door-closer I’d ever encountered in my entire life.
And Goldstein, with all his mulling and my faux crying, didn’t hear a thing. “Come on, come on,” is all he said.
“Well, you wouldn’t let me get dressed, and I don’t have a hankerchief,” I said. “Lemme get a Kleenex.” And Teddy, I reached over to that duck, like it was a Kleenex box.
And sure enough, just as I did, I glanced up, and I could see Mr. Trappe coming into the room from the kitchen. He was to my right, but behind Goldstein. He was carrying a few ears of sweet corn he’d brought for me, and his eyes were wide open with confusion and fear at the scene he’d chanced upon.
Thank God for Gentry Trappe or I wouldn’t be here today. And come to think of it, Teddy, you wouldn’t have been any place any day, ever.
And Mom paused and took a sip from the Old Crow. Then she looked back up at me. She said:
Promise me you won’t hate me, Teddy.
I only shook my head, still completely unsure of what she was talking about, as she went on:
I opened my eyes as wide as I could—on purpose. You see, now I wanted to make sure Goldstein did see that I saw something. I wanted him distracted. Sure enough, he turned his head a little, and when he did, I screamed out, “He’s got a gun!” Then I grabbed that wooden duck, the cigarette box, by the neck, and I brought it down across Goldstein’s arm. I hit him square on the wrist, where he was holdin’ the pistol.
Mom pantomimed the action. She had a pretty smooth range of motion. She never did, as we say, “throw like a girl.” Maybe it came from all the swimming. In any event, I could imagine that she walloped Goldstein pretty good.
Okay, Teddy, Goldstein turned back from spotting Mr. Trappe at that instant and pulled the trigger, and the gun fired, which scared the living you-know-what outta me. But because I bopped his wrist in the nick of time, his aim was off, and the bullet missed me. In another second, Mr. Trappe had sorta shoveled the ears of corn he was carrying into Goldstein’s direction, and then he tumbled over the back of the sofa, grabbin’ him round the neck, and I smashed Goldstein on his wrist again with the duck.
At that point, he managed to get off one more shot. It went through the screen door. I found the hole later. But that was when I fell forward onto his arm, just as Mr. Trappe had come all the way over the back of the sofa onto Goldstein’s back, so he couldn’t keep hold of the gun anymore. It dropped to the floor, and I snatched it up and pointed it right at his head.
“Okay, Mr. Trappe, I got it now,” I said. By then, he had Goldstein in a headlock from behind.
Poor Goldstein, Teddy. I must say, he looked more chagrined than anything. Here he was, the top-dog Nazi in the whole United States, and an old man and a pregnant woman had beaten the crap out of him and taken his gun away. I was still scared out of my wits, but, at the same time, there was something comical about it.
Gentry Trappe, of course, was mostly just puzzled. “Miss Trixie,” he said. “Who is this?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said. “First, go into the garage and get something to tie him up with. There’s some clothesline in there.”
He was reluctant to leave me alone with the guy, but I gave a little wave of the gun, to assure him that I was quite capable of handling the situation, and he hurried off to the garage.
At this point Goldstein turned a little sullen, trying his best, I think, to affect a tough-guy pose. “So what’r’ya gonna do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll call the FBI.” Then I got a little smug, Teddy. I couldn’t resist lettin’ him know the score. “Actually, I already reported you to them. Your goose is cooked.”
“I figured maybe.” Then he pleaded a little: “Look, why don’t you lemme go, and I’ll just get outta your hair?”
“You think I’m born yesterday?” I said.
And then, Teddy, Goldstein said something every bit as stupid as what I’d said a few minutes earlier. He thought he was bein’ so smart. He kinda snarled at me: “Well, have it your way, sister, because once you turn me in, the only name I’m givin’ the bastards is your old lover boy. And they’ll get that sonuvabitch traitor for sure. They’ll find him.” He shook his wrist then. It was pretty bruised from me clubbing him with that duck.
And I thought: yeah.
“Yeah what, Mom?”
Yeah. Of course, Goldstein was gonna tattle on Horst. I’d already figured that, but now my mind began to turn over, Teddy. I was very calm, very rational. I just thought to myself how Goldstein was as good as executed the minute the FBI got him. They hadn’t even wasted any time hanging those saboteurs they’d caught who’d snuck in on the U-Boats—and those guys hadn’t even managed to do anything. But that’s what you do to spies. You hang them. In wartime, you kill them.
And I thought about Horst, Teddy. I thought about Jimmy, too. I did. How he was gone, killed in the war. And I thought about Horst and how he still loved me and how much I’d loved him once and maybe I had never stopped loving him, but, anyway, I knew I’d love him again.
Mom paused, and her eyes took on a thoughtful aspect, and I could see that she was framing the scene in her mind’s eye. Then, without any drama at all in her voice, she simply told me:
And so, Teddy, just like that, I pulled the trigger.
And she crooked her finger before me.
She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest, letting that soak in. It all came so fast. Instinctively, I just said, “You what, Mom?”
I pulled the trigger. I executed him. Actually, I pulled it a second time, but that was probably unnecessary. Remember, I was holding that pistol only a foot, maybe eighteen inches from him, pointed right at his heart, and Goldstein was probably dead even before I pulled the trigger the second time.
“But, Mom . . . how?”
She did not change her expression, only tried to do her best to help me understand. She was more illuminating than emotional. There were no dramatics at all.
Oh, understand, Teddy, I knew exactly what I was doing. It wasn’t like shooting a duck or a dove. I knew I was murdering another human being. Thou shalt not kill—right? But I did it without blinking an eye. I’m sure I didn’t feel any different than the Jap did who mowed Jimmy down on Tulagi. It was just
a bit of the war, Teddy. In a strange place. But . . . just a bit of the war.
She stopped and looked me right in the eye.
So, do you hate me now? Do you hate your mother now that you know she’s a murderer?
I managed to shake my head, and reached out and took her hand. “No, I don’t, Mom. I mean, there were extenuating—” But then I stopped and grabbed for my glass, and I swigged—I mean, swigged—my bourbon. As for Mom, she merely resumed talking again, without any particular tone to her voice, quite evenly, bordering on the matter-of-fact. I think she’d gone over this so many times in her mind, even talking it out to herself, that it came off as some sort of statement—testimony, in a way. It was almost as if she might call me “your honor” and conclude by signing her name and writing out the date to her confession.
See, Teddy, I’d simply decided that he was going to be executed, so I might as well be the executioner. And, of course, not that it mattered, but it did spare him any agony. He never had a clue. Never in a million years did he figure this nice, young, pregnant girl from the Shore was gonna kill him in cold blood. You know, Teddy, I don’t even remember any expression on his face. He was dead before he could be surprised. He just slumped back and then tumbled over to the side on the sofa, and the blood started to stain his shirt, sort of oozin’ out. But I barely noticed.
I just kept sittin’ there, holdin’ the gun, and wonderin’, did I do it to save Horst, or did I do it because I wanted Horst? Did you do it for love, Trixie, or did you do it for yourself? And you know, Teddy, I’ve never lost a minute’s sleep over the fact that I killed that man. But I have spent all these years wondering what led me to do it.
“Well, Mom, love and selfishness can usually be intertwined. We love someone, and we want her . . . him. I don’t know where you can draw the line.”
She nodded at that assessment, but only, I think, to be polite. It didn’t seem to settle the issue in her own mind. Nothing could, not after all these years of wrestling with it herself. She just took another sip of her drink and went on.
I did have the presence of mind to call out to Gentry Trappe that I was all right, so he came runnin’ back into the room, and I told him that Goldstein had tried to take the gun from me, so I had to shoot him, and he commiserated with me, that a young lady had had to shoot someone in self-defense, but I assured him I was fine, and then he told me he’d call the police. That’s when I finally got up outta that chair. I hadn’t moved the whole time, Teddy. But I had to stretch, and I said, “No, Mr. Trappe. We’re not gonna call the police. Or anybody.”
“We’re not?”
“No, we’re gonna take Mr. Goldstein and dump him out here in the river. We’re gonna deposit him in Davey Jones’ locker.”
For the first time in a while, Mom smiled.
My gracious, Teddy, but you should’ve seen the expression on Mr. Trappe’s face.
Of course, Teddy, it was all very unreal—or “surreal,” as everybody says now. For only at that point did it begin to seriously enter my consciousness that there was a dead man, who I’d killed in my bathing suit, lying on the sofa in our living room. My practical side kinda kicked in at this point, though, and I told Mr. Trappe I’d explain, but first I ran upstairs to get some towels so Goldstein wouldn’t bleed all over the darn place.
I hurried back with the towels and covered up the body, but I’d noticed my shower curtain when I’d grabbed the towels, so I ran back up to my bathroom and yanked that off the rod and came back down, and we wrapped Goldstein in that.
“Miss Trixie . . . ?” Gentry began then. I mean, I did owe him an explanation. But the magnitude of what I’d done finally hit me, and I began to cry for real. I said, “Let’s go in the kitchen,” and we went out to the table in the pantry. There were pantries then, Teddy. My gracious, I haven’t thought about pantries in a coon’s age.
“No, ma’am.”
So I got us glasses of ice water, and we sat down, and I said, “Now listen, this isn’t going to make any sense to you, but that man is a Nazi spy.” Naturally, Gentry looked at me like I had lost my marbles. So I went on: “Remember when I went to the Olympics in Germany?” And he nodded. “Well, I met some people there, and in a roundabout way, Mr. Trappe, that’s what brought that man here. He was looking for someone I know. And I appreciate that might be hard to understand, but you just hafta trust me, because if we go to the FBI, it can hurt someone else. Someone who’s good.”
He nodded, sort of. So I went on: “I know this isn’t fair, but I promise you, whatever happens, nothing will happen to you. All right?”
It was obvious that he was still pretty dubious—which I certainly would’ve been had our positions been reversed—but he managed to give me the benefit of the doubt, saying, “All right, Miss Trixie.”
And, Teddy, I stuck out my hand then, and I said, “Sydney.” He cocked his head, unsure what I’d meant by me just saying my name, so I explained: “Mr. Trappe, you and me’ve known each other for a long time, and I think it’s time we got on a first-name basis. So I’m Sydney and you’re Gentry. Okay?” And he agreed and shook my hand.
We couldn’t get rid of Goldstein’s body till it was dark, so we set about planning. First, I put on a pair of sneakers and some old overalls over my WSA bathing suit. Then we dragged the body out of the house, around back. There was an old anchor in the shed and behind it some cinder blocks that had been there for a million years. I asked Gentry to get a wheelbarrow and haul them down to the dock. Next, I moved Goldstein’s car, hiding it behind the shed. Then I set about the incredibly unpleasant task of taking the clothes off the body. If it did somehow manage to pop up off the river bottom and float up, I knew that the fewer ways to identify him the better. Well, I did leave him in his underclothes. I couldn’t imagine that they could possibly help identify him. Besides, as they say now, Teddy: I just didn’t want to go there.
So after I got his clothes off, right before I was going to pull the shower curtain back around him, I couldn’t help but stop and look at his face. It was quite placid, really. Remember, Teddy, I’d just shot him in his heart. And I couldn’t help but study that face. It was not bad-looking. It was just another face. And it occurred to me that I’d be the last person on this earth who’d ever see that face, so even though I was the one who’d killed him, I couldn’t help but take what I guess you’d call a sort of proprietary interest, so you know what I did, Teddy?
Of course, I had no idea. I shook my head.
Well, I kneeled over him and took my hand and smoothed his hair down. He was already stone cold, of course, and it was spooky, but I somehow felt that it was the least I could do. You see, it occurred to me that if some Japanese soldier had come across Jimmy’s body before our boys got to it, I would’ve hoped they wouldn’t’ve done anything disrespectable to it. Just because it was war, I didn’t think you had to be hateful to the dead bodies.
And that made me think of Jimmy again, so I had to pause for a moment. I sat back down on the ground, looking away from Goldstein, and remembered my dear Jimmy. That brought on more tears—but not for what I’d done, you understand. Just for poor Jimmy. For your father.
“Yes, ma’am.”
After a while, I composed myself again, and turned back and wrapped the shower curtain all around Goldstein. I got up then, and I looked down, and I said, “May God bless you.”
That took me aback. “You did?”
Yes, I’ve never been much for that rot-in-hell business. He was dead. I’d made him pay for his sins here. I was just really sayin’, ‘Well, God, it’s your business now.’ I mean, Teddy, I never forgot that if Gentry Trappe hadn’t showed up when he did, I’m sure Goldstein would’ve killed me. There but for the grace of God—right?
“I must say, Mom, that was very generous of you.”
Oh, I don’t know, Teddy. In a way it wasn’t at all personal. It was just the war. Anyway, that was the end of that. I started goin’ through his effects.
His wallet had a
driver’s license, which did indeed identify him as Jeremiah R. Goldstein, age forty-three. It was pretty easy back then to make up new names and such. He had $187 in cash, which was a lot of money to carry in those days. And he had a couple of blank checks and various notes and cards. No pictures—no photographs. I guess spies don’t carry that sort of thing.
Anyway, I took all that there was back to the shed, and with some strong scissors, I cut everything up but the money and put it in the garbage. I gave Gentry the $187. He was a little reluctant to take it, but it was such a considerable sum, whatever compunctions about the source of the filthy lucre were soon overcome.
We waited till well into the night. The only boat we had wasn’t much more than a rowboat with an outboard, and it took us a while to figure out how to ideally position the body. Eventually, we decided that the best way would be to place it—still wrapped in my shower curtain, now—up near the bow, cross-wised, so that his head and shoulders hung over one side and his legs the other. See, once we got the anchor and the cinder blocks tied to him, that would be the easiest way to push him overboard without swamping the boat. Over the bow.
It was past eleven when we pushed off, Gentry up front, making sure the body didn’t fall off before we tied the dead weights to it, me in the back steering the little putt-putt. I don’t know how deep the river was, but we all knew the Chester had a good channel, because big ships used to dock in Chestertown in the colonial days. It had been a very serious port at one time. Certainly, it was plenty deep for our particular purposes. I knew that.
