She looked at me pityingly. “He has spies everywhere. He will do anything. If necessary he will fight even the United States. Do you know that Comrade Che, as he calls himself, has announced he would drop nuclear weapons on the US, if means the end of the great evil imperialists? Even if it means he takes all his own with him? They are crazy, Detective. But like a fox, you see. They have very good spies, but you Americans don’t believe it. Everybody thinks, oh, the Cuban men they are lovers, they sing and dance, they are only good at the art of love, but not the arts of subterfuge and espionage.” She laughed bitterly. “There are many right here in the United States, double agents, tough people, who report only to Fidel Castro, and yet Americans, even in the CIA, ignore it, they feel we are idle people, romantic and undisciplined.” Inhaling deeply, she squashed the cigarette butt in a silver ashtray. “These people who report to Castro are brutal, so we must have our own. We ask only to go back to our country, to reclaim our houses and our land. Castro and his people know that for us this is a fight to the death. We will take our island back, or we will die.”
“Tell me more about these young people. Please.” I was on the edge of the sofa, eating more of those pink cookies— I’d had nothing to eat all day—and smoking, nervous she would change her mind, anxious about how to keep her talking. It was the first decent lead I’d had, but the doorbell rang. “Are you expecting somebody?”
Rising, Mrs Reyes left the room. With her when she returned were three men in suits. They removed their hats. The two young men stood near the door. The third man was older, maybe fifty-five, with a weary face.
Mrs Reyes made more coffee. She produced sandwiches made of Spanish ham and cheese, and there was beer for the men. I gobbled a sandwich. The older man who wore a well-tailored navy blue suit, with a black armband, sat next to me. The conversation was in Spanish, and Mrs Reyes translated.
“Detective Wynne, this gentleman’s name is Roberto.”
“Roberto what?”
“He believes the young woman you found on the High Line may be his daughter, Susana. She wore this tattoo of the worm, and the words, as protest. God help me, she went into New York to join a demonstration at the United Nations. She was here with us, and she insisted on going into New York, where she was murdered. I let her go.” A small sound of intense pain escaped from Mrs Reyes, and she turned away from me briefly to hide her face.
“She lived with you?”
“She lived in Havana, and here.”
“Do you have a picture of Susana?”
Reaching behind her to a low table, among the cluster of framed photographs, Mrs Reyes picked one of the girl, the girl I had found dead, hanging from the High Line. With her was a young man but his back was to the camera. They were standing together on a beach somewhere.
I looked at the photograph, and at Mrs Reyes. “She was your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“But last summer, you didn’t say anything.”
“I was speechless,” she said.
“Somebody claimed the body in August.”
“A friend,” she said.
“Roberto is Mr Reyes, is that right?”
“Yes. He is my husband.”
There was something wrong. Why didn’t she introduce him as her husband right away? Why not tell me the girl was her daughter? I got the feeling she was lying, but I didn’t know why or about what, unless she was also involved in espionage, in the effort to destroy the Castro regime. There were layers I couldn’t dig through, couldn’t even guess at; more than ever I felt I was just a city cop, out of my depth, unable to play at these spy games.
“Why didn’t he come to us?” I looked at the man named Roberto, whose long face was sunk into his chin. He spoke no English. He murmured in Spanish and Mrs Reyes translated.
“He was afraid. We have made our own investigation,” she said while the father, weeping now, excused himself and left the room. A few minutes later, he returned, composed, his face blank with grief.
“I don’t understand.”
“Some people in your police department wanted money. He was afraid. He was afraid of the police, and also the Mafia.”
“I thought the Mafia were on your side. They hate Castro.”
“They are on the side of people who pay them. They kill anyone who gets in their way. Perhaps it is somebody who wants it to look like the Mafia.”
Mr Reyes turned in order to look me in the face, as if to beseech me. “Please, help us,” he said in English and began to weep again. “My daughter.”
“What about the young man? I can’t see his face in this picture.”
“He was her boyfriend. Susana was very young and impressionable, and she had believed wholeheartedly in the Revolution like so many of the young, and left us when she was seventeen to support it. And then more recently, she began to change. She saw what Castro was doing. She fell in with some people who felt the same, and one of them was this young man. He had fought with Castro in the mountains, he had almost given his life, and then something changed him. He saw their system. He learned to hate Castro. I should forgive him because he was a good man, but he pulled my daughter into it. They were to meet in New York. She was a romantic. He and Susana swore to fight against Castro until death. And they did, in the end.”
“Have you got a photograph of the young man where I can see his face?”
Mrs Reyes left the living room and returned with a snapshot that showed the two of them, Susana and the dead man from the pier and they were fooling around at a park; they looked like teenagers.
“What was his name?”
“Rica. All he would say was that he was Rica. I assumed Riccardo was his real name. Thank you. Excuse me, I’ll accompany you downstairs, Detective.”
On the sidewalk outside the lace shop, Mrs Reyes offered her hand, small as bird bones, so I took hold of it and kept it in mine. “There was more, wasn’t there? There was something they told you, wasn’t there? Something that can help us find her killer, and that of her friend, of course? Find out why they were killed?”
She nodded, and looked at me hard. “Susana told me that Riccardo had some information. He told her certain things, but he said there was someone else, and he lacked all the pieces of information, but they would meet in New York. He promised me he would not let anyone harm her. I did not like him, to be honest. He was older. He had been close to Castro. I was not sure what he believed. I don’t think Susana ever saw him in New York. She telephoned me one last time to say she was waiting for him. That’s all I know. They all wore the tattoo. Susana was proud of it when she was here, she would say, ‘Mama, look, this is for our country.’ But he, he wore a shirt with long sleeves, he covered it up.”
“Were they planning something, do you think?”
“You mean an attack? I believe they were going to New York to stop something. Susana kept saying this, even in her sleep. ‘We must stop it, Mama,’ and then she left. ‘Stop.’ I would hear her saying over and over. ‘Stop.’ ”
“I’m so sorry for your troubles,” I said.
“Riccardo was not a bad man, but he was a zealot,” she said. “He felt betrayed by the revolution. He thought of nothing else.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, of course.”
“One more thing.”
“What is it?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your daughter earlier? What’s the truth? There must be a reason. I know you were in mourning, terrible grief, of course, but I knocked on doors all summer long, I can’t believe you didn’t answer just because you worried the cops were on the take.”
“I didn’t trust you.”
“I see. Why?”
“Riccardo, my daughter’s friend, he was a peasant, a man of no family, but he spoke perfect English, and several times I heard him on the phone speaking in Russian, and I wondered why. He had been very well educated, and I asked myself, by whom? You have Russian friends, is that not so, Detective?”
&
nbsp; “I know a few of them. They’re not my friends.”
“We knew about your part in the investigation from the newspapers that reported our daughter’s murder. But one of our friends also saw an article in what is it called, the Village Voice? This past summer? About a Soviet student, a certain Mr Maxim Ostalsky, isn’t that right, Detective? It mentioned that you were his friend. Surely this Mr Ostalsky must be a Soviet agent if they allow him to study in the United States. I wondered why a New York etective, perhaps an Irish Catholic from your name, why does he have such a close friend who is a Communist? You saw the article, I imagine, and will forgive my little bit of detective work.”
“I saw it, sure,” I said. “When it came out.”
“Yes,” she said and reached into the pocket of her black skirt. “I kept a copy.”
“I see.”
“Then you understand. I must go upstairs now. You are ill,” said Mrs Reyes. “You should go home. It’s cold. Winter is coming,” she said sadly, as if mourning the season as well as her daughter.
“Let me ask you one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“Do you know a Captain Logan? Did he ever contact you?”
Quickly, she shook her head, then walked too quickly back to her door.
CHAPTER SIX
October 18, ’62
SOMEBODY HAD BROKEN INTO my place. I usually left a pin in the doorjamb so I could tell if somebody had bust in while I was away. If the pin fell out, someone had been by, and this time, soon as I got home from Jersey, I saw it: the pin was on the floor. I got out my gun and my keys at the same time. I unlocked the door carefully, then shoved it in fast as I could, still holding the weapon.
The apartment was empty. I looked it over. Nothing was missing as far as I could see. Maybe a certain fear, some kind of paranoia was on me, had been since I found the dead man on the pier earlier in the week. Riccardo. His name was Riccardo, according to Mrs Reyes.
After I checked on Tommy, who was at home in his apartment upstairs and confessed he had been into my place looking for a smoke, I went home, sat at the kitchen table, typed out everything Mrs Alicia Reyes had told me that morning and tried to make some sense of it, then I dug out the file I had kept on the High Line case—on the girl who was murdered, who turned out to be Susana Reyes. But what caught my eye was a copy of the Village Voice with Ostalsky’s profile.
August 6: it had been August 6 when I first saw the piece about Max Ostalsky in the Village Voice. I remembered because it was around the time Marilyn Monroe died. She passed on August 5, and reports of her death appeared in the papers the next day.
How much I loved Marilyn. I’m staring at her picture in the New York Post at the office when I knock the ashtray off my desk and it spills butts all over my fresh chinos. “Goddamn it to hell.”
“What’s with you, Pat?” says the guy sitting at the next desk, a new young detective typing with two fingers, filling out a form.
“Nothing. Leave me be. Do your own damn work.”
I’m feeling glum about Marilyn, and pretty much every goddamn thing when my boss calls me in, and says he saw the Village Voice and yells at me for palling around with Reds. Murphy sees a Red under every bed, and he considers himself vigilant. Plus, he is not a subtle man.
Lieutenant R. N. Murphy is short with big shoulders and an ugly pug-dog Irish face. His cruddy sour breath stinks of black coffee and the Camels he chain-smokes.
Once he was a star among young detectives, back when he was a favorite of Mayor LaGuardia’s. In the war, he fought in the Pacific, he was some kind of Marine hero at Tarawa, which was something, one of the ugliest battles, dead Americans all over the beach. Murphy got a Bronze Star. Makes sure everyone hears it.
“What?”
“Sit yourself down, Wynne,” says Murphy. “So what about this Commie pal of yours, man? In that new, what’s it called, this rag?”
“The Village Voice. And he’s not my friend.”
“No? Little birdie told me you been meeting him pretty regular for drinks and showing him a welcome to our fair city. You gotta be careful of them son-of-a-bitch Commies, man, you hear me?”
“How do you know?”
The boss laughs his mean pinched laugh. “Gotcha. You told me what I wanted to know. What’d you think, man, that I got spies out watching you?”
“Do you?”
Murphy thinks I’m some kind of bohemian bum, hanging around the Village. To him, I’m a freak, thirty-two with a failed marriage to the girl I got pregnant, the kid I’m never allowed to see, a man who sometimes goes to foreign movies and likes colored music he hates. “Just a friendly warning,” he says. “On the other hand, maybe you’ll learn something from that Russki. You never know. You find out anything, you come to me, right? Wynne? The FBI would love to hear. Read the piece,” says Murphy, leans back in his chair, puts his feet on his desk, and lights up. He wears ugly shit-kickers, big thick black old lace-ups so old the soles are broken. “Just read it.”
“I read it.”
“Read it again.”
“SOVIET GRAD STUDENT DELIGHTS IN GREENWICH VILLAGE” is the headline in the Village Voice. The photograph shows Max Ostalsky, smiling, in a new button-down shirt in front of the Washington Square Arch. In the interview, he says how much he’s enjoying his experience in New York, especially Greenwich Village, that everyone is so kind and helpful and his studies interesting, and his particular favorite food is fried clams at Howard Johnsons.
Max even tells a few jokes on himself, he relates how much the hospitality of New Yorkers means to him, and how much their friendship delights him, including the stranger who helped him out, buying a hot dog in the park, a friend he learns is a New York detective name of Pat Wynne. There it is, black and white, me and the Russki. A whisper of something bad hits the back of my neck, raises the hairs. This is no good, this thing about me and the Russian printed in public. The Commies are bad news. There’s plenty like my boss still out to get them and the people who make friends with them. I better keep my damn distance, I think, and toss the newspaper into a garbage can.
And then, just my lousy luck, Max—out of the blue, no invitation I can recall—shows up at the station house. These days he looks like everybody—blue button-down short-sleeved summer shirt, chinos—the sergeant hardly takes notice; just calls me to the front door.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry, Pat, I thought we had arranged to meet. Have I got the wrong day?” He looks apologetic.
“Did we? I don’t remember. What did we arrange?”
“I asked if you might take me to see the High Line, and explain about your crime scenes, and you said, come to my office, is that not right? If I am not correct, I’m so sorry.”
I’m finished work for the day, more or less, and I want to know what Max Ostalsky has been up to. What’s this Commie really want? “Yeah, come on. We’ll walk. Maybe catch a breeze off the river. So I see you made the big time, big profile in the Voice.”
Max doesn’t answer, just lights up a cigarette. Outside, on Charles Street, a young guy is smoking a joint. Sees me, tosses it into the gutter.
“You into grass yet, Max?”
“I have my Lucky Strikes.”
“How come? You dig the rest of it, the girls, the music, you scared because they showed you some propaganda films about the decadent West at home, and how you do drugs, you’ll become addicted like our own people in the ghetto?”
Without answering, ignoring the sarcasm, he says, “I have asked to see the place of the crime, Pat, this is to help me understand the workings of America’s Civil Society. If this is not proper, please, tell me.”
“Why? You thinking of sticking around, maybe join the police here? Jesus, it is hot. They get heat like this in Moscow?”
“Yes, the summers can be hot,” Max says, keeping pace with me.
“You been seeing Nancy a lot?” I keep it casual. We’re walking, up Sixth, up Greenwich Avenue, pas
t St Vincent’s, and west to the river.
“She has invited me to her father’s house for dinner.”
“I’ll bet you and old Saul hit it off just fine.”
“I admire him.”
As soon as we get close to the river, I change my mind. Later, it would come back to me that I should have turned around, and told Ostalsky it wasn’t on. Get lost, I should have said.
What do I want with this Russki on my crime scene, pawing over my case, asking questions about the dead girl, pestering me for information, and for what? What’s in it for you, Ostalsky, I think, looking at him, at the way he’s learned to dress, even learned to walk in that casual way as if he’s just out having a ball, smoking his Luckys; occasionally he pulls his little notebook out of his shirt pocket and jots something down.
“What the hell do you keep in there?”
Max stops, replaces his notebook. “Oh, as I have said, notes for my classes. This means words I learn. Books I read. Things I observe in New York. Music. I have been listening to quite a bit of your favorites, to Fat Domino,” he says. “He is jolly. I like this Blueberry Hill.” He smiles, knows the reference to music might please me; how charming this Russian is, and the more I think about it, too eager to please.
“Fats Domino.”
My shirt is wet from the humid air; my eyes burn; I can’t remember when I ate last.
“Do you know, Pat, when I was a boy I wanted to be a policeman. There was a murder in our building, this was very rare in Moscow, and I met the homicide policemen, I thought they were very, can I say cool, though cool may not have been quite a word they could understand. I had read quite a few detective stories.”
“You had detective novels?”
“Surely. In Moscow, things were possible. My mother adores Agatha Christie. I managed to acquire a few of the Americans, such as Raymond Chandler. Are all of your jobs within Manhattan?”
“Most, yeah.”
“What was most difficult?”
“The Mad Bomber, no contest, back in the 50s, you ever hear of him? I worked on that case along with hundreds of other cops. Bastard stashed bombs all over town for years. The worst was Penn Station, it’s goddamn easy to hide there, impossible to evacuate.”
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