“Was it a homicide, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant gave a nod.
“So,” the reporter said, “I take it that the fire was set to cover up a crime?”
“As I said, out of respect for Congressman and Mrs. Zielinski, we will wait for the conclusion of our investigation before releasing any more information to the press. That’s all I have to say at this time.”
* * *
Mimi and Nathan spent the day trying to process the terrible news. Best friends, practically family, gone in the blink of an eye—it was inconceivable. What kind of monster would do such a thing? How deranged and wicked would a person have to be to commit so evil a crime against such a lovely young couple?
A number of photographs lay on Mimi’s coffee table, and she gently arranged them with her index finger. “Chrissie was such a powerful force in my life, and I really don’t know how things will ever be the same. There’s an empty hole in my heart,” Mimi said. “She and I have shared our innermost secrets since we were eight years old. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Nathan stared at a picture of the four of them taken at the Indiana Dunes State Park. “He was like a brother to me,” he said softly. “He always had my back. I remember the time we played Sullivan and some smartass linebacker took a cheap shot at me. Preston came out of nowhere and flattened the guy. He was ready to take on the whole Sullivan team. I know I’ll never have another friend like him.”
The afternoon news compounded their sadness with the revelation that Preston and Christine had been murdered before the fire was set. The coroner reported that Preston had been shot three times: two superficial wounds and a fatal shot to the temple, execution style. Christine died from a single shot, an oblique wound that severed her carotid artery. Officials speculated that the fire was set to cover up the crime. Theories abounded. Police theorized it was a botched robbery. The house had been torn apart. Drawers lay open. Closets had been rifled through. According to Christine’s parents, items of jewelry were missing.
Mimi gripped Nathan’s hand tightly. “That was no robbery. You and I both know that the shootings were intended to silence Preston and Chrissie. If Chrissie hadn’t quit, if she had returned to work as her father demanded, she’d be alive today.”
“Vittie wouldn’t kill his daughter, Meems. He loved her.”
“I’m not saying that Vittie was the murderer. He would never harm Chrissie. I don’t think he cared for Preston, especially after last Sunday’s phone call, but he would never have done anything to hurt his daughter.”
“Then who? Was it Nicky?”
Mimi shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s an asshole, he’s violent, he’s a drunk, but according to Chrissie, he was madly in love with her.”
“Remember, he’s going through a divorce, and Chrissie knew all about his hidden money. Maybe Nicky’s more madly in love with his money than he was with Chrissie. He could have gone over there to threaten Chrissie and make sure she kept quiet. We know he has a hair-trigger temper.”
“I suppose that’s possible, but why would Preston ever let Nicky into the house in the middle of the night? I don’t think we should overlook the corporate executives—Vittie’s military contractors, his campaign contributors, his bribers—whatever you want to call them. They’re making billions, and they’re not about to let two kids get in their way.”
Nathan nodded. “Or send them to federal prison for illegal kickbacks. We both heard what Preston said to Vittie last Sunday night. We heard him threaten to go to the Tribune and blow the whistle on the ‘whole goddamn operation.’ And you heard what Chrissie said. ‘Everybody knows too much.’ Meems, there’s no doubt in my mind that they were killed to silence them, and it could have been arranged by any one of those billionaires.”
Mimi bit her lip. “Should we go to the police? Tell them what we know?”
“Accuse Congressman Witold Zielinski and the country’s most powerful businessmen of illegal kickbacks? We have no evidence. No proof of anything. Who’s going to believe two twenty-five-year-olds against those people?”
Mimi pointed at the first floor. “I know one person who might.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHICAGO
ALBANY PARK NEIGHBORHOOD
DECEMBER 1965
The top half of Chicago’s skyline was swallowed up in a blanket of low, dark clouds, reminding Chicagoans that winter had once again taken up residence. Patches of ice and snow dotted the sidewalk in front of the Ostrowicz Funeral Home, and despite the chilly north winds, the line to pay respects stretched out the door and down Wilson Avenue. The wait time was over an hour.
The mortician had expressed his concern to the Zielinski and Roberts families that he could not do justice to Preston. The head wound had caused too much damage. He recommended a closed casket wake for the married couple, but the congressman rejected the suggestion outright. “Christine’s will be opened. You will prepare her properly and I will have my goodbyes,” he said.
Nathan, Mimi and Ruth approached Christine’s casket together. Mimi stood for a moment, shivered and then slumped into Nathan’s arms as though she were a marionette and someone had cut her strings. With his arm around her, Nathan led her to a seat. A few minutes later, Congressman Zielinski came over and sat next to her. The dark circles under his eyes and the slump in his shoulders bore witness to his profound sadness. Mimi had never seen him look so old. A man who carried himself with the bearing of a Roman general had been vanquished by his grief.
“I am so very sorry for you, Uncle Vittie,” Mimi said through her tears.
“And I for you,” Vittie said. “I have memories, such happy memories of the two of you playing in the yard. Always like sisters. Always two peas in a pod.” He took Mimi’s hand. “You have been and will always be a second daughter to us, Mimi.” They hugged and cried together until the congressman nodded and left to talk to other people.
Mimi and Nathan were talking to Christine’s mother when a gaunt man in rimless glasses came over and clasped Nathan’s shoulder. He gestured for Nathan to follow him to the hallway.
“My name is Michael Stanley,” he said, with curled lips in an unfriendly manner. He did not offer a handshake. “I work for the congressman. I’m his chief of staff. I was Preston’s boss.”
“I know who you are.”
“What do you know about the murders?”
“I don’t know anything. What kind of question is that at a wake?”
Stanley lifted his chin and peered down over his nose. “You were his best friend. He confided in you, didn’t he? What has he been telling you recently?”
“About what?”
“Don’t play cute with me, Mr. Stone. What did Preston Roberts tell you about the reasons Christine was considering leaving her job?”
“Considering? She quit her horseshit job, and what either one of them told me is none of your business.”
Stanley jabbed a finger onto Nathan’s chest. “It is very much my business, Mr. Smart-mouth. What did Preston tell you?”
Nathan smiled and raised his eyebrows. “He told me he didn’t like you, that you were an asshole, and I can now confirm that his description was accurate.”
“How dare you! Sonny, you don’t know who you’re dealing with. I want answers.”
“Look, I don’t have to answer your questions, Mr. Stanley. You’re not a cop. This is a wake for my best friend, and you’re bothering me. And if you poke that finger at me again, I’ll break it off. Go away.”
Stanley took a step back. “You’re walking a dangerous line here, sonny. You better watch what you say and who you talk to. You can get yourself and your girlfriend in a whole world of trouble. If I was you, I’d keep my mouth shut.”
Nathan scoffed and walked away. He waited for Mimi to finish expressing her condolences and they left.
“Did you see that creep who cornered me?” Nathan said. “The guy who thinks he’s Joe Friday?”
“It’s Mike Stan
ley.”
“I know; he made that clear. No wonder Preston didn’t like him. What a jerk. He kept asking me what Preston told us. He threatened me, told me to keep my mouth shut. It makes me think he was right in the middle of the major shit that Preston kept talking about.”
“Is there any doubt in your mind, Nate?”
* * *
Though the wind had calmed, a large group of mourners stood by the grave sites, shivering in the morning cold. Congressman and Mrs. Zielinski sat with Mrs. Roberts under a canopy. A portable heater had been placed beside them. Mrs. Roberts was bravely fighting to keep her composure. The congressman had his arm around his wife, who sobbed and continually mumbled prayers for their daughter. To his left and slightly behind him stood Michael Stanley.
The roadways of Holy Angels Cemetery were lined with cars and limousines. Well over one hundred people had come to the graveside service. As the priest was offering his final prayers, Mimi glanced to her right and spotted a man standing on the roadway beside a tree.
“That’s Mr. Rosen,” she whispered to Nathan.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHICAGO
ALBANY PARK NEIGHBORHOOD
JANUARY 1966
Barely four weeks had elapsed since the funerals, but Mimi’s pain was still appreciable. After taking a few days off, Mimi had returned to her desk. The Tribune valued her work, and she was now an editor in addition to her occasional staff-reporter assignments. Every day when she arrived, the morning paper and several galleys were sitting on her desk. The Tribune had been running follow-up stories on the Roberts homicides, focusing on the intense efforts of the Chicago Police Department to solve the crime. The stories usually appeared in a one-column box on the lower right quadrant of the front page. Quotes attributed to Congressman Zielinski or the police investigators urged the public to help find the killers. The congressman offered a generous reward.
Multiple theories about the double murder, one more improbable than the next, were bandied about on TV, on talk radio and in print, particularly in the supermarket tabloids. Preston and Christine were killed by the Russians in an act of revenge against the congressman. They were killed by a jealous lover of one or the other, who was probably engaged in a torrid but deadly affair. They were the most recent victims of a nationwide serial killer who had murdered three Native Americans in Oklahoma the week before. They were killed by a burglar caught in the middle of the act. They were killed because of a gambling debt or a drug transaction or by hippies tripping on LSD. The police assured the news channels that they were following up every lead, no matter how bizarre.
Time had done little to diminish the sorrow that consumed Mimi’s thoughts. She struggled to maintain her focus. She searched for understanding, an explanation, a reason, but it wasn’t there. She unfolded the morning paper and stared at the front page with blank eyes. The lead story detailed the previous evening’s State of the Union address. The banner headline read LBJ SEEKS MORE FOR WAR. The president had emphasized the need for more tax dollars for the ever-mounting costs of supporting the troops in Vietnam.
“Ever-mounting costs,” thought Mimi. Ever-mounting shipments of military supplies from Nicky’s terminals. Ever-mounting baskets of cash in Nicky’s office. Who was divvying up the cash? What CEOs, what government officials, what congressman from Albany Park?
There were other front-page stories. Negotiators for the Transit Workers Union in New York had ended their strike. Former president Eisenhower was recuperating at Fort Gordon Army Hospital, where he had been admitted for chest pains. Numerous stories covered battles in Vietnam. But it was the continuing story of Dorothy Kilgallen’s death that grabbed and held Mimi’s attention this day, engrossing her thoughts. The fifty-two-year-old syndicated columnist and television star had been found dead in her New York townhouse bedroom recently. To all accounts, she had been in a chipper mood before she retired for the evening, but the medical examiner attributed her cause of death to alcohol and barbiturates. A suicide.
The night before Kilgallen’s death, she had appeared on What’s My Line? and was said to be in excellent health and spirits. There was no reason for her to take her life; a suicide was definitely out of the question, her family said. Conspiracy theorists jumped into the fray and reasoned that someone, as yet unidentified, snuck into her home and forced her to take the pills. After all, hadn’t she been working on the JFK assassination for two years, and hadn’t she told associates that she was about to break the case wide open?
As far as Mimi was concerned, it was another woman mysteriously found dead in her bedroom. Another family shocked and forced to come to terms with the senseless, sudden loss of a loved one. It was all too much for Mimi, and she took the rest of the day off.
She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to answer questions from her grandmother about why she left work early, or hear her suggestions on ways to cope with grief. It was at times like this that she would have picked up the phone and called Christine. She could hear the conversation play out in her head. “Chrissie, this has been a real bad day,” she would say, and Christine would have immediately come to her. Together they would have taken a walk, shopped for shoes, perused the sale rack at Field’s or just met up for a glass of wine. Lord, how she missed her friend.
She walked down Michigan Avenue and took the steps down to the river. She watched an old woman throw corn to the pigeons until the seagulls swooped down and forced her to another location. The weather had been frigid, and the river was starting to form ice floes. The gloom of winter—it mirrored her state of mind. Finally, she raised the courage to do what she had been contemplating for the past two weeks.
* * *
She hesitated for a moment outside his door. Did she really want to do this? All of her suppositions could be way off base. She might be making a total fool of herself. Then, as though some outside force picked up her hand and thrust it forward, she rapped on the door. She felt like running away, but she stood her ground. Eli answered and invited her in.
His smile was warm and empathetic. “How are you doing?” he said gently.
“Not so good.”
“I understand. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy.”
Mimi bit her lip and then blurted, “Eli, they murdered her. They abused her, they beat her, they shamed her and then they murdered her. And I think you know who I’m talking about.”
Eli’s expression was noncommittal.
Mimi continued. “I know you’ve been watching them for some time. Preston saw you outside Vittie’s office, and Christine saw you outside Nicky’s office. You’re with some branch of the government. You’re investigating some or all of them and that’s why you moved to Albany Park in the first place. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Mimi, I have too much respect for you to deny any of what you said, but I can’t talk to you about it.”
“Someone is responsible for murdering my best friend. Chrissie and Preston were innocent and naïve kids. They stumbled onto something, and it was much bigger than either one of them understood. And you know it, Eli.”
Again, he nodded but did not comment.
Mimi stood firm. “I want to help. I want to bring those responsible to justice. I want to do it for Chrissie.”
“How do you propose to help?”
“Well, for one thing, I have information. Gobs of information. Chrissie confided in me. We talked on the phone for hours, almost every night. For months, I listened to all of her stories about her job and the shipping business—stories about Nicky, her father, all the wealthy people involved and all the hidden cash. The afternoon that Nicky assaulted her, she came directly to me. I was the one who was always there for her. I was present during the conversation she had with her father. I know about the late-night meetings in Vittie’s office and the secret room in the back where the ledgers are kept. Eli, I have a very good memory, and I feel like I could be helpful in creating a narrative. I want to help you catch the murderers.”
; “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
“Nathan says we have no evidence, and we would be accusing the most powerful men in the country. Who would believe us? He says there’s not a prosecutor in the city with backbone enough to take on Vittie, and the police would probably file it away somewhere, like the wastebasket.”
Eli shrugged. “I can’t fault Nathan’s logic.”
“But you haven’t given up. You have a backbone. You’re not afraid to chase those people.”
After a pause, Eli said, “Mimi, I’ve been chasing them for twenty years.”
“Twenty years? What does that mean?”
“It means it’s a long time.”
“But now you’re closing in, aren’t you?”
Eli’s expression remained noncommittal.
“Please, Eli, let me help,” she pleaded. “I have a lot of information.”
Eli pondered the request. “Mimi, this is dangerous business. There have already been two murders.”
“And one was my soul sister.”
Eli nodded. “Let me think about it. I’ll contact you soon.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
LUBLIN
LUBLIN, POLAND
OCTOBER 1941
MONTH 25 OF THE NAZI OCCUPATION
It was evening when Maximilian motored out of Lodz with Eli by his side, heading for Lublin. It was only the fourth time they were able to return home since Zörner and Globočnik had ordered them to establish a new brickyard in Lodz the previous June. In each case, they were able to return home only under the pretense of needing materials and equipment from the Lublin yard. Visits were short, a few days at most. This visit was planned to last four days before they were scheduled to return.
“How much longer do you think it will be necessary for me to keep traveling back and forth?” asked Eli. “The Lodz brickyard is starting to hold its own. My presence is largely unnecessary, and I’d like to spend the winter in Lublin with my family. You can stay in Lodz and let me go back to managing the Lublin brickyard. I need to give my father a rest. He hasn’t been well and he’s not getting any younger.”
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