Better Dead (20 page)

She could have exploded at me for that, but she just lighted up another cigarette, turning sideways in the chair and crossing one of those nice legs, attractively set off by her prisoner-print skirt.

“You think I should come forward,” she said flatly. “And let everybody know what words were put in my mouth and by whom. Is that what you think, Nate? Mr. Heller?”

“You have immunity, don't you?”

She laughed and there was some cigarette rasp in it. “Not from perjury! What kind of chump do you think you're talking to?”

Not the kind of chump she married, certainly.

“No,” I said, “but you'll get immunity again, if you expose what the FBI and Saypol and Cohn talked you into doing in exchange for a deal they didn't keep.”

She laughed smoke. “There's the crux, Nate. You have no idea who and what I'd be dealing with, coming forward. What deal do you think those sons of bitches will make and break next?”

“They won't dare.”

She laughed again. “Really? You're a little old to be in the Boy Scouts, aren't you, Nate?”

“I'm no Boy Scout. I'm from Chicago. But I have connections in the press—big ones.… The name ‘Drew Pearson' mean anything to you? If you come forward—teary-eyed wanting to tell the truth—and spring your sister-in-law from Death Row, you'll be a heroine. You'll be famous and probably rich, when you sell your story to the tabloids. No more cold-water flats for Ruth Greenglass. That blouse is pretty, but it's nylon, right? Don't you think you deserve silk?”

She sat staring at the tub, smoke in, smoke out. Natalie gave me a sideways glance and I shrugged. I wasn't stringing this woman—I really did think she could turn this whole case upside down, or more like right side up. There would be a new trial, Julius would get maybe the fifteen years David got, David would get a reduced sentence or early parole, and Ethel would walk out of the death house and back into the arms of her boys in a nicer apartment than this one.

Finally Ruth said, “I won't say it's not tempting, Chicago. You're smart and you're convincing. But I don't feel like bucking the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI, either. J. Edgar doesn't strike me as anybody inclined to make deals, in his great big atomic spy case.”

I leaned toward her. “Ruth … it won't even seem self-serving—you can say you couldn't stand to see your innocent sister-in-law go to the chair.”

She smirked. “Ethel's not going to the chair. It's a bluff.”

“But what if it isn't? By the way, that console table that you described as a secret spy device given to Julie and Ethel? I found it. And it doesn't match up with what you said under oath. At all.”

The dark eyes narrowed, the sticky red upper lip curled just a tad.

“Not too late for you, Ruth,” I said. “To help yourself and maybe David, too.”

She shook her head, and a dark tendril escaped from her hairdo and tickled her forehead. “I don't intend to do anything to antagonize Uncle Sam, get me? My fate—David's fate, my
family's
fate—that's all in the hands of the prosecution and prison officials and parole boards.”

“Ruth, I think you're being shortsighted. You can change history.”

“I already made history and it was no damn fun. That's your cup of coffee, Nate. Nice seeing you again, Natalie. I'll show you out.”

She did.

*   *   *

A quick cab ride took us from the Lower East Side to Natalie's address in the Village. Along the block at street level were a corner grocery (closed), a cleaner's (also closed), a bar bleeding bebop, and a blacked-out display window with “VILLAGE ARTISTS” lettered in a drippy indifferent free hand.

I was helping Natalie out of the back of the cab when she said, “Here's your chance to see the gallery.”

“Let's do it tomorrow. I'm pretty beat.”

“It's not that late. Anyway, there's my apartment right here, if you need to lie down. Or is it ‘lay'?”

I didn't need any more invitation than that. I paid the cabbie off and joined her where she was unlocking the front door.

“An art gallery,” I said, “with the window painted black? Some kind of arty statement?”

She flashed a grin over her shoulder. “More like a peacekeeping effort. This is the cooperative venture of a bunch of egotistical, half-mad artists. You think they want anybody else to get showcased out front?”

She had a point.

Inside, she locked the door behind her, then hit several light switches, revealing a long narrow space that would have been as white as the window was black if there had been any overhead lighting. The walls of the former antique shop were painted out white and so was the ceiling—only the ancient floor, which hadn't seen varnish in decades, had been spared the white brush. Each wall was hung with unframed canvases, mostly very large, each getting spotlight-like attention from carefully aimed track lighting. Spillover into the wide aisle between walls created a dusk effect that Natalie, all in black, practically disappeared into, but for the ghostly cameo of her pale face with its scarlet mouth.

She slipped her arm in mine. “What do you think? Does this kind of thing do anything for you?”

“I like it as design. Nice splashes of color for a bachelor pad.”

“But…?”

“But nothing. It's fine.”

The bright smile in the dim room turned sideways. “Come on, Nathan. You won't hurt my feelings. But you'd be smart to pick up a painting or two. These are going to be going for a lot of money before long. Pollocks are in the thousands already.”

“You don't have any of those.”

She shrugged. “Lee Krasner is part of our group.”

“Who's she?”

“Pollock's wife.”

We were walking slowly down the center of the room, with her pointing out the sights left and right like a tour guide, telling me the names of the painters behind the work.

“
That's
Krasner, there.…”

A horizontal canvas of shades of green, yellow, and blue, an abstraction labeled a “still life,” though on closer look a bowl of fruit did seem to be trying to claw its way out.

“That's Reinhardt right there.…”

Geometric shapes, red, blue, white.

“… and Mitchell, another of our woman painters…”

Bold colorful dabs, yellows and pinks and blues, like a van Gogh that got smudged before it became a picture.

“… Alfred Leslie…”

A canvas broken into square and rectangular shapes of smeary gray and occasional heavy green outlining. A gifted five-year-old finger painter.

“… another of our women, one of my favorites, Grace Hartigan…”

Semi-abstract, pink and red and white, with childish images discernible.

“… and that's a Larry Rivers.”

Naked half-finished figures floated.

We were at the far end of the gallery, where several small black tables with black chairs were arrayed.

She drew away and faced me, hands on hips, like Superman or maybe Wonder Woman. “Not to your taste, Nathan?”

“I'm a Varga and Petty man, I'm afraid.”

To her credit, she chuckled in a way that said she recognized the artists I'd cited.

Still, something about the work displayed here resonated with me, however vaguely. Something that related to this so-called Atomic Age of ours, where bombs reduced us to smears and ashes and indistinguishable body parts. There was movement in this art, if nothing moving, and in its way reflected the postwar world more accurately than Norman Rockwell ever could. Not in a world where nobody sat still long enough to be painted anymore, unless they were very, very rich and really damn dull. Life went by now in a blur, never quite forming.

Natalie sat at one of the tiny tables. I sat across from her.

She got a Fatima out of her purse and lighted it with a small silver Zippo. “I admit I'm a little disappointed in you, Nathan.”

“Well, sooner or later I disappoint any woman who gets to know me.” I gestured toward the facing walls of paintings. “Anyway, I'm not your audience. Smarter, hipper people are. I know parts of Chicago where this stuff would sell through the roof. Crazy, man, crazy.”

Her smile pursed into a kind of kiss out of which she let smoke seep. “Now you're just being kind.”

“No. Not patronizing either. If this were a bar or a club, I'd dig it just fine.”

She smiled a little at the middle-aged man saying “dig.” Brightly, she said, “Why don't I play waitress, then? And get us some beers? I have a fridge in the storeroom.”

“Why not?”

She left the Fatima behind in a little black ashtray as she fetched the beers. In her absence, I sat gazing around the gallery, with its pools of light showcasing each abstract canvas, like lighthouses in a sea of ignorance.

She brought back two cold bottles of Pabst. She sipped hers, I sipped mine.

Brow furrowed, she said, “Nathan, there's something I want to ask if you'd do for me.”

“Sure. What wouldn't Nick do for Nora?”

Something bittersweet touched her smile. “
The Thin Man.
I haven't thought of those movies in years. Loved them as a kid.”

“Of course you did. Comrade Hammett's work.”

She tried to get comfortable in the hard chair, not an easy trick. “You're not FBI, are you?”

I about did a spit-take. “No.
Hell
no. J. Edgar has a file on me thicker than the Manhattan phone book. I told him to go fuck himself once upon a time.”

That got a laugh out of her. “You know, I wouldn't be surprised if that were true.” She retrieved the Fatima from the ashtray, took a drag. Set it free. “It's just … I'm trying to figure out where you're coming from in this … inquiry of yours.”

Another sip of beer. “What you see is what you get, kiddo.”

She was studying me. “You're not FBI. And you're not a socialist or Communist.”

“Hell, I'm barely a Democrat. Look, I do jobs for money. I try not to sell out my clients, but I like to keep an open mind.”

Working very hard at it, she made her words sound matter-of-fact: “How much would it take for you to walk away?”

“… From what?”

“This. Investigation. This effort to clear the Rosenbergs.”

I squinted at her through drifting cigarette smoke. “Wait a minute. Are
you
FBI?”

She managed a halfhearted smile. “No, Nathan. What you see is what you get, me too. I'm a Communist. As advertised.”

I shifted in the hard chair. “Then why the hell would you want me to walk away? Julie and Ethel are friends of yours. They're comrades, right? Julie, anyway.”

“Ethel, too. She's no spy, but … Nathan, I'm going to level with you. I was one of Julius' ring.”

I frowned at her.

She was frowning just a little, a woman telling her man she's been cheating on him but hopes he won't mind too much.

“Julius is who I reported to, Nathan. I know of seven others, but there could be any number more. This went on all through the war.” She gestured with the Fatima, a brushstroke worthy of the surrounding artists. “We didn't all work together, you see, although many of us knew Julie and Ethel socially, and a lot of us went back to City College days, though not me.”

I sat there absorbing her revelation. “Julius Rosenberg ran a major espionage ring. During the war. For the Soviets.”

She nodded. “Yes. He's guilty of that.”

“What about David and Ruth?”

“Oh yes. But they were mostly part of a different, bigger ring. They
really
know the secrets.” She smiled as if she'd just told me she wasn't a virgin and hoped I wouldn't care. “So, Nathan—how much?”

I reached for her cigarettes and lighted one up; she took that in quizzically, but said nothing.

I said, “I think you've misjudged me, Natalie. I'm not the most ethical guy on the planet, but I'm not necessarily for sale to the highest bidder. You're making my head spin, honey. You're a Commie? Well, I knew that. You helped Julius Rosenberg feed inside dope to the Soviets? Okay, nobody's perfect. Makes it tougher to look the other way, but let's say I can. Let's say I can
dig
that maybe you thought America shouldn't be keeping things from an ally like Russia.”

Her chin came up just a little. “That's a true, valid motivation.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just enlighten me, because I don't get this modern art. Why would you want
not
to clear the Rosenbergs? Certainly it's not because Julie's been guilty all along, and clearing him would be wrong.
Why,
Natalie? Explain it to a square who just isn't hip enough to get it.”

She touched a breast. “Nathan, I hate the idea of Julius and Ethel going … going to their deaths like criminals. I don't really think it will come to that—the government knows that they don't really have anything on Ethel.”

“Don't make any big bets. The feds don't run a bluff like that in public. What the hell is really going on here, Natalie?”

She put the Fatima out, got another one going, her eyes moving fast with thought.

Then she said, “I don't have to tell you that the government is using Ethel as a lever to get Julius to talk. But what you may not know is the specific information they're after—the names of his ring.”

“His spy network.”

She nodded. “Some of us have flown, Nathan, but others are still here … hiding in plain sight. If Julius dies in the electric chair, as a good party member in his position would do, all of the rest of us are safe.”

I goggled at her. “‘Safe'? You can't believe that. The feds probably already have your name—
all
the names. They just want confirmation, and nice juicy details. If I can't clear the Rosenbergs, how do you know the government's tactic won't work? That at the last minute Julius will spill?”