Better Dead (23 page)

“Other than his own name,” Rosenberg said, “everything that came out of David's mouth was perjury.”

“There are other lines of inquiry,” I said, tossing a hand, “that your attorney can pursue, and I've suggested a few more, including some not entirely kosher. But as for me? I'm at the end of the line.”

“You've done well, Mr. Heller. But why stop now?”

“Well, I've earned the fee the Hammett committee put up and then some. The A-1 is not a charitable institution. So that's part of it.”

“There's another part?”

I nodded. “I've learned that you were the head of a spy ring for the Soviets. That you are—in that sense, at least—guilty.”

He said nothing.

Either he had no response or he suspected we were being recorded despite my assurance otherwise.

“But,” I said, “I also know that if you had any role in the passing of atomic secrets, it was minor. Hell, man, Russia laid you off before all that atomic shinola really got going!”

His eyes jumped behind the round lenses. “You … you
know
about that?”

“Sure. Like I know that those so-called atomic secrets were worthless, were just ridiculously oversold to the jury at your trial.”

He squinted at me, trying to bring me into focus. “I don't understand, Mr. Heller.…”

“Really nothing else to understand, Mr. Rosenberg. The government has known much of this all along. They have been prepared from the start to let Ethel walk and give you a relative slap on the wrist, just for your cooperation. And you've known that all along.”

He didn't deny it.

I leaned forward and gave him a chummy smile. “Listen, I get it. This all started back in college for you, an idealistic lark, and when a few years later you got into the spy game, it was for what seemed like a good cause. And naturally when you went to assemble your network of industrious little Commies, you went to friends and even relatives. Selling these people out is anathema to you. I get that. But any of your people whose past actions would
really
put them in danger have already fled. Most are behind the Iron Curtain right now. The rest are prepared to take their chances.”

“So you're just like McCarthy,” he said, quietly bitter, upper lip curling back like the keyed lid of a sardine can. “McCarthy and HUAC and Nathan Heller. You'd have me name names, too. Betray friends. Family. You'd have me be no better than Greenglass and his shrew.”

“In this case, I would, yeah.”

His chin tilted up, Joan of Arc waiting for the first match. “Well, Mr. Heller, I'm not made that way. It disappoints me that you are.”

“My feelings are hurt but I may get over it. Do you want to hear that offer? It's from the CIA. A spook-to-spook proposal.”

He shrugged, his lidded-eyed expression oozing contempt.

“The good folks at the CIA would like you to talk to a council of rabbis, reps of various Jewish organizations, and some former Communists. They'll share with you evidence that the Soviet Union is anti-Semitic and intent on wiping out the Jews within their borders. You and your wife would receive clemency for speaking out to Jews worldwide, and for inviting them to leave the Communist movement, as you've done, and to join with you to destroy it.”

“My,” Rosenberg said.

“The international Communist movement has built you and your wife up as heroes and martyrs, making it impossible to discredit you with any plausibility. Take it as a compliment, Mr. Rosenberg. It's an acknowledgment that—whatever else anybody might think—you and Ethel have displayed immeasurable courage.”

“I see.”

“This council will also share with you evidence of Russian slave camps, where all kinds of daily horrors take place, and give you a full tour of Stalin's bloody purges. Plus the inside dope on the Slanksy show trials, and the public hangings that followed. What do you think?”

“I think the CIA has lost its collective mind,” he said. He was frowning so deep, his eyes barely showed. “Do they really think my Ethel and I might be so easily manipulated? That we would
shill
for them in exchange for our lives? Can they
imagine
that we haven't already heard these ridiculous charges against Mother Russia, which are just so much capitalist propaganda?”

“Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say,” I said. “But I owed this particular Agency guy a favor, so … anyway, I think that wraps it up for us, Mr. Rosenberg.”

He nodded, quickly regaining his composure. “I do thank you for your efforts, Mr. Heller. It does sound like you might get us a new trial.”

“For better or worse,” I said with a shrug. “But as a father myself, what I don't get is how you can put politics above your two boys … and the life of your wife.”

“I don't believe they will kill Ethel.”

“Oh I think they probably will. And you'll go first. They'll sit you down and hope at the last second, if it comes to that, you'll say you'll cooperate if they spare the mother of your children. But if you stay mute, Mr. Rosenberg, remember—you've boxed them in. She'll have to go.”

He was studying me in horrified fascination. “
You
would name names, Mr. Heller?”

“For my son? For a woman I love? You're goddamn right.”

“Then you're as bad as David and Ruth.”

“Maybe. I don't think I'd sell out a sister for my boy. I'd find some other way. Of course, I don't have a sister, so it's a tough call. But I think we can agree that, as in-laws go, those two are the rat-bastard bottom.”

I got up to knock on the door and let the guard know I was finished here. Rosenberg sat there staring at me, trying to understand me. He apparently hadn't met anybody from Chicago before.

 

CHAPTER

13

Dashiell Hammett's apartment on West Tenth in the Village was a duplex, and I was let in up seven stairs by an attractive colored housekeeper who walked me across a large yet cozy area that was both living room and bedroom, with a fireplace and a view on a small garden. We stopped at the mouth of a wrought-iron spiral staircase.

“Mr. Hammett,” she called down, “your guest is here.”

Hammett's voice came up: “Nate, join me.”

I corkscrewed down to where he was sitting in an office that was as spare and cold as the upstairs had been warm. No framed celebrity photos, book jackets, or movie posters, just brick walls. There was something of a cell about it—a few wooden file cabinets, a cot, and a dark-wood desk, where he sat at a typewriter with a blank sheet of paper rolled in it. On the left of the typewriter were a dictionary and thesaurus, and a cup of pencils a blind beggar might have forgotten there; on the right were a box of white paper and an overflowing ashtray near a book of Stork Club matches and a pack of Camels. He had already swiveled so that his back was to his work, though there was no sign of any going on, and rose to shake hands.

His grip was firm, particularly for a man so frail-looking, his mostly white shock of hair swept back, his posture casual, though the eyes behind the plastic-rimmed glasses were sharp. His skeletal frame swam in a short-sleeved pale yellow shirt and brown pants.

He got me a hard chair from somewhere. Then I sat facing him, filling him in on the discovery of the console table as well as much of what I'd learned. Natalie Ash and her anonymous friends from the art gallery I edited out.

When all that was done, I said, “I was able to tap into some federal sources. I'm afraid I may have let certain parties in the government think I was working undercover for them.”

“Oh dear,” Hammett said with half a smile, letting out a stream of smoke.

“I can let you know what I learned,” I said, “but only if I have your word that none of it goes any further.”

He nodded.

From this man, that nod was all I needed.

So I gave him all the rest of it, including most of what Shep Shepherd had shared last night. The writer listened quietly, with cool intensity, reacting not at all to the revelation that Julius Rosenberg had been a spymaster of sorts. He was halfway through another Camel before he finally interrupted.

“Julius Rosenberg was
fired
by the Soviets?” His dark eyebrows had climbed, making his hair seem to stand up, like a comedian's in a haunted-house movie.

I doled out a nod. “Once Rosenberg was fired from his civilian job with the Signal Corps, and didn't have the access to secrets he'd had, he was of little use … and since he'd been fired for denying he'd been a Communist Party member, that put a spotlight on him.”

“And his Russian handlers couldn't have that.”

I turned a hand over. “Keep in mind Rosenberg had stayed active with the Party—kept up his dues, socialized with other party members, maintained friendships with those he'd recruited for spying …
all
against Soviet protocol.”

Hammett shook his head. “So far in over his head, the poor bastard. Meaning well is just not good enough. Did Rosenberg have
anything
to do with the passing of atomic secrets?”

“Very damn little. He wouldn't have been David Greenglass's handler at all if it hadn't been for the accident of David getting assigned to Los Alamos.”

“I doubt that was an accident,” Hammett said. “That's the lead I would have followed if I were J. Edgar Hoover. Disgusting though that thought is.”

I shrugged. “Well, as far we know, it was an accident. Either way, Rosenberg was David's handler for maybe a month. That might involve the first batch of information that the world's worst brother-in-law delivered on furlough—the names of a few scientists, the general layout of the Los Alamos facility.”

“And from that,” Hammett said coldly, “Cohn and his boss Saypol tell the jury that Julius and Ethel gave the Soviets the atomic bomb.”

“A slight exaggeration for effect.”

His eyes narrowed. “Can any of what you learned from government sources be brought to light in a new trial?”

“Possibly, but not all of it is helpful to the Rosenbergs.”

“How so?”

“For example,” I said, “the console table may be a moot point in a new trial. Seems an apartment on Morton Street here in the Village, above an art galley, was used for years by Rosenberg and his ring to do exactly the kind of microfilming of filched documents that the missing table was thought to be designed for.”

Hammett frowned through a wreath of smoke. “Why didn't the government bring any of this out at the trial?”

“I frankly don't know. Exposing the real facts must in some way compromise agents still in the field, or possibly represents code-breaking that needs to stay secret.”

He gave a slow nod of agreement; the man was a seasoned investigator and didn't need spoon-feeding.

I slapped my thighs like a department store Santa summoning the next brat. “Dash, I'm done here. I've provided that attorney, Bloch, with the evidence he needs to seek a new trial. Nothing more I can do. Frankly, nothing more I
want
to do.”

“Why is that, Nate?” His eyes tightened. “What if I went back to the committee for another round of financing?”

“Thank you, but no. Julius and Ethel are committed to their cause—so much so that they probably
should
be committed.”

“You did talk to them both,” Hammett granted.

“They're fucking zealots. Anyway, Julius is. On the one hand, he's convinced himself they'll free Ethel at the last minute. On the other, he … and maybe she … are ready to become heroes to the Movement. Martyrs. You can't help a would-be martyr.”

“They don't want to name names,” Hammett said, with an elaborate shrug. “I understand that.”

“It's more than naming names, Dash. Julius knows the darkest secret of all—that the Soviets recruited their U.S. agents from, and with the help of, the American Communist Party.”

Hammett wasn't smiling now; what little blood had lurked behind the parchment flesh of his face drained out. “If that's true, I knew nothing of it.”

“I'm not accusing you. But do I have to tell you what might result if Rosenberg
did
trade that secret for his life, or Ethel's?”

He sighed Camel smoke. Shook his head. His eyes had a ragged look. “That would fuel this Red scare hysteria into something unimaginable. Mass pickups of tens of thousands of Communists and leftists. Prisons full of people whose crime is the wrong politics. Jails or concentration camps.”

“So much for it can't happen here.”

Hammett shuddered. “Browder would be the next to check in at Death Row.”

He was referring to Earl Browder, who had been the head of the Party during the war.

“And who knows?” I said. “We might just wind up with a President McCarthy running the shots in this country.”

The writer sat there looking down, thinking, smoking. Then his eyes lifted to meet mine. “Nate, I agree with you. Time to close up shop.”

“No question the Rosenbergs were railroaded, Dash. But I don't know if I've done them or anybody a favor, making a path to a new trial. Clemency is their best hope.”

“I believe you're right.”

He walked me to the door here on the basement level.

“You know,” I said, pausing at the sill, “what it really gets down to is a very old story—a couple of big-shot criminals lay off their crimes on a couple of small-time Charlies. The Greenglasses held a grudge that made Julius and Ethel the perfect patsies.”

“If you keep talking like Sam Spade,” he said, grinning like a skull as he put his left hand on my shoulder, “I'm going to have to charge you royalties.”

That hand on the shoulder seemed an uncommonly warm gesture for this self-contained man.

I said, “David Greenglass is a creep and he's married to Lady Macbeth. But I admitted to Rosenberg, at Sing Sing, that in their place?… I would probably have named names, too. If it meant my wife's life and the welfare of my kid.”