House of Ghosts (48 page)

“How was it that you held Paul out for placement with the Fifteenth Air Force? The truth about Auschwitz didn’t break until June 1944. He had been in the air force since his graduation in 1942. That’s a long time to evade action.”

“Despite what the history books say, the Jewish political wing in the United States was in contact with the Jewish Committee operating out of Geneva. We received reports from all over Europe and knew about the deportations. The Nazis had a plan to make the soon to be dead seem like they were in re-settlement villages, making them mail postcards to their families still living in the ghettos. Having our people transferred to the 8th Air Force in England to bomb Germany cities would have proven nothing.” Jake’s head bobbed as he studied Joe’s Wall of Honor. “Impressive.”

“You should have received a few medals for what you did for the Israelis,” Joe said.

Jake, glassy-eyed, looked at Joe. “Where did you hear that?”

“I know a guy in the FBI. Your file is chockfull of running guns to Palestine while Preston was working for the State Department trying to stop the flow of supplies to the fledgling Jewish army.”

“Swedge’s name circulated among various Jewish groups working to break the British blockade. It was proposed to knock him off and make our job easier.”

“Why didn’t you?” Joe asked, repeatedly opening and closing the cover on his Zippo.

“Truman was leaning to support the creation of a Jewish state. If a representative of Uncle Sam was murdered, and the murder was traced back to an American Jew, Truman would have cut our legs off.” Jake stretched out on the couch. The scotch had hit with its maximum punch. “Why does it always come down to the same thing?”

“I don’t follow,” Joe said, reaching for the bottle of Johnny Walker.

“Don’t touch it,” Jake said, slurring his words. “I’m not finished killing my pain.” He drank from the bottle. “I’m referring to oil. It set policy then as it does today. People are willing to die sucking it from the ground, and many more are sacrificed to maintain the supply.” He closed his eyes.

Joe pried the bottle away from Jake. Holding the cap under his nose, he repeated the mantra, “My name is Joe and I’m an alcoholic.” He carried the bottle to the kitchen sink and poured it down the drain. “Son of a bitch.”

IT WAS 8:15 IN THE MORNING AND JAKE’S Corolla was in the detached garage set in the rear of the Garwood property on Spruce Avenue. Joe hadn’t seen or heard from Jake for almost three weeks. In their last conversation The Man of Steele said reading the diaries had ripped out his heart and put him in a “mood.” Joe lied when he told his new friend that he understood, wanting instead to smash him out of his funk. It wasn’t as though the diaries dumped new information on Paul’s death in his lap. It didn’t take a PhD in clinical psych like Dr. Headcase to know what Jake’s “mood” was about—for almost half a lifetime, Jake suppressed the fact that his plan for bombing the concentration camp had a snowball’s chance in Hell to succeed.

“The senile old fool,” Joe cursed as he began climbing an outside staircase. Repeated calls to Jake beginning at 6:00 went unanswered. His breath, steaming in the ten degree air, froze the hairs inside his nose. Winded, he paused on the second floor landing, looking up through the railing’s balusters to his target on the floor above. Dragging his leg, Joe counted away the next fifteen steps. Stumbling on the last riser, he crashed against the railing of the third floor wrap around porch.

A weathered, peeling gray door snapped open the width of its safety chain. “Go away. I bought from the Avon lady last week.”

“God damn it Jake, open the door,” Joe said, wanting to shove the muzzle of his Glock into Jake’s face. It was a scenario he fantasized over when he was hunting for the big man. “I’ve got verification of where Paul went down.”

The door closed and then re-opened. Jake, in his black workout shorts and sweatshirt with the sleeves cutoff, barred the threshold with his arm. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s freezing,” Joe said, doing the limbo under Jake’s arm. He stepped inside. This was his first foray into the twenty by twenty apartment that originally was the garret of a one family built by the president of Garwood’s largest employer in the
early 1900s. The residence was converted to a three family when Garwood Metal Fabrication went bankrupt during the Depression.

Joe stood in the center of the space. The galley kitchen’s two burner stove hadn’t been updated since the Hoover administration. Doubling as a dining table, a simple pine desk held a computer, a large blue ceramic mug, one box of saltine crackers, a jar of grape jelly, and a three-quarter empty bottle of Chivas Regal. Two pairs of dungarees were draped over the foot of a standard bed Joe thought to be too short for its owner. Flowing wood hippie beads suspended over an alcove next to the kitchen failed to hide the toilet and stall shower. The lone piece of self-indulgence was black leather recliner positioned at arms length from a 13-inch television atop a red plastic milk crate.

“Comfortable…,” Joe said. His eyes widened as he guestimated the number of books sagging makeshift floor to ceiling shelves surrounding the periphery of the room. The titles ranged from Greek and Roman history to Euclidian geometry. “A thousand?”

“Twelve hundred and sixty three to be exact,” Jake said without emotion.

“Paul considered you a Renaissance man, he wasn’t lying,” Joe said, unzipping his coat. If Jake was made of steel, his superstructure was rusting. The man, who looked half his age less than a month before, now looked haggard and spent.

“Reading is a habit I picked up in the joint,” Jake said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Now what’s this business about Paul?”

“I’ve been trading e-mails with a Polish historian documenting crashes of American bombers on Polish soil,” Joe said, sitting on the recliner. “Mike Mulskawicz confirms the
Brooklyn Avenger
went down in a field twenty miles from Manowitz. The pastor of the local parish has the dog tags that were removed from the bodies. After the war, the Russians blocked all attempts to forward the tags to American representatives and were placed in a hiding.”

“Americans are buried all over Europe. What’s your point? I’m too old to travel to the only country where the largest of the concentration camps could have been built with nary a word of protest. The Poles didn’t need any incentives to shove their Jews into the ovens.”

“It means that we could bring him back if you want.”

“Of course I would want him home,” Jake said, indignantly. “But how?”

“A colonel at the Pentagon assured me the Air Force will exhume the bodies and bring them back for DNA testing. After positive identification, Paul’s remains will be released.”

Jake powered up. “I’m hungry as a bear. Let’s go to breakfast.”

“I’ll have to take a rain check,” Joe said, “I’ve got a class at noon.”

“I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE,” Joe said to Kim Angreen, as he steered her Honda CRV through the narrow lanes of Mount Hebron Cemetery, the largest Jewish cemetery in New York City. Two-hundred thousand graves stretched as far as he could see. “This isn’t Westfield’s pastoral Fairview. It’s a tsunami of tombstones.”

Kim checked the card given out at the main entrance listing the location of the internment for Paul Rothstein. “Slow up,” she said, reading the address markers on the curb. “We’re looking for block 25, section D, line 9, grave 1. This is block 23. Keep going.”

Two hours of driving from Princeton to the borough of Queens had riled Joe’s nerves. Chewing a piece of Nicorette gum hadn’t cut into his urge for a cigarette since crossing the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. He wanted to jump out of his skin as they approached Coney Island in the Belt Parkway’s Brooklyn traffic. Lighting up in the “SUV for wimps” as he called Kim’s mini-truck was verboten.

“Funerals are still depressing even if the man of the hour has been dead for sixty-eight years. It’s times like this, a drink would be welcomed,” Joe said painfully. Six months of marriage had soothed the savage beast and kept him on the wagon. Exchanging cans of Bud for unsweetened ice tea translated to thirty pounds off the scale and four inches from his waistline.

Elaine served Joe with divorce papers three days after the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001. Irreconcilable differences were the stated grounds. He instructed Mel Katz to make a deal with the plaintiff’s attorney, a hard nosed feminist lesbian from a powerhouse firm in Newark—split their assets including the proceeds from the sale of the Wychwood colonial. Joe had one demand, he wanted his Explorer returned. The counter offer—three quarters of the bank accounts, half of his pension, three quarters of the house, and a new car— the desert was hard on vehicles—and by the way, Elaine was being magnanimous,
he could keep his underwear.

“This must be the place,” he said, parking at the end of a line of vehicles. They would have to walk a hundred yards to the festivities. “I can’t believe this day has finally arrived.”

“I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished,” Kim said.

“I never imagined it would take so long to get him home.” What Joe thought would be a process of a few months, turned into a year and a half of frustration. While sympathetic, the Air Force dragged its collective feet, fearful of making re-interning WWII airmen a national obsession. “If it weren’t for Driscoll,” he winced, saying the special agent’s name, “nothing would’ve happened. The bastard is owed a lot of favors.”

The Polish Government was more than pleased to facilitate the paperwork after Driscoll’s contact in the Pentagon pushed the clearance for exhumations through channels. Jake located a cousin of Vinnie’s who supplied a blood sample to verify his remains. Finding next of kin for the other eight crewmen of the
Brooklyn Avenger
proved a daunting task for the Air Force.

It was necessary to walk on the graves closest to the road as another funeral procession made its way on the narrow lane. “I didn’t think you were going to make it,” Jake, in a short sleeve Hawaiian shirt, said, squeezing Joe about the shoulders. Bending over, he gave the diminutive Kim a kiss on the cheek.

“It took forever to get here from Princeton,” Joe said, rubbing his left arm where Jake applied his vice-like grip. After the sale of the Westfield colonial, Joe moved to Kim’s farmhouse in Princeton that had been in her family for three generations.

Ten elderly men huddled beneath the canopy erected over the grave, taking respite from the blazing sun. All but two were in sport clothes. Excavated earth was piled atop a blue tarpaulin spanning four adjacent plots. Jake called to a couple in conversation four headstones away, “Alex and Rebecca, I want you to meet Lieutenant Henderson and his wife Kim.” He turned back to Joe and Kim. “Sarah is in the car, she needs the air conditioning. Phyllis is keeping her company.”

Joe felt sweat running down his back. Wearing a navy suit in ninety plus degrees made zero sense, but Kim’s “look” when he put on his white U.S. Open golf shirt and beige khakis persuaded the change. He couldn’t understand how the woman wasn’t melting in her demure, black tailored suit. From his jacket he snuck a peek at the photos of Alex and Rebecca. The man heading his way was the spitting image of Paul—thin, average height, and had his smile. Rebecca, a good four inches taller than her husband, moved haltingly toward Uncle Jake.

“We can’t thank you enough,” Alex said, pumping Joe’s hand. “My uncle sings
your praises.”

“Your uncle exaggerates,” Joe said, jabbing Jake in the stomach. Rebecca offered a pained smile. Joe tried not to stare, searching for a resemblance for Preston. The nose was familiar, but…

Four uniformed cemetery workers blocked entry to within two hundred feet of the gravesite with yellow caution tape strung between metal rods pounded into the ground. Joe had enough experience with “wiseguys” to know that the muscle-men weren’t members of Local 365 of the Service Employees Union.

The funeral director signaled Jake. “It’s time,” Jake said, giving the thumbs up in return. “Alex, get your mother and Phyllis.”

Alex hustled off to a silver Lexus parked behind the hearse. “You knew my father,” Rebecca said with a dazed look. Without another word, she drifted away.

“She looks strung out,” Joe said, shaking his head.

“Am I missing something?” Kim asked sharply.

“I’ll explain later,” Joe answered. He removed his suit jacket, slinging it over his shoulder.

“When old wounds re-open…,” Jake started to explain. “Rebecca is a fine woman. She’ll need some time.”

Phyllis supported her mother as they painstakingly made the hundred feet journey to the grave. One of the elderly men waved to Jake. “That’s Sheldon Abramowitz, our rabbi,” Jake said. “The last chapter is about to be written.”

“I imagined him either an attorney or a labor organizer, not a rabbi,” Joe said with amusement.

“With the way he ran his mouth, I never thought he’d make it to the age of twenty-five,” Jake chuckled. “Working with the survivors of the death camps changed him. When he got out of the service, he made the decision to go into the rabbinate.” He walked toward the hearse where Alex and six of the geriatrics waited.

“Let’s get under the awning,” Joe said, moving to the Rothstein/Greenbaum family plot. Kim crunched close to her husband to avoid stepping on the final resting place of Sarah’s cousin Minnah.

Sarah, shorter than the five-two Kim, was bent over with a dowager’s hump. Joe helped ease her onto a metal folding chair. “It’s like a dream,” she said in a tired voice, running a hand through her simply coiffed gray, almost white, hair.

Joe kissed her hand. He received perfunctory nods of recognition from the other attendees. It wasn’t necessary to ask their connection to the deceased. They were Faction members. Canes and walkers were now their weapons. The unnamed man in the black suit turned, wearing the collar of a Catholic priest.