It's Superman! A Novel (11 page)

Lex grunts.

“How are you coming along with your engineering studies?”

“I haven’t
begun
them yet, Mother. I haven’t had
time.
”

“Then see that you
make
time. You know how I feel. Politics are all well and good, but look where they got your father.”

“My career is quite different from his.”

“Let us hope. But the future belongs to the engineers, son.”

“So you say.”

“So I
know.
Oh, do what you like, I won’t be around long enough to see what becomes of you anyway.”

“Mother . . .” Brows furrowed, he stands up. Just below his diaphragm, his stomach begins to ripple in little fluttering spasms. Bracing both palms on the terrace rail, he looks out over the dark blue Hudson. Firecrackers are exploding somewhere off to the north, probably in Fort Washington Park. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You’re not even sixty-five years old.”

“Am too. I’m seventy. Seventy-one.”

“Mother! And for all these years . . .”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she says, then leans over the small table, her nose hovering above the glass of bourbon, shifting six inches to hover and twitch above the dish of pills. “What shall it be today, oh what shall it be . . . ?”

“Must
we go through this every time I come?”

“The bourbon? Or the barbiturates? Bourbon? Or barbiturates? Eeeny, meeny, miney, moe . . .”

“I should be going.”

“You only just got here!”

“Have to show my face at a parade or two.”

“Do you enjoy all that?”

“No.”

“Then
why?”

“I have plans, Mother.”

“And what might those be, Alexander?”

“I don’t think I
need
to tell you everything I’m doing.”

“No. You don’t
need
to. But I’d hoped you might
want
to.”

“All right, Mother. I’ve decided to take over all of the criminal rackets in New York City—that’s all five boroughs—and with the money from that . . . well, I’m not quite sure yet.”

“Oh Lex, really. I don’t find this at all amusing. Now, sit down!”

He smiles and remains standing.

“I’d always thought we had a special bond, you and I. Seeing what we went through together. Fifteen years of hell. But no matter what, I always had you. And I liked to believe that you had me.”

“I did. I still do.”

“But you don’t love me. You’ve never loved me.”

“Mother, that’s not fair.”

“Ha! Fair.” She plucks out a dark green pill from the candy dish. “Barbiturate? Or bourbon?”

“For God’s sake!”

“Bourbon,” she says and takes another sip. “I was thinking just earlier today, don’t ask me why—but do you recall that pot-metal spaceship, that toy I got for you once at a Woolworth’s in Madison, Wisconsin?”

“Columbus, Ohio. And it wasn’t a Woolworth’s, it was a Kresge’s.”

“You remember it? Red and yellow with tiny little portholes?”

“Of course.”

“Do you also remember how I was so despondent one day, feeling so worn out from everything, all the running, and your father was already sick, hardly ever working—do you remember?”

“You were
always
feeling worn out, Mother.”

“Oh, Lex, you haven’t grown up to be the kindest man, have you?”

“You were
saying
?”

“That I found you on the rug this one day playing with that little spaceship and I got down there with you . . . you remember that?”

“No.”

“No. Well, I said, ‘Honey, wouldn’t it be nice if we could both just climb into that spaceship and blast off—go to another planet, just you and me?’ I was sick of
everything.
”

His hands, Lex realizes, are trembling again.

“I said, ‘Let’s just you and me get in your spaceship and blast off!’ And you said, ‘I’m sorry, Mother, but there’s only room for one.’ ” She laughs. “ ‘I’m sorry, Mother, there’s only room for one.’ You really don’t remember?”

“I really don’t remember.”

She nods. “Always the solemn little boy.”

“Practical.”

“And
practical. Yes. Well, run along, my solemn and practical little boy, you’ll be late for all your picnics and parades.” She scoops up several pills and, with a tiny wince, puts them all in her mouth. Washes them down with bourbon. “And happy Independence Day to you too, Lex,” she says, turning away her face, then tipping it back, full in the sun.

4

On Tuesday evening, July 9, 1935, Governor Herbert H. Lehman of New York has dinner in Manhattan with Alderman Lex Luthor at the Hotel Brevoort, Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street. Afterward they go by town car to the Booth Theater on West Forty-fourth Street and take in a musical revue (not especially tuneful, but Jimmy Durante and Beatrice Lillie are quite good). Later, they have drinks at Versailles, a nightclub at 151 East Fiftieth Street, where they are joined by Public Works Commissioner Robert Moses, golfer Gene Sarazen, and wrestling promoter Jack Curley. Later still, they huddle privately for an hour in the Wedgwood Room of the Waldorf-Astoria, Park Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. They conclude their evening in the governor’s suite. Shortly after two o’clock on the morning of July 10, Alderman Luthor is picked up by his driver.

Early in the afternoon of July 11, Governor Lehman confers in his downtown office with the district attorney of New York County, William C. Dodge.

On the morning of July 12, D.A. Dodge meets with Thomas E. Dewey, an impeccably dressed prosecutor with black wavy hair and a thick mustache. The discussion lasts until noon.

The following Monday, July 15, promptly at eleven
A.M.
, it’s announced to members of the press assembled below the steps of the Old County Court House on Chambers Street that Mr. Dewey enthusiastically has accepted a position as special deputy assistant attorney general, charged with conducting a thorough investigation of citywide vice and racketeering before an extraordinary grand jury.

Although he is not mentioned by name, everyone there knows the target of that investigation is Charles (“Lucky”) Luciano, the undisputed “czar of organized crime.”

Or at any rate the
presumably
undisputed czar.

5

On Thursday, the first of August, Willi Berg is informed that his doctors have deemed him sufficiently recovered to be moved from his bed in Roosevelt Hospital to the hospital ward in one of the new fireproof brick buildings constituting the model penitentiary on Riker’s Island. The transfer will take place sometime within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, once the paperwork is completed.

Later that morning, Dick Sandglass tells him, “I’ll still try to keep my eye out for you, kid, but it won’t be quite so easy from here.” Removing a 3 x 5 deckle-edged photograph from his billfold, he inches forward in the chair, closer to Willi. “Recognize this guy?”

“No.”

Sandglass sits back, looking disappointed and beginning to put away the snapshot.

“Who
is
it?”

“I thought you might’ve told
me
. . .”

“Is that Stick? Is that Herman Stickowski? Let me see it again.”

“Willi . . .”

“I didn’t get a good look at the guy’s
face,
I seen his
legs
!”

“But on the other hand, you saw Lex Luthor’s face clear enough.”

“I did! And if they hadn’t stolen my film, the other two guys would’ve been in the picture. You woulda seen!”

“ ‘Woulda.’ ”

“I’m telling the truth!”

“Sure, Willi . . .”

Early that afternoon, a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society who stopped by on two previous occasions informs Willi that he’s been unable to convince a judge to set any bond, then suggests that he hire a criminal attorney for his trial defense. “Sooner,” he says, “rather than later.”

According to hospital admitting records, at three-thirty
P.M.
, a male Caucasian, weight 240, height 6'3", date of birth 5/12/95, occupation left blank, is assigned a private room two doors down from Willi’s. His chart gives his name as Sidney n.m.i. Marsden and claims he is suffering from diverticulosis. He is not. He is in perfect health, although he does remember to groan occasionally, as he’s been instructed, and to complain, but not too
much,
about his discomfort. In between his groaning and his complaining, he entertains himself by reading stories in a year-and-a-half-old issue of
Argosy.
It’s a tribute to his professionalism that he resists ogling and mashing Betty Simon, one of the nurses on duty.
Madone,
the lungs on that broad! His name is not Sidney Marsden.

At a quarter to seven Lois Lane arrives at the hospital. Because her pocketbook holds a little zippered manicure kit containing a metal nail file and cuticle scissors, she has to leave it with the posted guard, this evening a young blond-haired policeman-in-tunic named Ben Jaeger. He apologizes when he divests Lois of her bag. She thinks he’s cute.

Eighteen months ago, Officer Jaeger, still a rookie on traffic detail, arrested Spider Sandglass outside of McSorley’s Old Ale House, 15 East Seventh Street, for assaulting an acquaintance Spider claimed owed him a small amount of money.

Clearly, Spider’s father doesn’t hold that against Officer Jaeger. On the contrary.

When Lois comes into Willi’s room, she discovers him standing at the window, looking down nine stories to the street. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“They’re sending me to Riker’s tomorrow!.”

“Get under the covers—please?”

“I can’t go to jail! I’ll go nuts!”

“What about Detective Sandglass,” she says in a measured, patient tone, “can’t he—?”

“Feh! He still thinks I’m lying.
Everybody
does!” Willi hammers the crown of his head against the window frame. “
You
don’t think I’m lying, do you? Lois?”

“Willi, I don’t think you cut anyone’s throat, of course not.”

“
But?”

“I think maybe you saw somebody who just
looked
like the alderman.”

“I should just stick my tongue in a light socket and be done with it.” He looks around for a lamp, follows the cord to a wall, the plug—there! He might as well do it now! Save everybody a lot of trouble.

“Willi, you need to calm down. Now listen. I did some calling around today and I think I may’ve found you a lawyer. His name—”

“I can’t
afford
a lawyer.”

“I can help.”

“Oh sure,
now
you can.
Now
you can loan me some money! Thanks a whole heap.”

“Don’t start.”

“If you’d loaned me thirty bucks when I
asked
you for it . . .”

“So this is my fault?”

She expects another explosion of Willi’s pique and a fresh fusillade of blame-laying, name-calling. Instead, his shoulders sag. “I’m scared, Lois.”

“I know,” she says, “I know.” She’s eager to hug him, but also reluctant: she doesn’t want him to cry out in physical pain. But suddenly Willi hugs
her.
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs. “It’s all going to be just fine.”

But with the situation the way it looks, Lois has no idea
how.

At ten minutes to eleven, a tall and buxom middle-aged nurse that Skinny Simon has never seen before briskly passes her by, absorbed, it seems, in making chart notations on the run. For a moment Skinny considers chasing after the woman to remind her it’s against hospital regulations for nurses to wear perfume on the job. She is going off duty, however, and besides, she’s not the shift supervisor. So instead she goes to check on Willi, not knowing what she could say to him; do you wish someone
well
when they’re heading off to jail?

But she needn’t have worried: when she peeks in, he’s pretending to sleep (an R.N. can always tell). Skinny shuts the door, bids good night to Officer Jaeger (he’s adorable), clocks out, rides an elevator down to the lobby, and leaves the building.

Out in the muggy summer night, she feels blue all of a sudden. Her live-in boyfriend, Charlie Brunner, is in California and won’t return till God knows when. Maybe September, but maybe not. He’s a trumpeter with Benny Goodman’s orchestra, which was on the verge of disbanding as recently as two months ago when the boys and their canary, Helen Ward, left New York on a last-ditch cross-country tour. Now they’re packing in audiences night after night at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. Lucky Charlie! Poor
Willi.
Poor guy, she thinks, recalling the two or three, three or four, certainly less than
ten,
times they made love, just for the pure fun of it and nothing more. How could he have killed someone? She doesn’t believe it. She believes it. No, she doesn’t. Then she thinks,
Imagine
that nurse coming on the floor drenched in perfume! And cheap, awful stuff at that! Skinny stops, inexplicably bothered by something that has nothing to do with perfume. But
what
? She gives a tiny shrug and runs to catch her bus.

Meanwhile, the atrociously perfumed nurse is removing a vacuum thermos filled with strong coffee from a leather bag she stowed in one of the linen closets when she arrived at the hospital. She glances at her wristwatch, which has no second hand. She is anxious to get started, but it’s still too early. Another forty-five minutes to an hour, at least.

Replacing the thermos in the bag and the bag at the back of a lower shelf, she closes the closet, looks up the hall at the policeman sitting in his tipped-back chair (she hates pretty boys), and then, to make herself scarce, goes and has a smoke on the concrete fire stairs between the ninth floor and the eighth.

The narrow square bar pinned to her uniform reads:
TIBBELL
. If anyone happens to ask her, she’ll tell them her first name is Rosemary, and that it’s
Mrs.
Rosemary Tibbell. But she hopes no one asks her.

Her name isn’t Rosemary Tibbell, and she isn’t married.

At a few minutes past midnight, now the second of August, Ben Jaeger is stifling a yawn and feeling the first cricks move through his shoulders and lower back when a nurse appears and offers him coffee. “You’re an angel!” he tells her. He peers above the square yardage of her bosom to her name bar and adds, “Miss Tibbell.”