Red Love (9 page)

Do We Ever Really Know Anything?

Define “ever”.

—G. L.

I

Six days after Solomon Rubell’s arrest in 1950, Sophie Rich had been sent by Solly’s friends from Manhattan to Bobby Metzger in Pittsburgh, where he was working for NACA. To Bobby’s amazement, Sophie had knocked at his door, walked in (her finger to her lips), sat down on the couch, took out $3,000 in bills, and wrote out a message in longhand on a pad of ruled paper. The message from Solly gave Bobby instructions on how to flee the country through Mexico. Declaring aloud, “Begone, stranger, I know not what thou seeketh, you must be nuts,” Bobby slammed the door on his old friend and flushed the message down the toilet.

Only a few days before Sophie’s visit, the F.B.I. had called Bobby in for a chat about the Perry Street apartment, and he was now sure they knew of Sophie’s visit. He panicked, and went to the Pittsburgh F.B.I. office and told them of the strange visitation. He said he thought he was being set up, although he did not know “by whom or what for.”

The following day, F.B.I. agents knocked on Sophie’s apartment door on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and told her what Bobby had told them. Bobby was no stool pigeon, so this was very strange news indeed. Sophie pulled herself together.

“Yes, indeed, gentlemen, Bobby is correct. Except that the message was not from Mr. Rubell, whoever that is.”

“Who was it from?” the beefy Irish F.B.I. lad inquired.

“Well, I really don’t know,” Sophie answered. “Why don’t you come in?” Beckoning the two agents into the apartment, she explained what had occurred.

“This may sound funny,” she said. “A stranger knocked on my door. I was on the phone with my boy friend at the time. The stranger was carrying an apple in his hand. I was uncertain about him, but told him to come in. Just to make certain, I left the phone off the hook so no one could disturb us.”

The agents sat down on the chairs Sophie provided for them and gazed up at her. “Well, sirs, the man came in and asked me if I knew Prescott. I said no, and he said, okay, that didn’t matter. He wanted me to go see Bobby in Pittsburgh. He took out $3,000 in small bills wrapped between pieces of black cardboard and held together with a purple rubber band. I hope you’re writing this all down.

“I immediately made plane reservations for Pittsburgh using the name Mrs. Harry Salsberg, and flew there the next day. When I saw Bobby he was very negative about this whole thing. He said I was ‘nuts to get involved with such people.’ He was absolutely right. Sometimes I don’t think I have a brain in my head. I went back to New York with the $3,000. Two nights later, the same stranger turns up here, asks me what goes, and took back the money. That was it.”

Summoned to appear before the grand jury the following week, Sophie sat in the waiting room across from Solly Rubell. The two sat facing each other for two and a half hours without showing any sign of recognition. Solly, whom Sophie had known for fifteen years, who had given her the greatest break you could ask for in this life.

When Sophie was called in to talk with the prosecutors, of course she told them she had been advised by her lawyers of her right to avoid self-incrimination. She would answer no questions without a grant of immunity.

Dolly Rubell was arrested three days later.

Sophie was given summonses four more times. Each time she refused to answer any questions, although they threatened to jail her for contempt. Agents followed her wherever she went and inspected her garbage.

Then she was called in and asked to look at pictures of men who might have been the stranger with the apple who sent her to Pittsburgh.

She gazed at pictures of her dearest friends, all the group from Perry Street: Maury Ballinzweig, Wilfred Fuller, Joe Klein, Max Finger, everybody she knew from the neighborhood. None of them, she said, was the stranger who sent her to Pittsburgh.

When Bobby Metzger was summoned before the grand jury, he was asked if he knew Solly and Dolly Rubell, Maury Ballinzweig, Jed Levine, and the rest of the old gang. He said he did not know Solly at all and could not identify a photograph of him, and that he’d seen some of the others around but knew them only casually when he was at City College. He said he had not stayed in the apartment on Perry Street since June 1948 (when he had dropped in sometimes) and that there was never any photographic equipment there.

Bobby went on trial for perjury in February of 1953. The prosecutor recalled his answers to questions from the grand jury about Sophie’s visit to him in Pittsburgh.

QUESTION
: What did you say to her, “Hello, Soph”?

METZGER
: I may have said, “Hello, Sophie,” and “What are you doing here?”

QUESTION
: What did she say after you said, “Hello, Sophie. What are you doing here?” You probably added, “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

METZGER
: She must have said something to the effect of, oh, she would like to talk to me.

QUESTION
: What did she talk about?

METZGER
: Well, I don’t think she said anything about her mission to me aloud. She may have mumbled something else.

QUESTION
: “Do you have a piece of paper,” or something?

METZGER
: I think she just peered about, saw some paper, and took it.

QUESTION
: Did she beckon you to come over and sit beside her?

METZGER
: Did she beckon?

QUESTION
: Yes.

METZGER
: I do not recall specific beckoning.

QUESTION
: And she wrote that she was told to come out and see an aeronautical engineer.

METZGER
: Yes.

QUESTION
: Did you ask her why she picked you out of all the aeronautical engineers in Pittsburgh?

METZGER
: Gee, I didn’t.

QUESTION
: Didn’t you think it was rather strange that she chose you? METZGER: I did think it was strange.

QUESTION
: Did she explain to you why she picked you out?

METZGER
: No, she didn’t.

QUESTION
: Didn’t you ask her?

METZGER
: I think 1 did.

QUESTION
: What did she say?

METZGER
: She?

QUESTION
: Sophie.

METZGER
: It may not have been her.

QUESTION
: It may not have been who?

METZGER
: Sophie. It looked like a man.

QUESTION
: Now, hold it. Fun is fun, but let’s not get ridiculous.

METZGER
: What must you mean?

QUESTION
: You must remember something she said. Where was your mind?

METZGER
: I was real upset at the time.

QUESTION
: What did she say after she started to write on that pad?

METZGER
: She or he had memorized instructions as to how this engineer and his friend were to leave the country.

QUESTION
: Yes, but what were they? What were the instructions?

METZGER
: I didn’t let her get that far. I told her I wasn’t interested in what she had to say, that I hoped she wasn’t getting in trouble or doing anything naughty.

QUESTION
: You’ve said you thought her visit was a trap. What sort of a trap?

METZGER
: Of course I had been reading about the spy cases in the paper. She did mention in writing that she knew Solomon Rubell. Well, here I was being asked to flee the country for some reason. So I wondered if somebody was trying to trap me into something, since I had no reason to leave.

QUESTION
: You knew exactly that Rubell had been arrested?

METZGER
: Yes.

QUESTION
: So that when his name appeared on that paper of hers, you weren’t completely ignorant of the fact, were you?

METZGER
: Oh, no.

QUESTION
: Didn’t you immediately connect that arrest up with her visit, in your mind?

METZGER
: Yes, I think I did.

QUESTION
: Of course you did. You are a doctor, with a Ph.D. The Rubells and the arrests and F.B.I. visit—that is one, two; and when she is there, asking you to flee the country, you immediately have to associate yourself with the Rubells in your own mind, and her visit—is that correct?

METZGER
: Yes.

QUESTION
: Then you must have said something to her. You must have not only been confused, but you might have been shocked. Look, I know that if I was in that situation, and I was completely innocent, and somebody knocked at the door and said, “Look, get out of the country. The Rubells—” I would resent it; I tell you, the air would be blue by the time 1 got through with someone like that. I think that’s what any normal, innocent person would do. Now Mr. Metzger, what
did
you do? Hmmmm?

METZGER
: I don’t think I lost my temper. I thought she should leave.

QUESTION
: You mean you were practically accused of espionage, and you didn’t lose your temper?

METZGER
: Not in the conventional sense.

QUESTION
: Don’t you ever get mad at anybody?

METZGER
: Not very often.

QUESTION
: If someone came up and slapped you in the face, wouldn’t that make you mad?

METZGER
: Yes, but I don’t recall when that has ever occurred.

QUESTION
: Generally speaking, what did Sophie Rich say to you when she came to your apartment?

METZGER
: I don’t know. It may not have been her.

QUESTION
: Oh, please, please. Here is a woman that practically accuses you of being a spy. She puts a finger on you. She selects you out of hundreds of millions—she picks you as the one to flee the country. And you don’t even recall what was said. You are painting yourself almost as a person who is committing perjury, my friend. Are you telling me you can’t even recall what happened at that time?

METZGER
: It certainly seems incredible, I know.

QUESTION
: If I told you the same story, you would think there was something wrong with me, wouldn’t you?

METZGER
: 1 couldn’t answer that. I don’t know.

QUESTION
: Tell us everything that Sophie Rich wrote down that day when she dropped in on you in Pittsburgh.

METZGER
: She wrote that she had instructions from a stranger in New York, and money which she was to transmit to an aeronautical engineer in Pittsburgh. She made some mention of a second friend in along there. The instructions were how this person, and presumably this friend, were to flee the country.

QUESTION
: Go on. That isn’t all?

METZGER
: I believe I interrupted her on occasion, with questions as to why she had visited me, and why she thought that I had anything to do with this, whatever it was; that I hoped she wasn’t doing anything naughty, although I realize this all sounds kind of trivial now. At this point I think she mentioned she knew Solomon Rubell.

QUESTION
: Did you ask her why she happened to pick you out?

METZGER
: Yes, I asked her about that.

QUESTION
: What did she say?

METZGER
: I don’t know.

QUESTION
: You don’t know what she said when you asked her why she picked you out?

METZGER
: That’s right. She said something like, I might judge this for myself. I recall that phrase.

QUESTION
: What did you do with the paper on which she wrote out her message to you?

METZGER
: I destroyed it.

QUESTION
: Why?

METZGER
: I don’t know why.

QUESTION
: Well, you must have had some reason?

METZGER
: It was … I was really rather upset and I presume I acted in response to an impulse to deface the memory of this visit.

QUESTION
: Why, for what reason, if you were innocent?

METZGER
: I can’t give you a logical reason.

QUESTION
: You have seen the pictures of the Rubells, haven’t you?

METZGER
: Yes.

QUESTION
: You still cannot identify them?

METZGER
: That’s right, sir.

QUESTION
: You graduated from CCNY in 1938?

METZGER
: Yes.

QUESTION
: Well, wasn’t Maury Ballinzweig one of your classmates?

METZGER
: Well, I understand that he was.

QUESTION
: You know he was.

METZGER
: I am sorry. I cannot recall Ballinzweig being in my class.

QUESTION
: Perhaps this will help you: When Maury Ballinzweig applied for a position with the General Electric Company, your name was given as one of his references, as a man whom he knew for more than eight years. Why did he pick you out?

METZGER
: This is news. I don’t know.

QUESTION
: It may be bad news.

METZGER
: I certainly must have known him in City College.

QUESTION
: You certainly must have; and you certainly must have known him afterwards, and you certainly must have met him almost every day at the meetings of the Steinmetz Society.

METZGER
: I can’t recall anything like that.

QUESTION
: Were you ever present in the apartment of Solomon Rubell?