Styx & Stone (40 page)

The cop retrieved a binder from the case he’d brought, opened it on the coffee table in the parlor, and dived in.

“First, Angela Farber made a full confession last night,” he said. He looked a little awkward, swallowed hard, then continued. “She confessed to both crimes.”

McKeever clearly didn’t want to relate the story, and I wasn’t happy about hearing it. I asked if I could read the report instead. It would be easier for both of us. He agreed.

Angela Farber’s confession detailed how she’d noticed the lights dim on Friday, January 22, at about 10:15 p.m., and knew that my father had just returned home. She had been expecting him for hours. Her plan to was to wait for him to go to bed, let herself in with the key she’d had since she’d cared for his plants, and club him to death in his bed. But everything changed when she heard voices in his apartment: my father’s and Bernie Sanger’s. She waited until Bernie left about twenty minutes later, then buzzed my father’s door. She made up a story about a missing letter she’d been expecting, had the doorman mixed it with his mail by mistake? He checked his mail right there in the foyer, and said no, it wasn’t there. They chatted a moment in the doorway, my father still holding his mail.

She noticed a letter in his hand: the one from Carnegie Hall, and mused how she really should investigate the spring program. My father, knowing what was in the envelope, opened it and proudly displayed the tickets for the January 31 concert. Mrs. Farber gushed her admiration for Van Cliburn, and my father offered to lend her an LP of Cliburn playing Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto. She followed him into his apartment, stooping to grab the small, cast iron doorstop from his threshold as she went. He led the way to his study, never turning fully to look at her, prattling about how the concerto had no trombones or tuba and that the second movement consisted of the most beautiful violin solos. Then she dashed the iron against the back of his head without a word. She hit him again, then again, and I had to look away from the report.

“Where does Bruchner fit in?” I asked once I’d composed myself.

McKeever offered me a handkerchief. I turned it down; he needed it for his own eyes. I almost threw my arms around him.

“Bruchner wasn’t adjusting too well at the department,” he said a moment later. “She said he often complained about the politics, the intrigues, and personalities. He was scared that Friday afternoon after the lunch at the Faculty Club and phoned Angela Farber right after the incident. He told her everything, expressed his fear of deportation and jail. According to the statement he gave us last night, his idea was to leave, skip town, just disappear, before your father could take any action against him. She talked him out of it, or at least into waiting a while, and decided to settle the matter herself. Angela Farber knew as much as Emmel did about the department, its people, and their peccadilloes, including Ruggero Ercolano. Everyone knew his haunts, his weakness for female flesh. She simply waited outside his place and followed him that Saturday to one of the bars Emmel had mentioned during one of his rantings. She flirted with him, and he took her back to his apartment. She actually had . . . intercourse . . . with him before killing him, like a praying mantis or a black widow. Said she did it for love.”

“Was it the Crystal Lounge?” I asked. “Just across the street from Ercolano’s place.”

“Yes, how did you know?”

I shrugged. “Ercolano had the matchbook, and Mrs. Farber mentioned the name to me once.”

“We showed his photograph to the manager and he remembered him from that night. He said Ercolano met a lady and left with her after about an hour. He identified Angela Farber as the lady.”

“Did she tell you about my father’s manuscript?” I asked.

“She said she mailed the book Monday, like you said. She knew it would come back for insufficient postage and implicate Ercolano.”

We sat quietly for a moment, sipping our coffee. I preferred talking about Ercolano’s case to my father’s. It distracted me, if only for a while.

“We don’t know exactly how she got into Ercolano’s office,” said McKeever. “She kind of faded away after a while and stopped speaking.”

“She took his office key,” I said. “I’m sure of it. The police found two silver latchkeys and a mailbox key in his possession, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, the keys to the Hamilton offices are brass,” I said, producing my father’s key, the one Joan Little had given me. “So, it made me wonder why he didn’t carry an office key, and the answer was that someone—his murderer—had taken it from his chain.”

McKeever nodded, then remembered something.

“I thought you’d like to know that we spoke to Mr. Lucchesi about his fingerprints on your father’s key. By the way, turns out he’s been waiting for you to contact him for the last several days. He said he’d left you a message, and you didn’t respond. Didn’t want to harass you.”

“I certainly didn’t get any message.”

McKeever shrugged. “Anyway, he says he used the key a while ago when he was helping your father catalogue his books. Miss Little seems to think no one has used it since then.”

“Well, that explains it,” I said.

“You must be glad Lucchesi’s not involved. I know how you feel about him.”

“No, you don’t, Jim,” I said, staring deep into his blue eyes. We held each other’s gaze for a long spell, until McKeever blinked and looked away.

“And all this happened because your father noticed Bruchner’s tattoo,” he said wistfully, bringing me back to the painful topic.

“It wasn’t the tattoo,” I announced.

“Beg your pardon.”

“My father’s suspicions weren’t caused by the tattoo, at least not initially.”

“Then what was it?”

I blushed. “It was Bruchner’s penis.”

“What?” McKeever had turned magenta.

“The man wasn’t circumcised. That’s what my father must have seen in the steam bath. It was only later on that he became suspicious of the tattoo.”

“How did you figure that?”

“In one of her drunken ramblings, Angela Farber mentioned that Walter wasn’t circumcised. I remembered it last night. That’s how my father knew he wasn’t Jewish. The tattoo must have seemed innocuous at first glance.”

“Bruchner still insists that the tattoo is not a cover-up of an SS tattoo. He says it’s a girl’s name. Katia, I think.”

“Was it Bruchner who made the call to the ICU the morning Mrs. Farber disconnected the breathing tube?”

“No,” said McKeever. “She kept Bruchner out of her schemes. She paid a vagrant outside the hospital to make the call from a pay phone.”

“What about Bruchner now?” I asked.

“He’s leaving the country. We had a long talk with his lawyer and him about his options. We might have tried to prosecute him, but we don’t believe he knew Angela Farber had done this until yesterday. She put the screws to him, threatened to go to the police about his identity. That’s why he went to the concert with her. I think he’s done with the charade. He wants to go home.”

“He was in a tough spot,” I said. “His past was closing in on him from all sides, even from his lover. I believe people are responsible for their actions, but I still feel pity for him.”

“That’s pretty generous of you, given the circumstances.”

I shrugged and sniffled. “I still can’t believe the coincidence. Both Gualtieri Bruchners in New York. What are the odds?”

“Not so hard to believe,” said McKeever. “After the war, Jewish refugees either went to Israel or they came here. And this was an attractive job for the professor. I understand a lot of Europeans are getting university jobs here. They call it ‘Brain Drain.’”

“Still,” I said, “you must admit it’s a coincidence.”

“Sure, but odds are that unlikely coincidences have to happen every so often. Ask an actuary. The real stroke of luck is that you picked up the wrong phonebook and found a Gualtieri Bruchner in Millwood.”

“Just by chance,” I mused. “Who knows if I ever would have connected Angela Farber to Emmel without Karen Bruchner?”

“And without that connection, she would have got away with murder. Two of them.”

“What about Mrs. Farber?” I asked. “How is she? She was pretty pathetic last night.”

“She’s insane. The DA’s going to have a couple of psychiatrists examine her before he decides which charges to file, but she’s gone around the bend.”

“Did you ask her about Elijah’s grave?” I asked.

McKeever nodded. “Yes, but she wouldn’t admit to that,” he said. “We asked her several times, but she denied it. Emmel, too.”

“I’ve come to believe it was just a random act of hooliganism,” I said. “You were right, Jim. Just some local punks, not an anti-Semitic crusade against my family. Angela Farber didn’t know about the confrontation at lunch until Friday night. Elijah’s grave was vandalized Wednesday.”

I spent the day meeting with lawyers and morticians, settling the bills and signing papers. The work was far from finished, but that was enough for one day. When I left the lawyer’s office, I ducked into a movie theater and sat through
Ben-Hur.
I don’t remember what it was about. That night, I arrived back at my father’s place after ten. Rodney was on his usual chair, sitting up a little straighter than usual. On the sofa was a visitor.

“Hello, Ruth,” I said.

Upstairs, I poured her a glass of sherry to steady her shaky determination.

“I had to see you, Ellie,” she said, staring into her glass. “I want to apologize for lying to you. I wanted to tell you the other day when we met, but I couldn’t do it.”

“There’s no need, Ruth,” I said, pouring myself some of my father’s whiskey and taking a seat next to her on the sofa.

“Don’t stop me, please,” she continued. “I want to clear my conscience. This belongs to your mother,” she said, twisting the ruby ring off her finger and folding it into my hand. “When I found it in Ruggero’s apartment, I thought it was his, a family ring of some kind, so I took it. The police told me it belonged to your mother. I’m so sorry, Ellie,” and she sobbed, head bowed.

I took her hands and smiled sadly. We said nothing for several minutes, and all I could think of was that time, years before, at the picnic when her mother had slapped her face. Poor little Ruth, to echo my father’s words. Poor little Ruth.

She looked up at me, her eyes sparkling behind tears, then fell against me. She cried for several minutes, her left hand still clutched in mine. She didn’t notice the ruby on her middle finger until she’d regained her calm.

“Ellie?”

“This isn’t my mother’s ring,” I said. “I found hers yesterday and put it in a safe deposit box today.” A lie. “This must have been Ruggero’s mother’s ring. Now, it’s yours.”

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1960

I arrived back in New Holland after eleven o’clock the following Sunday. I parked my car in its usual spot in front of my apartment on Lincoln Avenue, and, seeing the light still on in Fiorello’s, stopped in to chat with Fadge. The radio was playing from a shelf behind the counter: The Fleetwoods singing “
Come Softly to Me
.”

Fadge had already heard the news about my father; I don’t know how. I didn’t want to discuss it. We talked a while about nothing in particular, then I said I was calling it a day. I was about to leave when he remembered a message he was to give me:

“By the way,” he said, pulling a scrap of paper from the cash register. “Aside from all the calls from your editor, some guy from New York’s been calling here the past couple of days. He got the number from the paper, I think.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“He said his name was Gigi,” he said, reading the note. “Had an accent. There’s a number here; he wants you to call him,” and he handed the slip of paper to me.

I stuffed the paper into my coat pocket, and my fingers felt the envelope Rodney had given me the night of Dad’s funeral. I had forgotten it was there.

“Good night, Fadge,” I said, heading for the door.

“Good night, Ellie,” he called. “And I’m real sorry about your dad. If there’s anything you need, let me know.”

“How about a dirty magazine?”

“A little night reading?” asked Fadge, and I felt a little better.