The Letter Writer (17 page)
Authors: Dan Fesperman
HE IS OUT THERE, LOOKING FOR ME.
Or, rather, looking for the
old
me. I know this intuitively, in the same way I was once able to detect menace approaching from around the corner before it even showed its face. It is an awareness which never leaves you once you've experienced the bruising consequences of lowering your guard, although this time I can take comfort that my pursuer is relatively benign. Mr. Cain, I am quite confident, does not intend to do me harm. He will be dogged, yes, annoyingly so, but he will pursue his course of inquiry out of curiosity and a misplaced sense of duty, not out of malice. It is his inexperience that worries me more; the prospect that, in his blithe efforts to learn all, he will unintentionally reveal far too much to the hungry eyes beyond my walls.
I suppose that Beryl Blum is to blame. Fedya told me as much earlier this afternoon, after the poor girl confessed to him that she had revealed my former name in a moment of weaknessâcarnal, probably. Proving once again that, with secrets, even the involvement of a single additional person is one too many. But I will make no recriminations. Beryl is a good girl.
Girl,
I say, when she is thirty-one, well beyond a marriageable age, a status which probably makes her and Cain perfect companions. Lust and longing, truth serum of the lonely. No secret will be safe between them until the first flames of infatuation have been extinguished.
I cannot deny that this will require extra precautions of me. The next time I see Mr. Cain, he will doubtless be full of additional information, and thus, additional questions. For the moment, I will have no choice but to deflect, to parry, to misdirect; for his own good as much as for mine. Because the time has come for me to be his guide into the fringes of my former world.
You may justifiably ask why I would take such a risk for the sake of two dead Germans with Nazi inclinations. One motive is self-preservation. A shadowy cabal would appear to be at the center of these recent events, and if its fears and suspicions led its participants to silence Hansch and Schaller, then surely at some point will they not also reach out for me? Surely Lorenz, silenced in a different manner, must have revealed my name by now, since he was the one who directed those two Germans to my door.
But only with my help and guidance will Mr. Cain be able to reach the heart of these matters. I know the codes of these people. I speak their language, literally and figuratively. Without me, he would surely misread vital cues and messages, perhaps with disastrous consequences.
So, for his benefit and for mine, I must resume more of my previous ways of behaving. I must once again seek out dangerous company and, in doing so, beg the forgiveness of whatever deity has spared my life to this point. Because I confess that I again find myself beguiled by the prospect of tasting the voyeuristic pleasures and excitements which once guided my life, and once nearly ended it as well.
THAT AFTERNOON CAPTAIN MULHEARN
made damn sure Cain had no time to even think about Danziger, much less sneak off to see him. He began by once again dropping a thick file folder on Cain's desk.
“Here you go, Citizen. You're on Civil Defense duty.”
CD Duty, as the cops called it, was a wartime job that mostly involved dealing with civilians who'd volunteered as air raid wardens or as foot soldiers in civil defense patrols, which functioned as auxiliary policemen at a time when extra manpower was needed, like during parades, riots, or big demonstrations.
Cain's first order of business was to check out a rumor that a couple of ne'er-do-wells living on 37th Street had applied to become air raid wardens to make it easier for them to rob stores during blackouts. Five phone calls and a quick trip to the nearest Army recruiting station soon established that both men had left for boot camp weeks ago, and had never even applied to be air wardens. He nonetheless had to type up a detailed report, because the tip had come in a handwritten letter from some nosy New Yorker to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who had forwarded it to Mayor La Guardia, who had passed it down to Commissioner Valentine.
“Handle
carefully
and
thoroughly
!” Valentine had scribbled on an attached note. So much for being immune to political influence, Cain thought ruefully. And nice irony that it had ended up on Cain's desk. He resisted the urge to scribble an aside to Linwood Archer.
His other CD duty for the day was far more pleasant: registering six new female air raid wardens, a task that became the object of station house levity when he marched them downstairs for fingerprinting in full view of officers coming in off the street from patrol duty.
“Need some help rolling those fingers, Citizen Cain?”
“You're turning a little red there, Sergeant. They making your temperature rise?”
“Or is that something else rising?”
Several of the young ladies blushed. Cain took it in stride. This was one reaction that would have been no different in Horton. Usually the only women you ever saw in the station house were either the rare female plainclothes officer, working upstairs, the hard cases from the Tenderloin who'd just been arrested, or the distraught victims of crime. Even most of the clerical work here got done by men, and the sight of six well-meaning young women in smart CD uniforms was therefore bound to be a distraction.
Twice Cain had to shoo away overly curious patrolmen, but all the extra attention eventually gave him an idea which he decided to put into action as soon as the fingerprinting was done. He marched the women up to Romo's high desk and whispered conspiratorially, “Got a second, Sarge?”
“Considering your present company, I got all day.”
“These gals could use an escort upstairs while I go use the can. To keep 'em out of harm's way until I'm back, if you know what I mean.”
“Absolutely, young man!”
Romo sprang to his feet with a bounce in his step and led the women toward the stairwell. Everyone watched their progress except Cain, who reached beneath the desk for the ring of keys. The one for the 95 Room was clearly marked. Cain worked it loose, dropped it in his pocket and returned the ring to its hook just as the last of the women disappeared up the stairs in a chorus of wolf whistles. He'd be fine as long as no one missed it between now and the shift change. That gave him an hour to get a copy made. He'd worry later about how to put the key back.
After completing the paperwork for the women he followed them out of the building and veered off toward the nearest hardware store. The clerk, not accustomed to cops asking for copies of official-looking keys, frowned doubtfully until Cain slipped him a dollar and said, “I screwed up. Lost the duplicate, and the less my lieutenant knows about it, the better.”
“Got it.”
By then Cain had come up with a plan for how to return the original. After leaving the hardware store he headed straight for Logan's, a tavern that was a mandatory after-hours stop for some of his colleagues. The bartender was accustomed to special requests from his law enforcement clients, and Cain had heard talk of some of the tactics. He eased up to the bar. Ten minutes from now, every stool would be filled by officers from the day squad. But for now the place was practically empty.
“Special order for the lou on the night squad,” Cain said, using house slang for the squad lieutenant. “A flute would make his day.”
“Coming right up.”
The bartender pulled out an empty brown pop bottle from belowâOrange Crush, which made Cain wonder what Zharkov had really been drinking in the station house the day beforeâand filled it with a few shots of Old Bushmill's.
Cain reached for his wallet, but the bartender waved him off.
“With my compliments to the lou.”
Back at the station house, Cain followed established procedure. He approached the desk just as the night squad's desk sergeant, an agreeable rail-thin fellow named Walker, was settling in.
“Got a flute here to wet the lou's whistle,” he said, keeping his voice down.
Walker's eyes lit up.
“You're a gentleman and a scholar. Sergeant Cain, is it not? The new detective?”
“Yes, sir.”
He took the bottle in hand.
“Well, then. I'm sure the lou will remember you in his prayers. As will I.”
He winked and poured a toot into his coffee mug.
“Carrying charge,” he said, before heading off to complete the delivery. Cain checked his flanks, saw his chance, and grabbed the key ring. He slipped the key back on and headed upstairs to complete the last of the day's paperwork. Shortly afterward he left the station house with two errands to run. An hour after that he arrived at Danziger's doorstep on Rivington Street.
This time Cain entered without knocking. Danziger looked up in annoyance.
“I am with a client, my final one of the day,” he said testily, before turning back toward a heavyset woman in black, seated in a chair facing his. “My apologies, Mrs. Hartstein. You may resume in full confidence of privacy, as I can assure you that the gentleman who does not act as a gentleman neither speaks nor understands German. Nonetheless, I will ask him to wait outside if that is your wish.”
She eyed Cain, who smiled sheepishly, the way he used to whenever his grandmother caught him stealing icing from a freshly baked caramel cake.
“It is quite all right,” she said in English. “I am nearly finished.”
“Very well.” Then, in a sterner tone to Cain. “Please wait quietly.”
She may have been nearly finished, but, as Cain soon discovered, she still had important things to say. Danziger scribbled quickly while she spoke German in a low, urgent tone, gesturing with both hands. When she paused, he nodded solemnly and retrieved a folded page of onionskin paper from an open envelope. He then began reading from it in German while she listened closely, head bowed. At one point she stopped him with a hand on his arm. She reached into a large black handbag and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. Danziger continued reading in a lowered voice, and the silence afterward felt like a pronouncement of death. He gently refolded the paper, slipped it back into the envelope, stood, and slid it into one of the cubbyholes on the back wall, near the end of the top row. She rose with a mournful sigh, and he accompanied her to the door, neither of them glancing at Cain as they passed. Her eyes were off in some bleak world across the seas.
The door opened to the noise and dust of the neighborhood. Danziger guided her across the threshold. “I am walking her home,” he said to Cain. “It is a few blocks only, the least I can do for her in such a difficult time. You will wait.”
“Sure.”
The door shut behind them.
It took only thirty seconds for Cain's curiosity to get the best of his sense of propriety. He rose stealthily from the wing chair, already feeling like he was up to no good. First he tried the drawers of Danziger's desk. The biggest one was locked. The smaller ones were stuffed with bills, invoices, torn scraps of paper with scribbled names and numbers, none of them familiar. On top of the desk was a well-thumbed old book, open to the middle. Cain checked the spine:
Harkavy's American Letter Writer and Speller, English and Yiddish,
a reference work by some fellow named Alexander Harkavy, and printed forty years earlier by the Hebrew Publishing Co., New York.
He saw now there was also a small framed photograph, an oval barely bigger than a silver dollar that was walled off from the rest of the room by a pile of recent correspondence. It was a yellowed portrait of a young woman, beautiful but unsmiling, with black hair and a prim collar, buttoned to the neck. He turned it over but there was no date, only the name of a photographer's studio in New York. He was careful to place it in the exact spot as before.
Cain looked up at the two hundred or so cubbyholes. As before, every single one had something in it. Impressive, yes, but looking closer he now saw that for an alarming number the envelopes and papers were yellowed, or even curling at the edges. The ink was faded.
He gingerly pulled out a letter and unfolded it. It was dated October 1932. Ten years old. The onionskin stationery was brittle, almost to the point of crumbling. The other three envelopes in the slot were all postmarked before 1931.
Who were these people? What were their stories? And were some of them dead? If so, why had Danziger held on to their letters, especially since he seemed so keen on erasing their stories from his memory? Or so he'd said.
Cain slid everything back into place, taking care to do no harm. He felt like he had come across an ancient archive. The door creaked open behind him. He flushed in embarrassment, and took a moment to compose his expression before turning to face Danziger, who stood at the entrance with arms folded, staring. As the door slowly closed behind him, a band of sunlight lit his white hair and pale skin, making him look like an avenging angel. Yet he did not seem angry, or the least bit surprised.
“You will not find it there,” he said, “or anywhere on these premises.”
“Find what?”
“Any sign of my previous life.”
Cain was tempted to ask about the photo of the woman, but something in Danziger's expression warned him off.
“That sounds like you're admitting to one.”
“One? By my count there are at least three. We all have past lives, wouldn't you agree? There was my childhood, happy but impoverished, in a city now lost to memory. Lost to everything, if newsreels are to be believed. Then my passage to New York, which landed me far too soon upon the shores of orphanhood. Followed by a life on my own in an era of self-education and rising status. That is the one you seek evidence of, is it not? But, as I said, no trace of that life resides here.”
“No trace of it seems to reside in the police records bureau, either.” He decided not to mention the files he'd requested from the Hall of Records. “They say you're dead. Or that Alexander Maximilian Dalitz is dead, anyway. Has been since 1928.”
Danziger flinched, and Cain could tell he hadn't wanted to.
“He died for a good reason. Several good reasons. But let us not speak ill of the dead. Instead, look up again at those letters where you were just poking around. Go ahead.”
Cain obliged him.
“Now, tell me what you see.”
“Mail, some of it pretty old.”
“No, no. What you see are lives. Lives which depend upon me. And, yes, I have cultivated their dependence, perhaps out of a need to feel worthy and wanted. But it has occurred all the same. And now you would propose, with a little further meddling, to render me null, or perhaps damaged, and at the very least compromised in my standing here. So do it, then, if the only way you know how to behave is as a policeman, operating by his manual of procedure. But be prepared to live with the consequences for all of them.” He spread his arms wide. “Mrs. Hartstein, who you just saw leaving, would you care to hear the news of hers which has just been revealed to me?”
“News revealed in confidence?”
“Don't be impudent. Just listen, for a change. Four months ago she received a letter from her sister in Hamburg. Their entire family was in hiding, but the police were going door to door, searching for Jews. There were reports that entire crowds of them were being escorted to the
Bahnhof
and loaded onto rail cars. Cattle cars, Mr. Cain, not passenger compartments. These trains were seen leaving town, traveling east.
“During the next four months she heard nothing. Not a word. She feared the worst, but hoped that perhaps they were in a new location, someplace where even sending a letter through trusted intermediaries was too risky. Until today, when she came to me with a letter that had just arrived from an old neighbor, a sympathetic member of the
goyim
who only the week before had come across all of her family's belongings in a secondhand shop. Their furniture, their jewelry and silver, their candelabras. Even their
clothing,
Mr. Cain, right down to their laundered undergarments. Folded neatly on shelves and hanging from racks in this terrible little shop, every piece of their lives. As I sadly explained to her, this is not at all uncommon news, Mr. Cain, and its meaning can only be ominous.”
“Maybe they sold everything, lock stock and barrel, to buy their way out of town?”
“To go where? Berlin? Where these cattle trains are said to be running with even greater frequency? It is very likely, Mr. Cain, that everyone in Mrs. Hartstein's family has disappeared forever. Meaning that all that remains of her past, the only traces, are those which you see in her mail slot, third from the end on the top row. The top row, because she is one of my oldest customers. And without me to curate and translate those relics, where would she be?
“Whereas you, Mr. Cain, need me only as a cop needs a source, a guide, a clue. I will be expendable the moment you have obtained what you want. Yes, I know that I speak too highly of myself, and perhaps also too lightly of your work. But if my vanity engenders doubt, then ask someone you trust. Ask Beryl Blum.”
