The Letter Writer (32 page)

“So Zharkov made detective and you got a new life.”

“Yes.”

“Who else knew?”

“The elder Lorenz, Lutz's father, who arranged my paperwork. And Fedya, my oldest friend. Plus a handful of others whose help I needed in various ways. Mostly they are dead now. Only four people today know me as Sascha, and one of them, Beryl, knows little of its significance.”

“Five now, counting Lansky.”

“Yes, there is him as well, plus everyone else in that room today at the Astor.”

“Okay, but here's what I still don't get. When a man escapes his past, he usually runs from it, the further the better. But you went right back to the old neighborhood, almost like you
wanted
them to find you. Hell, you'd been there at Lindy's practically every night, standing at the right hand of God himself where everybody could see you. Yet when Mr. Big dies you figure you can just vanish into the woodwork?”

“Let me correct you on several points. I certainly did not want to be found, nor was I daring them to do so. Moving to Rivington Street was a form of camouflage they did not expect. It is called hiding in plain sight. And by the time I returned I was a different person, with new documents and a new face. A surgeon in the Catskills accomplished that. A nose job, I believe it is called now, plus more.

“I asked that he make me look ten years older, which astonished him because it was the opposite of what all his other customers wanted. But he did what he could to oblige me. The mere whisper of a mark became an indentation. He moved flesh from one place to another to make my neck sag like a turkey's, well ahead of its time. I purchased gray coloring and applied it to my hair, which cooperated by exploding in all directions. I grew a beard, which I did not shave even once until three years ago, when I deemed that enough time had passed to allow for some harmless nostalgia, in the form of my monthly breakfast at Longchamps.”

“So much for harmless.”

“No one is infallible, and my biggest asset all along was the nature of what I had done before. You said I stood at the right hand of God? Perhaps. But who really bothers to watch who is at God's side as long as God himself is there to be gazed upon? Yes, I drew the eye of Mr. Runyon, only because it was his job to observe, to notice. To others in my profession—to almost everyone, in fact, except Mr. Rothstein—I was a nothing, a cipher. I worked at the center yet existed on the fringe. Close to the throne, but a mere whisperer in the royal ear, neither seen nor heard in any real sense except by the one man who mattered, The Brain. And once he died it was all the easier for me to disappear and never be missed. It might have been flawless but for a single complication.”

“Lansky?”

Danziger nodded.

“In the matter of those three men I fed to Zharkov, one of them turned out to be a protégé, alas, of Mr. Lansky's.”

“I see.”

“No. You do not see. Meyer Lansky is a man incapable of forgetting. He is also the one man who could have ever possibly recognized me, changes and all, beard or no beard. So when I saw him walk into Longchamps, I was very careful to hide behind my newspaper.”

“You said you were there at his birth, professionally speaking.”

“It was 1922. Mr. Rothstein asked me to arrange a table for two for a noon business lunch at the Park Central Hotel. He said he was meeting a hungry and ambitious young man, a fellow who had as good a head for numbers as I did for words. At one point, around three that afternoon, the maître d' telephoned me to say that Mr. Rothstein wished for me to bring him some papers. When I arrived he introduced me to this short, brash fellow, twenty years old and dressed ridiculously in an overly large suit. It was Meyer Lansky.”

“Three o'clock, on a noon reservation? Lansky must have made quite an impression.”

“That is safe to say. Their lunch lasted six hours.”

“Okay, then. Point taken. He's dangerous, particularly to you. But our more immediate problem is Anastasia.”

“Of course. But from what you have told me he is a problem for
everyone,
Lansky included, and I am guessing that others will deal with him before we will ever have to. It is another reason for us to wait.”

“To
wait
? He's already gotten to three of the Germans. If we wait he'll also get Gerhard, and there goes the last of our evidence. And who's to say he won't come after us?”

Danziger shook his head impatiently. “Listen to me! It is Lansky who had a hand in this as well. Not in these sloppy murders in the aftermath, perhaps, but certainly in the larger scheme—the
Normandie
plot—before any deal was ever made with Hogan, or with the Navy. Do you not see this?”

“The
Normandie
was an accident. I doubt even Hogan or Haffenden would try to fake that investigation.”

“Of course it was an accident, a most fortuitous one which accomplished exactly what Mr. Lansky hoped for, by scaring the United States Navy enough to bring Haffenden and Hogan to grovel at his feet. But that left these four restive Germans still to be accounted for, out there on the docks, loose with their union cards and their letters home. Four men still awaiting orders and, more important, awaiting payment. So Anastasia took care of them. Not in the manner Lansky would have recommended, because it was far too sloppy. But I assure you, Lansky's hand is evident in all that has occurred.”

“There's no proof. Not from Lorenz, not from Gerhard, not from anybody.”

“The proof is in the design, Mr. Cain. The proof is in the details.”

“I'm not seeing it.”

Danziger pounded the table in exasperation, and then sagged in his chair. He took a few seconds to collect himself, and then put both hands flat on the table.

“Tell me, then,” he said, “those clever names that were chosen for our four Germans—Heine, Schiller, Goethe, and Mann—are those the choices, do you think, of a stupid and uneducated killer like Anastasia? Or even of an unimaginative dollar snatcher like Herman Keller?”

Cain shrugged, but had no rebuttal.

“Let me tell you what Mr. Lansky is like when it comes to books and thinking. He is proud, he is vainglorious, and he is insecure because he never went to university. Within an hour of meeting you he will tell you that he can recite all of Shakespeare's
Merchant of Venice
from memory. He is intelligent, yes, but what he wishes most to impress upon you is that he is brilliant. And no matter how much he wishes to portray Anastasia as some wild man who acted completely on his own, it is not believable. Do you not see this?”

“Maybe you're right. But for now he's still not the biggest danger. And even after what they threatened me with at the Astor, there are still certain things that I can do as a policeman that—”

“Please! No more talk of action, and no more talk of Anastasia! He is a killer, yes. But even he operates under certain rules, and one of those is that you do not kill a policeman. Not even a policeman who is meddlesome and has become a terrible nuisance. If this rule did not exist you would already be quite dead, trust me. Anastasia will be dealt with by his own people. Let them do so! And in good time we can decide how to best deal with Lansky.”

Cain wasn't ready to buy it. “Lansky isn't the guy who's been burning people with cigarettes, or dropping them into the river.”

Danziger shook his head and sighed, but this time he did not shout. He leaned across the table and spoke in a quiet but determined voice. “Let me tell you a story of the last time I saw Meyer Lansky. The Little Man, face to face. He had brokered a deal for us, and Mr. Rothstein put me in charge of ensuring that all sides met their obligations. Lansky knew this, and one night outside of Lindy's he walked up to me on the sidewalk and put his hands upon my face, one to either side, and he began to squeeze. He felt deeply of my bones and muscles, like a sculptor trying to imprint a memory. He turned my jaw one way and then another. Then he pulled my head down to meet his own—eyes to eyes, nose to nose. I smelled his peppermint breath, the spice of his aftershave. He waited for a few seconds longer, and then he smiled in a most unpleasant manner.”

“Yes. I've seen that smile.”

“Then you know how vulnerable it makes you feel. He spoke to me, whispering, probably just as he did to you at the Astor.”

Cain felt a shiver, remembering.

“He said, ‘Treasure this moment, Sascha. Imprint it on your memory. Because I do not forget, and I do not let go. Even when you think I am gone, I will be there always, Sascha.' ”

Cain nodded, unsure how to respond. He swallowed more beer and offered Danziger another, but the older man declined.

“So let us agree then, shall we?”

“Agree on what?”

“Agree that for the time being we shall both lay low. Yes?”

“Okay.”

“And that we will no longer speak of foolish acts, and that you will put these ideas of further action far from your mind until we are able to meet again. Yes?”

Cain nodded.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Danziger held his gaze, as if watching for any sign of falseness.

“Good,” he said finally. “I will have that next beer, then. As shall you.”

Cain pried off the caps of two more bottles. He handed one to Danziger, who raised it in a toast.

“To sanity, then. Sanity and caution, while we await our moment.”

Cain clinked his bottle to Danziger's, and over the next several minutes they finished several more while they waited for Beryl and Fedya to arrive. Danziger said nothing further about his past. Cain, as if to show how faithfully he was already abiding by his promise, said nothing further about any plans or stratagems.

But he did not stop thinking about them.

CAIN DID NOT LAY LOW.

After Danziger left with Fedya and Beryl he barely sat still and hardly slept, mostly because he kept going over everything in his head. By morning he was exhausted. He was also elated, convinced that he had come up with a fresh way forward.

Promise or no promise, doing nothing wasn't an option. He was a cop, for Chrissakes, and Hogan and Gurfein were prosecutors. And he was betting that during the meeting at the Astor both of them would've asked plenty of questions about the issues he'd raised if they hadn't been so intent on presenting a united front with Haffenden, who, to Cain, seemed far too willing to go along with whatever script the mob guys wanted. There was no mistaking the flicker of doubt that had passed between the DA and his deputy when Cain mentioned the three murders linked to Anastasia, and he saw that now as an opening.

A private meeting with the two men might actually get some results. But what he needed first was stronger evidence. An official statement from Gerhard might do it. Better still, why not give them Gerhard himself? That would solve two problems at once: convincing Hogan and Gurfein that they had been duped, and protecting his best remaining eyewitness. A rackets investigator like Gurfein was probably well practiced in keeping witnesses out of harm's way. And who knows? With Gerhard in hand, maybe they could even persuade Lorenz to open up.

First he needed to find Gerhard before Anastasia did, which meant a trip to the Bowery and its skid row of flophouses and rummy bars, the so-called “mile of misery” that stretched from 4th Street down to Chatham Square, home to tens of thousands of down-and-outers who paid thirty cents a night for a bed.

It wouldn't be easy. Gerhard's last known residence was the Sunshine Hotel, but by now he had probably moved on, which left scores of possibilities. Each would be best explored after dark, when Cain was off duty, and free of Mulhearn and all his busywork. The lone advantage of Eileen's complicity with his father-in-law was that she was now so guilt-ridden that he would have no trouble persuading her to work enough extra hours to cover for him at home.

Danziger could not be a part of this, of course. He needed to keep the older man out of harm's way, and mob guys would now see Danziger as one of their own, a fallen figure who was fair game. Cain, however, would be protected by his status as a cop. They could threaten him or even rough him up, but they wouldn't kill him. Even Danziger had said it. Or so Cain kept telling himself as he rode the subway downtown an hour after sunset.

The Bowery ran beneath the Third Avenue El, and it only took a block or two to get the flavor of the place. Doorways smelled of urine and stale beer. Most of the people on the street were men, hard-luck cases with weathered, stubbly faces and floppy hats slouched low on their foreheads. A few stumbled; others shuffled. To his right, Cain passed three men seated in a row along the curb, passing a half-empty bottle of cheap rye from hand to hand while they laughed and talked. A downtown train clattered overhead, casting them in deeper shadow.

At the next corner, a sidewalk preacher thrust a handbill toward him. Can took a look at the drawing on the front—a drunk in a gutter, with empties at his feet. On the back was the same fellow, cleaned up and gazing heavenward into a ray of godly sunshine, a Bible tucked under his arm.

“No thanks,” Cain said, handing it back.

He checked first at the Sunshine, passing through a sad little downstairs bar to climb an echoing stairwell to the second-floor lobby. The white tile floor smelled like a sour mop. Two men seated in beat-up chairs stared vacantly out the streaked front windows. A third fellow sat on a couch, smoking a sloppily rolled cigarette and reading a
Herald-Tribune
from the previous Sunday.

Cain crossed the floor to the caged reception cubicle, where the attendant looked up from a copy of the
Racing Form
and frowned. Cain flashed his shield, which made no noticeable impression.

“I'm looking for a German guy who would've been staying here a few nights ago. Named Gerhard, although he might've been calling himself something else.”

The guy reading the
Herald-Tribune
flipped to another page but tilted his head, eavesdropping. The attendant opened a beaten-up looking ledger, flipped it back a page or two and ran a forefinger down the side.

“He was in five-oh-five. Stayed two nights. Took off yesterday.”

“Know where he went?”

“Beats me.”

“Maybe I'll take a look upstairs.”

“Suit yourself, flatfoot.”

Cain turned toward the stairwell to find the guy with the
Herald-Tribune
blocking his way, an eager glint in his eyes.

“You asking about the kraut? Sorry G?”

“That's what they called him?”

“Sorriest man I ever seen. A toes-up goddamn nuisance who wouldn't lift a finger for nobody. Had him some money, too. Not much but enough, and wouldn't share a dime of it, which don't sit well when you're plinging dawn to dusk just to get three squares and a flop.”

“What's your name?”

“Ace Andy.”

A nickname, but it would do for now.

“Any idea where he went?”

“Let's get something straight. I don't normally make nice with bulls. But Sorry G, he could use some manners.”

“Okay. Nice talking to you.”

Cain turned to go, figuring that would get him talking, and it did. Ace Andy bustled up on his right.

“I can tell you where he likes to eat, and his dinner time's in about half an hour. You could set your clock by it.”

“You eat with him a lot?

The guy laughed, wheezing.

“You bulls. It ain't like that at all. I was his runner, yeah?”

“Runner?”

“Got stuff for him. He didn't like going out on the streets, so he paid for special deliveries, a nickel a pop.”

“Thought you said he was a skinflint?”

“Hey, I was working for my keep. Waited on him hand and foot.”

“For what kind of stuff. Narcotics?”

Ace Andy wheezed again, face crinkling.

“He was clean. Just a basket case, that's all. Didn't even touch the sauce except for a beer now and then.”

“And you'd bring those for him?”

“I got every motherfucking thing for him, like I was his goddamn valet. His runner, that's what I'm telling you. Got his morning paper, his coffee, his lunch, his dinner. And along about now he always wanted the same thing, at seven on the dot.”

“Night after night, huh?”

“You bet.

“And you know this from what, two whole days?”

Ace Andy frowned and waved him off.

“Fine. You don't want it, I don't need to be seen sucking up to a bull anyway.”

“Suit yourself.” Cain again turned to go. Ace Andy again followed, and sidled past him to block the doorway.

“Okay, then,” Cain said. “Tell me what you know.”

“Just like that, free of charge? You think I'm the Salvation Army?”

He handed the guy a nickel, who dropped it in his pocket and laughed.

“Down payment, but not even close to the balance due. Way I see it, you're probably half the reason he skipped without telling anybody, meaning you've already cost me two bits a day, right there.”

Cain held out a quarter, and the guy shook his head. He pulled out his wallet and forked over a dollar.

“Here's four days' pay,” Cain said. “You better be worth it or I can always run you in.”

“Yeah, well, what you didn't know was that I've been running for him ten days in a row. Or had been till you scared him off.”

“You've been moving whenever he does?”

“The White House, the Comet, the Crystal, the Providence. And now, nothing. Steady source of income, gone just like that. And he trusted me, or did until you spooked him.”

The idea that skittish Gerhard had ever put his faith in the likes of Ace Andy made Cain question the man's judgment, but he supposed that you took your allies as they came, mercenary or not.

“What else did he do?”

“Church on Sundays, up at St. Andrew's, too damn early even for me. Not much else. Went to the pictures once a week. He liked the Venice, over on Park Row, 'cause they opened at eight and he could stay most of the day. You get a double feature, a newsreel, a cartoon, and a short. Then maybe a cop serial, all for a dime. An even better deal when you sit through it twice. I don't think he was watching much, though.” Ace Andy grinned crookedly. “Making the bald man cry, you ask me.”

“The bald man?”

“Beating his bologna.” Andy moved his fist up and down so Cain wouldn't miss the point a second time.

“Right.”

Andy wheezed with laughter.

“Okay, so where does he like to eat?”

“I'll take you there. It's extra, though.”

“Had a feeling you'd say that.”

“You want to get all huffy, I'll just give you the name, and you can go all by your lonesome. But I know his order, and I know the other runners, 'cause it won't be him coming to pick up the food.”

Cain gave him a quarter. Andy nodded.

They walked to the block between Grand and Hester, to a joint called the Blossom Restaurant, where the entire steamed-up window was covered in a scrawl of white lettering listing every item on the menu.

“Pig's trotters and cabbage for a dime, that's what he gets. With buttermilk. Guy ought to be along any minute.”

Five minutes later, and right on schedule, Ace Andy perked up as a fellow rounded the corner with his hands in his pockets, looking a bit lean and hungry. They watched him enter the Blossom.

“Easy Zeke,” Andy said. “He runs from the Victoria House. Those krauts, they're creatures of habit, huh? All that
ordnung.
Must be what keeps 'em going, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Cain was about to pay the guy a final dime to keep his mouth shut and scram so he could follow the runner alone, and then a complication occurred to him.

“So I take it you speak some German.”

Andy shrugged.

“Ein bisschen, aber genug. Means ‘a little but enough.' ”

And that's when it hit him. Trust hadn't been the issue for Gerhard with Andy. Language was. Which was why Cain still needed Andy's help.

They headed for the Victoria House to wait for Zeke and settled in on a couch in the lobby, which was drearily similar to the one at the Sunshine except the windows were smaller and the attendant's booth had a block-lettered sign saying
ROOMS WITH ELECTRIC LIGHTS, 30C.

Zeke came up the steps a few minutes later, carrying a brown paper bag with dark blotches of grease. He climbed past the lobby toward a higher floor, and they got up to follow him. They heard him exit on the fourth-floor landing, and reached it just in time to see Zeke going into a room six doors down a narrow hallway. A few seconds later he came back out, flipping a nickel in the air like he'd just hit the daily double at Aqueduct.

Cain opened the door into a cramped room with a camp bed and a bare bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. Gerhard, shirtless, was hunched in a chair by the window, already gorging himself, hands greasy. He looked up in alarm and stood quickly, the food spilling everywhere. He tried to reach the door but Cain grabbed him, barely holding on to the grease-slicked wrists.

“Tell him it's okay!” Cain shouted to Andy. “I'm here to help him!”

Gerhard either gave up or understood enough to calm down. Cain coaxed him back into the chair, where he stared forlornly at his spilled dinner on the scuffed floor. The room looked like a jail cell. Maybe six feet wide and ten feet long. The walls didn't even reach the ceiling, and the proprietor had put chicken wire across the top from one end of the place to another, in order to keep the tenants from climbing over the partitions into the rooms of their neighbors.

Cain figured that everyone on the fourth floor must have heard the commotion, because he could easily hear Gerhard's neighbors coughing, laughing, and mumbling to themselves. The whole place smelled of sweat, piss, fear, and exhaustion, plus the greasy stink of Gerhard's pig's feet and cabbage. If anything, the man looked more baffled and forlorn than he had at the church, although now his hair was clipped in a buzz cut.

“You got a haircut,” Cain said. “Good idea.”

“You can get 'em for free at the barber college at Chatham Square,” Andy answered.

“Tell him what I said!” Cain snapped. “In German!”

Andy obliged, although he couldn't resist adding at the end, in English, “This'll cost more, right?”

Cain handed him another quarter and told him to shut the hell up and do as he was told. Andy nodded and for a split second looked almost chastened.

“Tell him I didn't forget. That I wasn't trying to shake him the other day.” Even though that's exactly what he
had
been doing. “I needed time to figure out where to take him next, to keep him safe.”

Andy took a while to finish that one, and Gerhard frowned, giving Cain the idea that Andy's German wasn't the greatest. Finally Gerhard nodded and asked a question.

“He says—uhh, hold on a minute.”

Andy spoke German again, trying to zero in on Gerhard's meaning. Gerhard replied with a hint of exasperation.

“He asks where you can go that's safe.”

“Tell him I'm going to take him there right now. That he and I will wait a few minutes while he finishes his food, and then we'll go, and he will be safe.”

This time Andy must have done reasonably well. Gerhard nodded and began picking up the spilled dinner, grabbing the pig's foot and scooping the cabbage with the palm of his left hand. He heaped everything atop the flattened bag.

“Okay,” Cain said to Andy. “Time for you to take off.”

Andy stood uncertainly, and then hesitated by the door like a bellhop hoping for a tip.