The Shadow Man (12 page)

wasn’t Gestapo! He wasn’t S.S.! He was a Jew, like all of us! There was no Odessa organization or Iron Cross group to help him find freedom and safety after the war! There was just himself!’

‘But certainly there were organizations. The Red Cross. Groups that helped displaced persons …’

‘Of course! That was how I arrived here—’

‘And me, too,’ said Frieda Kroner.

‘Not me. I had distant relatives who helped,’ Irving Silver said. ‘But who would help Der Schattenmann? Not the Russians. They would have shot him. Bang! No trial. So who!’

‘Tell me,’ Simon Winter asked.

‘His own people. The same people he’d betrayed,’ Silver said.

‘But not if they knew who he was, right?’

‘Of course. Were not the Kapos in the camps turned over to authorities?’ Silver replied. Rabbi Rubinstein nodded in agreement.

‘But he would have known of that danger,’ the rabbi added.

‘So what are you saying he would do?’

The three old people turned and looked at each other. For a moment Winter could hear them all breathing. It was as if they were conversing, arguing, debating, assessing this question, but without words, without gestures. Simply letting their imaginations blend together and come up with a single conclusion.

The rabbi wiped a hand slowly across his face, ‘He would need to become one of us. A survivor.’

Frieda Kroner nodded her head. ‘Of course. How else?’

‘But how could he fake that?’

Irving Silver frowned. ‘He was Der Schattenmann! He could do what he wanted!’

‘But…’ Winter hesitated, ‘… surely there were others like him. And they were caught?’

‘Really? Not like him. I do not think so.’

‘But why here?’

‘Because we are his people!’

‘No one knew us better than him? That was how he was so successful. Why would he be frightened of us?’

Rabbi Rubinstein rose, but as he did, he lifted the volume of The Destruction of the European Jews from the table. Stein’s letter fluttered to the floor, but no one moved for it. The heavy book swayed in his hands. He did not open it, and Winter realized the old rabbi could recall what was in the book by memory.

‘If you remember the times,’ he started, ‘remember the times. Confusion and depravity. The Holocaust, Detective, it was like a great machine devoted to the murder of the Jews. But for the Nazis to accomplish this task - they kept talking, over and over, in all their speeches and propaganda and writings of the “monumental” task - they had to have help. All sorts of help, from all sides

‘From the Pope, who did not condemn them …’ Irving Silver said.

‘From the Allies, who did not bomb the camps or the rail routes into Dachau and Auschwitz …’ Frieda Kroner added.

‘From the non-Jewish people, the Poles and Czechs and Rumanians and Italians and French and Germans who watched. Really, from the whole world, Detective; in one way or another, everyone helped. Including some of the very people they were trying to destroy.’ Simon Winter sat quietly, listening. ‘So, consider Auschwitz, Detective. After the Nazis did the selecting, someone had to close the doors on the gas chambers and someone had to remove the bodies afterward. Someone had to stoke the fires of the ovens and someone had to keep the whole thing working smoothly. And oftentimes those someones were ourselves.’

The rabbi sat down heavily, the book in his lap.

‘We helped, you see. Just by living, by doing whatever it took to stay alive, it helped perversely, to keep it all going

He looked at Mrs Kroner and Mr Silver.

‘Could it have been more right, more moral, just to die in the face of all that evil, detective? These are questions that haunt philosophers. I am just an old rabbi.’

He stopped, shaking his head, breathing in hard before continuing.

‘It is crazy, all of it you see, Detective. Look at the world we live in today. Some days you think this is all so far away and back in the past that it cannot really have happened, but others, well, then you know that it is right there, still alive today, just as evil and terrible and waiting to rise up again.’

‘Der Schattenmann, he was the worst of all of us,’ the rabbi continued. ‘He was worse than the Nazis. Worse even than those strange evil things that Mr King likes to write about.’

‘And now, he’s here, right amongst us,’ Irving Silver said bitterly. ‘Like an infection.’

‘Is there not always someone like Der Schattenmann amongst us?’ the rabbi asked quietly. This question went unanswered.

‘Can you find him, Detective?’ Frieda Kroner asked quietly.

“I do not know.’

‘Will you try?’

‘If he’s here. If what you suggest is true …’

“Will you search for him, Mr Winter?’

Simon Winter felt a vast echoing sadness within himself. The answer seemed to well up through that personal darkness.

‘Yes, I will try.’

‘Good,’ Frieda Kroner said. ‘Then I will help you, Mr Winter.’

1, too. I will help,’ said Irving Silver.

‘Of course, I will join in as well,’ said Rabbi Rubinstein. ‘We will do whatever we can.’

Frieda Kroner nodded, then reached forward and poured herself another cup of coffee. Simon Winter watched as she took a long pull at the dark cup, letting the bitter taste cascade through her. She smiled, but coldly.

‘Good. And when you find him, Detective, with our help, then you will kill him.’

‘Frieda!’ Rabbi Rubinstein interjected. ‘Think of what you say! Our religion speaks of forgiveness and understanding. That has always been our way!’

‘Maybe so, rabbi. But my heart speaks for all those he betrayed and who died. Think first of them, rabbi, then talk to me of forgiveness.’

She turned to Simon Winter.

‘I would rather speak of justice,’ she said. ‘Find him and kill him.’

Irving Silver leaned forward. ‘I will help. I will do whatever I can. We all will. But Frieda is right. Find him and kill him, Mr Winter.’ He took a deep breath, then added: ‘For my dear brother Martin. And my parents and all my cousins …’

Frieda Kroner joined in softly, ‘… And my sister and her husband and my two little nieces and grandparents and my mother who tried so hard to save me and all the others …’

Simon Winter didn’t reply. He stared over at the rabbi,

who was looking at the other two. He saw Rabbi Rubinstein’s hand seem to quiver as it tightened around the book on his lap.

Irving Silver spoke bluntly: ‘Kill him, Detective. And then there will be one less nightmare in the world. Kill him.’

And then the rabbi, too, nodded.

Simon Winter shifted about uncomfortably on a gray steel folding chair while a young rabbi spoke at the gravesite. Although the gathering was collected beneath a dark green canopy provided by the funeral home, the insistent heat of midday forced its way unbidden and unwelcome, amidst the mourners. They were mostly older people, and the dark woolen suits they wore seemed to steam under the noontime sun. Simon Winter urgently wished he could loosen his tie, snugged tightly beneath the starched white collar of the sole remaining dress shirt he owned. As he looked about, he thought: we all look like we’re ready to join Sophie Millstein in her coffin. He was slightly ashamed at the irreverence of his opinion, but forgave himself with the wry notation that it would not be too long before it was himself dressed out in some box or stuffed in some urn, with someone else whom he didn’t know and didn’t care about droning on above his head.

The rabbi, a short, rotund man, battling hard against the sweat collecting at his tight collar, raised his voice:

‘This woman, Sophie Millstein, was thrust into the inferno only to rise and through goodness and devotion, like a phoenix, become the beloved wife of Leo and the adored mother of a brilliant son, Murray…’

The young priest’s voice was high-pitched, needlelike. The words seemed to prick the still air. Winter’s eyes swept up into the expanse of eggshell-blue sky, searching the horizon for gathering clouds that might carry the promise of an afternoon thundershower and the momentary relief of a steady downpour. But he saw none, and he inhaled sharply, breathing in air as hot and thick as smoke.

As he sat alone, near the rear of the gathering, he berated himself for allowing the heat to distract him.

He could be here, he insisted.

Over there, just beyond your eyesight, obscured by those trees. Or sitting, head down, in a row to the side, acting like a professional mourner. If he’s hunting, this would be the first place he’d look, right amidst Sophie’s old friends.

What he doesn’t know, Winter thought, is that someone is looking for him.

Then he stopped, and let some doubt creep into his thoughts: if he exists at all.

To his side, Mr Finkel and the Kadoshes paid rapt attention to the rabbi’s words. Mrs Kadosh clutched a white linen handkerchief in her hand, which she alternately dabbed at the corners of her eyes and then used to wipe the heat from her forehead. Her husband held a printed program in his hands, rolling it tightly, then spreading it out, smoothing the pages. He occasionally, surreptitiously, fanned the paper in front of him, trying without success to move some of the warmth away.

The other residents of the Sunshine Arms were spread about the gathering. Winter saw that Mr Gonzalez, the landlord, kept his head bowed throughout the rabbi’s eulogy. His daughter had accompanied her father to the service. She was as tall as her father, and wore a slim, black dress that Simon Winter thought would have served her

equally well at an opera’s opening night as it did at a funeral.

Simon Winter sighed. For six months Mr Gonzalez’s daughter had occupied the empty apartment next to Sophie Millstein. She had enthusiastically and energetically entertained a number of boyfriends there, usually failing to close the curtains in the living room, permitting Winter to watch her. He thought she had been aware that he watched, thought, too, that she left the curtains open as an unspoken favor. He shook his head. When she had moved to fancier digs on Brickell Avenue, she had taken much of the energy out of the Sunshine Arms.

Before taking her seat next to her father, she had glanced back over her shoulder, and her eyes had met his, for just an instant, just long enough for her to pass along a small, sad smile, coupled with a slight nod, as if to remind him of what he missed in her; and this, despite the solemnity of the occasion and his troubled thoughts about his murdered neighbor, managed to bring a somewhat distracting, but altogether pleasurable, internal laugh to Simon Winter’s heart.

‘And so today we all feel the loss of this woman …’ The rabbi’s speech continued predictably.

He pulled his eyes off of Mr Gonzalez’s daughter’s back and once again swept them across the seated mourners. If he’s here, he’ll be looking hard, Winter thought. He’ll be searching the faces, as he ransacks his own memory.

Winter centered on one man, off to his right. The man was staring hard at the rabbi. The old detective felt a quick surge within him. Why are you so curious? he wondered.

But then, just as swiftly, he saw the man turn and whisper something to an elderly woman at his side. The woman touched his arm.

No, Winter thought. You’ll be alone. Aren’t you always alone?

If you exist.

Winter inclined his head slightly, dropping his chin toward his chest in thought. He had told Irving Silver, Frieda Kroner, and Rabbi Rubinstein not to attend the service. He did not want to give the man they feared the advantage of seeing them before he had had time to consider his own course of action. They had objected. He had insisted.

He surveyed the crowd again, looking for faces that he didn’t recognize, but there were too many. Sophie Millstein had belonged to too many women’s groups, bridge clubs, synagogue assemblies. There were nearly a hundred old people shifting about on the steel chairs.

The rabbi’s words seemed to shimmer in the heat.

‘To go through so much, only to be robbed of life near the end, is a tragedy almost too great for the heart to bear…’

Winter glanced about, trying to spot Detective Robinson or the young woman from the State Attorney’s Office, but he did not see them. He suspected that there was someone from the Miami Beach police mingled in amidst the mourners; this had been procedure on any homicide specified as nonsubject, when he was a detective - even when the prime suspect was a different age and different race. There was still no telling who might show up,-curious. He suspected that Robinson had sent a subordinate; his own skin color would have made it impossible for him to remain hidden, watching the people beneath the canopy.

Of course, whomever the detective had sent might be searching for the wrong person altogether.

Simon Winter breathed out slowly, and wrapped his fist

around the printed program. He felt an unruly anger, a frustration pounding around within him.

I don’t know anything, he said to himself.

All I have are some odd coincidences and a trio of frightened old folks and a nightmare from a different era.

He looked up into the sky again. He felt his anger slide away into guilt. Can you really remember how to do it? How to take some suspicions and turn them into something hard and cold and true?

He gritted his teeth.

Start acting like what you once were, he demanded.

You want them to call you Detective again? Then behave like one. Ask some questions. Find some answers.

In the front row, next to the grave, a young child of four or five fidgeted nervously, trying to speak over the rabbi’s words, only to be swiftly shushed by his mother. The rabbi paused, smiled at the child, then continued:

‘So who was this woman, this Sophie Millstein, who gave so much of herself, who achieved so much in her life? I feel I should learn more about this remarkable woman, so that the lessons of her life can teach me, as they have taught her son and her daughter-in-law and her beloved grandchildren …’

Simon Winter could only see the back of Murray Millstein. But as the rabbi spoke, he saw the attorney slide his arm around his wife’s shoulders and reach all the way to his son, where his hand remained. The rabbi continued, finally switching effortlessly into Hebrew, speaking the kaddish over the coffin, but Winter no longer heard the words, and no longer felt the oppressive heat. All he saw was the hand of the young father, lingering on his son’s shoulder, and the son gently leaning his head toward the hand, resting his cheek there, reassured, all the terrifying