A Child's Garden of Death (7 page)

“I'd be greatly surprised if any serial numbers whatsoever are found.”

“I think you're right,” Lyon said. “Let's see what else. They were Jewish, of course.”

Rocco's chair came down with a thud as he turned to Lyon excitedly. “How come?”

“Two sets of dishes. Two what seemed to be complete and separate sets. I suppose you can keep a kosher trailer as well as home.”

“Jesus H. Christ, go on.”

“Part of a book title, the only part I could read, Das.”

“Das is goot.”

“Exactly. German.”

Rocco began to pace the small room. “Anything else? Anything we can put a handle on?”

“The tool-box. It was corroded as hell and didn't seem to have the usual things like hammers and screw drivers. I got a close look at one gauge but couldn't make it out because of its condition.”

“What did it look like?”

Lyon made a pencil sketch of the implement he had held in his hand for a few moments under water. Rocco took the drawing and turned it in several directions. “I can't make it out,” Lyon said.

“It's a micrometer,” Rocco said.

“A micrometer. Yes, a machinist's tool. A tool and diemaker's box.”

“It's a possible.”

“A probable.”

Lyon put his feet on the desk and closed his eyes. “Now what do we have? A family of three are murdered; no one files a missing persons report. Probably because there are no relatives in this country. We have to work on the assumption that because of the teeth and the book title, at least the father was of European origin. They were Jewish, kept a kosher home, and the father was either a machinist or tool and diemaker. Since they died during the war, he probably worked at one of the plants or machine shops in the Greater Hartford area.”

“They could have been from out of state,” Rocco said. “Passing through as tourists … on their way to and from anywhere.”

“Unlikely. During World War II there was gas rationing, little pleasure driving, and a housing shortage. A time when people would be glad to have a trailer to live in.”

“Do you know how many machinists and tool and diemakers there are in Connecticut, and of Jewish descent, and how many there are or might have been in thirty years?”

“Hardly a lead,” Lyon replied. “Yet, let's assume that at least the man emigrated here from Germany. Because of his age, let's assume that he left Germany sometime after the Nurbenberg Laws.”

“What are they?”

“The Nazis passed them in September 1935; in essence they declared all Jews non-persons. The war started in 1938. That's only a three-year period. We also think he was either a machinist or tool and diemaker, or perhaps an engineer.”

Rocco looked depressed, his jubilation of moments ago now completely dissipated. “There would be thousands of German mechanics who came over here during that period.”

“Unfortunately for them, not as many as you'd think. What we're interested in are the permanent resident cards of those who came to Connecticut.”

“Damn it all, Lyon, you're still too complicated. It's an impossible job to track down.”

“Wait a minute. Think about the pathologist's report. The adult male was around five foot three, age between 30 and 35. Now what are we looking for?”

Rocco beamed. “Emigrated here between 1935 and 1938 from Germany, to Connecticut, with a probable occupation.”

“Adult male, age between 20 and 26 during those years, height and build we have, state of destination we have, occupation is narrowed.”

“And until he gained citizenship, if he did, he'd have to register once a year.”

“Can you do it?” Lyon asked.

“You're Goddamn right I can do it! With this kind of data I can run it through Washington as an official request. I'll have it in days.”

“You had better make it faster than that,” Lyon said. “Once your brother-in-law gets through that mud he won't be far behind us.”

“
THAT
'
S THE MOST RIDICULOUS SUPPOSITION I
'
VE HEARD SINCE THEY WANTED TO NOMINATE MY FRIEND BIG DADDY FOR GOVERNOR
.
IT
'
S ALL CONJECTURE
.”

“Will you adjust your hearing aid?”

“What?”

“Turn it up.”

“Oh, all right.” Bea reached for her ear only to look blank. “I'm not wearing it.”

“Lower your voice; you're disturbing the other diners.”

She looked rather sheepishly around the room and then back to Lyon. “It is ridiculous, you know. You hardly have a fact to go on.”

“I prefer to think of it as a probability. We'll know soon. Rocco thinks we'll have the first reports from Immigration tomorrow.”

The restaurant was an old train terminal. Outside, a dining car on the unused track acted as cocktail lounge. The high roof and windows gave a more spacious aura to the room than it warranted. The waiter set the escargots before them, and Lyon sipped on his martini, Bea on her Manhattan.

“Even if you find out who they are, what then?” Bea asked.

“As Rocco said, you can't begin to find a murderer unless you at least know who the victims are.”

“Aren't most mass killings, killings of whole families, done by madmen?” Bea asked.

He smiled across the table at her. “And madwomen, or, if you prefer, madperson.”

“Touché. But isn't that usually the case?”

“Unfortunately, at least from my readings; but isn't anyone who knocks people off nuts? Slightly less nuts when they go to the extreme care our murderer went to … buried bodies, hidden cars and trailers, engines removed … there's a macabre rationale to that.” They grasped the snail shells with tongs and gently extricated the meat with small forks. “This is great garlic sauce,” Lyon said.

“Never could eat snails,” the voice behind them said.

They turned to see Senator Marcuse, state minority leader, beaming through his carefully cultivated moustache. Well-tailored, even in early spring his face deeply tanned and healthy. A man who many spoke of as a possible future state chairman, but unfortunately not a potential candidate for the national scene because of a facial tic that proved unfortunate on any television appearance.

“I heard … saw you from across the room and just thought I'd say hello.”

“You know my husband, Lyon, I believe,” Bea said.

They shook hands, and Lyon winced slightly at the heavy grip of the minority leader.

“Yes, we've met,” Lyon replied.

“Sorry I couldn't make the party Saturday, but I had a speech.” The politician's cheek twitched, and Lyon wondered what that meant. “Oh, just one thing, Beatrice. Murphysville is in your district, isn't it?”

Lyon and Beatrice knew as well as the minority leader did that not only was it in Beatrice's district, but they lived in Murphysville. “Yes, it is,” Bea replied, leaning forward in an attempt to hear every word.

“If you get a chance Monday, I wonder if you'd talk to the chief of police down there. The State Police commissioner called me this morning about some flap over those three bodies they discovered. You know how it is—the local constabulary isn't in any position to handle an investigation of that magnitude. Have them officially request state intervention.”

“I'll see what I can do,” Bea replied.

With a wave the minority leader left the table. They watched him weave his way around the intervening tables, stopping twice to speak briefly to other diners before rejoining his wife. They sat quietly and Lyon ordered another martini for himself. Beatrice twirled the cherry in her half-empty drink.

“Thanks for the support,” he said.

“I just said I'd see what I could do. There's no real problem until the Governor calls me in, and I won't get that for a while.”

“How in the hell do you suppose he found out we were going to eat here tonight?”

“Darling, you're supposed to know those things. You tell me.”

The Chateaubriand arrived on the serving wagon and they watched as the captain began to carve it with a flourish.

Kimberly stood with her back against the refrigerator door, her brown arms folded defiantly beneath her large breasts, her Afro high above the belligerent eyes defying Lyon.

“The Man doesn't get food from this chick,” she said.

“Damn it all, Kim. All we want is a chicken sandwich and a bottle of beer.”

“Then you go into the fields, wring the neck of a chicken, pluck and cook him. No Fascist pigs are eating here.”

“He is not a Fascist pig. Now cut it out.”

“Let him go to the diner on the highway and eat free like the other pigs do,” she yelled.

“God damn it, Kim! Rocco is my oldest friend.”

“That's your problem, bourgeois pig.”

“Look at it this way. Join us for lunch, overhear the oppressive tactics we're plotting, and then you can report back to your leader.”

She contemplated this for a moment and then her eyes twinkled. “You manipulate and exploit me.”

“Absolutely,” Lyon said.

“You pay me slave wages, hold me in bondage and take advantage of me.”

“Of course we do. But damn it, we're hungry.”

She moved away and opened the refrigerator door. “You'll get yours one day,” she said, taking a chicken from the refrigerator. She put the cooked chicken on the cutting-board and brought the cleaver down across the breastbone with a guillotine-like whack. Lyon returned to the study to rejoin Rocco Herbert.

Kimberly had come to Nutmeg Hill a year ago as leader of a militant group of welfare mothers. They had picketed, Kimberly with a bull-horn that spewed forth revolutionary slogans and demands that Beatrice, chairman of the welfare legislation committee, resign. Beatrice and Lyon had placed a card table in the driveway circle, loading it with heaping platters of roast beef sandwiches and coffee. For an hour the women continued their march, ignoring the waiting couple, and Kimberly's voice had grown hoarse as she raised her tirade against the “oppressors.”

With a shrug, Beatrice had gone over to the large black woman to talk in a low voice. Perhaps the futility of the isolated protest march was the final weighing factor, since the nearest neighbor was a half mile away and no television or radio people were in attendance. While Bea and Kim argued, the rest of the women joined Lyon for lunch.

As a brisk autumn wind chilled them, protestors and Wentworths had gone into the house, where Kimberly and Beatrice spent the remainder of the afternoon in loud and acrimonious argument.

The welfare mothers had left in a minibus at four, and at five Lyon served cocktails to the still-talking Bea and Kim. As the evening progressed each woman made concessions to the other, and a strange bond was created between the two women, an unusual relationship between one born of patrician New England stock and the vibrant young black woman from the ghetto.

Kimberly had stayed the night and on the following day moved her possessions and daughter into the garage apartment near the house. At first she started as an unpaid assistant to Bea's committee, and that expanded to an interim state appointment when the legislature was in session. Now her position was inviolate as aide to Bea, research assistant to Lyon, overseer of the house, and in the ensuing year an invaluable help, and she finally agreed to accept a salary.

They lost Kim for several days a year as she disappeared to distant cities to organize protests, or to speak at meetings; and now her little daughter was entering the seventh grade and losing interest in Lyon's brand of monster as she became increasingly aware of real-life boys.

Lyon and Rocco looked down at the montage of intense, serious young Jewish men on the floor. The faces that stared from the small photographs on the permanent resident cards were gaunt with brooding darkness.

“Christ,” Rocco said. “They look like prison mug shots.”

“In a way that's what they are,” Lyon said. “God only knows what they went through to get here.”

The search by the immigration authorities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had turned up sixteen names with sixteen photographs and visa information. Sixteen names of Jewish males emigrating from Germany or of German origin as they made circuitous routes to this country. Each had arrived between 1935 and 1938 and was approximately five foot three inches tall, with some sort of machinist or engineering background. Each had moved to Connecticut, and each was now lost to the authorities because of death, failure to register, formal citizenship or other factors. Of the thousand possible names they were down to sixteen.

“It's still going to be a hell of a lot of work,” Rocco said.

Lyon thought for a moment. Some of the names had known addresses in the forties, others had dossiers that ended in the late thirties. He knew there were other sources they could go to, the Social Security Administration, the Armed Forces, or other governmental agencies that became involved in every person's life.

“You know, Rocco, it makes you realize how impossible it is to disappear completely. There are too many bureaucratic tracks on each of us.”

“Still, Connecticut is a big state for a little state,” Rocco said, “and thirty years is a long time. Where in hell do we start?”

“We'll go on the assumption that the man we're looking for lived somewhere in the Greater Hartford area, say in a thirty-mile radius. Let's start with the State Bureau of Vital Statistics and see if we can pick up the deaths from our group.”

Rocco's hand already cradled the phone and he dialed the Bureau of Vital Statistics. In twenty minutes they'd given the names and received a reply. “Thank you very much,” Rocco said. “As a double check I'll duplicate the request by mail.” He turned to Lyon and handed him a pad with a neatly aligned list of names. Four had been crossed off with the notation, “deceased.”