Better Dead (12 page)

“You also mentioned friends from their circle—others Julius and his wife knew in the Movement. Some you said have skipped, but maybe a few are still around.”

“You could get background from them,” she allowed, with a thoughtful nod. “They won't come forward, though. Just too damn dangerous.”

“I get that.”

She shrugged. “These are people I haven't talked to in some time. Like I said last night, when somebody gets recruited from our ranks to get … you know …
really
involved? They drop out of the Party.”

“Understood. But would you see what you can do?”

She nodded. “Give me a day or two.”

I gave her five bucks' cab fare.

*   *   *

For all its fame, the Empire State Building remained something of a flop.

The monumental limestone-and-steel building, tallest in the world and a terrible place for a giant gorilla to hide, remained the epitome of the 1920s boom years, its 1931 opening tactfully delaying the availability of the highest windows in Manhattan to jump out of.

As a tourist attraction, the Empire State was literally tops; as an office building, it was a bargain for businessmen. Eighty-six floors were home to mostly small shops—watchmakers, diamond merchants, barbers, low-end wholesalers—and, until the last few years, it was so underoccupied, its nickname was the Empty State Building.

The A-1 Manhattan branch had wound up here because we'd taken over the James S. Bolan Detective Agency—the boss, an ex–New York City police commissioner, had died last year with no one from the firm picking up the reins. We were happy to. It got us a client list, suitable space, and reasonable rent.

I survived the swift ride to the forty-sixth floor and clip-clopped down a dim marble corridor past smoky glass doors, stopping at ours, which read:

A-1 DETECTIVE AGENCY

(FORMERLY BOLAN)

Nathan S. Heller, President

Robert J. Hasty, Vice President

N
EW
Y
ORK,
C
HICAGO,
L
OS
A
NGELES

The atmosphere was perfect for a private detective agency, like something right out of Hammett's world and the black-and-white movies they spawned. But maybe not ideal for changing times. That would come.

Entering into our optimistically large waiting room—devoid of clients and with no receptionist—I had an immediate sense of what a small start we were making here. The place managed to be both relentlessly modern and a bit dingy—a drop ceiling with fluorescent light panels supplemented by metal nose-cone light fixtures; wall-hugging faux-leather armless chairs (mostly dark green with an occasional yellow); smooth medium brown walls; and a corner table where a droopy potted philodendron seemed to be surrendering to a selection of last year's magazines.

A door at right said “EXECUTIVE OFFICES” and a big window revealed the desk of what should have been a secretary's post, where instead big round-faced Bob Hasty sat. Right now this was a one-man operation and that window let him keep tabs on any clients who materialized.

He heard me come in and glanced up from the stack of mail he was going through and grinned over at me. Not quite forty, Bob had the stocky build of a high school tackle, hair light brown, eyes dark blue, nose a lump, lips thick, grin infectious. He looked like the happy drunk he'd once been till he went AA; but he'd seen more than his share of unhappiness when he'd worked homicide in both D.C. and Manhattan.

I went in and he got to his feet for the handshake ritual, then sat back down as I took the client chair opposite. I tossed my hat on his desk.

Nodding at the mail, I said, “Is that strictly money going out, or is some coming in?”

“A wash at the moment.” He was in a brown gabardine with a brown-and-white bow tie. Behind him were two doors, one to his office, which for now he only used for consultations, and the other to mine, which I'd not yet used at all.

“I'd say you look good, Nate,” he said cheerfully, “but you got Dracula eyes. Tie one on last night?”

“I got a female liquored up to make her talk,” I said, “and then she took advantage of me.”

“Life can be cruel sometimes,” he said with a chuckle. He gestured vaguely. “I got coffee.…”

“No, I'm fine. I won't be here long. I have an appointment with Manny Bloch in about an hour.”

“Rosenberg's lawyer,” he said with a nod.

I'd briefed Bob by phone on the job the other day.

“I wish I could pitch in,” he said with a shrug. “But till we get some people hired, I'm holding down the fort, and strictly using freelancers.”

We had adjacent space next door for an eventual bullpen of half a dozen operatives.

I filled him in about my interviews with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, emphasizing the need to find our only potential physical evidence—that console table.

“Send a man over to Macy's,” I said, “and another to the junk shop the table was sold to. I don't have the name yet, but I'll be getting it from Bloch this morning. In the meantime, I hope to talk to Harry Gold and David Greenglass in prison.”

“Where are they?”

“Lewisburg. And that female I mentioned is going to help me track down new witnesses.”

Bob's face was expressionless, which was as close as he came to a frown, unless he was beating on someone. “Some of these bigger junk shops sell to smaller secondhand stores, you know. We may need to put two or three men on that. That furniture could be anywhere on the Lower East Side.”

“Fine. Do that.”

His eyes narrowed. “You didn't say how much we're getting for this job.”

He wasn't out of line asking. Like Fred Rubinski in L.A., Bob was a vice president with the A-1.

“A flat three grand,” I said. “But I'm laying all expenses off on Pearson.”

“Would that include the tab we run on the freelance boys?”

“Probably not. I'm already sticking it to that old cheapskate by staying at the Waldorf.”

That made him grin, but just momentarily. “That's a respectable fee, but chasing a phantom table around town like that, I don't know. It's a lot of hours. And this thing may run right up to the night of the execution—when is that?”

“June sometime,” I said. “And I may need more men to chase down various leads. I want to find handwriting samples from David Greenglass, for one thing. Nice legible extended ones.”

I explained.

After listening patiently, Bob said, “Nate, we can run through that three grand without trying, hiring all these freelancers … and
your
time is the most valuable the A-1 has.”

“Nice of you to say, Bob.”

“And now you want to trot off to Pennsylvania to talk to a couple of unfriendly witnesses, and run down possible new ones here on turf you're not familiar with? I don't know.”

“Bob, there are certain things it's going to take to make a going concern of this expanded business of mine. Of ours.
You
could start by, oh, maybe watering that fucking plant in the other room? Or possibly getting the carpet cleaned?”

“Go to hell, Nate,” he said pleasantly.

“Now, what could
I
do to help the situation? Let me think. How about I can go out and try to clear the Rosenbergs, and get us the kind of headline publicity the A-1 hasn't seen in a while?”

“You pull this off,” he said, shaking his head, “and you'll make a lot of Republicans unhappy.”

“Just the crazy ones,” I said. I grabbed my hat and put it on, getting to my feet. “And that still leaves all those Democrats.…”

*   *   *

Manny Bloch's modest office was in a building near the U.S. Federal Courthouse on Foley Square. The walls were home to framed diplomas and black-and-white photos of leftist political figures posed with the attorney; half a dozen ancient dark-wood filing cabinets listened in on our conversation.

Behind a big beat-up chunk of a desk piled with papers and file folders, Bloch rocked gently in his swivel chair as we spoke. He was of medium height and build, looking older than his fifty-some years, thanks to short-cropped kinky white hair and deep-set eyes with dark bags, the latter emphasized by dark slashes of eyebrow. His gray suit was rumpled and off-the-rack, his tie a black-and-white striped number that reminded me of old prison uniforms.

Seated across from him, I'd already filled him in on my plan of action, plus asked for and gotten the name and address of the junk dealer who purchased the Rosenberg's furniture.

“I have to admit I'm outright astonished,” Bloch said, in a fluid court-schooled baritone. “I figured that damn table was gone forever. But if we find it, can we
authenticate
it?”

“I'm working on the Macy's end,” I said. “That should give us a damn good shot.”

If I was expecting handstands of joy and appreciation out of Bloch, I'd come to the wrong place.

With what was a perpetual doleful expression, he said, “The handwriting angle seems worth pursuing, too. I should have thought of that. I'll request any letters of David Greenglass's that might be in the government's hands.”

I frowned. “You really think they'll turn them over?”

“No. But they have a responsibility to. So we'll try, and then get their refusal on the record. Anyway, just because they act in bad faith doesn't mean we have to.”

It was bite-my-tongue time.

I knew Bloch had made two massive blunders in the trial. First, he'd passed on cross-examining Harry Gold, a notoriously inconsistent witness; and second, he'd requested that the government impound David Greenglass's sketches supposedly giving away atomic bomb secrets. By bending over backward to show patriotic concern for national security, Bloch had only given credence to the government's claim that the material in question was significant.

“Looking for new witnesses,” Bloch said, nodding, “who might be able to substantiate the money trouble between David and Julius? That also strikes me as worth doing. But might I make a suggestion, Mr. Heller?”

“Of course.”

“Try to eliminate anyone who might have a background in the Communist Party. Not just people from Julius' personal history, who you should avoid in any case … but any casual acquaintances, neighbors, who might themselves turn out to have pink skeletons in the closet.”

Courtroom blunders or not, Bloch was no novice in this area. He downplayed himself to the press as just an “obscure people's lawyer.” But he'd been in some high-profile political cases over the last decade, including both the Willie McGee rape and the Trenton Six murder.

“But I have to caution you, Mr. Heller, that though I continue to make my best effort, my confidence in the judicial system doing the right thing in this case is … well, let's say, badly frayed.”

“You don't think we can get a new trial, with new evidence?”

“Possibly. Right now we're putting together an appeal based on that passport photographer's perjury. So we haven't given up.”

“Nice to hear.”

The woeful face took on a smile that was fairly ghastly. “Mr. Heller, may I make the assumption that you're Jewish?”

Everybody was asking me that.

“My old man was an apostate Jew,” I said. “My mother was Irish Catholic. I'm not anything at all, except a businessman.”

The smile widened into something less depressing. “Well, that sounds fairly Jewish, at that.”

I smiled back at him. “Why would that be an issue, Mr. Bloch?”

“Well, let me ask you this.” Like all lawyers, he mostly answered questions with other questions. “Do you think it was pure coincidence that the defendants were Jewish, and that the chief prosecutors and judge were also Jewish?”

I shrugged. “They're also all New Yorkers. Hardly remarkable that they're all Jewish, too. There's a lot of delis around this town, or haven't you noticed?”

Shrugging back, he said, “Yes, about a third of New York City
is
Jewish. But in the Rosenberg trial, not one
juror
was.”

“You think there was an anti-Semitic factor here.”

The black slashes of eyebrow rose and fell. “Jews like prosecutors Saypol and Cohn and Judge Kaufmann might be anxious to prove they're good Americans…” His voice dripped sarcasm. “… unlike these Jews the FBI says are traitors and spies.”

I didn't know what to say to that. He might have had a point, but what was there to do about it?

“Of course,” Bloch said, “Saypol and Cohn are gone—to the New York Supreme Court and Joe McCarthy's staff respectively.”

Not sure I should comment, I did anyway: “I don't know if Cohn is gone, exactly. He's still keeping an eye on the case. A fairly close one.”

He frowned. “You're sure of this?”

“That's all I'm going to say on the subject, Mr. Bloch. Listen, I have one more request of you.”

“I'll do my best to comply.”

“I want to interview Harry Gold and David Greenglass. Ruth Greenglass, too. Ruth I can track down, but I don't know how to go about getting permission for the two in prison. Obviously, they may not be anxious to talk to me. And the government may not be so anxious to have me do that, either.”

He was already shaking his head. “I'm afraid I can't be of help to you there. Oh, I'll make a call to John Rogge—David's lawyer. But he'll almost certainly turn me down. I'll do the same with Jack Hamilton, Gold's counsel. And I expect the same result.”

“Well, please try. You can reach me at my New York office…” I gave him one of our newly minted cards. “… or at the Waldorf.”

One dark eyebrow went up. “The Hammett committee must be paying you well.”