Eye Wit (14 page)

I told her all of that, all those stories that had been vouchsafed to me
by my parents, as they’d been vouchsafed to them by
Andre and Mishka Domanoff
: stories
of how my grandmother had arranged my mother Luminitsa’s escape from the death camp at Majdanek
as a new-born baby
, stories told by those who helped her escape, my adoptive grandparents Andre and Mishka Domanoff.

I tried to convey how I had felt, listening to those Auschwitz surv
ivors describe their experiences on TV, how hearing their stories had made even more vivid those stories I heard from my parents and
adoptive
grandparents.

Brigitta had seen only one broadcast of the Jerusalem trials, but she
understood my feelings immediately
.

“
All those people saying the same thing,” she said. “Mengele going out of his way to meet all
the
new camp arrivals, resplendent in his uniform, his cap at a jaunty angle.
Using
his riding crop to direct new inmates one way or the other—to the left for the barracks, to the right for the ovens. Always wearing white gloves, joy on his face, a look of rapture when twins, especially Gypsy twins, appeared, so he could send them to those special barracks that housed the raw material for his medical experiments.”

She understood how all those things had been etched permanently on my brain. She not only sympathized with me and with my parents and adoptive grandparents; she
knew
why they had made sure I would know and understand where I had come from, so I would appreciate our proud and abused—yet unbowed—Romani heritage.

“
So I would cherish the heroic blood that still
flows
in my veins,” I said.

She smiled
. “Heroic, huh?”

“
What can I say?” I said. “We Gypsies are a proud
and poetic
people.”

“
Then I shall be proud to join your
poetic
people,” she said. “My own people are mostly gone now. My mother died four years ago of breast cancer, and my father of a stroke year before last. I was their only child, so I’m the last of my line. A cousin or two somewhere, but we’ve never been close.”

“
I found other families and latched onto them like a leech,” she said, grinning. “No, I’m kidding. It was tough—no, awful—to lose my pa
rents, but I am pretty much over it now. My mom and dad and I always had a good relationship. I think that makes it easier, don’t you?”

“
I suppose, but I
don’t
know,
thank God,
” I said. “My Mama and Papa are still alive, in Lucerne. For a long time yet, I hope.”

“
We will take good care of them, Hans. They will live long and pro
sper. But you asked how I survived. I was luckier than most kids, probably. Dad had insurance on mom and a lot on himself, so I could stay in our home in Groton until I could sell it for a good price and come here for
school, which has always been m
y dream: to be in New York, to dance…” She grinned. “…to meet a Gypsy
poet fiddler
, to fall in love….”

As we got to know each other better, Brigitta became especially inte
rested in hearing about my grandmother Luludji’s crystal ball and the role it had played in the survival of two sets of Romani twins from Bohemia-Moravia.

“Where’s the crystal ball now?” she wondered. “Was it still with Mengele when he was in South America? How can we find out?”

She vowed to help me find it and, if we managed that, to restore the priceless family heirloom to my family—my Romani clan, my immediate Romani family, soon to be her family as well.

Brigitta and I were married five months after we met: on the day after I received my degree. I cannot imagine why we waited so long. We must have been busy dancing and fiddling around.

I do know that both of us followed the events that occurred that spring, after Mengele’s show trial in Jerusalem. Millions of people all over the world had watched those four days of remembered horrors, and strong reactions were provoked.

More to the point, those strong reactions moved German authorities to act, with dispatch. Within a month, West German police raided Hans Sedlmeier’s home, finding numerous letters from Josef Mengele proving that Sedlmeier had aided Mengele’s flight from Germany to Argentina in 1949. They found other letters from other German expatriates who lived with Mengele in Brazil.

Alerted by the Germans, Brazilian authorities followed through quickly, locating families who had sheltered Mengele and discovering the aliases under which Mengele had been living. Eventually, their investig
ations led them to Mengele’s grave at Embu das Artes (Land of the Arts), with its headstone that read: “Wolfgang Gerhard.” The remains in that grave were exhumed and identified as Mengele’s by comparison to his dental records, an identification made certain by subsequent DNA testing of the remains in 1992.

Interestingly, none of Mengele’s surviving family members have
ever claimed Mengele’s remains. To this date,
even to his own family, Josef Mengele remains a pariah.

Not so with Mengele’s possessions, however, which were sought a
fter—not by
his
family, but by art collectors and ghouls alike.

Sometimes, as my Brigitta and I later discovered with Marco Fellini, a collector and a ghoul
are
one and the same.

23

“We should wait for forensics,” Zoran said to Yoko, after they had exited the Fellini townhouse. “I also want to take another look at the archery run on the roof.”

“Okay,” Yoko said. “I’m sure forensics can find Marco Fellini’s study on their own, though. What is it you want to see in the archery run?”

“I will explain when we are on the roof,” he replied, heading back up the steps to the front door of the brownstone and pressing the door buzzer.

“Yes? Who is it?” Sophia Fellini said over the speaker. “What do you want?”

Yoko noted that the speaker reproduced Sophia’s voice with remarkable clarity. Did Bose make intercoms too? She looked up, expecting to see a camera focused on the doorstep, but didn’t locate one. Perhaps they’d installed an incredibly small unit, cunningly hidden in a strange place. She glanced around but couldn’t spy a lens.

“Detective Zeissing, Mrs. Fellini. May Doctor Kamimura and I come in again?”

The door lock clicked, and Zoran opened the door. He and Yoko entered the hallway and saw Sophia Fellini standing at the top of the stairs. “I thought you were done, Detective. What is it? I’m really quite busy.”

“I require another visit to the archery run, Mrs. Fellini. Also I need to be here when the forensics team arrives, which should be very soon.”

Right on cue, the door buzzer sounded. Yoko looked questioningly at Sophia Fellini, who shrugged. “Oh, go ahead, Yoko. See who it is. If it’s Mormon missionaries, please shoot them.”

“I am certain that will be the forensics experts, Mrs. Fellini,” Zoran said.

Yoko opened the door and greeted the new arrivals. “Glad you could make it so quickly, guys,” she said to Amy Claussen and Kohichi Horiuchi, two of her favorite CSI types. As always, Amy was the leader of the team. Amy’s partner today, Kohichi Horiuchi, wasn’t her usual partner. Kohichi’s specialty was reconstructing crime scenes for the one-three, and other precincts as well, rather than field forensics. Still, Yoko knew Kohichi liked to keep his CSI credentials current and sometime filled in when the other CSI techs were tied up.

Perhaps, Yoko thought, he just wanted to be around me. Kohi-san’s crush on Yoko was pretty much one-sided these days. They’d had a few dates when Yoko had broken up with Dan months back.

“I’m not sitting home twiddling my thumbs if you’re so involved with work you can’t call when you’re canceling,” Yoko had warned Dan. “Forget your non-dates. They’re worse than any date from hell.”

A week later, Dan blew it.

Yoko didn’t hesitate. Hell, she’d never been sure if Dan was Mr. Right. She wasn’t sure he was Mr. Wrong but she’d had enough. Dan wasn’t going to charm the socks off her any more with his Irish blarney.

“We’re done, Daniel Riley.”

The one-three grapevine didn’t waste time sharing the news with Kohichi, whose yearning for Yoko was known to every guy at the precinct, a few of whom shared his feelings.

“She’s madder than a wet hen, Kohichi. Here’s your chance.”

Ever the diplomat, Kohichi waited a day then telephoned Yoko’s office.

“If you’re free on Thursday,” he’d asked, not making any reference to the split with Dan, “I’ve tickets to a concert in the park.”

Kohichi was a really nice guy but the chemistry wasn’t there for Yoko. The grapevine relayed that news as well, this time to Dan. The wily detective didn’t start by begging in person for another chance. First, a bike messenger brought a massive bunch of flowers. The next day, two jars of South River miso, aduki bean and red pepper, two of Yoko’s favorites, arrived. By now, the bicyclist was grinning. Each delivery had the same note.

It’s true what they say about make-up sex.

The one-three didn’t have to be told Yoko had relented and taken Dan back. Maybe it was osmosis, maybe Dan’s switch from hangdog to happy. Even so, for the longest time, Kohichi’s dreams had clearly not wavered from Yoko. Had he now shifted his crush to Amy Claussen? That would be nice, Yoko thought. Then felt just a tiny pang of jealousy—no, not jealousy, a pang of loss.

Kohichi carried a large aluminum case containing the tools and chemicals the team would need to dust for fingerprints and collect latent fibers from the Ishi display case in the study.

“I’ll show you the way, guys,” Yoko said, all business now. She led the two technicians up the stairs.

Sophia Fellini stood aside as they passed. Zoran trailed the crew up the stairs, nodding to Sophia Fellini as he reached the head of the stairs, then turned towards the stairwell to the roof. “I do not expect to be long, Mrs. Fellini. In all probability, I should be finished in five or six minutes.”

Curious, Sophia Fellini followed him, pausing at the side door of her husband’s study just long enough to hear Yoko instructing the forensics team to be sure to include the brackets that once held hunting arrows. The widow continued on upstairs, reaching the roof just as Zoran finished dusting his shoes with a wipe. She watched him fold the dirty wipe into a tiny square which he then wrapped with a clean wipe, tucking the packet in an outside suit coat pocket.

“I do not see what is strange about keeping oneself tidy,” he replied, turning and walking towards the archery run. “The world is quite dirty, and cleanliness is…” He looked down at his shoes and spotted more dust accumulating on them, “…next to impossible.”

“I will leave you to your tidiness, then, Detective.” Sophia walked towards the small building that housed the stairs to the roof. As she reached for the door, she glanced back and saw Zoran staring out into space from a location about halfway between the entrance to the archery run and the shooting position. His hands opened and closed at his sides as if he was grasping something. The detective was oblivious to her staring.

The door swung open, bumping Sophia’s arm as she reached for the door herself. She teetered for a second or two then recovered her balance.

Yoko stepped out onto the roof. “Sorry, Sophia. I didn’t know you were here. Did the door hit you?”

“My fault,” Sophia said. “I was just on my way down. Do you think you and this…this strange little man will be finished soon? I really do need to get on with my day, so much to cope with, now that Marco’s…” she hesitated but finally got the word out, “dead.”

“I’m sure Detective Zeissing will be done soon. He said he just wanted to verify a couple things.”

“Like what? What on earth is he doing?”

“I have no idea, Sophia. But I’m sure it’s important.” Yoko looked past Sophia to see Zoran walk quickly over to the parapet at the northeast corner of the roof, where he gazed at the balloon wreckage that was still hanging from the face of the SUNY Optometry College.

“Honestly, Yoko. I don’t understand how all this aimless wandering is helping anyone find my husband’s killer.”

“I assure you, with Detective Zeissing, nothing is aimless. He has a national reputation for figuring things out. Believe me, he knows what he’s doing.”

“I certainly hope so,” Sophia said. “Do tell me what he finds, besides dust on his shoes.” She watched, a critical expression on her face, as Yoko turned away and joined her OCD colleague.

“Did you find what you were looking for, Zoran?”

“Yes, I did.” He looked down at his shoes, frowned, then smiled. “Now I know exactly what happened.”

24

I must tell you more about my Brigitta, but it is difficult. When I stammer and falter, bear with me. I’ve not come to terms with losing my love. I cannot do that. And will not. That I will join her soon is my consolation.