Father's Day Murder (22 page)

“Leading you nowhere.”

“Exactly.”

“But some of them have said some things that were different.”

“That’s true, and I’ve discovered a dead man who’s alive.”

“Well, if that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is. Start at the beginning.” She pulled the paper in front of her and picked up a pencil.

So that’s what I did, going back to the phone call from
Janet Stern over a week ago and the lunch with her and her mother at Maurice’s. I tend to tell Joseph what I have learned in the same order in which I learned it. That way, I don’t inadvertently stress something that has impressed me. I want her to listen and make up her mind without my influence. And I listen carefully to her questions, which often point to facts I haven’t realized were missing or to incidents that need elaboration.

These retellings of mine tend to take a fair amount of time, and this was no different. I showed her the snapshot of the little boys, told her what each of them was doing now, how he had spent his life professionally, who his wife was. I handed her the photographs of the Father’s Day dinner and paused while she went through them, attempting to identify each person.

Then I started with my lunch with Dr. Horowitz at his office and my subsequent visit to the crime scene, the restaurant where the murder had taken place. I didn’t tell her at that point that the Bellers had been in the restaurant, saving that for my lunch with them the next day. I related my first conversation with Dave Koch, in his apartment, at the end of which I had met his wife, Ellen, who had sprung the mysterious rumor on me, that one of the wives had had an affair with Arthur
Wien
.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Joseph said. “I suppose it’s possible that this woman, whoever she is, resented his marrying the new Mrs. Wien.”

“Anything is possible,” I said.

Joseph laughed. “You sound as if you’re near the end of your wits over this.”

“Very near.” I continued with the lunch with the Bellers at the Waldorf-Astoria, a place I had never imagined entering, much less dining in.

“Very elegant,” Joseph commented.

“And tasty. It was really good food.” I made sure to tell her about the Bellers’ meeting with Arthur Wien in California and the subsequent visit in Minnesota that never took place, Mrs. Beller’s sudden silence when I asked what had happened to prevent it. I took out the photo of the two of them at that point and handed it across the table.

“A pleasant looking couple,” Joseph said. “They look like they’re enjoying themselves.”

I went on to relate the trip to the Bronx, the business street cut in half and the noisy highway below, the old homestead—apartment houses and school and shops—that no longer included a kosher butcher or a delicatessen but was the heart of all the memories of the Morris Avenue Boys. I told her about that afternoon I had visited the Meyers, and that night the Kaplans who mentioned the fuss over the seating arrangement.

“And what did Mr. Kaplan say about the alleged embezzlement?”

“I didn’t ask,” I admitted.

“But it might be important, Chris.”

“It was too embarrassing.” I felt embarrassed to say it.

“That’s understandable, but if nothing else points to a killer, I think you’ll have to do some more digging there. It would be interesting, at the least, to hear what he has to say about it.”

I wrote a note for myself, knowing this was going to be one of the hardest things I had ever had to do. Then I moved on to Monday and my talk with Ernest Greene at his research institute followed by my discovery that the Bellers had indeed been at the restaurant the night of the murder.

“That’s quite a discovery, Chris. Are the police aware of it?”

“I doubt it. They may not even know Fred Beller exists.”

It was Joseph’s turn to make some notes.

And then there was my first meeting with Alice Wien when she told me the circumstances of her meeting with her husband while she was nearly engaged to Fred Beller. I watched Joseph’s eyebrows rise and saw her nod. And then there was the story of
The Lost Boulevard’
s being used as collateral for a loan.

I had shown her my copy when I talked about the Kaplans. Joseph opened it and noticed that it was signed, and I explained that Mrs. Kaplan kept several such copies around for gifts.

“It certainly sounds as if Arthur Wien and the Kaplans were on good terms.”

“It does, yes. I imagine a writer would be very happy to have someone stock his book to give to friends.”

I then told her how I discovered that George Fried was still alive.

“Chris, this is amazing. You know something that no one in the group knows.”

“That’s right. I don’t think it’s worth very much, and I don’t intend to give that information to Dr. Horowitz or anyone else unless I find out that Mr. Fried was somehow involved in the murder. It sounds as though he just wants to be rid of them as friends and this is how he chose to do it.”

“Well, go on. This is very interesting.”

My next fact was from Jack: Mrs. Horowitz had been seen visiting Arthur Wien several times at his New York apartment. This was followed by my meeting with her and her denial of any affair and her refusal to explain the visits.
Later that day I had spoken to the Reskins. Bernie Reskin was the first person I talked to who thought that Bruce Kaplan had actually stolen the money that he went to prison for stealing.

On Wednesday I had gone through the pencil manuscript and the typescript of
The Lost Boulevard
and found pages missing.

“Well,” Joseph said. “Finally.”

“Finally what?”

“Finally something concrete, something that isn’t hearsay. I imagine Alice Wien was quite shocked.”

“Quite shocked, yes. Very shocked. This was her prize, Joseph, her reward for being married to Arthur Wien. This was her children’s inheritance and her husband ruined it for her. Not only that, he did it in a deceitful way, probably when she wasn’t home, removing the typewritten pages from the manuscript and typing them over with so many mistakes she could see immediately that she hadn’t done it herself. He didn’t bother rewriting the pencil edition because it didn’t matter. I suppose one day when she carried out the garbage, she was disposing of her most treasured possession.”

“That depends,” Joseph said.

I looked across the table. “On what?”

“On when those pages were removed from the pencil manuscript.”

“The typed pages had to have been removed before he submitted the manuscript to a publisher. He could have disposed of the pencil pages at the same time, or however many years later, he could have pulled them when his creditor insisted on holding the book as collateral.”

“That’s one possibility,” Joseph said distantly. “Do you have more for me?”

“A little.” I told her about my lunch and conversation with George Fried at Newark Airport, including my shirt cardboard with his name on it so that I looked like a limousine driver waiting for a passenger. That had been yesterday, and when I had gotten home, there was a message on the machine from Alice.

I told Joseph about what the missing manuscript pages had probably contained.

“A love affair between a different man and one of the wives,” she said. “That’s the stuff of blackmail, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

In the evening I had spoken to Cindy Wien, who also had no suspects, and with Kathy Greene who thought there was something strange about Bruce Kaplan.

“Then you must call him, Chris. Whatever Kathy Greene meant, she’s a person whose perceptions are useful in her work. I know this will be painful, but please give him a call.”

“I will,” I promised. “And that’s the last thing I have in my notes. We got up this morning and I packed Eddie in the car and here we are.”

“Give me a moment.” Joseph turned her sheets over to the first one, leaving me surprised at how many notes she had taken. She went through them, picking up a red pen and marking some places. “Everything I’m going to suggest will cause you embarrassment, I’m afraid,” she said apologetically. “You’re going to have to ask people things they don’t want to talk about, and if they refuse to answer, I think your duty will be to take what you have to the police.”

“I know I have to do that.” I scanned my notes. “You want me to press Mrs. Horowitz on her visits to Arthur Wien.”

“That’s one. Another is Fred Beller. You must find out why they didn’t meet Arthur Wien when he went to Minnesota.”

I had guessed that was coming simply because I had thought of it myself and declined to make the phone call.

“And Bruce Kaplan, as I’ve already said. And I’m afraid you really need to get back to Mrs. Koch and press her on the tantalizing information she volunteered to you. Am I to believe that someone told her a woman she knew and a man she knew were having an affair and she forgets not only who the party to the affair was but also the name of the person who told her? I can almost believe she could have forgotten the source of the information—I do that myself from time to time—but she knows who the woman was.”

“Do you?”

“I may, but I’m not speculating.”

“I’ve sprung this on many of the people I’ve interviewed and not one of them thinks it’s credible. Everyone says Arthur Wien liked his women young.”

“That may be. But the wives weren’t always middle-aged. Now let’s get back to those missing pages. I agree that Arthur Wien threw away the typed pages before the manuscript went to his editor or agent or whoever was the recipient of the unpublished book. And he went to some lengths to hide what he did from his wife. But I think there may be another explanation of what happened to the missing pencil pages.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I would think that an author, especially one who wrote in the days before computers, would have a sentimental attachment to his first draft, especially to the first draft of his first book, a book that went on to be very successful.”

“I agree.”

“And since no one was likely to read those pencil pages for many years, possibly until after his death when he wouldn’t care any more who knew what, I think he kept the pencil manuscript intact.”

“Until he gave it to someone.”

“Suppose he gave it to one of the people involved in this allegedly fictional love affair.”

“The person he borrowed money from.”

“Exactly. And that person removed the pages.”

“Did Arthur Wien know the pages were removed?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. There are several possibilities. One is that the person removed the pages and returned the manuscript without telling the author what he’d done. It never occurred to Wien that anything was missing so he didn’t check. Another possibility is that the person refused to return those pages, to ensure that the affair would never be revealed. And the third possibility is that the person simply didn’t want to return the manuscript under any conditions.”

“So that he could sell it for a tidy sum himself.”

“Perhaps. If the second explanation is the correct one, then the dickering wasn’t over the money Wien owed or how much extra he was being coerced into paying, but just getting those pages back so the manuscript would be intact.”

“And Wien lost. He got the manuscript back without the pages and he never told anyone.”

“He couldn’t tell his first wife. She might have gotten a warrant to find the pages, feeling they properly belonged to her husband and then to her.”

“Do you think this person still has the pages?”

“I think it depends on the reason they were withheld.”

“Money or keeping a secret.”

“There might be a third possibility,” Joseph said thoughtfully, and I knew enough not to press her.

“So you think the person who had the manuscript is the killer?”

“I’m not at all sure of that, but it’s possible. I would very much like to know what Mrs. Horowitz was seeing Arthur Wien about. And I think you should try to put together all the times in this case, Chris. When did Arthur go to Minnesota? When did Mrs. Horowitz visit Arthur Wien? When did Mr. Wien marry his second wife? When did George Fried ‘die’? When did Bruce Kaplan allegedly take money illegally?”

I was writing furiously. “Anything else?”

Joseph smiled. “There is one other thing, an event you mentioned rather quickly, almost as an afterthought. Think about it. It might be important.”

That is Joseph’s way. I knew I had my work cut out.

21

Our lunch was delivered while we were still talking and we put aside the Wien homicide to enjoy it and talk about other things. St. Stephen’s, like other convents, uses the talents and skills of its nuns to best advantage. I never learned to cook, and I was rarely asked to prepare a meal, only when no one else was available. And then I wasn’t asked again for a long time.

In my honor, today, several of the sisters living in the Villa, the home for retired nuns, had whipped up a fine lunch that included fresh biscuits and still warm cookies, a specialty of Sister Dolores. I knew there would be a bag of them downstairs for me to take home and I hoped Eddie wasn’t overdoing it on sweets, but these visits were far from frequent and I wanted everybody to be happy we had come.

When Joseph and I had finished, we went downstairs where Eddie was sleeping in his stroller in a shady spot outdoors, one of the older nuns crooning a lullaby as she sat in a chair beside him. Since both my son and his sitter were quite happy to remain where they were, Joseph and I took a walk across the convent grounds and the adjoining campus to admire the new plantings and get a good dose of the fresh air of upstate New York.

It’s difficult to communicate a love of place. I have not traveled much in my life and very little outside the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area in which we live. I have managed to drive through a good deal of New York State and dip into Pennsylvania, but aside from that, there is most of the country and a whole world that I have not seen. And yet I am certain that if I am fortunate enough to visit the many wonders of that world, places of great interest, beauty and charm, I will still return to this place and feel that its beauty and its peace are unchallenged. Joseph knows how I feel because she feels the same way.