Father's Day Murder (3 page)

“He’ll probably regale you with stories of the old neighborhood.”

“That’s OK. I kind of like that sort of thing. And maybe I’ll begin to understand how this group of little boys turned into such fine old men.”

“Don’t call Dad an old man if you value your life. He’s only in his late sixties, and he’s as powerful a human being as he was in his forties.”

“Sounds good.”

Lila pressed a tissue to her eyes. “Thank you.” She smiled. “I think I’ll have dessert today.”

“You, Mom?” her daughter asked in apparent disbelief.

“Yes, me.”

“Then I will too,” Janet said.

I wasn’t about to be the odd man out.

2

I came home with a large envelope from Lila. After I had told her I would look into the murder, she had held out her hand to Janet who had given her the envelope on cue. It had been on the floor next to Janet during our conversation. What was inside would be the beginning of my investigation if I took it on.

The envelope contained not only the photographs but also jottings that Dr. Horowitz, Lila’s father, had made, not for me but for himself. She had xeroxed them that morning and given me the copies. It was a place to start my thinking. Tonight, she would call her father and arrange for me to meet him as soon as he could make time for me. Eddie had been pretty rambunctious when I picked him up at Elsie’s, and I didn’t get a chance to look at the pictures and writings till a few minutes before Jack walked in the door.

I put Eddie to bed before Jack came home. His tour was ten to six, but he was lucky to leave on time and it was a long drive from Brooklyn to Oakwood, especially at that hour of the day. I had roasted a chicken according to my friend Melanie Gross’s fail-safe recipe, the only kind of recipe I ever use, and the kitchen smelled wonderful, full of garlic and rosemary and lemon.

When I heard the car, I put the stuff back in the envelope and opened the family room door, the closest door to the garage.

He came inside, gave me a kiss, and looked at me strangely. “What’s up?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s happened? Is Eddie OK?”

“Eddie’s fine. We’re both fine. Dinner’s ready.”

“You look a little—I don’t know. What did you do today?”

“I had an interesting day. Sit down and eat your melon.”

We sat down at the kitchen table, which was already set, and started to eat.

“Nice and sweet,” Jack said. “You gonna tell me?” He took another bite and looked at me. “You’re on a case.”

I started to laugh. “You saw that in my face?”

“I saw something. You had that look like you were really fixed on something. Is that it? You walk into a murder this afternoon?”

“One of my students called,” I said. I told him about it as he carved the chicken and I got the potatoes and string beans on the table.

“Maurice’s, huh? You’re gonna need a whole new wardrobe for this one.”

“I doubt whether I’ll be eating many more lunches there. Lila’s going to arrange for me to meet her father, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. She was in tears, Jack. I tried to say no because I want to be around while you study.”

“Honey, I can study alone. I just won’t make a very good baby-sitter. I’ll really have to concentrate.”

“I know.”

“But it sounds interesting, a bunch of guys who love
each other except that two of them don’t. At least the things you stumble into don’t involve drugs and gangs.”

“These men could hardly be called a gang. I’d love to drive over to where they lived when they were children and get a look at it.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Bronx. A Hundred Seventy-fourth Street and Morris Avenue. They called themselves the Morris Avenue Boys.”

“You’re kidding. You want to
go
there?”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s just above Claremont Park. It’s drugs and gangs and you don’t want to know what all else in the street.”

“That bad?”

“It can be.”

“I guess Lila was right. She said nobody lived there anymore.”

“It’s gone way downhill since the forties and fifties. The young people left; the older people left or died. Look at this guy’s pictures. They’re a lot better than reality.”

I mulled it over after dinner. Jack sat down in the family room, which he likes better than the office upstairs, and I sat down away from him with my envelope of goodies after we’d had coffee and some extraordinary Jersey strawberries I had picked up on my way home from lunch. Eddie had eaten several with relish and his father did the same hours later.

I emptied the envelope and took out the smaller envelope of pictures. It was thick enough that they must have used a whole roll of film to record the evening’s activities. Lila had said they were in chronological order, and I was
anxious to keep them that way. With a pencil, I numbered the backs before I sat back to look at them.

They told the story of a happy reunion, a festive dinner, a group of men who, as far as I could see, cared about each other. There were no solemn faces, no hints of anger, no tense, nervous wives. I was particularly interested in Arthur Wien, the victim. Using the first picture Lila had shown me as a key, I identified him in picture after picture, a man of average height, hair still mostly dark, thickening at the midsection, standing close to a wife who was many years younger than he and very attractive. He had a good-looking face that had probably been quite handsome when he was young, and he was dressed, like the others, in a well-cut suit. Instead of the dress shirt that most of the others wore, he had on a white turtleneck. His wife, whose name was Cindy, was wearing a dazzling low-cut dress that showed off an enviable figure. Even in these amateur snapshots, the sequins on her dress caught the light. Like everyone else there, they seemed to be very happy and enjoying the evening.

As a boy he had been shorter than most of the others, his hair dark, although hair color in black-and-white pictures is hard to determine, and a bit on the pudgy side. There was nothing about his looks that would indicate he would grow up successful and famous in a competitive field.

A sudden thought sent me to the bag of recyclable paper, which we keep in the family room where we read newspapers, magazines, and mail. I pulled out
The New York Times
from Monday and turned to the obituary page. There was no mention of Wien, but if he had died during the night, that was understandable. But Tuesday’s edition had a paid notice that read: “Wien, Arthur A., suddenly on Father’s Day, beloved husband of Cynthia (Cindy)
Porter, devoted father of Michael and Katherine, Robert and Sondra, and Melissa and John Beck.” It went on to name numerous grandchildren and then said, “Author of
The Lost Boulevard
and many other respected novels, Art was a good father, a good husband, and a good friend. In lieu of flowers, contributions to the Authors Guild will be welcome.”

I thought that last was very generous. I was about to tear out the small square of paper when I noticed that just below it was a second, smaller notice for Arthur Wien: “A good man and a great friend. We will miss him forever. The Morris Avenue Boys.”

I tore the tiny notices out of the paper and slipped the clipping into my envelope. Then I checked yesterday’s paper and found the same family notice again but no
Times
obit. Today’s paper was an arm’s length away, and I reached over and pulled it toward me. This time there was a long obituary with a photograph taken about ten years ago.

Arthur Wien, novelist and author of
The Lost Boulevard
, died Sunday night, the victim of an apparent homicide. Police said there were no immediate suspects.

Born in the Bronx to immigrant parents who owned a grocery store in which he often worked after school, Mr. Wien attended City College where he majored in English and graduated after World War II. He held a number of teaching jobs until, days before his thirtieth birthday, his first novel,
The Lost Boulevard
, was published to great critical acclaim. The
Times
called it “a searing, incisive study of the generation that came of age during and after the war.”

It went on to note the titles of his other books, not all of them critical successes although apparently they did well enough commercially. The obituary mentioned places he had lived—he had apparently become an expatriate for a while and taken up residence in Paris—and some of the people he had known.

He is survived by his second wife, Cynthia Porter, and three children of his first marriage, which ended in divorce, his sons Michael of New York, Robert of Short Hills, and one daughter, Melissa Beck of San Francisco.

When I tore the section out of the paper, Jack looked up to see what I was doing and then went quickly back to his books. As I put the obituary in the envelope, the phone rang.

It was Lila Stern with an appointment for me to see her father. He would talk to me after his last morning patient; it was the best she could do. His office was in New York, and if I didn’t mind, he would order a take-out lunch so he could eat while we talked. I didn’t mind at all. That was one tuna fish sandwich less I had to make for myself.

I went back to my comfortable seat in the family room and took out the several sheets of xeroxed handwritten notes. They had been written in pencil, and there were places where words were so faint they were not legible. To make matters worse, the handwriting was that of a doctor who was used to scribbling so that no one but a pharmacist could read it. But as I looked the first page over, I realized he had tried to put down on paper a chronology of the events of the Father’s Day dinner, starting with the arrival of the men and their wives at the restaurant.

Arrived before seven. Dave, Bernie, and Joe already there with wives. Room set up. Nice. Joe very thin but said no recurrence. Ernie and Bruce came next, I think. Art was last but not late. All stood up for our regular picture.

Then picture of the women. Cindy (Wien) very gorgeous. Ellen (Koch) looking good too. Bernie still overweight; Art looking better than last time. Can’t remember when that was. Bruce in good spirits and drinking a lot, but Arlene covers her glass when waiter comes around. Art eats fish; so does Joe. Didn’t notice the wives.

Everyone talks. Everyone in good spirits. Art tells funny story about Hollywood. Dave tells lawyer joke. Ernie tells doctor joke. Joe tells jokes so old we all laugh before he finishes.

Several couples dance after appetizer; not sure who. Robin (my wife) insists we dance and we do, but the food comes right away and we sit down. Waiter takes pictures throughout meal. Joe eats little. I worry.

I found myself feeling confused about who was who and who was married to whom. I looked through the remaining pages and found that the last one, the one that should have been on top of the pile, was a key.

Here Dr. Horowitz had sketched out the group complete with last names, professions, and wives. He had taken the men in the order of the famous half-century-old snapshot, which made it easy for me to put names onto faces.

The first man in the back row was Dave Koch, an attorney, whom Dr. Horowitz identified as “my best friend in the world.” His wife was Ellen, and I found her in the wives’ pictures, contemporary with her husband, a pretty face, and an excellent figure. To the right of Dave Koch
was Bernie Reskin, the schoolteacher, married to Marilyn. Third in line was Dr. Ernie Greene, who might or might not be in line for a Nobel Prize. He was married to Kathy. To the right of him in the picture was Dr. Horowitz himself. His wife’s name was Robin. And last was Bruce Kaplan, dubbed a businessman, the one Lila said had been caught in some sort of embezzling scheme. He was married to Arlene.

The front row had only two men. Fred Beller was absent as usual and not further described. Next to his empty space was Arthur Wien, the writer who had been murdered. To the right was the empty space for poor George Fried next to whose name Dr. Horowitz had written “dec.” And finally, at the right end of the first row stood Joe Meyer, the violinist, whose wife’s name was Judy.

Now, at least, the names began to mean something to me. When I went back to the narrative and saw that Judy had ordered a vegetable plate instead of the filet mignon or fish alternative, I knew he was talking about the violinist’s wife.

Most of what followed struck me as mundane; this didn’t mean it wasn’t important or wouldn’t yield something crucial. From time to time he would note that this man danced with that man’s wife, but there was no comment about how close they danced or whether they seemed enamored of each other. There was just the fact: they danced.

He noted the wines that were served but was unable to say who drank red and who drank white. Champagne had been ordered for the traditional toast with dessert—a sheet cake with a schematic of Morris Avenue and 174th Street drawn on it—and “even Joe took a sip of bubbly.”

It was while the cake was being cut that Dr. Horowitz
left the table to find the men’s room. Arthur Wien had gotten there first, and someone had found him and killed him before Dr. Horowitz entered the room.

The chronology ended there but he continued to write his musings.

Why Artie? If he offended one of us, I know nothing of it. If he had his eye on someone’s wife, no one has told me. And why would he? His is the youngest and prettiest wife in the group. Who among us could have been offended? Artie lives in Cal. We only see him at reunions.

As I read these rambling comments, I could feel the doctor crying out in despair. He was convinced one of the group had committed the murder, but he could find no reason for it and could not believe one of his boyhood friends could have done such a thing.

I put the photos and notes back in the envelope and groped around for the small rectangle of newsprint that was the family’s notice of Arthur Wien’s death. I took it out and read it again. “Suddenly on Father’s Day.” The phrase did something to me. I had never written an obituary notice. When Aunt Meg died, while I was still a nun at St. Stephen’s, I had not thought about a notice until the funeral director asked me. I gave him the facts of her life and death, and he composed it for me and sent it to the paper.