House of Ghosts (5 page)

JOE’S SUNDAY MORNINGS BEGAN after eleven. The routine, perfected over the months of his wife’s absence, consisted of reading the rag-sheets and drinking enough coffee to kick up his ulcer. Joe settled in at the dinette armed with
The New York Post, The New York Times,
and the University of Arizona mug filled to the brim. The TV on the counter was tuned to the ESPN football pre-game show.

The clock above the sink read 12:30. He refilled the Mr. Coffee. “Come on girl, I‘ve got to finish my homework,” Joe said to Roxy lying under the table. The Giant-Eagle game didn’t start until one. He needed to polish his research paper.

He headed toward the den armed with the mug of coffee and a new pack of Marlboros. Roxy followed but detoured to sniff the garbage bag and Preston’s leather satchel on the dining room table. She pawed at the drawstring.

Joe placed the mug and cigarettes next to the bag. “Nothing good in there.” He untied the drawstring, dumping the musty contents on the table. Roxy took one more sniff then returned to the kitchen.

Joe felt the supple leather of the cordovan wallet. The passport declared the holder to be employed by the U.S. State Department. The message was clear: Preston was a big-shot. Why Preston’s government service wasn’t mentioned in the three line obituary gnawed at the retired detective.

Joe flipped a stack of utility bills to the side. Time and humidity had taken its toll on the assortment of stray papers. Typing paper had turned to a brownish mush. Ink and pencil were illegible.

Joe put the pictures of the young girl in her communion dress, Preston and Millie on vacation, and Preston standing next to the Fairlane convertible to the side. He laid the crumpled loose-leaf size map on the table. Lines drawn in red ink ran between Foggia, Italy and Manowitz, Poland. Several numbers were circled on either side of the lines. He recognized the map as a navigation aid from memorabilia saved by an uncle who flew a B-17 based in England. The numbers were altitude rendezvous points.

“Where’s my Jozef?” the sultry voice asked, breaking the silence.

“In the dining room. I brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Grab a cup,” Joe said, looking toward the hallway.

Alenia Gilbert, the raven haired beauty from down the block, entered the dining room barefoot. One of Joe’s T-shirts strained to contain her 38DDs. The creations were the handiwork of a plastic surgeon the girls at the strip joint considered the god of silicon. “I felt for you, but you were gone,” she said with a pout.

Retired from the “trade” for two years, Alenia still possessed the moves that caused sane men to throw twenty-dollar bills onto the stage. On the other side of forty, the Russian émigré was devoid of fat, cellulite and stretch marks.

Joe followed her deeply tanned legs rounding the table. Her rhinestone encrusted G-string reflected the light streaming through a French door opened to a redwood deck. Joe reached behind him, flipping the door closed. “I don’t want to be responsible for giving Charlie Pond a heart attack. The old guy is always looking over the fence.”

Alenia sat on his lap. “I haven’t killed you, no?” she said, running her hands through his hair.

“Not yet,” he said with a laugh.

“What is this?” Alenia asked, pointing to the pile.

“It’s my treasure from the Swedge estate sale.”

Alenia scrunched up her face. “I
didn’t
like the way he looked at me. I told Harry and you know what he said?”

Harry’s high blood pressure and diabetes were a fatal combination in the bedroom. Joe liked Harry and rationalized bedding his wife as doing him a favor. “Not to be half naked when you went for your walk?” Joe asked as he rummaged through the mess.

“No. To smile and tell him to fuck off.”

A check laying at the edge of the pile caught Joe’s eye. It was dated October 2, 1975 made payable to Westfield’s only Jewish temple, Temple Emanuel, for $5,000.

Alenia playfully squirmed on his lap. “Looks like garbage. I’m still tired. Let’s go back to bed.”

Joe let Alenia’s suggestion pass without comment. He stared at the check and took a gulp from the mug. “The
Five Books of Moses
on the kitchen table, the rabbi at the cemetery, and a donation to a temple. The man was closest to being an anti-Semite as one can be. Doesn’t make sense.”

She leaned back to nibble on Joe’s ear. “Jozef… I don’t care.”

Joe moved his head away. He rummaged through the mess. A sheet of carbon
paper was sandwiched between a sheet of onionskin typing paper and a faded photo clipped out of a newspaper of a man in a glass booth. Joe strained to make out the face. Only one word was legible in the caption beneath. “Eichmann,” he said. “This was taken at his trial in Israel. Do you know who Eichmann was?”

“He killed the Jews in the Great Patriotic War,” Alenia said flatly. The Great Patriotic War was what the Kremlin dubbed World War II and drummed into children.

“You’re as smart as you are beautiful,” Joe said, patting her rear.

“Many of my family died in the war,” she said without emotion. “Maybe Mr. Swedge liked Nazis.”

“Preston was a lot of things, but I doubt that he was a Nazi lover.” Joe turned to the carbon paper. He hadn’t seen or handled the stuff in years. The paper was severely creased looking as if any manipulation would cause it to split. “Do me a favor. Get a pencil and the tweezers from the top right drawer in my desk.”

Alenia popped the G-string with her half-inch French manicured nails as she walked to the den. Joe felt where Alenia used the daggers to scratch the middle of his back. She returned with the pencil and tweezers tucked in the half-dollar size patch covering her nether region.

Joe held out his hand. Alenia snapped the items into his palm. Using the pencil’s eraser, Joe tried to hold the carbon sheet down on the table. “This isn’t working. Give me your fingers.”

Alenia held out her hands, pushing a two carat diamond toward Joe’s face. He guided the nails on her index fingers to the edges of the carbon paper. “Don’t move,” he ordered.

Joe lifted the carbon paper with the tweezers just enough to slide the pencil under the flap, ever so slowly unfolding it along the crease. “You can let go,” he said.

“Do I get a reward?” Alenia asked, puckering her lips.

“Later,” he replied, using the tweezers to hold the carbon paper to the light. Alenia snuggled next to him. Joe read the typewriter impressions aloud, “31may1944. Photo Reconnaissance Fifteenth Air Force: Mission 60 PRS/462 Can D Exposures 4056-8. Height 27,000 feet. Aerial photographs of Manowitz, Poland; Synthetic rubber production facilities; also noted barracks and railroad lines to the concentration camp Auschwitz.”

Joe put the carbon paper and tweezers on the table. He studied the loose-leaf sized map. “I don’t believe what I just read.” Stunned, he leaned back in the chair. Fumbling with the cellophane wrapper on the pack of cigarettes, he handed the pack to Alenia.

With the zip of a nail, she removed the wrapper and opened the pack. She handed a cigarette to Joe and took one for herself.

“What’s got you in this punk?” Alenia asked. She moved a chair away from the table and sat.

“The word is funk,” Joe corrected, taking a huge pull on the cigarette. He opened the door a crack to air out the growing haze of smoke. “The American Air Force took pictures of the Auschwitz concentration camp and didn’t do a fucking thing. You see this map?”

Alenia nodded yes. “What do the red lines mean?”

Joe traced his finger along the straight line from Foggia, Italy to Manowitz, Poland. “This is the route bombers took to bomb a synthetic rubber plant less than four miles from the concentration camp. The crooked line is the return path to Italy.”

“Syn-tetic rubber?”

“In the 1940s, tires were made from real rubber. The Nazis had limited supplies. They invented a way to make rubber from oil. We use something like it to make tires today.” Joe flicked ash into the mug.

From between two crusty pieces of cardboard, Alenia removed a second piece of carbon paper. This piece was in pristine condition and easily read. She held it up to the light.

EYES ONLY: JOHN P. McCloy

ASSISTANT SECRETARY, U.S. ARMY

20 August 44 Re: Mission completed.

Will return to Washington ASAP

Preston Swedge, Captain U.S.A.A.F.

“This McCloy a big shot?” Alenia asked with the cigarette dangling from her lips.

“I’m a little hazy on details about McCloy,” Joe said, tossing the cigarette into the coffee. “I’ve read some stuff about him—he was a big shot before, during and after the war. I’ll be right back.” He got up from the chair and walked out of the room.

Alenia looked through the pile and found a credit card sized envelope sealed with Scotch Tape. She removed a 2x2 photo of a young man in his dress army uniform.

Joe returned carrying the coat tree kept next to the front door. “Who’s this Rothstein?” Alenia asked, holding up the photo.

“Rothstein?” Joe asked as he placed the coat tree beside the French door.
Alenia handed him the photo. The uniform bore the wings of a pilot. Joe turned the print over. Paul Rothstein was written in blue ink. “I’ll be a son of a bitch. Another Rothstein. How many ghosts did he have?”

“You’re talking crazy,” Alenia said in a huff.

“Give me the picture of the kid with the
yarmulke
,” Joe said.

“Call me Joe’s secretary,” Alenia said, handing over the photo.

“Secretary isn’t the adjective I use.” Joe held the picture labeled Rothstein along side the one of the Bar Mitzvah boy. “The kid looks like a younger version. What do you think?”

Alenia scrunched up her nose. “Same mouth and noze. Must be his off springs.”

“Offspring. One word and one kid,” Joe said, laughing. “Preston must’ve been friendly with Rothstein the flyboy to have his kid’s Bar Mitzvah picture.” He removed the suit from the leather satchel, buttoned the jacket around the topmost hooks, and hooked the pants below. “Let me have Preston’s picture, the one where he’s standing next to the convertible.”

Alenia handed him the picture. Joe placed it into the jacket’s collar. “You were in the middle of something,” Joe said, looking at Preston atop the coat rack. “What, I don’t know.”

ALENIA HAD JUST STEPPED OUT OF THE SHOWER when her cell phone chimed her back to the reality of being married to Harry. She packed the G-string into a side pocket of her Gucci carry-all and slipped on a pair of what she called babushka underwear—non-see-through white bra and plain cotton panty. “Harry is on his way back from Atlantic City.”

Joe backed the Volvo onto the street to let Alenia’s Mercedes SUV out of the garage. When she arrived on his doorstep, the Benz was sequestered in the garage just in case Harry lost his shirt at the crap table and decided to come home to nestle his head in the bosom of his loving wife.

Joe flashed the Volvo’s high beams to signal that Tanglewood Lane was clear of prying eyes. Alenia screeched onto the street, blew him a kiss and was off.

It was 2:45. Finding the Rothstein photo put working on his research paper into the category of “I’ll get to it later.” He headed for The House of Beers to buy a six pack of Guinness Stout.

The parking lot of the converted gas station on the south side of town was deserted. Sunday football enthusiasts had completed their forays and were sitting at the feet of their televisions. Joe breezed into the store, gave a nod to the Pakistani clerk behind the register and fetched the beer from the cooler. The clerk robotically began to ring Joe’s weekly purchase of a twenty-four can carton of Budweiser, but caught his mistake. Distracted by a kid who looked about fifteen browsing the aisles, he handed Joe change from a twenty and hustled from behind the counter.

For an instant, Joe moved in the direction of the expected confrontation, and then stopped. Juveniles were somebody else’s problem. He put the change in his pocket and walked out the door.

Joe placed the six-pack on the Volvo’s passenger seat. It had been too long since he visited John Beauchamp, a retired Westfield detective who had taken Joe the rookie under his wing. It was on a reported break and enter call with
Beauchamp that Joe was introduced to Preston Swedge.

Beauchamp’s small yellow, two bedroom ranch was two blocks from The House of Beers. Parking on the street, Joe walked through an ivy covered red cedar arbor bound by hedges running the length of front yard. A wood ramp extended from the driveway to the front door. The tough guy cop cheated death when he suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side. Joe and the crew, who helped remodel his colonial, built the ramp and widened the interior doorways to make the house wheelchair accessible.

Helen Beauchamp, John’s bride of fifty years, answered the door. “I feel bad I haven’t been around,” Joe said, giving her a kiss on the cheek as he stepped inside.

“I was on my way out to do some shopping,” Helen said. “The girls okay?”

Joe wasn’t going to get into his domestic mess. “They’re good.” He held up the Guinness.

“John’s favorite. He’s in the Florida room watching his beloved Giants.” She put the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger.”

What Joe and the crew couldn’t widen were the halls. Chair rails attested to the limited width with deep scars and chipped paint from the armrests of John’s wheelchair. The wood floor in the hall between the front door and the kitchen was worn by its wheels. Directly off the galley kitchen was the Florida room.

Joe stood in the doorway. The original screened porch was enclosed using sliding glass doors to let John view the outdoors during his painfully slow rehabilitation. Plants, thriving in the hot-house like temperatures, filled clay pots and hanging baskets. John, despite being propped against a pillow, was slumped to the side of his motorized wheelchair. A plastic cup of water and a bowl of pretzel nuggets were in easy reach on a wicker end table that matched a loveseat and rocker.