See How They Run (8 page)
Benjamin Paul Rabinowitz. Postal worker. Chasing the Nazis through rain and sleet and snow.
Inside the Wallkill Inn, David, Rabinowitz, and the government agents huddled around a splintery pine table. They drank Rheingold beer so cold it might as well have been carbonated water.
Watching Rabinowitz, it was difficult for David to imagine much more than one of those pale, balding men who shuffle around the back rooms of every post office in America, quietly sorting the mail.
The government pensioner was under five feet, five inches, with mottled, mush-yellow teeth. His wrinkled cheeks and turkey neck were covered with dark gray stubble. He wore a stained gabardine suit bought in 1960 at the latest.
Benjamin Rabinowitz also had a great drooping wen on the right side of his nose and the disconcerting habit of saying
“bullchit”
every fourth or fifth word out of a slightly collapsed, somewhat feminine-looking mouth.
Rabinowitz knew his Nazis, though.
At the time of the Wallkill meeting, he was hard at work on a manuscript that was already some twenty-one hundred typewritten pages long. Titled
Leading American Nazis
, it traced, among other things, 400 of the 750 companies set up by Martin Bormann to protect the Third Reich. The book tracked several, of these companies right to the heart of some of America’s richest and most prestigious corporations: a major oil company—one of the “Six Sisters” a noted cereal maker; a corporation that owned one of the big television networks.
If Rabinowitz was correct, David figured, business fortunes, major stocks, and impeccable reputations would tumble like dominoes come publication time for
Leading American Nazis
.
Was that a clue to consider, David suddenly wondered? Could that possibly be connected with the Storm Troop? Or was his imagination simply getting out of hand?
“Let me ask you a rather strange, leading question, Dr. Strauss,” the Nazi-hunter rasped after all the general introductions were over.
David Strauss shifted uneasily on the wooden bench. He had no idea what to expect from a man whose obsession, hobby, whatever, was Third- and Fourth-Reich Nazis.
“What do you know about the Jews and President Franklin Roosevelt? This is during World War II I’m talking about. What do you think?”
David was noticing that he kept adjusting his gold wedding band as he sat at the slightly surreal barroom table. He found it especially hard to look into Rabinowitz’s rheumy, blood-flecked eyes.
“Not an awful lot. A little bit,” David started to answer the strange man’s question. “Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, Harry Hopkins. They all must have known about the German and Austrian concentration camps, say, from 1939 on. They waited until 1943 to do something substantial or meaningful about the Holocaust. That’s fairly well documented, I think. Arthur Morse wrote a popular book, right?”
Benjamin Rabinowitz nodded indifferently. He bit off half of a hard-boiled egg brought with the beers. Yolk crumbled down the front of his shirt.
“Now why in God’s name do you think President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull acted like that toward the Jews? Sort of a peculiar way to act, eh? I mean, you and I wouldn’t have acted like that, waiting four years to do something about the ovens.”
David thought that he had no goddamn idea why President Franklin Roosevelt had done
anything. Ever
.
“Well, I would imagine Roosevelt was getting unbelievable pressure to stay out of the war in Europe. Isolationists. The 1940 election and his promises to ‘keep our boys home.’ I also believe that some large American companies were still supplying and secretly arming Germany at that time.”
“And?”
And what?
Dr. David Strauss suddenly felt as if he were taking orals in Modern World History. The little mailman manqué was watching him like some sort of madman professor emeritus.
“I guess … uh … well, shit.” David finally had to laugh. “If the American people had known about the Nazi death camps, they would have forced this country into World War II sooner. Let’s hope so anyway.”
The Nazi-hunter folded his liver-spotted hands together, prayer style.
“No bullchit now,” he said. “All right, Dr. Strauss. David, if you believe that I’m a sane man—and I am. If you believe I am a relatively intelligent man to have tracked down all of these Nazi bastards, what do you make of this statement?” Rabinowitz made a small dramatic pause. “No bullchit now, David. This is important with respect to understanding the killings in your family. Tell me what you think of this idea:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Nazi
.”
The agent Hallahan spit out a mouthful of beer.
David’s mind whirled off into blank, empty space for a few seconds.
Rabinowitz just stared at the young, dark-haired doctor. He was perfectly serious, David was certain.
David realized that his face and neck had gone all red. He’d begun to feel slightly paranoid, foolish. He answered with a statement that didn’t make any sense to him.
“Well, I’d have to take it that you were … using the word
Nazi
metaphorically. Like—Richard Nixon was a prick.”
Rabinowitz’s face lit up with a wonderful Halloween-pumpkin smile.
“Good. Wonderful.” He began to praise David, like a proud yeshiva instructor. “Mr. Callaghan. Mr. Callahan, are you still with us?”
Harry Callaghan nodded his head slowly. “Yes. Sure. Only in addition to being
a prick
, Nixon was a
Nazi
.”
This came so unexpectedly from the serious-faced agent that it made all of them laugh. Benjamin Rabinowitz, especially, laughed until tears were rolling down his mottled cheeks.
“Okay then,” he finally said to David, his eyes now shiny and alive. “Okay. Let’s make up a theory about the Strauss family. You see, it’s stupid to try and think with one, two, three, four logic, because we don’t have all the one, two, three, four facts yet. Let’s suppose, just suppose that someone in your family—your grandmother, your brother—had seriously, perhaps inadvertently, threatened the Nazis.
“Yes, yes.
Maybe
, it’s Die Spinne. ODESSA … this is a very complicated matter, though. Many possibilities, given what’s happened so far. We have to move one step at a time.”
David literally sat on the edge of his seat. He watched the Nazi-hunter with quiet amazement. He was beginning to understand certain new things about being a survivor. What it meant to be a Strauss. David also had the feeling that Benjamin Rabinowitz was being cautious with him. Bringing him along slowly.
“For the moment, I think two things.” Rabinowitz clasped his hands once again. “
One
. Someone in the Strauss family has seriously frightened the Nazis. Somehow. I don’t know exactly how yet. That part confuses me. Okay?
“
Two
. We mustn’t limit our thinking to the old-time Nazis, David. Remember Franklin Roosevelt. Nazis take many odd shapes and forms today. As many shapes as evil itself. I mean that last very seriously.
“And Mr. Callaghan. If I was to take a guess, I would say that what is involved here could bring a serious war to entire countries. Big, big doings. Bigger than anyone might think to guess right now. A very interesting combination of things at work here.”
Benjamin Rabinowitz suddenly thrust his skinny hand across the table. He shook David’s hand with surprising strength.
“You’re a nice man, David. I wanted to meet you. This is a good start. This is terrific. Maybe we’re going to hunt Nazis, young man.”
Benjamin Rabinowitz took a deep breath.
“Now I have to tell you a few things about your grandmother and myself.”
For the next hour, Rabinowitz patiently told David about the old days: some good; some not so good.
Rabinowitz even gave David the very vaguest details about a secret Jewish group that had been formed to ensure against another Holocaust. He told David about a meeting in Jerusalem—where David’s grandmother had underestimated the Fourth Reich.
At the same time, Benjamin Rabinowitz began to get the feeling that David knew almost nothing about the Jewish defense group.
Elena Strauss had kept this grandson out of it. She had shielded the doctor from any involvement whatsoever.
“In Jerusalem, we had wanted to try and stop the Reich once and for all, David. One final time, and then it would all be over. We wanted one last confrontation with the swine,” Rabinowitz rasped.
David Strauss couldn’t have agreed more.
Just one final battle with the Nazis would be perfect.
When they finally left the Wallkill Inn, it was minutes after nine on the beer sign glowing in the front window.
A bright green stoplight at the four corners shivered on a steel necklace hung across Main Street.
Maybe it was his imagination, but David felt a chill crawling up his back. His mind was racing with all the new possibilities. Extreme pressure was pushing in on his skull from all sides.
Actually, though, he felt pretty good, David thought. Better anyway. He was excited about working with Rabinowitz. The night was buzzing with possibilities and prospects.
“It will be interesting to see,” he heard the Nazi-hunter say in a dream voice. He felt the skinny hand on his arm. “I wouldn’t even discount Arabs. Black September. Even Arabs have to be a possibility at this point.”
Arabs. Franklin Roosevelt. Nazi conspiracies high up in the United States Government.
The important Nazis would have to be truly frightened to come out in the open after all these years.
The Reich moving once again. For whatever reasons.
David was actually beginning to think a little like a Nazi-hunter. It was a fait accompli, then. He was going to become involved. Amazing as it all seemed right at that moment.
“You must be careful now,” he heard Rabinowitz warn. “The Strauss heir must be careful, David. I begin to wonder if I shouldn’t respect your grandmother’s wish to keep you out of all this …” Rabinowitz’s voice trailed off.
As he got into the Lincoln, David noticed a tiny silver light flash across the darkness of Main Street.
A cigarette lighter, he thought after his initial start.
So this is how paranoia feels. So this is how it’s going to be from now on
, David realized with a shiver.
Just then, David heard a distinct
thhhppp
noise outside the open car door. A sickening, crunching sound.
David’s nervous system clicked on as if an unseen hand had thrown a full-power switch.
The next few seconds were impossible to comprehend.
Benjamin Rabinowitz’s hand flew up to clutch his forehead. The old man groaned loudly. He looked at David, utter disbelief and shock stamped onto his face.
“
They shot him!
” David screamed out.
“Oh, my good God!”
A second bullet ripped through the car’s side roof. David threw his arms up to protect his head.
He went crashing down into the narrow space between the front and back seats.
The Lincoln suddenly jolted and screeched away from the curb.
David was still lying across the floor, with the Lincoln’s back door swinging wide-open. David could feel the road bumps coming hard and fast against his cheekbone. The floor, the pile carpeting, was bouncing up and clubbing him repeatedly.
It was all unreal. A terrible nightmare. It had to be.
“They killed Rabinowitz!” David could hear himself yelling. “They shot him! They killed him!”
As the Lincoln swerved and turned, David began to throw up.
So this is how it’s going to be from now on.
Stranger events transpired during the week of the funeral of Benjamin Rabinowitz. Much stranger events.
It began on Fifth Avenue in New York.
Frizzy Wyatt Earp mustache drooping, six-gun banging off his meaty hip, a twenty-five-year-old New York City patrolman, Michael Rosenberg, finally had to stop and sit
and vomit
.
Rosenberg plopped down on the dusty curb at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Eighth Street.
In front of a Pan Am ticket office.
Across from Scribner’s Bookstore.
He took his visored cap off, hung his head between dark blue trouser legs, and out it came: a viscous orange-yellow river running down over the gutter litter.
Rosenberg then unbuttoned his police tunic down to the third gold button. Perspiration was pouring down onto his V-neck T-shirt. It dripped from his thick mustache.
The young New York policeman simply
could not believe
what he was witnessing on Fifth Avenue.
The morning before, a gawky zombie in a Fleet messenger service hat and “Let It Bleed” T-shirt had arrived bright and early at 1330 Avenue of the Americas, the executive offices of ABC-TV.
He had hand-delivered a reel of film in a flat silver can. Taped to the can was a paid invoice and a two-page cover letter addressed to the executive board of the TV network.
Less than fifteen minutes later, four New York City policemen descended on Fleet headquarters on the lower level of Grand Central Station. The letter and film delivered by one of their messengers contained the first substantial news from the Storm Troop since the Strauss family murders thirty-three days earlier in Westchester.
“Unless the accompanying educational filmstrip is shown on all network news programs tonight,” the cover letter instructed, “one of the Jewish families listed on page two will be extracted within twenty-four hours. There will be no deadline extensions. None.”
Listed first among the names on page two was an obvious choice: the powerful Jewish family that owned a controlling interest in ABC.
Mr. & Mrs. Charles Samuelson, United Nations Plaza; children: Robert, Louis, Rachel; grandchildren: thirteen
. Listed #2, 3, and 4 were the Jewish stars of ABC’s top-rated TV shows.
At 7:00
P.M
., New York time, the anchorman for ABC
Evening News
came on the air looking particularly pale and tense.
