The Girl Is Trouble (14 page)

It was the last thing I expected to hear from him. “Why?”

He held my gaze. “I’m not sure your skills are where we need them to be. First you got made during the tail—”

“I covered that up,” I said. “I got the picture.”

“And now I’ve heard from his wife that Mickey Pryor knows someone was calling around asking about him.” I’d been too abrupt with the hotel clerk. She must’ve realized what I was really up to and warned him. “Maybe later, when you’ve had a little more time to practice, we can reconsider putting you out in the field, but I think it’s best if I go it alone for now.”

Did he know that I tried to get Mama’s death certificate? Had he found out that I’d been to Yorkville? “I could still file and answer the phones, right?”

“Arthur?”

Pop looked toward the stairs, where Aunt Miriam was poised, ready to come down.

“I thought I heard your voice,” said Aunt Miriam as she started her descent. “It’s good to see you.”

“You, too,” said Pop. How much of our conversation had she heard?

“Has the ice stopped?”

“Yes. It’s warmed up a bit, too.”

“Good.” She arrived on the first floor and wrapped her arms around herself as though she needed to ward off a chill. “Do you mind if I use your telephone to call for a cab?”

“You don’t have to leave now, Miriam. It’s awfully early.”

“Not for your brother. And you know Adam can’t fend for himself.” Translation: she didn’t want to make him any angrier than necessary. “I brought gifts.”

“So Iris told me. That was very kind of you.”

“I had such a lovely time with Iris last night. It’s so nice to see her.”

“You’re welcome to visit anytime, Miriam. You know that.” She also knew what he didn’t say: the same invitation would not be extended to my uncle.

“And Iris is certainly welcome in our home. I know Adam would love to see her. But she seemed hesitant about the idea.”

“Did she?” said Pop.

I don’t know why I did it. Maybe I was mad at Pop for telling me I couldn’t work for him anymore. Maybe I was irritated at the way he’d shut me out over the photographs. Or maybe it was the disappointment in Miriam’s eyes. But I spoke up right then and said, “Actually, I’ve reconsidered. I’d love to spend the weekend with you.”

“What?” said Pop.

“Aunt Miriam invited me to stay with Uncle Adam and her this weekend. If it’s okay with you.”

I expected him to say it wasn’t. I was depending on it, in fact. That way I wouldn’t look like the bad guy and he could give me some hope that he still wanted me around. But hope, it appeared, was in short supply that morning. “It’s fine by me. In fact, I think it’s a great idea.”

“You could come, too,” said Aunt Miriam.

Pop put his free hand on my leg. “I think you know that wouldn’t be a good idea. But it would be nice for Iris to get away for a few days. Celebrate Hanukah with your congregation.”

“It would?” I said.

“You should spend the whole weekend, if Miriam thinks it’s all right.”

She brightened at the suggestion. “Of course it is.”

So he really was pushing me out. And why? So he could retreat to Betty’s love nest?

“Wonderful,” said Aunt Miriam. “I’ll take a cab to your school on Friday afternoon. That way we can make it to the Upper East Side before the Sabbath begins. You could invite a friend if you like. I know the idea of being all alone with your aunt and uncle must seem terribly dull.”

“You should ask Pearl,” said Pop. “I bet she’d love to spend the weekend uptown.”

“All right.” I swallowed hard to keep from crying. Pop wasn’t just shutting me out. He was sending me away.

CHAPTER

12

POP SENT ME TO BED
and told Miriam he’d call her a cab. When I woke a few hours later, Miriam was gone and Pop was on the phone in his office. He gestured as I passed his open door, asking me without words to close it for him.

I pushed it a little harder than was necessary.

I finished getting ready and ate a piece of toast for breakfast. Then I headed for school without bothering to tell him goodbye.

Let him stew on that, I thought. Let him know how it feels to be shut out.

Pearl was waiting for me just outside Mrs. M.’s house.

“Hi,” I said, startled to find her there.

“So what’s the scoop?” she asked. “Why was your aunt there last night?”

Pearl knew that Pop didn’t speak to Aunt Miriam and Uncle Adam. She also knew Miriam had gotten me in trouble several weeks before. It hadn’t occurred to me how strange and mysterious my claim that Miriam was in the house must have seemed when I had to abruptly hang up the phone the night before.

“She brought Hanukah gifts,” I said.

“That was nice.” She looked disappointed. She was expecting drama and all I had to offer were seasonal tidings. “I thought maybe something bad had happened to someone in your family, you know, and that’s why you left school early. I’m glad that that’s not the case.”

Now that she had no reason to be worried, I could see irritation creeping into Pearl’s face. After all, I’d abandoned her yesterday. She deserved an explanation.

“Can you go to my aunt’s with me this weekend?” I asked. “She invited me and a friend to stay with them.”

“Seriously? Sure. I mean, I’ll have to check, but I don’t think my parents will mind.”

“Good.” It would be easier with Pearl there. It was going to be awkward enough spending an entire weekend with them; having someone to distract me from dwelling on what Pop was doing during his time without me would make things much, much easier. “Is Paul better?”

“He seems to be. He’s coming to school, anyway. Probably wants to show off his war wounds so he can be a big man on campus.” I could tell she was biting back the urge to demand to know where I’d been the day before. I relented before she exploded.

“I went to Yorkville. With Benny.”

She couldn’t have been more confused if I’d just said I’d journeyed to the moon with F.D.R. “Huh?”

“That’s where I was yesterday. I went to find Anna Mueller.”

Her mouth flapped uselessly like a puppet’s. There were just too many disparate elements for her to assemble. “And did you?”

I slowed my pace, recognizing that this was a story that was bound to take longer than the walk to school would allow. As Pearl listened in silence, I told her about my trip to Yorkville, accompanied by a boy who I didn’t think wanted to talk to me, much less help me with something like this. I described the run-down hotel and the terrible room still stained by my mother’s blood, the man who’d held us at gunpoint, the ex-wife who had allowed her silence to be bought, and the strange, sad afternoon we’d spent in an air-raid shelter.

I told her everything. Everything except that my mother was, according to Anna Mueller, a Nazi. As far as Pearl knew, the story ended as soon as Anna admitted that she’d been paid to lie that Mama had committed suicide.

I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud. And the story was strange and awful enough not to need that meaningless twist. Wasn’t it enough to know that Mama had been murdered?

“So Anna confirmed everything. What about the police, though? They must’ve known that it was a murder, not a suicide. You said there was blood everywhere.”

“Anna said the man bribed the police, too.” Despite my attempts to slow our pace, we’d arrived at school.

“But who was he?”

“That’s the thousand-dollar question. Anna said she saw him going into Mama’s room several times. Whoever it was couldn’t have been a casual acquaintance.”

I stopped walking. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Anna’s accusation had so blindsided me that I hadn’t realized that Mama’s real crime was staring me right in the face. “Oh, God. It must’ve been true.”

“What?”

“The rumors about the affair.”

I was going to be sick. That was why Pop felt no shame about starting a new relationship before his wife’s headstone was even unveiled. She
had
been cheating on him.

But with whom?

“You can’t know that for certain,” said Pearl. “There are lots of reasons why a man might visit a woman at a hotel.”

“Such as?”

I could tell she was pulling the first available theory out of the sky. “Maybe he was a relative.”

“She doesn’t have any family here. The ones who brought her over are all dead and gone.”

It was obvious Pearl was out of examples. We walked in silence until we entered school property. I could feel Pearl struggling to find a way to change the subject. “That was really nice of Benny, to go with you like that. I wouldn’t have expected him to do that.”

“You and me both.” It still felt like a dream, his being there to help me the day before. Someday, when all this business with Mama was behind me, I’d have time to reflect on what Benny had done. But for now I had to set it aside.

There were much bigger issues demanding my attention.

“Do you think you can find a way to excuse our absences yesterday?” I asked Pearl.

“Sure.”

“And maybe filch a handful of hall passes?”

“Why?”

“Benny asked for them.”

Pearl shifted her books from one side to the other. “They keep pretty close tabs on those.”

“All he needs are two or three.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“So tell me about the new note,” I said. “Who got it? Did this one have anything in it?”

“Sarah Stein was the recipient. And there was a pamphlet in it from a pro-German group. Pretty awful stuff.”

“So I should talk to her and Saul. What about the lockers? Do you want to do another stakeout today?”

“You know what? Let’s not worry about it today. You’ve got a lot on your mind.”

“I could use the distraction, Pearl.”

Her eyes danced toward the front steps of the building. Benny was there with the other Rainbows, leaning against the banister with a sort of ease that suggested he’d been there for a while. When I saw him, he raised a hand just enough to let me know that he saw me, without alerting his friends to my presence. “Let’s talk about it over lunch.”

“Okay.”

The bell rang. I drifted away with a casual “See you later, alligator” and headed toward first period. On my way there, I passed Paul and Denise. His face was a fright of bruises. He smiled my way, showing off the missing eyetooth his father was so angry about having to replace.

I returned the smile and mouthed “Ow” at him.

As I approached the classroom for Personal Hygiene, Michael Rosenberg appeared. “I was hoping I might run into you. Did you hear about the new note?”

“The one Sarah got. Yeah—Pearl told me about it.”

“This was in it.” He thrust a pamphlet toward me, deliberately hiding the cover with his hand. I took it from him and caught a glimpse of it before shoving it in my health-and-hygiene book. “How to Solve the Jewish Problem,” it read.

I wished I could unsee it, but then I wished I could unsee a lot of things these days.

“We’re getting a little frustrated,” he said.

“I imagine so.”

“If you don’t think you can catch whoever’s doing this, you need to tell me.”

And then what? “No, I’m sure we’ll be able to do it. We just need more time.”

“Just don’t take too much,” said Michael. Benny walked by us. Michael waved his way. “Hey, Benny.”

Benny returned the “Hey” and kept on walking.

“I didn’t know you knew Benny,” I said, grateful for the change in topic.

“He works for my dad.”

“Oh.”

“He’s a good guy.” Michael winked at me. “But I guess you already know that.”

Michael knew about Benny and me? Had Benny said something?

Before I could ask, he said, “I’ll see you later,” and disappeared down the hall.

I went to Personal Hygiene and opened my book. The page I landed on, unfortunately, was where I’d shoved the pamphlet.

Did Mama distribute these kinds of pamphlets?

Stop it, Iris.
Why was I trusting the word of a woman who was so slippery morally that she accepted money in exchange for the truth?

Mama wasn’t a Nazi. She couldn’t have been. Her devotion last Hanukah, the way she insisted we be observant after Pop was injured, she couldn’t have faked that. And there was no way she suddenly lost her faith in the days between when Hanukah ended and her body was found. Which meant that if someone thought she was a Nazi they’d gotten it wrong.

But why?

Because they knew that if they claimed she was a Nazi, the police would have no reason to investigate the crime?

By lunchtime I was all but convinced that that had to be the case. I joined Pearl at our usual table and dug into the day’s hot meal of chili with surprising gusto. My appetite was back, even for food that hardly earned such enthusiasm.

“You seem better,” said Pearl.

“Do I?” It all seemed so desperately absurd that I had to fight the urge to laugh. Sure, I’d just tell Pearl,
The good news is I’m positive my mother’s not a Nazi. The bad news is, she’s still dead.

“Just thinking about something Benny said,” I said. “I talked to Michael this morning. He said the group is losing patience.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Pearl.

I looked toward where Paul was having lunch with Denise Halloway. They weren’t alone. Michael was there, too, and a couple of other boys I recognized from the federation. Despite the injuries, Paul was engaged in an animated conversation with the other boys.

“Well, if nothing else good comes out of all of this, it at least looks like the group is banding closer together. If the note-writer was hoping they’d disband, they’re sorely mistaken.”

“Paul says some people are still on the fence,” said Pearl. “But it is amazing what people will do when faced with a challenge.”

Denise looked around the room, clearly bored with whatever the federation members were talking about.

“Denise looks like she’d rather be anywhere but that table,” I said.

“She’s worried about Paul. She kept going on and on yesterday about how stupid it was that he told those boys he was Jewish.”