The Girl Is Trouble (27 page)

“No, thanks. I can always use snow if it starts to sting.” He sat back down and wrapped himself in a blanket he’d left on the bench. “What happened with your uncle?”

He was changing the subject and I knew it, but I was grateful for the shift. I sat beside him and told him the tale of my weekend with Adam and Miriam and how things had resolved the night before.

“And you’re okay with how your pop handled things?”

“He didn’t exactly have a choice, right?”

“He could’ve just injured the guy and let the police deal with it. There’s no hope of the truth about your mother coming out now. If the guy’s dead, he can’t confess to what he did.”

Benny gave voice to something that had been bothering me: Pop got his revenge when he killed Haupt, but what did Mama get? There were still people who thought she was a Nazi and many, many more who thought she’d killed herself. He could’ve kept us safe and vindicated her if he hadn’t responded so brashly.

Benny offered me the flask he’d had the other day. It felt lighter to me, a lot lighter, in fact. I took a swig, but instead of handing it back to him, I held on to it.

“You still didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“Do I really need to? You’ve made up your mind.”

“Pearl saw you putting notes in the lockers.”

He flicked ash into an empty can of pork and beans. Had he stolen that from the A&P? “And she couldn’t have been mistaken, huh? Or made the whole thing up because she was jealous that her best friend had someone new to occupy her time?”

Would Pearl act that way? No, not the Pearl I knew. But then the Benny I knew couldn’t write those letters. “Your handwriting matches,” I said. “Pearl couldn’t be mistaken about that.”

“And here I was starting to think you were the one person who believed in me,” he said.

“I do believe in you.”

“Then you never would’ve asked me if I’d done it to begin with.”

I hugged myself against the cold. It wasn’t just the room that was chilly; Benny’s manner was doing a fine job of sucking any hint of warmth from the air. “What are you going to do now?”

“Work. Wait to get called up. I’m eighteen, so it’s only a matter of time before that happens. Hopefully I’ll be able to take out a few Krauts and Nips before they do the same to me.” He rubbed his hands together.

“That’s a pretty dim future.”

“What do you expect from someone like me?” He leaned his head against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “You’d better go, Nancy Drew.”

I stood up, biting back the urge to tell him that he could’ve been so much more than he was letting himself become. As I turned to go, he took my hand. I thought he was going to pull me back to him, but his fingers slid from my grip and wrapped around the flask. I let go of it and him and left.

CHAPTER

23

I TRUDGED HOME IN THE GATHERING SNOW,
feeling just as bad as I had in the days before I visited Miriam and Adam. Was Benny innocent? How was that possible? Pearl had seen him. I didn’t doubt that for a moment. She had seen him putting those notes in the lockers. Twice. And there was no mistaking that handwriting.

I stopped in my path. He may have written the notes and put them in the lockers, but what if someone else had put him up to it?

I turned tail and headed back to the air-raid shelter. I slid the last few feet to the door and pounded on it with my bare hands.

It wasn’t necessary. The door was unlocked. Under the force of my knocks it swung open, revealing an empty space.

I stepped back and peered at the building Benny lived in. I had no idea which apartment was his. In the distance the bells at Our Lady of Sorrows began to sound the five o’clock hour.

I needed to get home. Benny would have to wait until morning.

I made it home ten minutes later. As I entered the house, I waved to Pop, who was seated in his office with the phone to his ear. As he returned my wave, he gestured for me to close his door. It latched with a sickening thud.

It seemed I’d hurried for nothing.

Would I ever work with him again? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. It turned out I was a terrible detective, just like I feared. I had gotten so many things wrong in the past week, misread so many signs and clues. It was embarrassing that I could be born into a family of detectives and have so little common sense and basic skill at my disposal.

I stood before his closed door and strained to hear his side of the phone conversation, but his voice was too low to make out. Just when I was about to abandon my eavesdropping, he started to laugh.

How could he possibly find something funny after he’d killed a man?

What I’d seen in Yorkville came rushing back to me. When it came to working cases for unscrupulous people, Pop sometimes operated under a different morality—after all, he was being paid to do what they asked, not pass judgment. He seemed to conduct himself more carefully in his private life, though, and encouraged me to do the same. Being honest, respecting authority, saying thank you—these were all things he believed were important. So why did he choose to act like one of his clients when he faced down Stefan Haupt? Why not, as Benny suggested, shoot to disarm him and then let the proper authorities determine his punishment?

I couldn’t come up with any reason other than that it was easier.

After a quiet dinner of kasha with lard and onions
,
I spent a miserable evening in my room, trying to unsuccessfully distract myself with comic books and
True Romance
magazine. I kept waiting for the phone to ring and for Rhona to demand to know if I’d talked to Pearl, but it remained silent. No doubt she’d pounce on me at school the next morning. What would I say then?

What could I say?

Just before I was about to call it a night and turn out my light, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I said.

Pop entered the room, looking strangely out of place among my girlish things. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be sleeping.”

“Not yet.”

“What’s on your mind, Iris?”

“What do you mean?”

He sat on the edge of my bed. “You were so quiet at dinner. It’s obvious something’s bothering you.”

I couldn’t tell him everything that was on my mind, but perhaps I could share part of it. “I’m just thinking about this boy I know. I found out he did something really terrible and I can’t wrap my head around it. I never would’ve thought he was capable of something like that.”

He rubbed his chin, where that day’s growth of beard was starting to create a shadow. “The two things aren’t mutually exclusive, are they? People who do awful things can also be kind and generous. No one is all bad or all good. And sometimes, though we may not understand it, people have reasons for the things they’ve done, even the awful things.”

Was it possible Pop knew that I had been brooding over what he’d done to Stefan Haupt? “Isn’t that just making excuses, though? If you’ve done something awful, can your reasons for doing it ever justify it?”

He smoothed my quilt with his hand, pressing out the wrinkles in the fabric. “It’s not about justifying or forgiving someone, Iris. A bad thing is still a bad thing. But it gives you a reason, and once you have a reason, maybe you can prevent it from happening again.”

I tried to tune my head to what he was saying, but all that came back was static. “Thanks, Pop,” I said.

“Get some sleep.” He looked down at his hands and it became apparent that there was something he wanted to tell me. “I might be gone for a few days. There’s a big case upstate that I’ve gotten involved in. The money’s too good to pass up, I’m afraid.”

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow.”

Still he didn’t meet my eyes. Maybe he was more bothered by what had happened to Haupt than he’d let on. Or maybe he was just worried about possible retribution.

“I could go with you,” I said.

“Not this time, Iris.” He bent my head forward and kissed me. “When I come back, let’s talk about the business again and how you can help me. All right?”

I stared at his face, a face that was, mercifully, still whole, and wondered how he ever thought things could go back to how they used to be. “Sure, Pop,” I said. “That would be swell.”

*   *   *

I DISTRACTED MYSELF
with
True Romance
until my eyes grew too heavy for reading. Despite the light subject matter of the magazine, as I dozed, my mind seemed determined to go to dark places. In my dreams I was back at the White Swan with Pearl, listening to the gunshot and the sound of what we thought was Stefan Haupt running from the scene. We went into 3C, and just before I was able to verify that Pop wasn’t the one who was shot, the gun would fire again and I’d be back at the beginning, breathlessly worrying if Pop was dead.

I awoke with a jolt after the dream had restarted for what must’ve been the fifth time. I couldn’t bear to experience the worry that we’d been too late again, that Pop would be dead, that our trip had been in vain. Each time it felt so hopeless. Why did my mind insist on going back there again and again?

Was I missing something? Was this my brain’s way of conflating the anniversary of Pop’s injury with what happened at the White Swan, or was something else afoot?

*   *   *

BEFORE I LEFT
for school the next morning, I combed the paper, looking to see if they’d identified Stefan Haupt, but there wasn’t even a mention of the body in Yorkville. Pearl was waiting for me at the corner. From the look of the snow accumulating on her shoulders, she’d been waiting for a while.

“Hi,” she said shyly, like this was our first encounter since I’d moved to the Lower East Side.

“Hi.” We started toward school, both of us bent into a powerful wind that ruffled our hair and sent the snow into our mouths and eyes. “I think we should hold back until the first bell.”

“Why?”

“Rhona’s on the warpath. Until I figure out how to handle her I think it’s best if you lie low.”

Pearl nodded her consent and slowed her pace.

“There was nothing about Stefan Haupt in this morning’s paper,” I said.

“I know. I looked, too.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Pearl removed her glasses long enough to wipe them free of snow. “Maybe they couldn’t identify him? After all, he was shot in the face.”

That could’ve been deliberate on Pop’s part. If the police couldn’t identify the victim, it would be that much harder to track down a killer. Besides, this was a personal victory, not a public one. He didn’t need anyone else to know that Haupt was dead.

I had to change the subject, before that wretched bloody face moved into my brain and set up camp. “I talked to Benny,” I said.

Pearl put her hands in her pockets and buried her chin in her scarf. “And?”

“And I wonder if it’s possible that there’s more to the story.

“I told you what I saw.” Her words were clipped, her tone defensive.

“I know. And I believe you. I believe he wrote those notes and put them in the lockers. But what if someone made him?”

“Like who?”

“I’m not sure yet.” We walked in silence, both of us weighing the possibilities in our heads. “I talked to Michael, too. He said the federation wants you back.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “They’re impressed with what you did and they want to give you a second chance.”

Her face flushed despite the cold. “Wow. I didn’t expect that.”

“Are you going to take it?”

“I don’t know.”

P.S. 110 came into view. Another banner hung above the main entrance, unreadable from this vantage. Could it be more anti-Semitic vandalism, perhaps proof that someone else had been behind this all along?

With each step, the sign became clearer. This wasn’t another threat to the Jewish students, just a reminder: “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Like we could forget.

*   *   *

PERSONAL HYGIENE.
Again. Mr. Pinsky droned on about the role of sanitary fairs in the nineteenth century while the students around me giggled at the concept that people used to throw their poop out the window.

But as compelling as disposing of fecal matter during Victorian times could be, it wasn’t where my mind was. It was buzzing around Benny and Pearl.

Michael had given both of them a second chance. But that wasn’t accurate, was it? The notes weren’t the first bad thing Benny had done that Michael knew about: according to what Paul told Pearl, Benny had also stolen from the store.

Was it possible that while Michael knew Benny was stealing, his father didn’t?

The notes and the banner were a public act, one that Mr. Levine was bound to hear about from customers in the neighborhood. Michael would’ve had no choice but to tell him about that.

Michael had to know his father would forgive Benny for all of that, just like he had to know that he would’ve given him another chance if he’d known he was stealing. So why tell him about one crime, but not the other?

Leverage. Michael could have used the thefts as leverage. After all, Benny probably didn’t know what Mr. Levine would do if he knew he was stealing. That information was Michael’s alone.

Michael knew that Benny’s dad was out of work and that Benny was the family’s only source of income. He knew Benny would’ve been desperate to keep his job. And if Benny were fired, the fact that he was a thief could keep him from getting another one.

So Michael dangles this carrot in front of Benny and tells him his lips are sealed, as long as Benny does him this one little favor …

Wait a minute—what was I thinking? That Michael made Benny leave the notes? How on earth did that make sense?

“Don’t forget,” said Mr. Pinsky as class wound to its completion. “After lunch everyone will be convening in the auditorium for our ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ convocation. We ask that you treat this somber occasion with respect and demonstrate the maturity we know you young men and women are capable of displaying.”

And that’s when it hit me: Michael had done it to force the federation to band together at a moment when it seemed like the group was doomed to fall apart, and to force the school to recognize what was happening to the Jews in Europe. He needed Benny’s help because he knew he couldn’t write the notes and plant them himself. He may not have ever anticipated our figuring out who was behind the crimes. And if we did, Michael may have assumed that we’d never come forward if we knew Benny was behind it.