The Letter Writer (31 page)

Danziger shed the blanket and joined Cain in the kitchen, where the two men sat at the table with two bottles of beer. Danziger then began to talk of things that he had not discussed in ages.

DANZIGER TOOK A LONG SWIG OF BEER,
his Adam's apple bobbing with every swallow. Then he sighed, as if suitably fortified for the task ahead.

“May I?” he asked, tilting the bottle toward the file folder across the table.

Cain slid it toward him, and Danziger opened the flap. He picked up the Runyon story, curling at the edges, and he slowly broke into a smile of deep fondness. Then he shook his head.

“It shames me to say it now, but the day this edition of
Collier's
first went on sale was one of the greatest of my life. Or so I believed at the time. I clearly remember the morning. I had received advance notice of the story's contents from a writer friend in the Village, who knew very well the identity of The Dictionary. I rose at dawn in anticipation. I practically beat the delivery truck to the newsstand, and I didn't even wait to take it home. I stood there reading it on the sidewalk, pigeons strutting at my feet. My reaction was quite vain, quite proud, and quite stupid.”

He set down the beer.

“There is no fool like a young fool, especially one who believes he has arrived because suddenly he is notorious and has money in his pocket. I was also convinced, at least for a day or two, that I need never worry again about having a conscience. Folly and consequence. Engage in the former, and the latter will surely follow.”

Cain had already told him about his summons to the meeting at the Hotel Astor, with its unlikely cast of characters—so similar to the one at Longchamps—and the even more unlikely scheme that was afoot to secure the New York waterfront.

“Wartime,” Danziger said. “It breeds such creative alliances, yes? Hitler and Stalin, at least for a while. And now, Lansky and Luciano are breaking bread with Frank Hogan and the United States Navy.”

“The lion shall lie down with the lamb,” Cain said.

“Yes. Although I doubt Gerhard would take any comfort from this current manifestation. As long as Hogan and Haffenden remain willing to overlook the occasional excesses of their new friends, those friends will hunt until their quarry is dead.”

“There was one last thing,” Cain said. He hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Lansky, right before I left. He whispered in my ear, so that no one else would hear. He sent his personal regards to Sascha, and said to tell you that it had been far too long. He was smiling, but I wouldn't call it friendly.”

“I feared that would be his response.”

“You knew him then?”

“I was there at the birth, you might say. Of his career, I mean. And we did not part on the best of terms. You will understand when I have finished.”

Sascha then seemed to shiver. He swallowed more of his beer. A few minutes later, the bottle was half empty as he again took up his tale.

“I might have easily avoided this sort of life, of course. All of it: The disappearing act and, before, my descent into perdition, my apprenticeship among dangerous people. Even after losing my parents, I was well cared for. The good Reverend Haas saw to that after the
General Slocum
calamity. I was lodged with caring neighbors. Jews, of course—the reverend was not that magnanimous. I stayed in school. I had all the books I ever wanted. Responsible adults were concerned for my welfare.”

“Beryl said something about a rabbi.”

“Rabbi Kaufmann, yes. He became a presence when I began to discover the attractions of the streets. If I had heeded his counsel, I suppose that I might have taken up a respectable profession or trade. I might even have read for the law. But the competition was fierce, I must tell you. Stroll down Second Avenue, and how could a boy not be dazzled? Crap games in which, with a modicum of intelligence and mathematical cunning, you could instantly become wealthier. Whiskey and women—for a price, of course, but available all the same. Joints and hangouts offering all the action a boy could ever ask for. Tischler's on Rivington, Max Himmel's on Delancey. And there were so many easy ways for a boy like me to make pocket money from the macks and the gun molls.”

“Like what?”

“Running numbers, delivering a parcel here and there. For a while I was just an errand boy, until they learned I was also good at finding out things.”

“Such as?”

“Anything. Names, addresses, people's daily habits.”

“Information. Just like on your card.”

“Well, it's true. It is what I have always excelled at. Along with the languages, of course. But even then I was not a fool about it. I knew the temptations. I saw the dangers. Left to my own devices, I am confident I would have followed Rabbi Kaufmann's guidance. But I was led astray.”

“By who?”

“Not who. What. It was love. Love for a woman who is not at all to be blamed, because she, too, would have chosen the straight and narrow path for me.”

Cain wrinkled his brow.

“Then how—?”

“Her brother, Angelo. She was Italian, you see. Her family lived two blocks over. Upright people, all of them except Angelo. When I saw her at a dance, I knew I would have to impress him if I were ever to stand a chance at an introduction. So for a while—too long of a while—I did as he asked, and took orders from whoever he said, and I was happy to do so because it was leading me closer to her.

“I knew as well that I would have to learn her language, all of it, and not just the few rough terms I had acquired for my dealings on the street. I was happy to do this as well, because her language was a thing of beauty. Italian is like the lyrics to a love song. All of those vowels, rolling around like lovers in a bedchamber. Compared to it, German stumbles along like a defeated army in retreat, a dirgelike procession of consonants down a stony lane.

“And it worked! She liked me! Loved me, even, in spite of what I was up to with her brother. Her father did not share her feelings, of course, but sometimes at that age a father's disapproval only adds to a young man's charm. I became forbidden fruit of the sweetest variety. I was living in a dream of the best sort.”

Danziger paused for a moment, his eyes staring off toward something Cain would never see.

“Maria?” Cain asked.

Danziger's body jolted as if he'd been struck. His eyes flamed with accusation.

“Runyon mentioned her name in the story.”

“Ah.” He relaxed instantly. “Of course. Yes. Another reason I was so fond of that tale, although even he surmised correctly that tears were ahead.”

“It didn't last?”

“Unless you count the first nine years.”

“Nine?”

“Nine years in which she would never give her hand in marriage. Her father would not consent, not as long as I was a filthy companion of her disreputable brother and all of those terrible people he worked for. By then, of course, it was impossible for me to leave that sort of work. The Brain made that painfully clear to me. So I tried to earn my way financially into her father's graces. Yet, even after I moved into a fine new home in a far better neighborhood—up on the fringes of Yorkville, in fact—he would not relent. Still, she stayed loyal to me, or tried. But not long after the story in
Collier's
I sank so deeply into my own delusions that she moved away. Quite literally. Over to Queens, parting with a request that I not see her again. In my hubris, and even in my heartache, I insisted that I was not wounded. I assured her that I would soon find someone better. An idiocy, of course, but understandable because by then I had been in thrall to another for far too long, a devotion that had nothing to do with love.”

“Arnold Rothstein.”

“The Brain. My talents came to his attention fairly early. He was only eight years my senior, but seemed well advanced beyond the rest of us in both wisdom and sophistication. He was the up-and-coming force of our time—in those circles, anyway. So I did as he asked, whenever he asked it. And it was my ruin, as Maria could plainly see.”

Cain nodded at the file folder.

“Your arrest record was pretty thin.”

“Mine were not the sort of assignments which tended to land a man in jail. At first I was simply a finger man.”

“Finger man?”

“I knew how to find people who didn't wish to be found, usually those who were behind on their payments to Mr. Rothstein. He told me it was quite harmless, of course. He said it was like working for a bank, being a loan officer who went after welshers and deadbeats. I would hang around Lindy's, waiting for a name.

“Then one night he saw Maria, or, more to the point, saw me speaking to her in her own tongue. And with my fine and fluent Italian—I was overly proud of my accent, I must admit—I soon became an asset of another sort, by being able to find out what certain rivals were up to. A careful listener in all the right places. A spy, if you will.

“When necessary, I also functioned as a liaison for important meetings. Mr. Rothstein knew that whenever his Italian associates wanted to speak to each other in their own language I would not miss a trick.”

“It all sounds so normal. Almost like you were working for J. P. Morgan.”

“That is what I wanted to believe as well. Mr. Rothstein knew this. Because one evening he sent me out with two men who had been supplied with one of the names and addresses I had found for them. He told me to accompany them in order to witness the fruits of my labors. I was somewhat puzzled by the request, but I went without protest.

“It was a man, I soon learned, who was not simply behind on his payments. He had defaulted altogether. He had been redlined, as a bank officer would say. They stood me in the room and made me watch as they beat him. Quite thoroughly, with saps and a hammer. Then they bound him, forcing me to tie the knots while he squirmed and whimpered. We placed him in the trunk of a large Chevrolet and drove him to a dock on the Harlem River, where we put him aboard a boat. Cement shoes, you have heard this term, yes?”

“Yes.” Cain said.

Danziger's eyes looked dead, his face a blank. “Well, we made him a pair, then and there on the deck of the boat, in a galvanized washtub. I was charged with stirring water into the mixture. All the while this man watched me with his red eyes and his whimpers. I helped lift him overboard, and stood at the rail as he sank. His hair, trailing like seaweed. So many bubbles. I shall never forget.”

The room was silent a few seconds. Cain got up to peek around the corner to make sure Olivia wasn't listening. He heard her soft and steady breathing from her bedroom doorway. When he sat back at the table, Danziger had his head in his hands.

“Why did they do that?” Cain asked.

Danziger lowered his hands. He was pale, drained.

“To let me know that I was eternally theirs. A fact which Mr. Rothstein reminded me of not so much later, when I considered enlisting in the Army. So by the time Mr. Runyon met me on that night in 1920, I had hardened myself, and I had insinuated myself ever deeper into the organization. I was a planner, a thinker. I needn't dirty my hands anymore from that point forward, but certainly I was aware of what my talents helped bring about in the dark regions beyond my sight. Maria read this in my eyes, and that is why she finally gave up on me. A few years later I heard she had married a grocer, a man who sold citrus fruits in Queens. I never heard his name. I never went looking for her address. I could not bear to.”

“How'd you get out? I know you faked your own death, but that was eight years after the Runyon piece.”

“It took that long for me to see an opening for my escape. It came the night Mr. Rothstein was killed. Everyone was at Lindy's. A call came in, a little after ten. Mr. Lindy, he was not fond of having his telephone line tied up in this way, but what could he do? I watched as Mr. Rothstein took the phone. He got out his black book and nodded as he spoke. When he hung up he gave me the high sign, and motioned me to the door. I followed him outside, where he told me he was going to meet George McManus at the Park Central Hotel. I was puzzled, because Mr. McManus was a gambler of small consequence. The Brain handed me his gun for safekeeping until he returned. ‘I'll be right back,' he said. Those were his last words to me.

“The rest I learned from the newspapers. He arrived at room three forty-nine and was shot. A day or so later he died of his wounds. No one was ever convicted for the shooting, although that should not surprise you if you have read any stories about Mr. Anastasia.”

“Some kind of fix?”

“Yes. Some kind of fix. But by the time of the trial I was preoccupied by my own fix. From the moment The Brain died I knew there would be a war of succession. Even at his funeral people were already speaking of it.”

“The last time you rode in a taxi?”

Danziger smiled ruefully.

“Yes. Because from that point forward I began living more modestly, more carefully. As the killing began I awaited my moment, and it arrived quickly, well before the trial, even. I received word that one of the fallen, a poor mack of no account named Whitey Mendel, had been knifed in the face and dropped into the river. His corpse had turned up, but the police had not yet identified it. This was my chance. But to succeed I needed an accomplice, one who could not be chosen from any of the usual interested parties.”

“Yuri Zharkov.”

“A fine beat cop. He knew when to pry, and when to look away.”

“He was on the take.”

“No, no, no. You still do not see. As a cop in our neighborhood in those days you could either make yourself an ineffective nuisance by trying to stop every petty act, or, if you were wise, choose larger targets and work in concert with the neighbors to bring them down. He chose the latter, and in exchange for his assistance I helped him in return.”

“You ratted on someone?”

“On three men in particular. All of them deserving, and all of them by now deceased, thank goodness. It was a boost to his career, and to the city's law-abiding residents.”