The Other Traitor (16 page)

Washington Square Park was practically deserted. It was just before noon on Tuesday, so where were all the NYU students? This was the university’s urban-campus equivalent of a gathering place, and Julian was accustomed to seeing kids swarming through the park even in frigid weather like today. But this morning, the benches along the paths were covered with an inch of icy snow and the only inhabitants were a couple of people with dogs and an old woman pushing a shopping cart filled with rags.

And then it hit him. It was still winter break. His sister might not be here after all, despite her posted office hours, which showed her in today between twelve and two pm.

He walked through the park, hands buried deep in his pockets, the wool hat he’d picked up at a thrift store this morning pulled low over his ears. The temperatures were again in the single digits, making this one of the coldest winters on record. Those global-warming-mongers might do well to recheck their calculations.

He hurried under the modern archway and through the courtyard into Vanderbilt Hall, relieved to get out of the freeze into the heated lobby.

A gray-haired uniformed guard was seated at a desk.

So much for the surprise-his-sister approach. “I’m here to see Professor Rhonda Berkowitz,” Julian said.

“ID, please,” the guard said.

Julian pulled out his rarely used driver’s license with cold, stiff fingers. “I’m not a student here, will this be okay?”

The guard turned it over in his wrinkled hands, then dialed a number on his phone and waited. “Hello, Professor. I have a Julian Sandman to see you.”

She must have said something unexpected to the guard because he looked up at Julian and scowled. “Well he looks like the photo on the driver’s license. Not a bit like you, though. What’s that?” he said into the phone. “Wait. Let me write that down.” He turned to Julian and chuckled. “How much is 8763 times 3529 times 1753?”

“Are you kidding me?” This was a game Rhonda used to play with him when they were kids. Accelerating mathematical challenges to see just how far he could go with mental math. “I have no idea.”

Julian thought he heard low laughter coming through the phone, then his sister’s speaking voice.

“Okay,” the guard said. “She wants to know how much they add up to.”

So Rhonda decided to give him an easy one. Julian thought for a second. 8763, 3529, 1753. “14045,” he said.

His sister must have heard him, because Julian could hear her voice coming through the phone.

“I guess you passed the test,” the old man said with a wink. “Professor Berkowitz said you can go on up.” He gave Julian a pass and her room number. “End of the hall, on the left.”

Julian took the elevator up to the third floor and walked down the empty hallway. All of the office doors were closed except for his sister’s. He stepped inside. It was a large room with a view of the park, not surprising considering Rhonda’s reputation as a brilliant constitutional lawyer, but with all the piles of books and files, it looked more like a storage room than an office. There was a conference table with six chairs, also loaded with files. His sister was nowhere to be seen.

Then, on the other side of a tower of law books, he saw something move. A head popped up, covered with frizzy graying black hair, then a pair of piercing pale blue eyes, small pursed lips, and finally a dumpy body wearing a ratty brown sweater over a black wool jumper. His sister had never been a fashion-plate, but it seemed she’d deteriorated even further in the year since he’d last seen her.

She stood up with an effort, brushed off her jumper and trundled over to her desk carrying a book.

“Stop looking shell-shocked, Julian, and sit down.”  Her voice hadn’t changed. Soft, languid and quivering, like a very old person, not a forty-year old. It was remarkable to him that Rhonda Berkowitz had once been a formidable presence in a courtroom, though she’d stopped trying cases four years ago to dedicate herself to research and teaching full-time.

The two mahogany guest chairs were both covered with files. Julian picked up a stack and looked for a place to put them.

“Anywhere,” his sister said.

He set them on the floor, then sat down, leaving his jacket on.

She watched him with alert crane-eyes, her hands folded on the desk, a thumb and pointer finger worrying each other. It was a nervous habit she’d had, even as a kid. There was one photo on her desk, of Rhonda and her husband Gary, another well-known attorney who was always spearheading high-profile liberal causes.

Finally, Rhonda released a deep sigh. “I assume our mother and grandmother are fine, or you would have called rather than taken a chance that I wouldn’t be in my office over winter break.”

Her condescending, indifferent tone irked him. “Yeah. They’re okay. Though it would probably be nice if you visited Nana once in a while since your office is only about a mile from her apartment.”

“Jewish guilt doesn’t become you, Julian.” She sighed again, as though the burden of this conversation was wearing her down. “I have issues with our grandmother,” she said in her unhurried shaky voice.

“Duh.”

“Don’t be cute, Julian. You’re thirty years old, not a child.”

“And Nana’s ninety-five. Are you going to wait until she’s dead to confront her about your issues?”

“Is that why you’re here? To play family peacemaker?”

“This is pointless.” He stood up to leave.

“Ahh, Jules.” Another tormented breath. “My poor little Jules.”

“I’m no one’s poor anything.”

“I’m sorry. I spend so much time arguing and debating with my students that I think I’ve forgotten how to be civil.”

He rested his hands on the arms of the chair. The wood was deeply scratched. “I saw Essie the other night,” he said. “She’s still angry with Nana, too.”

“Can’t blame her. Our grandmother wasn’t the warmest of mothers.”

“Oh, like our mother was?”

Her lips twitched in a little half-smile. “Touché. You would have made a good lawyer, Jules.”

“You already have that covered, Ronnie.”

“Fair enough,” she said, still smiling. “Now please tell me why you’re here.”

“I know you stay in touch with Essie, so I’m guessing she told you I quit my job.”

“Even if she hadn’t I could have deduced it looking at you. It’s a Tuesday and you’re not wearing one of your snazzy suits.”

“I also broke up with my girlfriend.”

“No great loss there,” she said. “But I understand you’re walking away from two advanced degrees to take up finger painting.”

“Really, Ronnie? Are you still fourteen?”

“Sorry.”

“Between your abuse and Essie mostly ignoring me, it was a real pain in the ass growing up.”

“I can believe that.”

He took a deep breath. Being with his sister always set him on edge, but he needed to find out what he’d come here for. “Did you know that Nana’s brother made the painting in our living room?”

She pulled on a loose thread in her sweater. “I remember Mom mentioning that.”

“Not to me,” he said. “Friday was the first time I learned that someone else in the family had been an artist.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Mom’s always been very proud of you, Julian. I have, too.”

“Right. I’ve heard that refrain from Nana.”

“It’s true.”

“You could have been a great physician.” She sighed. “You could have been a great anything.”

“You’re changing the subject,” he said. “What’s the deal with Saul? Was Essie afraid if I knew he’d made the painting, I wouldn’t have pursued my higher education?”

“I don’t think that was it.”

“Something happened with Essie, Nana and Saul. I think it’s the reason Essie’s the way she is. Why she’s so angry at Nana.”

Rhonda stood up and began to pace.

“Tell me, Ronnie. You know something.”

She went over to the credenza behind her desk and began digging through papers and files. Finally, she pulled out a large, brown folder, held closed by a string. “This is something you might want.”  She handed him the folder.

It looked like it might disintegrate in his hands, so he opened it carefully. He slid out a stack of papers. Sketches done in pencil. He recognized the style. “Saul made these?”

“That’s right.”  She took the files off the other guest chair, dropped them on the floor, then pulled the chair close to Julian’s and sat down.

The paper was yellowed and fragile. The first few drawings were of comic-strip characters—Dick Tracy, Popeye, and Buck Rogers—the heroes of Saul’s day. He noted the three-dimensional aspect, which wouldn’t have been in the original comics, but was very similar to Julian’s own work.

He set each paper down on Rhonda’s desk after he studied it. There were several of the Buck Rogers character wearing a strange spacesuit, surrounded by objects that appeared to be glowing. They reminded him of something.

“Do you know the character?” his sister asked.

“Buck Rogers? Just that he travelled to the future. Early sci-fi.”

“Very early. He first appeared in the pulp magazine
Amazing Stories
in 1928.”

“Saul got rheumatic fever when he was ten, so these sketches are probably from around 1932 or ‘33.”

“Well, he chose an interesting subject,” she said. “As the story goes, Buck was exposed to radioactive gas when a coal mine caved in around him. He fell into a state of suspended animation and awakened in the twenty-fifth century. That’s where he has all his adventures.”

“Very cool,” Julian said. “I forget that radiation made it into popular culture in the early 1900s.” He looked again at the glowing objects. “So Saul was probably trying to convey radioactive rays here. It’s a lot like in the painting in the living room. I guess there’s a bit of Buck Rogers in that painting.”

He put the Buck Rogers sketches on the desk with the others, and looked at the next one. It was a study of a woman with her hair pulled into a loose bun. She had large eyes and a sad expression on her face and looked like the Madonna.

“This is our great-grandmother, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ve never seen a picture of her.”

“I think this is the only one.”

He turned to the next page. Another study. This one of a girl with a long slender neck and a thick braid draped over her shoulder.

“Nana?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

Julian put the last sketch on Rhonda’s desk with the others. “Saul was very gifted.”

“Like you.”

“Nana’s been telling me stories about him.”

“Really?” Rhonda plucked on her wiry hair. “What kind of stories?”

“That he played stickball as a kid, then became a communist.”

“That’s all?” she said.

“Is there something else?”

Rhonda looked away.

“What do you know about Saul?” he asked.

“Very little.”

“But you have his sketches,” he said. “Did he give them to Essie? Did she give them to you?”

Rhonda shook her head. “I got them from our grandmother.”

“Nana gave these to you? She doesn’t even talk to you.”

“Years ago,” Rhonda said. “She asked me to take them away before she burned them.”

“Burned them? Are you serious? But her brother made them. They’re a tangible part of her past.”

Rhonda put the sketches back into the folder. “I guess she didn’t want a reminder of that past.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe you should ask her.” Rhonda’s gaze pierced him.

What was his sister suggesting? That Nana had some terrible secret? Essie had said she was deceptive, but he had refused to believe her. Now, Rhonda’s story was matching up with their mother’s.

But that didn’t make sense. Nana was kind and wise and loving. It wasn’t in her nature to deceive. And yet, he sensed she’d been holding something back from him.

Julian took the folder of sketches from Rhonda. Sketches Saul had made. That Nana had wanted to destroy. Just like she’d hoped to do away with the painting Saul had made for Essie’s thirteenth birthday. But why? What was Nana hiding?

He shivered in the cold room. And despite the nearness of his sister, he felt more alone than ever.

Annette was relieved to step out of the frigid weather into the dim lobby of Arnie Weissman’s apartment building. The son of Isaac Goldstein’s attorney lived in an old building, probably built in the 1920s or 30s, but it was well maintained, with two matching Queen Anne sofas beneath a crystal chandelier. She gave her name to the doorman, who called ahead, then directed her to the elevator. She found the apartment number and rang the bell.

A nice-looking older man in a burgundy cardigan and pressed gray slacks opened the door. With his thin graying hair and intelligent brown eyes, he resembled photos she’d seen of his father, David Weissman.

“Please come in, Ms. Revoir.” He had a rich, melodious voice.

“Annette,” she said.

“Of course. And please call me Arnie.” He took her coat and led her to the living room. It had wood floors covered with rugs, comfortable sofas and easy chairs, and walls of books. On top of the baby grand piano in the corner of the room were framed colored photos of smiling adults and children and a couple of black-and-whites, which reminded Annette of the photos in Grandma Betty’s album.

“I apologize for the informality,” Arnie Weissman said. “I’m accustomed to meeting in my office or boardroom. I only recently retired and I’m still adjusting to my new situation. May I get you something to drink? A soda? Water?”

“I’m fine. Thank you.” She sat on the sofa with her satchel as he took the chair cattycorner to her. Through the large windows behind him, she could see the leafless trees of Central Park. “I appreciate you seeing me.”

“I was intrigued by your email,” he said. “I haven’t thought about Isaac Goldstein in years.”

“I imagine you’re too young to have met him.”

He smiled. There was a narrow gap between his front teeth that she found endearing. “Don’t be misled by my recent retirement. I held onto my practice many years after most of my peers had retired. I just turned eighty. And I did meet Isaac Goldstein.”

She felt a flutter in her chest. “Please, tell me.”

“First, if you don’t mind, I’m a little curious about you. With my father’s very heavy involvement in the case, you can understand I have a bit of a vested interest in learning what became of Isaac Goldstein’s family.” He ran his hand over his smooth-shaven cheek and stroked his chin. “You see, I knew he had a wife and daughter who left the country after his execution, but they seemed to have disappeared.”

Annette nodded. “They tried to disappear. They moved to Paris and my grandmother changed her name.”

“So you’re French? I thought I detected a slight accent.”

“And American. My father’s from the U.S.”

“And what made you decide to look into your grandfather’s death?”

“This.” She took out the photo album from her satchel and opened to her grandparents’ wedding photo. “I found it when I was packing up my grandmother’s apartment. She died a few weeks ago.”

“I’m truly sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you.” Annette felt the sting of tears. She hadn’t cried when she’d first learned of her grandmother’s death or while she packed up her things. Why was it hitting her now?

Arnie got up and left the room, so she had a moment to compose herself. It was probably the anguish she’d read in Grandma Betty’s letters that made her feel even closer to her grandmother than when she’d been alive.

Arnie returned with two glasses of water and a box of tissues, which he put down on the coffee table. He picked up the photo album and studied the wedding picture.

“This is much closer to what Isaac looked like in person than the photos and posters the public got to see,” he said.

“That’s why I decided to find out who he really was.” She dabbed her eyes with the tissue, then crumpled it up. “This man doesn’t look like a monster.”

Arnie put the album down on the table, then leaned back against his chair. “How much have you read about my father’s defense of Isaac?”

“I read the article you wrote in 1968 about your father. That’s how I found you.”

“So you’ve done your homework, but let me give you a little more background.” He pursed his lips, a faraway look in his eyes. “There are some who believe my father wasn’t qualified to handle the case. That it was way beyond his experience. And it’s true that my father had a small, family practice and that the Goldstein trial was at a Federal level and required someone knowledgeable in constitutional law. But my father was a brilliant and dedicated man. What he didn’t know, he taught himself.” Arnie stood up and paced in front of the window. Outside, the sky was a dull gray. “No attorney could have been more committed to defending Isaac Goldstein than my father. Not that they were beating down the door for the privilege.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you think Goldstein came to my father in the first place? None of the big firms would have anything to do with him. This was back in the early fifties. McCarthyism was in full flare. No one wanted to be seen as a communist sympathizer. And defending Isaac Goldstein would have cast suspicion on the firm that took him on.”

“Wasn’t your father afraid of being tainted?”

Arnie took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “My father was a great man. An independent thinker. Mass hysteria infuriated him, especially the Red Scare. He was determined to give Goldstein the best defense he was capable of. He worked tirelessly during the trial and through two years of appeals.” Arnie picked on a button on his cardigan. “My father was determined to defend Goldstein even knowing that he himself was under FBI surveillance as a possible communist. Even when the bar association threatened to have him disbarred.”

“For defending my grandfather?”

He nodded. “It was probably what led to his early death. At least that’s what my mother always maintained. That the stress of the trial, the appeals, and the harassment by the government caused my father’s fatal heart attack.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“Well, we all make choices.” There was anger or frustration in his voice. “I believe even if my father had known the outcome, he would still have taken on the case and worked it just as hard. Maybe harder, if that was possible.”

It hadn’t occurred to her that more than her own family had suffered from Isaac Goldstein’s persecution. She tried to bring down the tension. “You said you met my grandfather. Can you tell me about that?”

Arnie sat back down. “Sorry for getting emotional. This subject obviously pulls up a lot of painful memories for me.”

“I’m grateful to you for sharing them.”

He gave her a little smile. “Isaac Goldstein came to my father’s office in 1950, shortly before he was picked up by the FBI.”

“So he must have known he was going to be arrested.”

“He did. He was a communist. He never denied that. Many of his friends and associates were being arrested, so he knew it was just a matter of time for him. But I don’t believe he ever imagined how the charges would multiply and take on a life of their own.”

“And that’s when you first met him, at your father’s office?”

“That’s right. My father had a small suite in Midtown. Just Dad, a couple of associates and a secretary. I would often help out after school and occasionally my father would invite me to sit in with his client meetings, if they didn’t mind. I was sixteen back in 1950, a senior in high school, a baseball star.” He smiled at Annette. “That was a long time ago.”

“So you were at the meeting with my grandfather?”

He nodded. “And I remember thinking what a handsome, charismatic man Isaac Goldstein was. He commanded the room, even with his limp.”

“Limp?”

“War injury. That’s why he’d been given a medical discharge and ended up working at the Army Signal Corps toward the end of the war.”

She glanced at the photo of her grandfather in the open album on the coffee table. Bill had mentioned the war injury, but not the specifics.

“I recall him joking with my father, who was a serious man,” Arnie said. “And my father warning him. ‘Don’t take this lightly, Mr. Goldstein. If the government arrests you, it’s like falling into quicksand.’”

“Your father was prescient,” she said.

“No. He was a pragmatist who understood the seriousness of the situation.”

“Do you remember anything else about my grandfather?” She craved details from someone who had actually met him.

He thought for a minute. “He asked me about myself. I told him I’d been accepted to Brooklyn College and was going to play on their baseball team. And I remember he became pensive and then he said, ‘Sports. Stay with sports. I’ve always been a Yankee fan myself.”  He took a sip of water from one of the glasses. “The next time I saw him was at the trial. My father had gotten me in to watch.” He shook his head. “Your grandfather hadn’t been able to make his hundred-thousand-dollar bail and was being held at the Men’s House of Detention on West Street. I remember how different he looked from the first time I’d met him. Tense and anxious, even hostile. Much more like the photos that appeared in the newspapers. But by then, it was apparent to my father and very likely to Goldstein that the trial was a witch hunt.”

She sat up straight. “How so?”

“My father had gone into the trial believing he had a very strong chance of an acquittal. The prosecutor’s case was shoddy and mostly circumstantial. But then, Dad realized what he was up against.”

She felt tiny fingers crawling up the back of her neck.

“Dad was convinced the prosecutor and judge were in cahoots with the government. The judge wouldn’t allow important testimony that my father tried to get in and always favored the prosecution. It was apparent to Dad that they railroaded Goldstein’s conviction.”

“But why would they have done that?”

“You have to remember the times. In 1949, the U.S.S.R. had detonated their first atomic bomb. McCarthy was terrorizing Americans with the Red Scare. The Cold War was in full swing and the government decided to unite the masses in common hate, so they executed Isaac Goldstein as a symbol of evil communism.”

Bill had also believed that the ‘Death to Goldstein’ posters had likely been designed as an allusion to George Orwell’s
1984.

“So what you’re saying is there was no real case against my grandfather.”

“That’s right. Florence Heller, the key witness against him, claimed that Goldstein was the mastermind of a spy ring that included her, her boyfriend Joseph Bartow and Albert Shevsky, who worked at Los Alamos. Goldstein knew Bartow and Shevsky from City College, but he insisted that he had only a superficial involvement with them during the war.”

She was familiar with the testimony. “But why would Heller have fingered him?”

“Goldstein told my father that Heller was carrying out a personal vendetta against him because he had once wounded her female pride. You know the expression—Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned. Unfortunately, there was no way of substantiating this.”

A personal vendetta? There was nothing about this in anything she had read. “But I recall testimony where Florence Heller produced copies of atomic-bomb sketches,” she said. “They were very basic and not of particular value to the Russians, but they carried a lot of sway at the trial. Heller claimed she had received the sketches from Shevsky, and then given them to my grandfather to pass on to the Russians.”

“My father believed Florence was protecting Joseph Bartow and that she had actually given the sketches and other documents to him.”

“So most likely Bartow and Shevsky were the real spies,” she said.

Arnie turned his wedding band around on his finger. “That’s what my father believed. But years after the trial, it was revealed that Shevsky only had intermediate clearance, which wouldn’t have gotten him near important secret material. And yet it’s known there were leaked documents coming out of Los Alamos that were crucial to the Russians.”

“Do you think my grandfather was involved with a spy ring?”

He rubbed his chin. “It’s possible.”

His words bit into her. Was she deceiving herself trying to prove her grandfather was a victim when he really had been a perpetrator?

“But Annette,” he said. “Even if your grandfather had been aiding the Russians, it was certainly not at a level that would have justified his demonization and execution. And remember, during World War II, Russia and the United States were allies. So it could have been argued that at that time he was helping an ally.”

She thought about Yaklisov’s book, that someone who went by the code name Slugger was the real spy. “Did Slugger ever come up at the trial or after?”

“Slugger?” Arnie frowned. “Like Babe Ruth’s bat? No. I can’t say I ever heard that name in connection with Isaac Goldstein.”

“Did your father retain any correspondence from the trial? Either letters my grandfather may have written him or letters he may have received in prison?”

Arnie shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know of any letters Goldstein sent my father and any personal letters he had in prison would have been sent back to his wife with his other personal effects.”

Which Grandma Betty had most likely destroyed.

“Do you believe my grandfather knew who was leaking the documents?”