The Other Traitor (18 page)

Arnie Weissman’s theories spun through Annette’s head as she stepped out of his apartment building into the frosty, late-afternoon air. A government conspiracy? Bill had also suggested as much, but that would be almost impossible for her to prove. The best way to publicly vindicate her grandfather was to identify the true spy. But how could she find the traitor who had evaded identification for over sixty years? Most everyone associated with the trial was dead. And Mariasha Lowe, who may or may not have been close enough to the family to know the truth, was no longer an option.

The smell of roasted chestnuts drifted toward her from a stand at the entrance to Central Park and a couple of joggers ran past into the park.

Bill might be able to help. She pulled out her cell phone.

“Well if it isn’t Annie-get-your-gun,” he said, sounding unusually exuberant. “I haven’t heard from you since Sunday night. How’s the romance with the grandson coming along?”

“It isn’t.”

“Gee, that’s too bad.”

“Do you have time to get together for a little bit?”

“I’m picking Billy up at six and bringing him back here for a special dinner. Come on by if you don’t mind watching me cook.”

She told him that was fine, and then took the uptown train to his apartment near Columbia University.

Since his separation from his wife six months before, Bill had been renting a studio on the sixth floor of an old building near Riverside Park. It had an elevator, but Annette couldn’t remember a time when there wasn’t an ‘Out-of-Order’ sign covering the control panel. She huffed up the stairs and found the door to Bill’s apartment slightly ajar. Bill had a bad habit of leaving his door unlocked. She knocked and walked in. “I’m here.”

The large room smelled like fresh baked bread, apples and cinnamon.

She hung up her ski jacket by the door and bent down to stroke Woodward, Bill’s gray tabby named for the Watergate investigative journalist. Then, the cat slinked off to its bed on the windowsill, near the ancient radiator.

The apartment faced Riverside Park and the Hudson River, but a rusty fire escape and soot on the windows obscured most of the view. Inside, Bill kept everything clean and orderly, despite multiple coats of peeling paint on the walls and over-shellacked wood floors. A beige futon sat on a shaggy area rug in the center of the room, and a double bed with a black iron headboard and a small Parson’s desk were pushed against the far wall. The low room divider was filled with books, and several stacks of books cluttered the coffee table and desk.

Bill was in the kitchen alcove wearing a red and white striped apron, a huge bandage on his right pinkie.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Clumsy,” he said. “I got carried away peeling apples and sliced off a piece of my finger.”

“
Quelle horreur
!”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I ran over to the ER and they stitched me up. Gave me oxycodone if the pain gets too bad, but so far Tylenol is keeping the edge off.”

“You’re awfully cheerful under the circumstances.”

“It feels great to cook for a change. I’m making Billy’s favorites. My famous meatloaf and gravy with garlic mashed potatoes. And I’m baking an artisan boule and Dutch apple pie.”

“Lucky boy.”

“No. Happy daddy. I’m really excited. Kylie’s letting him spend the night.”

“I wish you wouldn’t act like she’s doing you a favor. He’s your son, too.”

“I hear ya, but now’s not a good time to make waves. I’m sure Kylie will come around if I cooperate with her.”

“I hope so.” She sat down at the small oak breakfast table next to the fireplace that probably hadn’t worked in fifty years. Above the fireplace was the framed Pulitzer certificate Bill had been awarded when he was a young reporter with the
Washington Post
. William Turner, it said. He had been runner-up in the ‘feature writing’ category, a tremendous accomplishment. Had that bothered him, never again achieving such heights in his career?

Bill was shaping the meatloaf in a casserole dish, holding his bandaged finger up and away from the chopped meat.

“Do you want help with that?”

“I’m good. Thanks.” He ripped off a piece of aluminum foil, covered the dish and put it in the oven. “So what’s going on with the grandson?” he asked, his back toward her.

A bottle of Tylenol was beside a sealed bag from the pharmacy on the breakfast table. “Nothing,” she said.

Bill turned to her, his brow furrowed. There was a light dusting of flour on his tortoise-framed glasses. “And his grandmother? Did you at least have a successful meeting with her last Sunday?”

“She’s a lovely woman, but I think there are better ways for me to get at the truth about Isaac Goldstein. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Whatever I can do to help.” He put a bowl full of cooked potatoes on the counter and began to mash them with determination.

“This afternoon I went to talk to the son of the attorney who defended my grandfather.”

He stopped and held the potato masher up out of the bowl. “That’s an interesting development.”

“It is. His name’s Arnie Weissman.” She ran her fingernail against a crack in the wood. “He gave me a little more insight into the type of person my grandfather was. Charming. Charismatic.”

“I hear a ‘but.’”

“I’ve been so focused on proving his innocence that I hadn’t accepted that even if he hadn’t passed atomic-bomb secrets to the Russians, he was still a communist and possibly a spy.

Bill went back to mashing the potatoes. “You know better than to think of people in terms of black and white.”

“I just need to adjust my expectations,” she said. “But something bothers me. The government was convinced Isaac knew the identity of the true spy. They believed by threatening him with execution, they could get him to reveal that person.”

“But he didn’t,” Bill said. “Do you think it’s because he was the traitor?”

“No. I’m sure he wasn’t, especially after talking to Weissman. But how can I figure out who the true traitor was?”

“Do you believe your grandfather knew?”

“And give up his life to protect this person?” She shook her head. “I just can’t imagine him doing that, knowing how his execution would destroy his family.”

“Maybe he wanted to die.”

She looked over at Bill. His head was bent over the mixing bowl so she couldn’t read his face. “That’s an odd thing to say.”

He kept mashing.

“If he wanted to die, that would suggest he was guilt-ridden,” she said.

“Maybe he was. But guilty about what?”

Woodward hopped down from the windowsill and came over to watch Bill mash the potatoes.

“I’m just saying as a journalist you should look at this from every angle.” Bill came around the counter with a spoonful of potatoes. “Have a taste.”

She licked the spoon. “Good.”

The cat jumped up on the counter, sniffed the empty spoon, then slinked over to the bowl.

“There now,” Bill said. “Woodward still has his investigative instincts.”

“Right.” She laughed. “I guess I’ll just have to keep sniffing around some more.”

It was in a part of Queens that Julian had never been to before. The streetlights came on as he hurried past a check-cashing store, a grocery, beauty shop, Chinese restaurant, and the shell of a graffitied building, whose interior was littered with loose bricks, weeds, and garbage partially covered by dirty snow. He checked the address she’d given him over the phone, then looked across the street and saw a block-letter sign above a brightly painted storefront, ‘Sandman Pediatric Care Center.’

What the heck? His mother operated a free clinic? Julian knew nothing about this.

He crossed to the clinic, taken aback by the beauty of the windows, covered with paintings of families and children in a primitive, urban-art style. Probably done by some local artist. Julian followed the colors inside, where the walls continued the family motif, and the room was filled with a dozen or so adults and children sitting on red, yellow and green plastic chairs. At first glance, it seemed like an experimental primary school, but quickly Julian heard the sounds of suffering beneath the smooth beat of Beyoncé. Children crying, soft moans, gentle hushing.

He went to the check-in window. To his surprise, there was a framed photo of his father on the wall. His father was laughing, looking much like Julian liked to remember him. Beneath the picture was a plaque.
In Memory of Tom Sandman.

So the clinic was named for his dad, not his mother. How come she’d never told Julian about any of this?

“Can I help you?”

He turned to the slim black woman behind the window. She had a full head of beaded braids. “I’m here to see Dr. Sandman,” he said. “She’s expecting me.”

She looked confused for a moment. “Oh. Doctor Essie. You must be her son.” She smiled. “Come on back.”

He went through the door, noticing a long hallway with several closed doors, each with a colorful number.

“She’s in Room Three,” the woman said. “We’re happy for the help.”

I’m not here to help, he was about to say, but she’d turned away to speak to a new patient.

He knocked first, then opened the door to an oversized examination room. A toddler sat on the exam table, held by her mother, as Essie stitched the child’s brow. Sitting on the floor were two other young children, crying softly. Then Julian noticed the blood-soaked bandages.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Car accident.” His mother wore a pink lab coat that said ‘Dr. Essie’ on the pocket. “LaTanya and Tanice need stitches. I’m handling Ajay and Mom.”

“I’m on it,” Julian said, washing and disinfecting his hands in the sink.

“Doctor Bruce called in sick. A bad time for him to get the flu. I only have one other doctor working tonight.”

“Shouldn’t they have gone to the ER?” he asked.

The children’s mother widened her eyes and shook her head in a near panic.

Essie gave Julian a quick, stern look. “These are my patients, practically family,” she said, patting the mother’s arm. “They know I’ll never turn them away.”

Practically family. He felt a twinge of envy. Her patients were more her family than he’d ever been.

“I understand,” he said, crouching down to examine LaTanya and Tanice. He hadn’t practiced medicine in several years, but his ER training came back to him quickly. LaTanya’s cuts were more serious and he carefully lifted her up to the examining table.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his mother. He’d known she was a dedicated physician, but he had only been aware of her pediatric-oncology practice, not this free-clinic project. Her manner was gentle and reassuring.

As he cleaned LaTanya’s wounds and told her to be brave, he remembered his own pain as a child.

A few days before Julian turned five, his father had taken him and Rhonda to see the July Fourth fireworks. Julian couldn’t recall his mother being there. She’d probably been working at the hospital that day. The black evening had started out frightening. Loud sudden blasts, terrifying whistling sounds. But quickly, Julian became transfixed by the light show in the sky, thinking that God was making the startling colors and lights. He wandered a short distance away, where a group of older boys were swinging sparkling sticks back and forth like wands, making their own magic. One of them threw a firecracker into the air. It exploded with an eruption of bright light and the boys laughed. Julian smiled and stepped closer. He watched the boy throw a second firecracker. Julian froze. It was coming at him. The firecracker exploded, hitting Julian in the chest with an excruciating burst of pain.

He didn’t remember going to the hospital to be treated for second-degree burns on his arms. And until just now, he hadn’t remembered his father washing him in the shower to remove the dead skin. The agony as his father ran lukewarm water over his arms and cleaned the burned area. His own screams echoed in his head. Tears ran down his father’s cheeks.
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.

But where had his mother been when Julian wanted her to protect and comfort him?

He finished stitching up LaTanya and lowered her to the floor. “You’re very brave,” he said. “Now how about you, Tanice? Are you as brave as your sister?”

He carefully picked up the little girl, who was as light as a goose, even though she was probably three or four years old.

This wasn’t what he’d planned to be doing when he had left his grandmother’s apartment earlier. Nana’s revelations about Saul had raised fresh questions, which he believed only his mother could answer. But with a waiting room full of people who needed immediate care, his own priorities had changed. These people needed attention. Saul would have to wait.

After a couple of hours of treating young patients with high fever, diarrhea, and ear infections, the waiting room was finally clear. His mother invited him back to her small office—more of a large closet with a metal desk and a guest chair squished in. Essie took a couple of containers of orange juice from a small refrigerator, handed one to Julian and stuck a straw in the other. “Do you want to eat?” she asked. “I can have Chloe order you something.”

“I’m good, thanks.” He drank down the juice, surprised by how good it tasted. In fact, the satisfaction he felt was something he hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

Essie handed him another container. “Thanks for helping out. It isn’t usually so hectic.”

“I didn’t realize you ran a clinic, too.”

She shrugged. “I started it a few years ago. It’s staffed by volunteer physicians and physician assistants during the week and I generally just work on weekends.” The straw made a sucking sound as she finished her juice. “Anyway, you didn’t come out here to practice medicine. What’s up?”

He leaned against the hard chair. “Nana’s been filling me in on Saul. I had no idea he’d been involved with the Manhattan Project.”

Essie pushed a strand of hair out of her eye and behind her ear, but continued looking down at her desk blotter. It was covered with scribbled words and numbers.

“She told me the communists tried to recruit him,” Julian said, “but he refused to help them.”

She met his eye. “Is that what she told you?”

“Yes. Do you know something different?”

“If that’s what my mother told you, it must be true,” she said. “So what do you want from me?”

“The painting he made in our living room. It depicts his guilt over helping to create the atomic bomb, doesn’t it?”

“That’s as good an explanation as any.”

“But it wasn’t like Saul had a choice. He was recruited to work on the bomb. He did what he was told. Why would Nana hide the picture? It’s as though she was ashamed of him, and yet she speaks of him with great love.”

“Why are you asking me? She’s the one who has the answers.”

“I can tell she’s holding back. That she doesn’t want to tell me what really happened.”

“Then why do you assume I know anything?”

“Because you and she have been at odds about something my entire life. I think it has something to do with Saul. But whatever it is has affected how you raised me.”

She glanced at the scribbles on the blotter. Behind her, shelves were neatly stacked with medical supplies. “You’re letting your imagination get away from you, Julian. You have a tendency to do that.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Really? You just said it was.”

“Why do you hate her, Essie?”

His mother rubbed her temples. “Why does she hate me?” she said in a small voice.

The phone buzzed. Essie answered it. “Thanks, Chloe. I’ll be right there.” She stood up. “More patients, but one of my physician assistant volunteers just arrived, so I won’t need you.” She slipped past him and opened the door. “Thanks again for your help.”

“She’s ninety-five,” he said. “She won’t be around forever.”

He heard her footsteps down the hallway, then a door closed.

Damn it. What the hell would it take to get his grandmother and mother to finally tell him the truth?