Cold Morning (13 page)

“Some folks say Violet had a lot of romances,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard that. So she saw a few guys. Nothing serious. She was a nice girl. Christ, at the speakeasy that night we all had beer and whooped it up. Violet had a cup of coffee. Imagine that. In a speakeasy drinking coffee.”

“Why?”

He rolled spaghetti around a fork and swallowed it. “I don't think she wanted Mrs. Morrow or the other servants to smell beer on her breath. Jobs are hard to get in the Depression, you know. She wasn't no fool. But she liked to go out. So what? We're young. That's what young people do, Miss Ferber.”

“I vaguely remember.” I smiled at him.

He eyed me curiously, gauging my humor. “I bet.”

“What did she talk about that night?”

“I can't remember. I mean, we covered everything. She
did
like to talk.”

I broke a crust of bread and took a sip of wine. “She must have mentioned the Lindberghs. She worked for wealthy people. Anne Morrow had married the most famous man in the world. The American hero.”

“Well, we all knew that. We kidded her about that, and I could tell she was tickled. But I guess Lindbergh sort of ignored her at the house. Yeah, they talked, but he…like looked right through her. I sensed she didn't care for him that much. She said he was a little—like a hick. Blew his nose into his hands. He spit all over the place—a hayseed. He was mean to Anne—told her to shut up once. Called her stupid. Got ice cold. God, how we laughed at her stories. Anne, the wife, well, Violet liked her a lot.” A long pause. “And she even mentioned the baby…how cute he was, blond curls, stumbling around the house, babbling baby talk.”

I shifted the conversation. “Did she mention Anne's younger brother, Dwight?”

He bit the inside of his mouth. “Funny that you mention his name. I hadn't thought of that.”

“What did she say?”

“I know exactly what she said. She thought he was a little odd—like he had some emotional problems, was always breaking down, being sent away, trouble for the family. Unstable. I guess his mother ignored him, favored the sisters all the time. He was quiet most of the time, she said. But he saw things, like visions. His mother would walk by him, like he wasn't there. But Violet liked him. He was nice to her.”

“How do you remember that?”

“Because she got all moon-eyed talking about this friend of his. God, I can still see her. She didn't say much, because I got to frowning. After all, she was with me that night. But I guess he was this wealthy neighbor, flashy as all get-out, some slick operator that ordered Dwight around like a puppet. But she said he was real kind to her, sought her out. Smiled at her a lot. My friends was real curious, her living the high life at the mansion. But not me. I shut her off, angry a bit, saying she was a fool to listen to some rich guy with coins in his pocket. A slick car in the driveway.”

“Was he around a lot?”

“I dunno. As I say, I cut her off. A guy don't need to hear that malarkey from a girl he's taking out on the town.” A sly smile. “Even if she only orders coffee.”

“Did she mention his name?”

“Maybe. I don't know.”

“Blake Somerville?”

“You got me. Could've been.” A pause. “I remember that she said those guys used to go to the Peanut Grill in Orangeburg sometimes. I think that's what she said. I never seen them, and I went there a lot.”

“They go with her?”

“I doubt that, lady. Two rich boys with a servant? Come on.”

“Possible?”

He drained his glass of wine, sat back. “Naw. I think Violet liked him because he talked to her, yeah, but he always was…like this fast talker.” He gulped, “Yeah, I remember now, she said he was a thrill-seeker. I said, what the hell does that mean? And she said, ‘Poor people don't understand that rich people like to do things for the thrill of it.' I tapped her on the arm and told her, ‘Yeah, we poor folks, and that includes you, Missy, got no time for thrills.'”

“What did she say to that?”

“I dunno. I stopped listening. Rich people and their lives bore me.”

“But she obviously enjoyed rich people.”

“Yeah, and look where it got her.”

“Tell me about this Peanut Grill.”

“A ragtag speakeasy then, hidden under trees and paying off the cops. Mafia types all over the place. Everybody went there. Popular with the crowd from the Bronx from over the Hudson. The Palisades. Tappen.”

“Why do you say that?”

He leaned in, confidential. “I told the cops I seen that guy Isidor Fisch there once. Leastwise I think it was him. I mean, they plastered his picture all over the papers.”

I sat up. “Hauptmann's corrupt business partner? The one who Bruno said dropped off a shoebox with the ransom money?”

“Yeah, the one who skedaddled to Germany and died of TB there. Supposedly, according to Bruno hisself, Isidor never told him the box was filled with fourteen thou. ‘Keep it safe.' Yeah, sure. So creepy Bruno found the money, so he said, and started spending it left and right. The trip to Germany for the missus, an expensive radio, spy glasses—how convenient!—and a new dark blue Dodge sedan. And him never working again after he
found
the money. Isidor was a con artist, true, a man who lied and tricked people. That's how Bruno got caught, stupidly spending the ransom money. Not too bright, Miss Ferber.”

“Maybe his story is true.”

“Yeah, and I'm the King of England.”

“But you saw Fisch?”

He picked up his empty glass and stared at it. “Like, maybe. I guess Isidor was known throughout the Bronx and down into Jersey, working one scheme or another. Selling animal pelts, I heard. But I remember him from one night there because he was loud and made a fool of himself.”

“How so?”

“He come there with someone. But he tried to pass a counterfeit bill to the bartender, who bagged him good. They started yelling at each other, and that's how I noticed him. The bartender knew him—called him Izzy. They threw him out on his…rear end, pardon me, Miss Ferber.”

“I know what a rear end is, Mr. Miller.”

Color rose in his face. “Sorry about that.”

“You tell this to the cops?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but I guess lots of folks told them they seen Isidor or Bruno here and there…taking a subway, walking in the cemetery. Strolling down the street. And I'm not sure.”

“Of course you're sure.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I suppose I am.” He watched me closely. “After he left, the bartender—hey, I know the guy, he's Joe Morelli, a buddy from work years back—he tells me this guy Isidor deals in hot money.”

“Hot money? I don't understand.”

He checked to see whether any diners nearby were listening. He lowered his voice. “Like counterfeit or stolen money. Like he buys it from someone, not at face value 'cuz it's trouble, dangerous, and he starts to unload it. You know, pass it here and there. The seller makes a safe buck—Izzy has all the risk. He makes a buck or two. It's dangerous but Isidor was a swindler, slippery as an eel.”

“Is there any chance Violet Sharp knew Isidor?”

“I don't think so. Why would their paths cross?”

“True.” I thought of something. “I wonder if he ever came with his friend Bruno?”

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“'Cuz I talked to Joe after Bruno's arrest and all. Christ, it was all over the papers—his mug shot. He said he'd remember if Bruno ever walked in. It never happened.”

“But he remembered Isidor.”

“As I say, everyone sooner or later bumped into Isidor. But you had to keep your hand on your wallet when he was around.”

“But Violet…”

He held up his hand. “I gotta go, ma'am. I think I talked enough. You know, all this scares the willies out of me, this talk. Christ, a baby died, Isidor died back in Germany, that butler Ollie Whately at Hopewell died, Violet died.”

“Yes—” I started, but he was already sliding out of the booth.

He spat out the words. “And this Bruno fellow is gonna die.” He stood up, waited for me to hand the waitress a few dollars, though he looked embarrassed that I paid the bill for dinner, and he placed his fedora on his head, pulled down over his forehead. He tipped it jauntily, and smiled, half-bowing. “My friends say I talk too much.”

“I'm not complaining.”

We walked out of the restaurant together and he said good night again, thanking me again for the twenty dollars. He offered to call me a cab, though I refused, bidding him good night. He headed north to a subway stop.

Standing under a streetlight, gazing up at the light snow drifting across the murky lights, I breathed in. A beautiful night, but bone-chilling. I stepped into the street to hail a cab.

Shivering from the cold, I pulled my scarf closer, covered my lower face, and turned away from a sudden blast of sleet. Distracted, I searched up Arthur Avenue, but saw no familiar taxi lights. I walked down to the corner, hoping the busy intersection was a better place to grab a ride downtown.

A squeal of tires. A horn blared. I swiveled in time to see a dark car careening from the opposite side of the street, a speeding car that maneuvered in front of another car—another blast of angry horn—and, to my amazement, the car sped across the busy avenue and headed toward me.

Instinctively, I panicked, jumped back onto the curb but not in time to escape the fender of the car that grazed my side. I fell against the bumper of a parked car, staggered a second, righted myself, and watched the errant car, which didn't pause but headed south, blaze through a red light, now back on the correct side of the street. I gasped for breath.

“You all right, lady?” a man yelled out.

I stammered, “Yes, I…”

“Hey, maybe it's me, but it looked like that car was aiming for you. Bull's-eye.”

“I don't…”

He laughed. “You got some enemies in this part of town, lady?”

I didn't answer. My eyes followed the taillights of the black car that was a block or two south now. It sped through another red light. Horns blared. A woman screamed.

Chapter Fourteen

I barely slept that night, the brutal image of that shadowy car and unseen driver kept slapping me awake. I'd doze off, then sit up suddenly, snapped awake by a machine barreling toward me, purposeful, deadly. In the morning, showered but still droopy-eyed, I drank a cup of steaming coffee, ignored the conversation of my mother, and then went down to the lobby after the doorman called up to say my ride had arrived. Six a.m., the city waking up, and the town car idled in front. James opened the door and I slid in.

“Good morning, Miss Ferber.” From Marcus, a little too cheerful for the hour.

I wasn't alone. In the rear seat sat two staff members from the
Time
s—a photographer I knew as Sammy and Irma Selz, a talented young woman who did line drawings and got on my nerves because her caricatures of me always depicted me as a wild-eyed martinet. She once drew me with a lariat flying high about my head. Annie Oakley with a pronounced Semitic nose.

I decided to sleep during the two-hour trek back to Flemington, though I feared Miss Selz might sketch me with my head lolling, mouth agape, puddles of drool gathering on the corners of my lips. And, given the scare I'd experienced last night, she'd probably catch the tension in my brow, the twitching of my hands in my lap. Worse, I'd probably babble in my sleep, some garbled nightmare that would be used to regale the editorial rooms of the
Times
for days on end. I didn't care. I dozed off.

***

At the Union Hotel, Marcus graciously extended his arm as I lumbered out of the car. He whispered, “You look tired, Miss Ferber.”

I smiled. “A troubling night.”

That puzzled him. “A night in Manhattan always enchants me.”

“Yes, well, that's not the word I'd use for last night.”

Alcck Woollcott was waiting for me in the lobby, sitting in the reception area, a cloud of smoke around his head and a plate of sugar doughnuts nearby. He toasted me with a cup of coffee. “Right on time, dear Ferb.”

I leaned in. “Aleck, someone tried to kill me last night.”

He scrunched up his face. “Again? Edna, you have to stop annoying people.”

“I'm serious, Aleck. A car crossed traffic and bumped me.”

The smirk disappeared from his face. “This is true, Edna?”

“I swear.” A heartbeat. “Or I assumed it's true. Perhaps it was an accident, a wayward car, out of control, some drunken maniac, but I felt its driver was purposely aiming toward me.”

Aleck leaned over and patted me on the wrist. “Edna, perhaps this…caper of yours has now assumed dangerous proportions.”

I snarled, “But what? It's not a caper. I'm asking questions. For God's sake, Aleck. The story of Violet Sharp…”

He stopped me. “It's obviously too raw a story still. There are too many loose ends here.” He struggled to stand. “Are you attending the trial?”

“Not this morning. I'll be in my room. You can fill me in later at lunch. Or this afternoon.”

An hour later, refreshed with breakfast, I walked to the depot and found Willie polishing a town car. I engaged him for late that afternoon, although he remarked that Kathleen Norris had suggested she wanted a ride to Trenton for an interview. “But” he leaned in, “that lady novelist never leaves town. She's glued to the courtroom and Nellie's Taproom, afraid she'll miss some choice morsel of gossip. The bourbon and applejack crowd likes to chatter. So I don't expect her to bother me today. It's just me today. Marcus is off. He likes to get out of town—too many people in the small town, he says—and drink rum Coke in a country inn where no reporters ever go. Me, well, I like the crowds, the excitement, spotting Colonel Lindbergh strolling by, even seeing that Bruno Hauptmann led across the street to the courtroom, him all spruced up with that new fedora, sullen like a beat puppy, shuffling between the state cops. They should dress him in rags.”

“Anyway,” I interrupted,“five o'clock?”

“I'll write it down now, ma'am. Car's all yours.”

Unless, I thought, Kathleen Norris actually does demand a journey out of town. A friendly woman, Kathleen Norris was. We'd shared a moment in the lobby, and she'd slipped me the copy for tomorrow's
Times
column. My eyes had caught the lines:

“The big story is on its way to every corner of the world.”

Then:

“There is a steady deepening tension and a steady increasing horror in the Flemington courthouse as the most unfortunate man in the world makes a fight for his life.”

For a moment, reading those lines and watching her eager but humble face, I was sadly jealous. I wanted those lines to be mine. Well, maybe not. She was actually a warm, likeable woman—and much too pleasant to spend a lot of time with because such genuine affability strained the muscles used for smiling. Niceness is best applied in small, manageable doses.

When I sat with Aleck at lunch, I outlined my plan: an early evening spin to the Peanut Grill, a place that intrigued me. “Perhaps you'd enjoy the ride?”

Aleck wasn't happy. “Really, Edna. If someone takes a potshot at you, they'll probably hit me. I'm a much larger target.”

“But your infamous cutting remarks have given you a tough hide no bullet can penetrate.”

“Ah,” he grinned, “the insulation of the choice
bon mot
?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, that doesn't really comfort me, but, yes, I could do with a drink and a look at a place stupidly called the Peanut Grill. Perhaps Violet Sharp etched her initials into the sticky woodwork.” He reached for a cigarette. “Lord, my dear, this wild goose chase you're on.”

“Clues, Aleck.” I thought of my conversation with Ernie Miller, which I summarized to Aleck. “I want to meet a guy named Joe.”

“Don't we all,” Aleck muttered.

“Tell me what happened at the trial,” I began.

Aleck discussed the morning testimony. David Wilentz began his stream of witnesses calculated to place Bruno at the Lindbergh estate—a crucial bit of courtroom stretching. Otherwise—what proof was there? Circumstantial? The morning session, according to Aleck, featured craggy old Dr. Condon, the nicknamed “Jafsie,” the ruddy-faced gentleman who'd delivered the ransom money in the Bronx cemetery. The doddering old man, self-important and bombastic and garrulous, was entertaining, Aleck said. Early on, during a police lineup in New York—twelve burly cops with no accents, and one tiny unshaven man named Bruno—he'd hesitated. He'd refused to identify Bruno at the time. “He is
not
the man. He resembles the man. I can see a resemblance, but I cannot swear to it.” Odd, given that he'd spoken face-to-face with “John” for an hour. But on the stand, though Wilentz was visibly nervous, Dr. Condon emphatically named Bruno as the man he met in the cemetery.

“Just how foolish is Bruno, then?” I now said to Aleck. “He wears gloves at the kidnapping site, conceals his identity a number of times, and then talks straight-on for an hour, undisguised. Really, Aleck!”

“Well, the doctor made a show of it, what with announcing that the Bronx was the most beautiful borough in the world.” A sigh. “Then he pointed at Bruno and said—yes, that's ‘John.' With his gigantic white moustache and a black bowler on his huge body, he seemed a circus performer.”

I checked my watch. “Let's go. The afternoon session begins.”

A tedious afternoon. Although Aleck nodded his head in agreement as witnesses against Bruno Hauptmann streamed past, I found myself wondering: Amandus Hochmuth, a frail eighty-seven-year-old man who claimed he saw Bruno speeding by in a car at Hopewell three years back, yet seemed myopic, squinting through cataracts to focus on a photograph displayed before him. The speeding man had a bright red face, he insisted—and everyone turned to look at Bruno: pale white, pasty. Someone tittered. He tugged at his gray Van Dyke goatee, and tottered down to place a hand on Bruno's knee and pressed down hard, probably to avoid toppling over. The tip of his beard grazed Bruno's forehead. Very dramatic, if ridiculous. The reward money, I thought. A siren's awful lure for mountain folks. Bruno muttered, “
Der Alte ist verrückt
.” The old man is crazy.

Worse, an illiterate mountain man from the tarpaper shacks in Sourland, a bumbling sort, easily rattled, recalled a strange man wandering through the woods at Hopewell, a man some three years later he insisted was Bruno. Others testified that the witness was a chronic liar, and only had the wonderful recollection when reward money materialized. A fool, I thought, unconvincing.

A third witness, Joseph Perrone, was the taxi driver in the Bronx who delivered a letter to Dr. Condon. When he walked down and touched Bruno on the shoulder, Bruno roared, “You're a liar.”

Perrone had identified Bruno in another New York lineup that included two cops, one in uniform.

“Circumstantial evidence.” I jotted in a note to Aleck. “Is Wilentz serious?”

He scribbled back. “Nitpicking, Edna.” He took back the sheet from me and added, in barely legible penmanship, “Like your current pursuit of the elusive and departed Violet Sharp. Circumstantial evidence.”

“I rest my case.”

***

Willie made a grunting sound as he pulled the town car in front of the Peanut Grill, parking it a little too close to a bank of pale green yew bushes speckled with ice-hoary red berries. We sat there, the three of us, as Aleck poked me in the side, whispering loudly, “The site of our first date. Do you remember, Edna, my love?”

“No,” I shot back, “your memory is slipping, dear Aleck. That was the dessert table at the Algonquin, if I remember correctly. And your cheeks were puffed out with chocolate éclairs.”

He chuckled. “We looked into each other's eyes.”

“Yes, when you pledged your love to…chocolate.”

“A love of chocolate is enduring. A love of you is fickle.”

Willie was still grunting, his fingers fiddling with a cigarette he was about to light. “You folks gonna jaw the afternoon away in the backseat like two schoolgirls over Francis X. Bushman?”

We got out of the car.

The Peanut Grill struck me as a frontier cabin, a sloping roof of tired, moss-stained shingles, an ice slick at the eaves, tiny windows the size of a folio page. Peeling clapboards painted a ghastly forest green, the boards sagging, some slipping, nails giving way. Over the front door—built of a wide slab of rough, unsanded pine with wrought-iron handles—a crudely painted sign: The Peanut Grill. For some reason someone had added an “e” in black crayon to the word: “Grille.”

“Ambience?” I said out loud.

“Very
Tobacco Road
,” Aleck announced. “I can already feel the mildew seeping into my heart.”

Inside was no better, though thankfully the late afternoon shadows and the faint lighting gave the interior a monastic feel. Plank tables and barrel-stave chairs cluttered a sawdust-splattered floor. A long oak bar ran the length of the room, a glass tier behind it, with etched mirror and, for some reason, a cheap chromolithographic print of a Conestoga covered wagon being attacked by savage Indians. Perhaps, after all, we were in Wyoming. Or, at least, frontier New York.

“Does Manhattan really exist?” Aleck mumbled.

“It's only a state of mind, anyway,” I told him.

There was not a single customer in sight. A man stood behind the bar, busy wiping glasses and stocking the glass shelves. He turned suddenly, shielding his eyes at the burst of sunlight from the opened front door. “We're not really open,” he called to us.

“Well, we're not really here,” I announced.

A woman was wiping down tables. “What does that mean?”

“We came to talk, not drink.”

The man glanced at the woman. “Mostly people come here to do both.” He stepped out from behind the car and approached us. “We're closed Mondays,” he said. “Says so on the sign outside. Door should have been locked.” He wore a simple smile. “But can I help you?”

“Are you Joe?” I asked.

That puzzled him. “Joe?” A pause. “Oh, like the man who works weekends? Joey Warehouse. That ain't his last name, but he works…never mind…an older guy, walrus moustache, real fat face.”

I interrupted. “I've never met him, but a friend of his named Ernie told me to ask for him.”

“Well, he ain't here. Sorry.” He turned away.

“But perhaps you can help us.”

He turned back. “Suit yourself. Park yourself down in those seats. Be with you in a second.”

So parked we did, though Aleck made a fuss over the wobbly chair he chose, teetering on the edge, his tremendous bulk shifting like a seismic ocean current, and I noticed the woman eyeing him nervously. Settled in, breathing heavily, Aleck reached for his cigarette holder and inserted a Camel. He struck a match. He snapped his fingers as he called to the woman who was now stacking glasses on a sideboard.

“Does this mean we can't drink? I will have a brandy. And a dry martini for my woman friend, the former head of the Upper East Side Temperance League and All-Around Street Litter Patrol.”

The woman watched the man who shrugged and said, “All right.”

When she went up to the bar, I noticed she winked at him, and he smiled broadly, turning away. Young lovers, I thought, playful and happy to be alive. When she returned with the brandy and the martini—I watched the bartender deftly pour from a bottle, his wrist dramatically exaggerated—she said, “Here you go.” An accent, decidedly Irish. “And you are from Europe?”

“County Cork.” A half-bow. “Mary Louise, though my friends call me Marielle. Mary L. M-a-r-i-e-l-l-e is how I spell it. Understand?”

“It's not that complicated,” Aleck said.

She pointed to the bartender. “He's Charlie. From Newark.”

Charlie, dragging a rag across the bar, bowed with a flourish.