Authors: Reggie Nadelson
August 6: it had been August 6 when I first saw the piece about Max Ostalsky in the
Village Voice.
I remembered because it was around the time Marilyn Monroe died. She passed on August 5, and reports of her death appeared in the papers the next day.
How much I loved Marilyn. I'm staring at her picture in the
New York Post
at the office when I knock the ashtray off my desk and it spills butts all over my fresh chinos. “Goddamn it to hell.”
“What's with you, Pat?” says the guy sitting at the next desk, a new young detective typing with two fingers, filling out a form.
“Nothing. Leave me be. Do your own damn work.”
I'm feeling glum about Marilyn, and pretty much every goddamn thing when my boss calls me in, and says he saw the
Village Voice
and yells at me for palling around with Reds. Murphy sees a Red under every bed, and he considers himself vigilant. Plus, he is not a subtle man.
Lieutenant R. N. Murphy is short with big shoulders and an ugly pug-dog Irish face. His cruddy sour breath stinks of black coffee and the Camels he chain-smokes.
Once he was a star among young detectives, back when he was a favorite of Mayor LaGuardia's. In the war, he fought in the Pacific, he was some kind of Marine hero at Tarawa, which was something, one of the ugliest battles, dead Americans all over the beach. Murphy got a Bronze Star. Makes sure everyone hears it.
“What?”
“Sit yourself down, Wynne,” says Murphy. “So what about this Commie pal of yours, man? In that new, what's it called, this rag?”
“The
Village Voice
. And he's not my friend.”
“No? Little birdie told me you been meeting him pretty regular for drinks and showing him a welcome to our fair city. You gotta be careful of them son-of-a-bitch Commies, man, you hear me?”
“How do you know?”
The boss laughs his mean pinched laugh. “Gotcha. You told me what I wanted to know. What'd you think, man, that I got spies out watching you?”
“Do you?”
Murphy thinks I'm some kind of bohemian bum, hanging around the Village. To him, I'm a freak, thirty-two with a failed marriage to the girl I got pregnant, the kid I'm never allowed to see, a man who sometimes goes to foreign movies and likes colored music he hates. “Just a friendly warning,” he says. “On the other hand, maybe you'll learn something from that Russki. You never know. You find out anything, you come to me, right? Wynne? The FBI would love to hear. Read the piece,” says Murphy, leans back in his chair, puts his feet on his desk, and lights up. He wears ugly shit-kickers, big thick black old lace-ups so old the soles are broken. “Just read it.”
“I read it.”
“Read it again.”
“
SOVIET GRAD STUDENT DELIGHTS IN GREENWICH VILLAGE
” is the headline in the
Village Voice.
The photograph shows Max Ostalsky, smiling, in a new button-down shirt in front of the Washington Square Arch. In the interview, he says how much he's enjoying his experience in New York, especially Greenwich Village, that everyone is so kind and helpful and his studies interesting, and his particular favorite food is fried clams at Howard Johnsons.
Max even tells a few jokes on himself, he relates how much the hospitality of New Yorkers means to him, and how much their friendship delights him, including the stranger who helped him out, buying a hot dog in the park, a friend he learns is a New York detective name of Pat Wynne. There it is, black and white, me and the Russki. A whisper of something bad hits the back of my neck, raises the hairs. This is no good, this thing about me and the Russian printed in public. The Commies are bad news. There's plenty like my boss still out to get them and the people who make friends with them. I better keep my damn distance, I think, and toss the newspaper into a garbage can.
And then, just my lousy luck, Maxâout of the blue, no invitation I can recallâshows up at the station house. These days he looks like everybodyâblue button-down short-sleeved summer shirt, chinosâthe sergeant hardly takes notice; just calls me to the front door.
“What are you doing here?”
“I'm sorry, Pat, I thought we had arranged to meet. Have I got the wrong day?” He looks apologetic.
“Did we? I don't remember. What did we arrange?”
“I asked if you might take me to see the High Line, and explain about your crime scenes, and you said, come to my office, is that not right? If I am not correct, I'm so sorry.”
I'm finished work for the day, more or less, and I want to know what Max Ostalsky has been up to. What's this Commie really want? “Yeah, come on. We'll walk. Maybe catch a breeze off the river. So I see you made the big time, big profile in the
Voice.”
Max doesn't answer, just lights up a cigarette. Outside, on Charles Street, a young guy is smoking a joint. Sees me, tosses it into the gutter.
“You into grass yet, Max?”
“I have my Lucky Strikes.”
“How come? You dig the rest of it, the girls, the music, you scared because they showed you some propaganda films about the decadent West at home, and how you do drugs, you'll become addicted like our own people in the ghetto?”
Without answering, ignoring the sarcasm, he says, “I have asked to see the place of the crime, Pat, this is to help me understand the workings of America's Civil Society. If this is not proper, please, tell me.”
“Why? You thinking of sticking around, maybe join the police here? Jesus, it is hot. They get heat like this in Moscow?”
“Yes, the summers can be hot,” Max says, keeping pace with me.
“You been seeing Nancy a lot?” I keep it casual. We're walking, up Sixth, up Greenwich Avenue, past St Vincent's, and west to the river.
“She has invited me to her father's house for dinner.”
“I'll bet you and old Saul hit it off just fine.”
“I admire him.”
As soon as we get close to the river, I change my mind. Later, it would come back to me that I should have turned around, and told Ostalsky it wasn't on. Get lost, I should have said.
What do I want with this Russki on my crime scene, pawing over my case, asking questions about the dead girl, pestering me for information, and for what? What's in it for you, Ostalsky, I think, looking at him, at the way he's learned to dress, even learned to walk in that casual way as if he's just out having a ball, smoking his Luckys; occasionally he pulls his little notebook out of his shirt pocket and jots something down.
“What the hell do you keep in there?”
Max stops, replaces his notebook. “Oh, as I have said, notes for my classes. This means words I learn. Books I read. Things I observe in New York. Music. I have been listening to quite a bit of your favorites, to Fat Domino,” he says. “He is jolly. I like this Blueberry Hill.” He smiles, knows the reference to music might please me; how charming this Russian is, and the more I think about it, too eager to please.
“Fats Domino.”
My shirt is wet from the humid air; my eyes burn; I can't remember when I ate last.
“Do you know, Pat, when I was a boy I wanted to be a policeman. There was a murder in our building, this was very rare in Moscow, and I met the homicide policemen, I thought they were very, can I say cool, though cool may not have been quite a word they could understand. I had read quite a few detective stories.”
“You had detective novels?”
“Surely. In Moscow, things were possible. My mother adores Agatha Christie. I managed to acquire a few of the Americans, such as Raymond Chandler. Are all of your jobs within Manhattan?”
“Most, yeah.”
“What was most difficult?”
“The Mad Bomber, no contest, back in the 50s, you ever hear of him? I worked on that case along with hundreds of other cops. Bastard stashed bombs all over town for years. The worst was Penn Station, it's goddamn easy to hide there, impossible to evacuate.”
“I envy you, Pat.”
“Yeah? How's that?”
“You do a job where you must see things I know of only in books. You are willing to go to places where you may die. I think they say, you put your life on the line, is that the right expression? All I know is books, I sometimes think. You take care of people. Isn't that so?”
He would be good at my job, I think suddenly. He listens hard. He asks good questions. Put him across the table from a suspect, and they'd pour their guts out.
“Nothing wrong with teachers, pal. And don't underestimate yourself. You could have been a good cop. Or a spy? Are you a spy, Max?”
“Is that what you think?” He looks hurt for a second, then he laughs. “Look at me. I talk too much. I talk to every-body, I behave like a fool, even my nice American clothes are always, would you say, rumpled? When I should be studying, I prefer going to movies all night at the Waverly Theater, listening to jazz until four in the morning, drinking whisky. Do you think I could be a spy? I can't keep secrets. I am hopeless. All my life, I had so many ideas. First I want to be a homicide cop. Then I think I must join the military to support my country, but my eyes are bad, and my feet are flat. I will go to Siberia as an explorer, to track the great Siberian Tiger. I would have loved to be a spy, the kind in a novel of the Great Patriotic War who infiltrated the High German command. But I must settle for teaching English,” he says. “I'm talking too much. Tell me a little about how you found the girl here.”
We're standing directly under the High Line now; a train rumbles overhead. I point at the viaduct. “There.”
“Is it forbidden for you to take me up there?”
Forbidden? It's a word that juices me up. We're New Yorkers. We're cops. We do what we want, nothing's forbidden to us.
“Nothing's forbidden in a free country.” I'm bragging, telling him we're so free that a cop can show people anything, which is of course crap. The boss would kill me. Probably call the Feds on me. So naturally I take the Russki up the ladder and along the tracks, to the warehouse. Then inside where the girl hid before she was murdered. It's cold and lonely. I explain a little about the way we process a scene, the procedures, and then, outside, rain comes down suddenly, in soaking sheets. Max Ostalsky is poking around the warehouse, peering into dark corners, turning over crumpled sheets of newspapers, asking questions.
“Leave it. Damnit, Max, leave it, it's evidence. Come on, we're going.”
“I'm sorry, yes, Pat, I am so sorry if I have done something wrong.”
“Let's go. There's nothing more.”
“You seem in a hurry to leave now. Have I in some way offended you? Is anything wrong?” Max asks.
“In my line of work, it always is. Let's go home. It's late. I'm tired. It's raining. I'm going home. You should go home, you hear me? Just stay out of trouble.”
“What do you mean?” Max asks. “Am I in trouble?”
A big green taxi with checkerboard stripes passes. I yell for it to stop.
“You want a ride, Max?”
“I think I'll walk.”
“It's raining, in case you didn't notice, but do what you want.”
Out the rearview window of the cab, I can just see Max as he turns in the other direction, and walks back towards the High Line in the pouring rain on a humid summer night, a wet solitary sorrowful figure. Suddenly, out of nowhere, slipping from the doorway of a warehouse, is his FBI tail. He's under the streetlight and I see him clearly: ragged yellow crew-cut; wrinkled short-sleeved shirt; a tie even in the heat; a copy of his newspaper. He looks around and there's something furtive about him, but then he just puts up an umbrella and disappears back into the dark and out of sight. Right then I know it's time to get rid of Max Ostalsky; get him out of my life for good.
It had been bad in August. The whole month. It had been lousy hot. Real dog days. I couldn't sleep, not even out on the fire escape. I recalled that. I remembered people were cranky. Agitated. There had been bad news on the TV; people saying the Russkis were up to something in Cuba.
All I care about is passing the nights when I can't sleep. People are cranky. Fights break out on the sidewalk. I can hear the sound of breaking bottles and sometimes breaking heads. If I'm not in the mood for drinking, I haunt the bookshops and the stalls on Fourth Avenue where you can get second-hand paperbacks for a dime. I pick up crime novels, cop stuff. Ed McBain does it great. It's why I'm taking the writing class at NYU.
I know a lot of the insomniacs who haunt the stalls, junkies, old men, students.
One night around the time when the
Village Voice
article on Max comes out, I head for the Eighth Street Bookshop where I find Nancy sitting on the floor in a thin sleeveless yellow shift.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she says and holds up the book. “You should read this. It's astonishing.”
“What is it?”
“It's called
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
.”
“I have a bone to pick with you.”
“What's that, Pat?” She gets up off the floor, smooths out the shift and refastens a sandal, then takes the book to the front desk and buys it. “I just want to go home and finish my book, so what bone?”
“Who was the man I saw you with this morning?”
“Where?”
“At the Hip Bagel.”
“What were you doing there? Why didn't you say hello? Jesus, Pat.”
“I saw you with him through the window. You go there, right?”
“Sure. Frequently.”
“He was in his forties, I'd have said, but that kind of silver hair only a vain man would wear like that. Lot of hair. Groomed. Gray hair that looked like it gets plenty of attention. He was wearing a dark blue blazer and light gray slacks.”
“What about his shirt and tie? You want to tell me about that, too? You follow me, you watch me eat a bagel, you've lost your mind.”
“Who was he?”