Authors: Reggie Nadelson
“She always likes talking about the Kennedys,” I said.
“You remember?”
“Remind me.” Jack wanted to get it out, and I sat and listened.
“You bet she does,” said Uncle Jack. “And this Red is pumping her, and her saying how she loved Bobby best cause he was the runt of the litter, and how later he would sometimes drop by Old St Pat's, because it was the oldest in the city and he always lit a candle for his poor sister, well, I'm giving Clara a look, and finally she clears away the tea, and your friend, this Max, he gets the message, at least he has some manners, he brings Clara a nice little present, one of those wooden painted dollies, you know? He knows when it's time to go. But the other one, what's he so interested in the Kennedys for?”
“I don't know.”
“Anyway, Paddy, stay away from them. From the case, like you were told. I'm not just talking about you getting canned from the Force, I'm talking much worse. You hear me? There's something going down, and it involves the Feds. I want you safe. I'm thinking of taking your ma and Clara up to the Adirondacks where she'll feel safe if this Cuban thing goes down bad. You remember Bumpy Heaney, my partner back when? He's got that place on Raquette Lake, why don't you come up. ”
“What about my pa?”
“He doesn't want nothing to do with us, just sits in that chair. I think his brain went dead a long time ago. Your ma won't leave him.” He got out of the chair. “You hear my knees creaking? I'm getting on.”
“Uncle Jack?”
“What's that?”
“Who's Captain Logan? Homer Logan.”
Jack took a step back. He looked frightened. “Is he involved?”
“He's the one who told me to stay away. He was at the pier when I found the dead man. Uncle Jack, you have to help me out, because there's nobody. Nobody is talking to me. Nobody will take my calls, including guys I been friends with for a long time. I have good information on the homicide but my boss just tells me, take a vacation. Everyone just shuts me out. Who the hell is Logan?” “He's connected.”
“You mean the Mob?”
“Bigger.”
“Christ.”
“You feeling that cold wind on your neck?”
“Yes.”
“These boys push you out, they freeze you out. We used to say you was out in the cold for good, if it happened.”
“You knew?”
“I felt it, sure. Your other homicide, way back last summer when the girl got murdered on the High Line, I got the feeling you were not flavor of the month, kiddo. Suddenly the brass starts dropping by, asking me about my nephew, Pat. Offering me a nice retirement package. I said, forget about it. I don't know what else you're up to, Pat, but I have to think you're not hanging with the KGB for nothing.”
“Is that what they think? How do you know Max is KGB?”
“You're fucking kidding me. The fellow is a Red, they let him out of the country, they let him loose in New York, like he told me when you brought him to the house. Told me how much he likes going around in the City, listening to music, walking around. I'll bet he likes it. Never been free a day in his life before. You think that comes without strings? I'm going to assume that whatever you're onto with him, it's for our side. I'm assuming that, Patrick.” Jack lowered his voice. “I'm assuming this is a delicate situation and you can't tell me certain things because you don't want to put me and your aunt in danger. Can I take it you won't go crazy, with one of your impetuous hare-brained schemes?”
“Yes.”
“You are working for our side.”
“Is that what they're saying? That I'm some kind of traitor?
“You always been different, you never put up with a lot of the shit that goes with being a cop in this city. Plus, you go around with that girl, Nancy, you introduced me one time, and she has some pretty radical ideas for a young lady, but now listen to me, no matter what you been doing, I'll take care of you, which is why I want you to come to the Adirondacks, where nobody gives a shit about anything except a good day of hunting.” Jack's eyes were filling up. He held out his hand to me. He would take care of me even if I had betrayed everything he cared for, even if I had signed on with the KGB.
“Thank you.”
“You're like my own kid, Paddy.”
“It's OK, Uncle Jack. I'm working for our side. Of course I am.” I had been tempted to tell him Max Ostalsky was the killer, that he had murdered the man on Pier 46, and possibly Susana, the girl on the High Line, but when I looked at him again, I saw how old he was now.
“Thank you. Now, what about you come up to the mountains with us? You can bring that boy, that Tommy, I know you treat him like a son, and if it helps make him safe, bring him too.”
“I'll think about it, I promise.”
“No, you won't. You'll do your job, like always. But you take care. Nothing matters more than your life, Pat. I wouldn't make it if anything happened to you. There's no goddamned politics that matters as much as life.
“I used to tell those Irish bastards in the IRA who wanted money for guns, and were always acting tough, you know, and pretty crazy, you'd run into them in some of the bars on Third Avenue, and they're saying, the cause comes first, the cause is the thing, and I'm saying, fuck the cause, I have family over there, and some of them married to Protestants, you touch one hair of somebody I love, and because you don't play their murderous game, you're ass is grass. You hear me? If you don't want to come upstate, go out to Montauk, get some fishing.
“If you need me, I'll do what I can, but once I get upstate, the only phone is at the hardware store, so mostly I'm out of touch. You got that number, Pat? OK, I love you,” said my Uncle Jack, swallowed a couple of gulps more of the whisky and kissed me goodbye.
I had never felt lonelier, or more frightened than when Jack went out the door, and I heard his slow heavy steps on the stairs. But I was sure now that not only was Ostalsky the killer, but somebodyâour people, his peopleâwanted to keep it a secret. Otherwise, why keep it going that this was the Mob? Why not pick up Ostalsky? Why freeze me out? Or was Ostalsky dead, after all?
I was lost. I almost ran after Uncle Jack, but instead I turned the TV on.
Later that night, Walter Cronkite, the new anchor on CBS, was reporting troop movements, the location of Soviet ships, the growing probability of an encounter with the Soviets.
That week, the people on the screen became characters in a real-life soap: JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Khrushchev, Castro, Adlai Stevenson. Cronkite was the everyman in this play. He looked weary.
Cronkite, with his little mustache and receding hairline, the heavy pouches beneath the sympathetic eyes, the broad Midwestern face, the voice was calm and straightforward. Tonight, for a split second, he rubbed his eyes and emotion ran across his face.
We got to know that look later. When the President was shot, he kept putting his glasses on and taking them off, as if he needed a prop to get through the terrible moment and to cover the damp naked eyes; when he told the country the truth about Vietnam; when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered. Got to know that if Cronkite, his hair thinning and going first gray then white, if this modest man could not keep his feelings to himself, it was bad.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, even Cronkite let it show he was unsure of the future. I can't recall now if it was the Tuesday or Wednesday for sure, or if Cronkite wore his glasses. We didn't know how long it would go on. Fifty years later, thinking about it, my gut heaves.
Looking at the camera, Cronkite just said, “See you tomorrow if there is a tomorrow.”
Then the phone rang.
CHAPTER SIX
October 23, '62
“
P
LEASE DEPOSIT TEN CENTS
.”
The world could end because you'd failed to stick your extra dime in the phone.
“Please deposit ten cents.” The operator's voice came through on the phone. “Please deposit ten cents, sir,” she said. “Sir, will you please deposit ten cents now,” she said again and again.
“I already put in the dime, plus a nickel for extra time, please connect me.” It took me a second or two to understand, because I had never talked to Max Ostalsky on the phone. His voice was soft, a faint but distinct accent noticeable; maybe it was fear.
It came through the phone like a shockwave. The cold black phone receiver in my hand seemed like a foreign object; I sat down hard on my bed, and tried to light a cigarette, and dropped the worn Zippo that my Uncle Jack had taken to war and had given me when I went to Korea. Like a silvery icon, it lay on the thick Hudson Bay red and black blanket I got up in Canada on vacation hunting with him years ago. My place stank of cigarettes. A green china ashtray I swiped from some pub in Ireland was piled high with butts.
I checked the time on the watch I had received for my high school graduation; it needed cleaning. All these souvenirs, all this stuff, these things I had carefully assembled, seemed somehow like evidence from a crime scene that was my own life. I was hallucinating.
“Hello?” said his voice.
I waited. Was this some kind of prank?
“Who is this?”
“I am so glad to hear your voice, my friend.” He didn't say his name, or mine, probably in case somebody else was listening. “Is this my old friend I recently ate meatballs with?” His breathing sounded shallow.
It startled me again, hearing his voice, the sound muffled by the receiver, or by his own anxiety. This was not the easy-going student I had known around the Village. I had read his notebooks. I knew that he was an agent with the KGB, or whatever they called it. I was glad I had done it. I felt triumphant, because I also knew Max Ostalsky was a murderer and I had the evidence. The silver charm I had picked up from the pier, that Nancy had given him was in my pocket where I kept it like a talisman; I let my fingers run over it when I reached for some change.
There was a click on the line. Was somebody listening? I knew Hoover's people could bug you easy. If you had contact with a Red, they could get into your place and fix it easy enough, and you'd never know unless you had reason to look. I would look after I got off the phone. The phone in one hand, I began emptying the pack of Chesterfields onto the blanket, then lining them up like soldiers. It kept me calm, focused.
“Hello?” said the voice. “Please speak if you are able to hear me.”
“Where are you?”
“It doesn't matter so much, but I need a favor from you. You must not look for me. You must tell this to our mutual friend. She should no longer call me and leave messages. People will think something is not normal. It will be harmful to her. I don't want to cause harm. I didn't hurt anyone. I don't want to hurt anyone. I beg you, don't search for me any more. Please.”
“Are you still in the United States?”
“Nowhere,” said Max, his voice low and sorrowful. “I feel very bad to make my good American friends worry about me. This is why I'm calling.”
“Tell me where you are?” I was trying desperately to keep him on the phone, to hear anything in the backgroundâ traffic noise, subways, restaurant noiseâany sound I could grab hold of. “Are you here in New York? I can help you.” I said the words, the hollow stuff cops always say, but neither of us believed it.
“I apologize. When this is over, if you can, please take the remaining things from my room, I would be grateful. Please say to everyone I intended no harm. But don't look for me. Don't put yourself in harm's way. Can you agree?”
I was silent.
“I will be in touch.”
“When?”
“One day,” he said.
“Hello?” I called out to him. I could tell he was still on the phone, not wanting me to go. In some way I couldn't explain, he was hanging on as if to a life raft. “You knew I was looking for you.”
“Yes. The Millers had left several phone messages last week, including two from you. It doesn't matter. Please, tell everybody I am away in vacation. Say hello to my friends.” There was a kind of longing buried in the brisk voice. “Please.”
“You should tell them yourself. You owe them that.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Who else is looking for you?”
He was silent.
“Your own people are looking for you, so are ours. I think you know. I think you know I'm the only one who can help you.”
“I must go,” he said. “I just want to say thank you for everything.”
“What things?” By now, keeping myself steady, I had rearranged the cigarettes twice, reminding myself that this man with the soft voice and pleasant manner was a cold killer who had murdered a young Cuban, and maybe the girl too.
I made a bundle of the cigarettes and, only half aware of what I was doing, crushed them in my hand. Tobacco clung to my fingers.
“Everything. Thank you for your friendship.”
“Where are you, goddamnit?”
Then I heard it. Just before Max hung up, I heard the announcement. He was at a train station. I played the phone call back again in my head, and I heard it, first a jumble of sounds, the low-level buzz of the city. It was the city. He was here. Then: a voice announcing a train.
Suddenly I recalled that I'd once told Max about the Mad Bomber case and how tough it had been evacuating Pennsylvania Station. “A good place to hide,” I had said.
On my table were some notes I had made in Max's room. G.U. D.C. Who was G.U. Did he mean Washington DC? The trains to Washington came and went through Penn Station.
Who was in Washington? His embassy? Would they give him cover? Send him home? Smuggle him out and stick him in one of those camps? Kill him? Hang a medal on the new jacket that made him look like an American college boy?
I ran for my car.