Authors: Donna Simmons
“Do you know him?”
“He looks like my boss.”
“Can’t be, why would he
be here? And while I’m asking, shouldn’t we be in there with Ruth?”
“It’s getting damn cold
out here, Cass. Go be my mole while I go back to the car for my scarf and
gloves.”
“You’ve been hanging
around the British agent too long.”
“Scoot, I want a full
report.”
Cass threaded her way
through tombstones with the Star of David engraved on them, shuffling through
an autumn leaf blanket.
Returning to the cemetery
gate, Sara watched Jonathon crouch beside the widow, whispering something she
hoped Cass was close enough to hear. He stood and began walking down the hill.
The ceremony hadn’t even begun and he was walking away. It took him another
couple of yards to recognize Sara, change directions, and come toward her.
“Sara,” he said with a
nod.
“I didn’t know you were
acquainted,” She tilted her head to the naked hole up the hill.
“I didn’t know you were
either, small world.”
He left with a fatherly
touch on her shoulder. The wind was fierce; she huddled inside her coat
watching the ten people at the grave site, four of them professionals from the
funeral home and the cemetery crew waiting to finish their jobs. Ruth started
to cave into Cass’s arms and Sara moved quickly through the gate and up the
hill. The rabbi finished his prayer as Sara attached herself to Ruth’s other
side.
“Thank you, Sara. I
can’t do this any more,” Ruth whispered “He always said I was the strong one,
but I’m not.”
The three women, linked
in sorrow, stood frozen in place as the rabbi came around the gaping hole to
cover Ruth’s hands. Like reeds in a basket, Cass and Sara wove their arms
across Ruth’s back in support. Minutes later, the three of them walked back to
the funeral home’s limo.
“You’ll come back to the
house?” Ruth asked.
“Of course,” they said in
unison.
“You’ll be sitting
Shiva?” Sara asked.
Ruth nodded as tears
finally spilled down her cheeks.
“We’ll both visit throughout
the week. You’re not alone, Ruth,” Cass said.
She looked up with a
question on her lips then shook her head and leaned into the leather seat as
the funeral director shut the door.
***
On Thursday afternoon,
Ruth’s house looked dark. Sara rang the doorbell and listened for sounds of
life. After a long five minutes, Ruth opened the door, dressed in black with a
white handkerchief clutched in her hand. Her face was solemn, but the tears
were gone. “Come in, Sara, come in. I was just thinking about you.”
“Really?” She didn’t know
how to approach her neighbor without the polite barrier of Cass and the other
mourners from the burial. As scant as the gathering was, it gave credence to
the normal process of the funeral ritual. Ruth truly was in mourning; Sara was
not exactly sure for whom.
“Thank you for what you
did in the house,” Ruth said after another silent moment. She offered Sara a
seat on the sofa they moved two days before. Sara should have checked beneath
the cushions when she had a chance.
“It was nothing. Cass and
I tried to put everything back the way it was.” Her eyes roamed around the
room. Other than the shrouded grandfather clock, the room appeared normally
lived in. A short stack of newspapers filled the seat of the recliner where
Oscar supposedly took his last breath. A best seller sat at an angle on the
corner of a scarred coffee table, a book mark protruding from its middle. A
lace doily framed the obsidian bowl of a dish garden – a condolence gift from
Cass and Sara.
Ruth interrupted her
muse. “You knew what to do.”
“I believe you know who I
am, Ruth. I may be the new neighbor on the block, but I suspect a lot more than
you think.”
“Why don’t you tell me
what you do know,” she said.
“I believe that’s my
line. Who are you, Ruth? Or is that really your name?”
“I am Ruth Obermeyer, a
survivor of the Holocaust. And, you are a descendent of the same atrocity.”
“Whom did we bury
yesterday?”
“What is it you want from
me?” Ruth finally asked without answering Sara’s question.
Sara watched dust motes
travel along the late afternoon sun rays from the bay window behind her.
“Answers to some very
bizarre coincidences.” Sara was pushing, and she was embarrassed by her own
lack of diplomacy. “The man who died yesterday, were you really married to him?”
“Yes.”
“Was he Oscar Obermeyer,
Alfred Carmody, Charles Johnson...or someone else?” She watched Ruth’s face for
lies. Dad always said you could tell a lie from the truth by the expression in
a person’s eyes. She was good, just a slight twitch in her eyelid. “Did you
kill your husband, Ruth?”
“Oh, God, no; I loved
him. The Nazi’s killed him sixty years back. He just refused to take a last
breath until two days ago. His haunted spirit refused to let go. I hung on
because my spirit was gone from the moment they yanked me from my mother’s
arms, marched her away, and gassed her. For decades I begged God to take me,
too. But, He had other plans for me. I survived Dachau and fled south after the
war. Oscar survived Auschwitz and found me in Israel just after its
independence. Most of us in those early days were survivors. He was my anchor
and I followed every crazy idea he had. He swore for the rest of his life he
would find and eliminate every effort to recreate the third Reich. And that’s
what he did. At first, we worked with other survivors in secrecy. Then we were
recruited to work as undercover agents for Mossad.
“A few years ago, we
retired from active service and moved to New York. We occasionally do, did, odd
favors for the organization.”
“Moving next to me was
one of those favors?”
“You moved here after we
did. We were here to listen in on any conversation your neighbor had.”
“Cass? She has nothing to
do with any of this.”
“She is your friend, your
confidant, as you will. Her son was close friends with yours, your son, who
joined a Nazi cult!”
Her accusation stung.
Sara turned the color of a ripe tomato. She could feel it in the heat of her
face. “Nothing is as it appears, Ruth. Nothing!”
“I am fully aware of
that. I was not sure how much of this you already knew. Your son was a mole for
the American government, wasn’t he?”
“I can’t answer your
question. How do you know, Jonathon Pierce?”
“He’s a friend. I can
tell you no more.”
Sara watched her stand
and walk to the door.
“I believe your visit is
over. Thank you for your condolences.”
Sara turned to her at the
door. “I’m truly sorry for your loss, Ruth. Nothing I say can bring Oscar back
to you.”
Ruth nodded and Sara
walked out the door. Tears clouded her vision; she stumbled on the first step
and grabbed the banister.
Ruth whispered from
behind, “As nothing I do can bring back your son.”
***
Pushing herself through
Friday was not helping. Sara still felt like crap. Folding over her tender
stomach she laid her forehead on the desk and tried for five minutes of relief.
A knock on her door defeated her attempt. Before she could respond, Jonathon
was half way to a chair beside her desk.
“This better be business
related, Jonathon.”
“You look like a green
cowboy the morning after his first night in a bar.”
“Don’t shout.” She tried
to lean back so that the chair supported her head. “How important is it that I
attend this thing?”
“I’ll make your
apologies. Shouldn’t you be over this bug by now?”
“I would think so. You
need any additional information from me?”
“The San Francisco report
if you have it ready.”
She pointed to the stack
of gray bound reports on the corner of her desk.
“Did you touch any of
this?” he stood and leaned down to pick up the stack. “I don’t want any of the
department heads to catch what you’ve got.”
“How do you think the
stack got there? I can’t wave my magic wand and make things happen. If I
could, I’d make this bug disappear from my body.”
He sat back down and
leaned forward staring at her.
“Are you sure it’s the
flu? I mean flu season aside, maybe you ate a bad batch of meat laced with
e-coli.”
“How come you’re being so
nice to me?”
“I can’t win with you,
Sara. You bitch when I’m tough on you and you bitch when I try to be nice. I
told you I was sorry for the misunderstanding in Chicago. I was fed erroneous
information and acted on it instead of trusting my instincts.”
“Let me guess. The
barracuda called to spread malicious gossip in an attempt to get my job after
she failed to get Mr. Farrell to play games with her.”
“That was part of it.”
“What did she do to get
even with Matthew?”
“I understand he was
called back to Washington. Have you heard from him?”
“Not lately. I thought he
was coming back midweek; something must have come up since he didn’t show.” She
looked down at her watch. “Don’t you think you should scoop up the germ pile
and get out of here?”
“You should head on home.
You’re not much good to us in this condition.”
“Gee, thanks boss. Nice
to know I’m not needed.” He opened his mouth to rebut and she shook her head,
which was a mistake. Every hair follicle began to scream. “I’m out of here. I
just need to make one call. Get Louise to spray some of her disinfectant in
here after I leave.”
“I’ll see you on Monday,”
he said on his way out.
Sara reached for the
phone and took as big a breath as she dared. “Ron, how are things going down
there?”
“Who is this?” he asked.
“It’s Sara.”
“This doesn’t sound like
you. What’s wrong?”
“It’s just the flu. Why
didn’t you call me after Monday night’s meeting?”
“I took care of business
like I should have in the beginning. It’s all in the hands of professionals,
Sara. It’s done. You’re out of it.”
“Did you meet with an
older man introducing himself as Charles Johnson? Did he have a British
accent?”
“What is this thing you
have for Brits? He did give that name and I saw his identification. It was an
exact match. There was no accent. He was as American as the Bronx can make
him.”
“Ron, he was an Israeli
operative. He intercepted your call. The FBI never got it.”
“That’s bullshit! Stay
out of it, Sara, I’m warning you.”
“Such foul language, you
should be careful what you say over the phone. And, Ron?” she waited just long
enough. “Charles Johnson, alias Oscar Obermeyer, is dead. We buried him on
Wednesday.”
Sara’s silence had been
nagging at him all week. Matthew pulled into her drive on Friday evening and
threaded his way through a collage of fall colors. Pumpkins and large pots of
chrysanthemums almost obscured the steps to her front door although the trees
had been bare for weeks. He pressed the button beside her door and listened to
the chime. Two minutes was too long to wait. He knew she was home. He saw
lights on through the front window. He pressed the doorbell again and just as
he thought he was going to have to break in, she opened the door with a wet
piece of terrycloth pressed to her lips. Her eyes were sunken with dark
semi-circles draped below them and her hair was stuck limp to her forehead.
“Hi, beautiful.”
“That’s not funny,
Matthew.”
He walked through the
living room into the dining area. “New painting?” he asked gesturing to the
large canvas hanging on the wall behind her table.
“It’s from Jordie. What
do you think of it?”
“You can’t just glance at
it and know it. Jordie has a wonderful talent. Do you know the location?” he asked.
“Odiorne Point and some
other places.”
He studied it a few
minutes more. “A memory of friends?”
“When they were little,
Cass and I took the boys to that park and watched as they played pirates among
the rocks and through the trails. The boys had wonderful adventures there. Then
when they grew up there was Stacey.”
“What is that disk with
the pole running through it?”
“It’s the old air shaft
down into one of the bunkers. It’s all blocked up with leaf debris and rodent
nests. The boys used to hide pirate treasure in it.”
He stared at the air
shaft, almost totally covered in foliage. Carl, is it this easy?
“I expected you earlier
this week. Would you like something to eat?” Sara stood with her arms crossed
over her stomach unaware of the washcloth dripping onto the floor beside her
feet.
“How long have you been
sick?”
“I thought you were on
your way north when we talked on Tuesday. What took you so long?”
He took three steps
forward, effectively pinning her to the side of the fridge, and lifted her chin
with a finger. “How long?”
“It’s just the flu.” She
tried to move out of his grasp.
“Sara?”
She shrugged her
shoulders, “Monday.”
“Have you been tossing
for five days?”
“Unfortunately that is
part of the process.”
“But not for five days.
You’re dehydrated; a soft breeze could knock you over.” He walked her over to
the sofa and gently set her into it.
“I had thought to take
you to dinner. We’ll eat in, instead.”
“It would be easier and
less painful to just skip the middle man and dump the food directly into the
toilet. It saves wear and tear on my stomach.”
“Sara, you have a choice:
either I make you some soup and tea, and maybe juice, and you drink it like a
good girl; or I take you to the hospital, get you hooked up to an IV and pump
the liquids into you. You call it, love. Those are your only two choices.”
“You know, Matthew, you
can be a real bully sometimes. There’s a can of chicken noodle left in the
cupboard.”
While he searched for the
soup, he asked, “Did you talk to your neighbor, the Jewish lady?”
“I paid a condolence call
on Thursday.”
He dumped the can of soup
into a pot and stirred in a can full of water. Wiping his hands on a kitchen
towel he walked back into the living room. “And?”
“She wouldn’t tell me how
she knows Jonathon, but she did tell me she and her husband were survivors of
the holocaust and that they worked with Mossad. She says they were retired, but
occasionally do a small task when asked by their government. Did you know
they’re Israeli citizens?”
“Not until Wednesday. She
knows Jonathon Pierce?”
“He was at the cemetery.
Matthew, how could a man so frail fly to Chicago, intercept you, run down the
mayor’s son, then fly back here and pretend to be an FBI agent convincing
enough for Ron to spill his guts. Then the very next morning turn up dead?”
“Your husband’s
gullibility aside, I don’t know, love. I do know the man who stabbed me with an
umbrella last week, has the same image as the artist sketch in the Chicago papers. This same man was seen going into and leaving your husband’s house late
Monday night. He was followed back to the house next to yours where he parked
in the garage and did not come back out.”
“If you weren’t there,
how can you be sure?”
The tea kettle whistled
and he walked back to her kitchen returning with two steaming mugs and a glass
of apple juice. “I’m sure because my bird dog is reliable and his camera has a
date and time feature. Now sip your juice, and let the tea cool down a bit
while I get the soup into bowls.”
“It’s not going to work,
Matthew. I’ve tried this before – as soon as my nose smells the food, my
stomach revolts.”
He walked back into the
living room and sat on the recliner beside her. “Are you sure this is the flu?”
“What are you getting
at?”
“I don’t want you to take
this the wrong way, Sara, but could you be pregnant?”
“It’s only been a week
for us. It’s been ten months since the last time with Ron.”
“What about...?”
“That’s sick, Matthew. I
was unconscious.”
“Stranger things have
happened.”
“Not to me!”
“Okay, okay. Eat your
soup.”
***
The boss man walked down
the dark hall on the sixth floor of the Starr Shine building. A faint light
illuminated the offices of finance. He walked in silently. A light spilled into
the corridor from the corporate comptroller’s office. She was supposed to be
home with the flu.
He pushed the door open
wider. “What are you doing here?”
“Damn, are you tryin’ to
give me a heart attack?”
“I said what are you
doing here? You’re not supposed to be on this floor. When I got you this job,
it was with the understanding that you remain in the club. You get caught
anywhere else and I’ll let them hang you.”
“I just came down to
retrieve the glass from her desk.”
“What does that have to
do with the fitness club?”
“I’ve been providin’
nutrition shakes for the people who skip lunch to workout. Two of your ladies
usually spend their lunch break doing laps. The shakes are very popular, you
should try one.”
The boss man walked over
to the desk and picked up the half empty glass. “It doesn’t look like she’s too
keen on it. She left half of it behind.” He lifted it to his nose and sniffed.
“Smells like apricots.”
“I call it apricot
freeze. Ice cold you can’t taste the bitterness.”
The boss man tipped the
glass sideways and dipped a finger into the pink liquid. About to raise it to
his lips, he was halted by Otto’s next sentence.
“I wouldn’t do that if I
were you. The first symptoms will be flu-like. Within a week you’ll do anything
to remove the pain knotting in your gut. In ten days you’ll tell me anything to
get release.”
“Fuck you, Otto. You
found the cylinder!”
“Nope, this is the
prototype that failed. I kept a vile of it when I toured the plant back in
January. It’s only got enough in it to work on one, maybe two people.”
“How many have you
poisoned with it?”
“Oh, just your little
Mourning Dove. I figure she’ll be ready to tell me anything I want with three
more days of this stuff. Everyone else is getting an instant breakfast with a
scoop of fattening ice cream blended in.”
“Are you telling me Sara
Stafford’s flu all week is poisoning from the very product we think her son has
hidden?”
“Not quite, this original
formula has some quirks in it. The cylinder Carl stole from us is tasteless and
lethal in twelve to twenty-four hours. We have to find it and the disk in the
next four days or our Middle East contacts will obliterate their next target.”
“And do you know what
that target is, Mr. Fountain of Information?”
“I intercepted a
communication yesterday, boss.”
“Well?”
“The new Starr Shine
satellite scheduled to launch on the 19
th
will never make it out of
the atmosphere. Pieces of it will fall over most of the southeast, the Bahamas’ and Bermuda. I’ve been told it’ll be radio-active.”
“You’re bluffing. I heard
nothing about this. I’ve got listening devices on all possible contacts.”
“I intercepted two that
were supposed to come to you. You should spend more time in your office.”
The boss man, with his
jaw clenched, stared venom at the little weasel.
“Now who’s top dog?” Otto
bragged.
“Obviously, you’ve been
busy doing more than picking up the evidence. Did you find anything more of
interest?”
“A lot of neat filing and
a locked desk drawer I was about to open when you came in.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve got a
key and I check this office daily. Sara Stafford keeps confidential files on
the former comptroller and company espionage in there, nothing else. I’ve got
some other news that may lead you to the prize we seek. The Jew got Sara’s
husband to spill his guts. Ron Stafford showed him the information and evidence
he has, but the Israeli didn’t take it with him.”
“Are you sure?”
“He would have talked
Monday night. He said the guy keeps the information he found under the kitchen
sink behind the cooking sherry. Do you think you can get this one right?”
“I’ll have it in your
hands tomorrow morning.” Otto walked around to the front of the desk. The boss
man grabbed his shirtfront and pushed him against the wall.
“Listen to me, you
little shit, you screw this one up and you’re dead.” The boss man took the
glass of poison evidence and walked to the door.
Otto straightened his
green t-shirt with the fitness club logo on it and shoved past him. If Otto
wasn’t his only contact to the group he would have been dead long ago.
***
Deception was a craft
well learned. It took Ron years to realize his son had deceived him. Carl’s
life from the time he could shave was a fake. He pretended to be someone he
wasn’t, riding this pretense until a bullet stopped the charade. Then, another
deception took its place. A government lie made Ron believe his son’s sacrifice
was self-inflicted, no hero’s honor guard, no recognition for services rendered
to his country, just a void where his life had been.
It took months to
understand Sara’s deception, too. Not until Carl was gone and her nightmares
began did their marriage start to unravel. It gnawed on her six months before
she walked out on twenty-six years of a partnership intended to last a
lifetime.
If Sara was to be
believed, even the government agent was an imposter. What a web of lies. He put
his reading glasses down on a stack of printouts from weeks of research, a
search that got him lost in circles of anonymity. He picked up the brass
medallion that started this and rubbed his thumb over the embossed insignia.
With eyes closed he remembered Sara’s shock. She was so horrified she was
physically ill the night she found it.
A muffled thud at the
back of the house interrupted his thoughts and Ron wondered if his erstwhile
burglar had finally come back to finish the job. He slowly pulled the center
drawer of his desk open and lifted the gun. The slider was opening now. He
could hear the crinkle of the cellophane he’d placed in the track.
He hobbled as quietly as
he could to the kitchen doorway. Cast or no cast, this was not a time for
crutches.
Ron flicked on the
overhead lights in the kitchen. “Come back to finish the job, did you?” A young
man dressed in black with his head tucked into the cabinet under the sink
jerked back, banging his head on the top of the opening.
“I see you’re home, after
all,” the short, stocky burglar rubbed the back of his blond head and stood
with a box in one hand and a flashlight in the other. “Your lights were out;
you should’ve stayed at your office.” His eyes scanned down Ron’s body,
probably sizing him up for a fight. He laughed when he got to the cast.
“What do you find so
funny, little man? Is it that you have at least a hundred pounds on me, or my
decorative footwear?”
“I find your pink cast
hilarious. You’re nothin’ but a scared jack rabbit that tripped over his own
feet at the first sign of trouble. You couldn’t even hold on to your wife. Now,
she’s
a tough little package. No matter what I put in front of her, she
always seems to land on her feet. Well, she’s not gonna make it out of this
one. I’ve been tending to her nutritional needs; to shake up her system. And
there’s no cure.”
“You listen here, little
man. You harm Sara and your life is over.”
“Makin’ idle threats now?
Ooh, I’m so scared.”
“This threat isn’t idle.
You’re not leaving this house.”
“You think you’re tough
enough to stop me?” The burglar slowly put down his flashlight and the box Ron
could now see was a container of soap pads. Immediately a switchblade appeared
in the right hand of the burglar. A single click and four inches of steel
appeared.
“Do you mean to tell me
you broke into my house for a box of Brillo pads?” Ron laughed over the
absurdity of the situation and moved to put his butcher-block island between
him and the threat.
“You thought you could
hide the disk and cylinder in here, didn’t you? Well the Jew couldn’t keep the
secret. He died with the truth on his lips.”
“You mean the man who
came here Monday night? I told him my son kept his secrets in the soap pad
box. And honestly I have to say he did. All of Carl’s secrets did, in fact,
stay hidden in there. His mother never saw the evidence of his childhood
misadventures, from a test with an F on it to a mysteriously appropriated
marijuana cigarette. Since she was always away at work, I was the one to scrub
the pots. But, son, that was a long time ago and a truckload of Brillo pads
from here.”