In the afternoons, David offered a free medical clinic for hotel workers and their families. He tacked up a very unofficial-looking sign in one of the long hallways on the ground floor.
Dr. David Strauss. Hours: 3
P.M
. until I’m finished
.
More and more, though, David found himself being drawn to the subject of modern-day Nazis. He pored over Nazi books and stared at old Nazi movies, with unhealthy attention. Almost daily he tried to reach an old friend of his grandmother’s, the famous Nazi-hunter Michael Ben-Iban. Ben-Iban, however, never seemed to be at his home in Frankfurt.
“I’m sorry, Ben-Iban is away in Israel”; “Ben-Iban is on business in England,”
David heard from the old man’s secretary.
David had always overintellectualized the Nazis, he decided midway through his reading and research.
So who exactly were these Nazis?
he now asked himself over and over like a monotonous broken record.
In May of 1980, who were they?
Who was it that had attacked his family on Upper North Avenue?
Who had murdered Heather?
Why?
In a suite of hotel rooms, David stockpiled some three hundred Nazi books and pamphlets, many of them supplied by the Ulster County Lending Library Association. Among the Nazi books were Hugh Trevor-Roper’s
The Last Days of Hitler
; Thomas Mann’s
Order of the Day
; hefty tomes by Walter Langer, Michael Bar-Zohar, Shirer, Speer, Toland;
The Final Solution; Hitler’s Twelve Apostles
.
There was also the swastika-covered and quite stupefying
Hate Book
; pornographic Nazi paperbacks imported from a drugstore in nearby Poughkeepsie—
Gestapo Prison Brothel
and
Bitch of Buchenwald;
and
The National Socialist White People’s Party Songbook
(To the tune of “Jingle Bells”: “Riding through the Reich/In a big Mercedes-Benz/Killing lots of kikes/Making lots of friends”).
There was also the Holocaust volume of
The Jewish Encyclopedia
, the complete Lucy Rabinowitz, Samson the Nazarite, and Jabotinsky.
Almost daily now, too, a man named Harry Callaghan from the FBI brought David new information: data on the known Nazi organizations still flourishing anywhere.
From all of this information, Strauss began to compile his own composite box score on the Nazis. They certainly knew who he was. Now David wanted to know all about them.
Literally everything about the Nazis.
The American Nazi Party. Now calls itself the National Socialist White People’s Party
, David wrote in a foolscap notepad.
Based in Alexandria, Virginia, FBI guesstimates 800 to 2,000 active members
.
The National States Rights Party. Out of Marietta, Georgia. Hate sheet called
Thunderbolt
distributed to 15,000 members every month. Members included Fred Cowan, New Rochelle furniture mover who went berserk in 1976, killing five people in Westchester
.
American Nazi splinter groups:
The National Socialist Party of America. Based in Chicago. Attempted Nazi march through Skokie, Illinois, on July 4, 1977
.
The National Socialist Women’s Organization. Chicago
.
The National Socialist League (Gay Nazis). Los Angeles
.
A small group in Pennsylvania called Stormtroopers, but considered “harmless” by FBI
.
International Nazi groups and movements:
Die Spinne. “The Spider.” Leaves no mailing address. Not considered “harmless.” The same goes for Die Schleuse, L’Araignée, and ODESSA
.
Day after day David Strauss rummaged through, or just stared at, the hateful stacks of Nazi papers and Nazi books.
He wondered exactly which page had killed his brother, his grandmother, his wife
.
Every night when David closed his eyes, he saw after-images of the funerals.
Heather’s funeral had been disturbingly peaceful. An Episcopal cemetery called Evergreen. Blue skies overhead. Tall, full-boughed trees like those in Van Gogh’s final paintings at Arles.
Nicholas, Elena, and Beri’s service had been at Temple Emmanuel on Fifth Avenue. The funeral was held the day after the shootings, according to Jewish law.
As David lay in his bed at Cherrywoods, he could see himself riding to the funeral in a somber, tomblike limousine. The trees along Fifth Avenue were silently flashing by the limousine’s windows. His own face was reflected on the windows: dark, dreamlike, severe.
There were nearly four thousand people at the temple.
Gray police barricades had been set up for three blocks in either direction on Fifth. Two pale blue police buses sat at Sixty-seventh Street, which happened to be the site of the Soviet Embassy.
David held the arms of his two great-aunts as he slowly walked down the roped-off entranceway to the temple.
Inside the temple, David’s gaze fell down the long center aisle. At the sight of the three plain pine caskets his eyes filled. A cantor with a basso profundo voice began to sing. A swirling wave made up of sadness and immeasurable loss turned David’s stomach inside out. He felt lightheaded.
You never know how much you’re going to miss people
. At that moment, David was certain he couldn’t go on without them.
Dear, dear Heather and Elena. And Nick and Beri.
Not only family, his four best friends in the world. His flesh. A physical and spiritual part of David gone without warning.
Dr. David Strauss ran to punish his body, it seemed—
for what sin or sin of omission he wasn’t exactly sure
.
He ran to prepare himself—
for what Olympic task he wasn’t certain of, either
.
Six miles a day at first.
Then eight miles.
Ten miles. And then heartbreaking quarter-mile sprints.
Probably because he was a doctor, David pretended to himself that the running would help to lower his blood pressure. It would decrease his cholesterol. It would build up his cardiopulmonary fitness.
Pure folly.
David really ran for the pain
.
During what, David called his “ruthless runs” he had no memory. No practical necessities. No tragic past or frightening, very unsure future.
There was just the physical act of running, the cleansing pain.
There was pushing himself to his absolute limits. There was teaching his body to accept extra pain like heel spurs, runner’s knee, and groin pulls. There was learning to control without oxygen before a second wind came. There was learning to run hard in spite of crippling excesses of lactic acid.
One overcast afternoon the FBI chief, Harry Callaghan, approached David about his running. Callaghan was shorthaired, physically fit, in his mid-forties. He was tall and gauntly thin. He reminded David of a New England college professor—or Gregory Peck trying to play a college-professor role. He was getting a little soft puttering around Cherry-woods, the agent said. Could he possibly work out a little with David? Might he tag along on one of the ruthless runs?
David didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t know how to say no politely. He recoiled from the thought of having a running partner: someone who might take his mind off the
pure physical act
.
A little before 5:00
P.M
., Callaghan appeared in a burnt-orange-and-red USMC T-shirt, and loose Georgetown basketball shorts showing pale white and freckled legs.
David wore gray-and-red-striped Snowbirds, ancient Pumas, a faded apple-green shirt and shorts, and an old ratty sweatband that had evolved from snowy white to gray.
David was completing a hybrid combination of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the West Point fitness drills when Callaghan came up to him on the Lake Porch.
“No, no, Dr. Strauss. You don’t do the West Point drills before you run.” The FBI agent couldn’t really believe what he was seeing.
“I do a few sit-ups, squats, leg and knee raises before I go out,” David said. “When I come back in I try to do another set with rocking sit-ups and isometrics.”
Callaghan shook his head from side to side. This was the first time he’d realized that Dr. Strauss was a bit more than just another fitness nut.
The two men completed the final exercises side by side on the groaning wooden porch.
Grunting and cursing, they did squats, leg thrusts and raises, push-ups.
Acidic sweat began to waterfall into Harry Callaghan’s eyes. His Tiger Corsairs sloshed as they began to fill with water. Gnats and horseflies landed on his glistening back as if it were the national insects’ aircraft carrier.
David strapped a yellowish cowhide pack onto his back and shoulders. The backpack was a professional training device made by Dunlap. It could hold from twenty to fifty pounds of lead weight and David had it full.
“Do you mind if I run with this?” he said.
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“I’m the doctor, right?”
“Or maybe, you should
see
a doctor.”
“Okay, I’m ready. Run from the hips, Mr. Callaghan. Breathe from the belly.” David smiled for the first time. “Let’s go, partner.”
They ran straight back into the tall evergreen forest. Very cool in the shade. Actually, quite nice, Harry Callaghan thought, as his feet padded softly on the pine needles. Maybe the worst of it had been the exercises.
Seeming to sense the FBI agent’s contentment, David turned onto one of the winding trails leading up onto Lookout Mountain.
Here, the lie of land was steep and rocky. The running of the two men became closer to mountain-climbing.
After two and a half miles of mountain, Harry Callaghan began to feel an uneasy tightness and burning in his chest. Shortness of breath. Tightening in his upper legs. At first, he guessed that Dr. Strauss was trying strongly to discourage him from tagging along again.
The FBI man struggled to keep up beside David Strauss.
“What are you trying to do to yourself?” Callaghan asked in a puffing, grunting voice. “What are you trying to do
to me?
”
Very suddenly, though, in an intuitive flash, Callaghan knew exactly what David Strauss was doing on his “ruthless runs.”
“You’re getting yourself ready,” Callaghan huffed, his heavy steps landing like small bombs now.
“Want to fight them, don’t you? … Nazis? Storm Troop?”
David Strauss began to pick up the pace. He tried to ignore the agent. “Little stitch in my side. Diaphragm spasm. Getting my second wind, though.”
“You can’t fight them.” Callaghan was struggling to keep up with the younger man. His chest was twisting tighter and tighter. His legs felt leaden. His neck and shoulders ached.
“The fuck I can’t. If I ever get the chance … I goddamn will. Fight the bastards. Murdering coward bastards.”
“They’re not going … challenge you to a footrace, Doctor.”
David said nothing.
That
made Harry Callaghan angry.
Damnit, he
knew
about the Reich. Callaghan knew more about the Nazis than just about any field man in the Bureau.
He could help
. That was his job. David Strauss was choosing to ignore him, though. Acting as if the agent were some kind of useless second asshole.
Furious, Harry Callaghan stuck his foot out.
He knew he shouldn’t have the second he did it.
Not professional, Harry
. Not rational.
David fell hard and fast. As if he’d been hit by a bullet from a sniper’s rifle. Something Harry Callaghan had seen happen to a man.
The green shirt and shorts, the wheeling arms and legs, flipped, somersaulted, and rolled to an exaggerated stop against a wall of scrub pines.
“You might as well learn a lesson right now,” the FBI agent called down from the main trail.
“The Nazis run dirty, Dr. Strauss. Remember that.”
Harry Callaghan headed back to the Cherrywoods Hotel.
Walking slowly.
The realization that she was maybe royally screwing up her life, her acting career at least, came to Alix Rothschild slowly, over a couple of weeks in mid-spring.
First there had been the million-dollar perfume stink in front of Henri Bendel’s.
Then another tempest in a teapot, in The Café of the Sherry Netherland, with a slick “packager” representing CBS, MFA, and apparently two million dollars.
Now there was the most uncomfortable tableau of all. At her movie company’s New York offices, high over Central Park South.
Alix’s agent, Mark Halperin, was there, the California golden boy. He was biting his manicured nails, sliding his sunglasses in and out of a breast pocket of his Western shirt, rubbing the soles of his fashionably soiled tennis sneakers together.
Also present in the posh business office was Arnold Manning, former president of one of the few remaining large studios in Hollywood. The gonzo independent producer was unattractive. He was bald and stout.
Manning sat in the midst of a coterie of studio lawyers, accountants, and other vice presidents. These overindulged men seemed to confuse themselves with their company’s movie stars and directors.
Arnold Manning spoke to Alix in the softest voice—as if she were a wayward but much-loved daughter—which in a way, Alix was.
“Must I remind you, Alix, dear, sweet, confusing, confused lady, that we have a three-picture arrangement, you and I. That’s for
movies. Three
movies.”
“That’s fine, Arnold,” Alix nodded. “I just haven’t liked the scripts you’ve been sending me.”
One of the studio heads reared ugly. “Point of information, Alix. As I understand it, Jackie Bisset didn’t like the script for
The Deep
. Dick Dreyfuss didn’t want to do
Jaws
. Facts.”
Alix looked away and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that were rattling softly in their giant aluminum frames.
Outside was Columbus Circle. Lovely Central Park in late spring. No visions of concentration camps today. No Dachau. No Buchenwald. Not yet, anyway.