It looked like a sure thing. Podres was too strong. This time they were going to do it. After fifty-five years Brooklyn was finally going to win the Series.
Three weeks later, two days after Earl died, Bernie received a call at the station from an attorney named Jack Meyer, who worked out of a small storefront near Grand Army Plaza in downtown Brooklyn. He mentioned that he was handling the details of Earl’s estate and had a couple of questions for him. Bernie arranged a time to see him during his lunch hour and took the trolley to his office.
Meyer worked alone in a cramped single room, piled halfway up the walls with accordion files and loose paperwork. A round, balding man in his mid-sixties with a welcoming smile, he welcomed Bernie in and gestured toward the chair in front of his desk, the only other place to sit.
“Apologies in advance for my filing system,” said Meyer. “I’m a few weeks behind on my paperwork.”
Bernie said he didn’t mind, uncomfortable as always in an encounter with any form of authority.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you know Earl Grannit?” asked Meyer.
“We met during the war.”
“Did you serve together?”
“Not in the same unit. But that’s where we met.”
“Where are you from originally?”
“Brooklyn. That’s what we realized. That we were from the same neighborhood.”
Something of Bernie’s reticence came across. “I don’t mean to pry,” said Meyer. “I’m just trying to understand the relationship. I knew Earl’s father; I represented the family for many years. I never heard Earl mention you.”
“He was never much of a talker,” said Bernie.
“No,” said Meyer, with a warm smile. “But he made the most of the words he let go of.”
“Yes, sir. After the war, we stayed in touch. When he had the stroke, I started helping out at the gas station. I’m a mechanic.”
“I see.”
“Earl had a rough time of it.”
“I know he was badly wounded over there. Took him years to recover.”
“See, I don’t think he ever really did.”
“It’s a blessing his suffering is over,” said Meyer. “So our business here today is short and simple. If you knew him as well as you say, you won’t be surprised to hear that Earl took very precise care of his affairs.”
Bernie smiled slightly.
“I have his will here. He’s left everything to you.”
Bernie couldn’t speak for a moment. “Excuse me?”
“You’re his sole heir. Don’t run right out and move to West chester; there’s not a lot, aside from the gas station and a few savings bonds.”
“I thought…He had no other family at all?”
“He had a sister growing up.”
“Where is she?”
“She was killed. There was a robbery at the station. Some punk emptied the till, she walked in on him. A long time ago now, over twenty-five years. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen.”
Bernie’s own vivid impressions of that day came flooding back and his eyes filled with involuntary tears. He could even pick a young policeman out of the crowd in his memory who might have been…
“As I understand it, Earl had just joined the police force. Had to work a double shift that day when he would normally have been at the station. Terrible, terrible business. They never found the killer. Family never got over it. Two years later Earl’s father dies of a heart attack. His wife went the next year. There’s one theory that she killed herself. Didn’t he ever tell you any of this?”
“No, sir. He never did.”
“Well,” said Meyer, sympathetic to Bernie’s show of emotion. “He was a hard man to know.”
Bernie composed himself before he spoke again. “You have no idea what he did. Over there. Nobody knows what he did. More than any man I know. Did he ever tell you what happened?”
“No. And I never asked. Nor, in putting this document together, and this is a little awkward, could I find any mention of your service record. No entry or discharge. Nothing with the Veterans Administration.” He let that sink in for a moment, then turned to a legal pad. “I did verify that your family lived in Park Slope, as you say. Then it appears you moved away for some time in ’38? Eight years later you’re back in the area. Alone. Living in a one-room apartment. Unmarried. No trace of your family.”
Meyer appeared to be waiting for an explanation, but when none was forthcoming he showed no disappointment.
“The fact is Earl Grannit vouched for you,” said Meyer. “And that is as far as my curiosity extends. I require your signature here, and here.”
Meyer set two copies of the will down in front of him and handed Bernie a pen.
“I owe him my life,” said Bernie, about to elaborate.
“Please, feel no obligation to say anything more. Earl obviously had his reasons as well.”
Bernie signed the documents. Meyer efficiently gathered them from him and showed him to the door.
“Anyway, one hopes that’s what we’ve learned about what happened over there, isn’t it?” he said. “In those black hours.”
As Meyer looked at him over his glasses, behind the easy congeniality, Bernie wondered exactly how much he did know.
“What’s that, sir?”
“What we were fighting for. And against.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not every hero came home with a medal.”
They shook hands, and Bernie stepped out onto the quiet tree-lined street, a chill in the wind, the leaves just starting to turn, and walked all the way back to Park Slope.
AFTERWORD
On May 19, 1945, near Salzburg, Austria, where he had led his commandos into the Alps to mount a final defense, Oberstürmbannführer Otto Skorzeny turned himself in to American forces. News of the surrender of “the most dangerous man in Europe” created a sensation throughout the Continent, America, and the rest of the world. When General Eisenhower learned of Skorzeny’s capture, he sent his personal chief of security to interview him and ordered a film crew from Army Counter Intelligence to record the interrogation. Eisenhower reviewed the resulting footage personally, but his reaction was never made public. Skorzeny would spend the next two years in prisoner-of-war camps at Nuremberg and later at Dachau, awaiting trial in the Allies’ war crimes court. Although he was universally described in newspaper accounts as “the man who tried to kill Eisenhower,” Skorzeny skillfully defused the accusation through the English-speaking press. Charming and formidable, easily the most charismatic of the surviving Nazi hierarchy, in dozens of interviews he claimed that he had never seriously intended to assassinate the Allied commander, adding, with a sly smile, that if he had, “no one would have been left in doubt about what I was trying to do.”
Despite working steadily for the next two years, Allied officials were unable to produce any written orders or compelling eyewitnesses who would testify to Skorzeny’s direct involvement in the plot to kill Eisenhower. Skorzeny had received his orders directly from Hitler, and had made certain that no paper trail survived. The only other men with direct knowledge of the Second Objective had all been killed in combat or shot by American firing squads. Only the interrogation of the unfortunate Karl Heinz Schmidt and a few others testified to its existence, and those files would remain classified by Army Counter Intelligence for the next fifty years. The reason for that had something to do with the fact that, while in custody, after weeks of fruitless interrogations about Operation Greif by Allied interrogators, Skorzeny was visited by the legendary Bill Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, and Skorzeny’s opposite number on the American side. Donovan recognized a kindred spirit in Skorzeny, and although no record of their discussions remain, they were apparently amiable and far-reaching. What they shared in earnest, besides an appetite for spy craft, was a serious dread of the Soviet Union and its emerging designs on Eastern Europe. Shortly after their encounter, all pursuit of charges against Skorzeny in the Eisenhower assassination attempt was dropped. For a while, frustrated prosecutors considered including Skorzeny with the dozens of soldiers and officers responsible for the massacre of American troops near Malmédy, but the idea was dismissed for an obvious lack of evidence.