I got up and paced the room restlessly. This wasn’t going anywhere, I might as well come right out with it.
“Penny, did he ever talk about Jews?”
“What are Jews?”
Well, that was it. She was too young and too wide-eyed to be an accomplished liar, so I might as well give up.
“Thank you, Penny. I’m sure Papa will be back to see you soon.”
I’d stake out a few men around the place, just in case, but it was a dead end, I was pretty sure.
“Will he bring my present?”
“Yes Penny, he’ll bring your present. Goodbye now.”
She waved and returned to her teddy-bear and I was halfway out the door before it registered. I froze a minute, then turned around and went back in, closing the door slowly behind me.
“Penny, just one more thing. That picture over the door, what happened to it?” I kept my voice calm, casual, there were a thousand other explanations.
She looked up blankly for a minute, then smiled.
“Oh that was Papa. He hated that picture. He threw it on the floor and kicked it once he was so mad. That was the only time he ever got mad. A lot of people get mad at me, like Mr. Zeelan, but I never saw Papa mad except that one time. He got all red.”
“Thank you, Penny.”
I stood outside in the corridor for a minute, lighting a cigarette with shaky fingers. The picture hanging above the door with its glass shattered, was a 10-mark mass-produced portrait of the Fuhrer.
I didn’t stop to see Lotte on the way out and kept my foot on the gas all the way back to Centre Street. I couldn’t spot my guardian angels anywhere along the way, but they were supposed to be good. It made me feel a little bit better to have somebody friendly at my back, but I hoped those dart guns of theirs were as effective as Kohler said they were.
Beck was tied up with the computer when I arrived so I launched right into the story with Ed. Half-way through, before I even reached the punch line, he picked up the phone and ordered a stakeout at the Crib. “Anybody who’s over sixty with gray hair, I don’t care if it’s the Mayor himself.” And when I reached the part about the portrait he jumped up in excitement.
“It’s him, Bill,” he said, leaning across the desk towards me. “It’s gotta be him.”
“It sounds right,” I agreed. “But it still doesn’t put us all that closer. He hasn’t visited her for two weeks, and it might be another two weeks or two months before he shows up again. But it’s a start anyway, the first hard make we’ve had.”
“I’ll fill Pete in as soon as he gets up here.” Kohler ran a hand wearily through his tousled hair. “God, for the first time we’ve gotten close to the bastard. And if the Japs are stalking us, and know as much as we do, they’re liable to make their move pretty soon.”
That thought didn’t exactly fill me with joy, but at least we were dealing with something tangible.
“You know, Ed,” I said softly, “up till tonight I could never really believe the guy existed. I mean, I knew all the reasons he should exist, the mezzuzah, the skull in the park, the way the Japs are behaving, but I could never really believe in him. And now, thanks to that little girl, we’ve finally got a line on him, I can feel him now.”
“Yeah, all because he likes kids. Never even screwed her, hah?”
I shook my head and started to ask for a drink. But something stopped me, something away at the back of my mind. Something about kids.
“Ed, let me see that original precinct report on the robbery at Pickett’s place.”
He rummaged through some papers on his blotter and tossed the three foolscap pages across to me. I read it through once, then returned to the part about the skull in the park. Shit, there might be something there.
“Ed, when that woman returned the skull, the one her kids had dug up in the park, we only thought about the guy’s reasons for burying it, we were concerned with it only as an indication that he was a Jew. But there could be more to it. What if these kids didn’t just dig up that skull by accident? What if they saw it being buried and got curious? What if they were witnesses?”
Kohler squeezed his eyes shut.
“Good God, we never even talked to them.”
He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and headed toward the door.
“Take the report, it’s got the address.”
It was past six by the time we got to Washington Square but the sun was hot as ever and the humidity was hovering somewhere around the ninety degree mark. The Arnold Gellerts lived in a comfortable six-floor apartment building overlooking the park, and Mrs. Gellert was polite enough, if a bit baffled. “I’m sorry, officers, but my husband isn’t back from work yet.” She was a fairly attractive woman, in her late forties but with nice skin and the legs of a twenty-year-old.
“It’s about your children, Mrs. Gellert,” I said, and her calm expression told me they were right there in the flat. “Do you remember when they dug up that skull and you returned it to the antique shop?”
Understanding dawned on her face and, belatedly, she invited us into the airy living room. We all sat down and Kohler refused an offer of refreshments, though God knows I could have used a cold drink. Alcoholic, preferably.
“Yes, the proprietor, Mr. Stickett or something, told me it had been stolen. And to bury it like that, what a crazy thing to do. Tommy and Bob spend so much time in the park, it does worry me to think that characters like that are hanging out there. I tell them not to talk to strangers, but at that age it’s so difficult to do anything with them…”
“Do you know if your children ever actually saw or spoke to the man who buried this skull?” Kohler cut in.
A shadow of worry flickered across her face.
“Oh my no, at least I certainly hope not, I was just speaking generally. What happened, they brought this skull home one day, said they’d found it in the park, and when I saw the price tag I just assumed someone had lost it and I returned it to the store the next day, thinking the owner might return or they could trace it through a sales slip. But I never suspected it was stolen till Mr. Stickett told me, I just assumed the children had found it by accident, they dig a lot out there, burying their pets and that kind of thing…”
“Could we speak to your children, Mrs. Gellert?” Kohler asked quietly.
“Oh yes, yes of course, they’re at home, it’s too hot for them to play outside.”
She led us into another room decorated with model planets and poster blow-ups from the Torture Master series oh viddy. Two curly-haired kids in shorts were nailing a hamster to a sheet of plywood in one corner, the little animal writhing and mewling as the nails pierced the pink underside of its paws, and Mrs. Gellert marched over to them angrily.
“You boys promised me you’d keep this one for a week, they cost five dollars apiece and you are not going to have another this month.”
“Ahhh, Ma,” the younger boy whined, “it’s almost a week, we wanta have some fun.”
His older brother, around nine I’d say, dropped his hammer and scrambled to his feet.
“Yeah, Ma, and this one’ll stay alive another couple days anyway, we give him water so he keeps on making noises.”
“If he’s around by Friday we may talk about it.” She turned to us with an embarrassed smile. “We can’t keep a cat around here for two days, you know what boys are. But it’s a healthy outlet for their aggressions, they say.”
“Yes, I’m sure it is,” Kohler said. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, Mrs. Gellert, if we could speak to the boys…”