Ed must have felt as elated as I did over our first real breakthrough, and maybe that was his way of showing it. A good release for aggression, as Mrs. Gellert would put it.
“Where are we taking him?” I asked as we pulled out into the traffic. The old man wasn’t cowering or begging, in fact he wasn’t doing much of anything, just sitting in the corner staring out the window, as if he were on a Sunday drive.
“Where do you live?” Kohler asked when we stopped for a light at Sixth. He said nothing, and I prodded him in the ribs with the Schmeisser.
“The man asked you a question.”
“At 285 West 12th Street, off Hudson.”
The voice was deep, resonant, and didn’t sound frightened. Maybe he was a pro, maybe he just had guts. Maybe both.
“Let’s take him over to his place and check it out,” Kohler said, cutting into Bleecker on Sixth. “Before anybody else beats us to it. You never know what we might find there.”
The same thought was in both our minds, which was why we kicked the door down in the crummy fourth-floor loft, threw the old man ahead of us and went in crouched and with our guns ready. But there was nothing there but some crummy furniture and an assortment of junk that must have taken years to collect, ranging from one of those old bubble vending machines that used to dispense gum and candy to an ancient sundial. Empty pint bottles of cheap whisky and raw muscatel were strewn over the floor and the place smelled like a cross between a distillery and a locker room. The bed was just a soiled mattress, and Kohler and I picked the old man up from the floor where he’d fallen and threw him onto it.
“If this guy is a Nip agent,” I said sotto voce as we propped the door back into place, “he’s either acting his part well or the Empire’s fallen on hard times.”
“He could be just an acquaintance of the Jew. The kid said they played chess together, maybe that’s all there is to it. But we’ve got to act on the assumption he knows something, and try to get it out of him.”
We walked over to the mattress and stood over the old man, who was rubbing his shoulder tentatively.
“Look, mister,” Kohler said in a friendly tone, “we’re not going to hurt you if we can help it. In fact, if you’re clear on this there’s some money in it for you, enough to keep you in decent booze for six months. So just cooperate, and we’ll get along fine.”
He dragged over a rickety kitchen chair and straddled it backwards, facing the old man. I stood back and at an angle, covering them and the door both, just in case.
“Now, what we want to know…”
“There’s a pint of bourbon inside the stove. Would you get it for me?”
His eyes were gray, I noticed, the pupils bloodshot. They were not frightened eyes. And that, I thought, was wrong. Anybody should be frightened when he’s dragged at gunpoint from a public park and kept a prisoner in his own flat. Anybody that is, except somebody who’s accepted such risks as part of the game. Which, appearances notwithstanding, brought us back to the nips. I remembered the panhandler disguise of the Komeito agent who tried to kill me, and that was every bit as believable as the image of the kindly old chess-playing alky projected by the guy on the mattress. Until the mask came off, it was.
“Get him the bourbon, Bill.”
That surprised me, but I walked over, still not putting my back to the door, and rummaged through the rusty old pot-bellied stove till I found a pint of Early Times. The seal was still intact and when I handed it to the old man he screwed off the cap with a strong twist of his hand and took a long slobbering gulp from the bottle.
“Feeling any better?” Ed was playing it easy, for the time being anyway.
“Yes, considerably. I assume you are officers of the law, and not unscrupulous sundial thiefs willing to go to any length to purloin my treasure?”
Kohler frowned, and I seconded the expression. The slightly pedantic voice was educated, intelligent, and the sense of humor didn’t fit the circumstances. To say the least.
“My name is Kohler, Ed Kohler, and this is Lieutenant Haider. We represent a combined task force of the Gestapo and the New York police.” That sounded impressive enough to me, but our captive didn’t even blink. “Now to complete the amenities, why don’t you tell us your name.”
The old man smiled, which also didn’t fit.
“Connor. Francis X. Connor. I’d offer you a drink, gentlemen, but I think my need is the greater and this is the last bottle in the place.”
The flippancy might or might not hide fear but I didn’t like it.
“Connor,” Kohler said, “whether you know it or not, you’re in real trouble. We want your cooperation, and if we don’t get it you won’t be seeing a drop of whisky for a long, long time. Now, we’re looking for a friend of yours, at least an acquaintance, someone you’ve played chess with on several occasions…”
Connor held up a hand.
“Why not spare me the preliminaries, Lieutenant. I know why you’re here, I’ve expected you for some time. You’re looking for the Jew.”
You could have cut the silence with a knife. Shit, he’d come right out with it, admitted it. Which meant he had to be with the nips. But that was wrong too, why the hell would he blow it like that, before we’d even touched him? Kohler must have been just as confused, I’d seen the expression on his face when the old man said it, but he tried to carry on naturally.
“So you know about the Jew. For how long?”
“Oh, from the very beginning. From the day he arrived.”
Arrived. The same word Ed had used in the car coming down from Croton.
“From where did he… arrive?” I could hear the sudden tension in the words, but Connor just smiled.
“You’d better ask him that. I met him in Washington Square Park, which as you may have guessed is my local stamping ground. He was wandering around in a dazed state, I thought he was ill, either physically or mentally.
At first he couldn’t talk coherently but finally I got him back here and forced the last of my drinkable brandy down his throat. Then he talked, all right. Dear God, he talked and talked, we went right through the night.” He took another pull at the bourbon. “I haven’t talked like that to man or beast for twenty-five years.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, many things. Crazy things I thought they were at first, then I wasn’t so sure. And now I know he’s the sanest man I’ve met in a long, long time. He stayed on with me here, I fed him and gave him money. I have some, you know, appearances notwithstanding, from a white sheep brother in Scarsdale who sends me a check each month so long as I never darken his split-level doorstep. The Jew had no money of his own, or at least none that would be negotiable here. After awhile he had the courage to go out again, though I stayed with him most of the time at first. It was never easy for him, God knows.”
“Where is he now?” Kohler almost breathed the words.
“I haven’t seen him for two weeks.”
Two weeks. Two fucking weeks, in every case. I think both of us groaned out loud at the same time, but Kohler wasn’t ready to give up that easily.
“And all that time you knew he was a Jew, he’d admitted it to you?”
“Yes, of course.” God, he was a cool one.
“You realize that harboring a Jew is still on the books as a capital offense? You realize that under the Emergency Regulations, which are also valid, I have the right to execute you on the spot?”
“Yes, Mr. Kohler, I do.” Suddenly the urbane mockery was gone from his voice, and the bleary eyes were hard. “And you will, in one way or another. I knew from the moment I saw you that I would die today.”