Styx & Stone (28 page)

“Could you tell me who?”

He looked at Roger, mulling it over. “Victor Chalmers,” he said finally. “When he called me in to explain the department’s decision, he told me how the final meeting had gone.”

“And how was that?”

“Your father announced that he would fight my tenure all the way to President Kirk’s office. Victor and Franco were nervous about that, since your father and Kirk had known each other for years; his wife had bought some paintings from your mother, it seems, and they met at social functions. So, they all felt compelled to buckle under to make it unanimous.”

Not quite the version I’d read in Miss Little’s minutes.

“What about you, Mr. Purdy?” I asked, turning to Roger.

“I have nothing nice to say about your father, because of what he did to Anthony and what he did to me.”

“The B?” I asked.

He seemed surprised that I knew. “Well, yes. But only because I deserved an A. A-plus, really.”

“You pursued the matter vigorously.”

“As well I should have,” he said. “Your father was bent on ruining my future, so I’m fighting him on it.”

“It’s not over yet?”

Purdy looked surprised. “Of course not. What makes you think that?”

“I just assumed that my father was unwilling to budge.”

“He was. But who knows what will happen now?”

I was stunned by his question and found it difficult to believe he’d said it to me, the man’s daughter. I knew my father was at times insufferable, opinionated, and harsh, with a vindictive streak to make Stalin shudder, but he was principled. To him, weakness was a blight on the human spirit. He was arrogant because he knew he was brilliant. These paradoxes had helped to drive a wedge between him and me, ever deeper since the death of my brother. My nature, too, contributed to the estrangement of affection, but before Roger Purdy, I felt the urge to defend him.

“I wish you’d remember that you’re speaking to his daughter,” I said.

“I am aware of the fact,” said Purdy, eyes narrowing with scorn, “and I chose my words with care.”

I returned to 26 Fifth Avenue for a bath and a change of clothes. Rodney was sitting on his usual stool near the elevator. He returned my hello with a nod to the sofa across the lobby. Bernie Sanger was waiting for me.

We stepped into the elevator, and Rodney whispered to me that Bernie was the young man who’d accompanied my father home the night of the attack. Bernie couldn’t help but overhear. He seemed miffed but said nothing.

“Thank you, Rodney,” I whispered back.

“Would you like me to wait here?” asked Rodney, once we’d reached the fifteenth floor. I told him I was fine.

“I don’t think he trusts me,” said Bernie, indignant, as the elevator doors rolled shut.

“He’s just protective of me,” I said. “Now, what’s so urgent, Bernie?”

“This arrived on my doorstep this morning,” he said, handing me a small package.

I looked at it: a box wrapped in kraft paper—opened—with his name scrawled across the front. No postage, no return address. The handwriting was ambiguous, and I figured it could have been written by a man or a woman.

“Go ahead,” said Bernie. “Open it.”

What I found inside was a photograph of Adolf Hitler, torn from a book, with a caption written in large block letters across the front:
STAY AWAY FROM HER, YOU DIRTY JEW. IF YOU SOIL HER, I’LL KILL YOU!

After the shock had dissipated, my attention came to rest on one word, perhaps more telling than the threats and diatribe:
SOIL
. Inconsistent with the tone of the note,
SOIL
was about as home on that page as Utica Club beer in a crystal flute. But what truly gave me pause was the certainty that I had heard the word recently. Helen Chalmers had pulled the evocative term from her bag of contempt for Bernie Sanger. He had “soiled” Hildy Jaspers, and would “soil” her daughter, Ruth, if given the chance.

“Do you have any idea who might have sent this?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Bernie. “I got a telephone call yesterday, threatening me to stay away from her. I think it was Billy Chalmers.”

“He said to stay away from Ruth?”

“Actually, I thought he meant Hildy Jaspers.”

“Really?” I asked. I had never imagined Hildy was the her. “Why would Billy Chalmers care about Hildy Jaspers?”

Bernie shrugged. “I think he’s sweet on her, but why he would threaten me, I don’t get. He should call Gigi Lucchesi instead.”

That stung me unexpectedly. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Just that Gigi and Hildy are the cozy ones, not Hildy and me.”

I flushed red, wanted to ask him for details, but I didn’t dare.

“What’s wrong, Ellie?”

“Nothing,” I said, still fixated on Gigi and Hildy.

“You know, now that you mention it, I was talking to Ruth the other night at the reception,” he said. “Billy was there too. Maybe he did mean Ruth after all.”

“What?” I hadn’t been paying attention.

Victor Chalmers and family lived in one of the brand-new, white-brick high rises that had sprouted up along Third Avenue when the El came down about five years earlier. He had given up his Carnegie Hill apartment and moved into the battleship building docked on Third Avenue and Eighty-Fourth Street. I remember my father speculating on several occasions why Chalmers had moved to the Upper East Side. He was fond of laying the blame at Helen Chalmers’s feet.

“She wanted a doorman in a green blazer to walk that ugly little lapdog of hers.”

A doorman in a green blazer met me in the lobby, and I asked for the Chalmers’s apartment. He called upstairs to announce me, then dispensed directions on how to get to where I was going; the building sprawled from the southwest corner of Eighty-Fourth Street halfway to Lexington Avenue. The wrong elevator bank would take you to a different postal zone.

“Ellie, please come in,” said Chalmers, greeting me at the door. “Can I fix you a drink?”

Why did everyone want to feed me liquor? “Sure,” I said, following him to the study.

“Scotch, right? Quite strong for a girl, isn’t it?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer, as he started pouring immediately. “Now, what’s this all about?” he asked, handing me the glass.

I sat on a short sofa, he took an armchair. “I called you because I wanted to show you this,” and I produced the package Bernie had given to me about an hour earlier.

He took one glimpse and blanched. “My God!”

“Don’t you want to know who sent it?” I asked.

He looked at me guardedly. “You know who it was?”

I was waiting for more reaction, drawing out the moment as long as possible. I thought he might know. “I suspect Billy or your wife sent this.”

He winced, then summoned some grit and fought back: “That’s an outrageous accusation, Ellie! How can you say that? What makes you think they would stoop to such behavior?”

“Bernie Sanger received a threatening phone call yesterday morning. He recognized Billy’s voice.”

“Sanger? That damn . . . How? How can he prove it?”

“I suppose he can’t. But he’s pretty sure it was him. And at first, he thought Billy wanted him to stay away from Hildy Jaspers.”

Now my host nearly choked on his alarm. “What? Billy and Hildy! Impossible!”

“That’s what I thought at first. Then I realized he was referring to Ruth.”

Chalmers seemed relieved, but still managed some outrage. “Billy’s no anti-Semite, and neither is Helen.”

“You’re probably right,” I concurred. “At least no more than most. But I’m used to that; I always figure it’s not my problem when people are bigoted, it’s theirs.”

“God, I can’t stand this,” said Chalmers, dropping his head into his hands. There was something more. “Listen,” he said, suddenly raising his head and drawing a deep breath. “Helen had nothing to do with this, I’m sure of that. She would be as horrified as I am.”

“What makes you so sure she had nothing to do with the letter?”

“Helen believes in direct confrontation. She’s not shy. If she had wanted to keep Sanger away from Ruth, she would have told him so to his face.” He sighed. “It’s Billy, I’m sure. But he’s no anti-Semite. He’s just confused.”

“What should I do about this?” I asked.

“Please, leave it to me, Ellie. I’ll straighten Billy out. This won’t happen again, I promise you. He’s really a good boy, you know. Just a little emotional about the family.”

I felt I’d tripped over some old family bones. He thanked me for the discretion I’d shown in bringing the matter to him instead of the police. Then at the door, he returned to Hildy Jaspers.

“What you said about her and Billy,” he began. “You said you were mistaken, right?”

I nodded. What was it to him?

“You gave me a fright there,” he said, smiling now. “Of course I shouldn’t have worried; everyone knows she and Luigi Lucchesi are an item.”

I left the Chalmers’s residence feeling like a chump. I was being played for a fool, and it was the first time in my life that I cared. But why should I be surprised? Hildy Jaspers was gorgeous, stunning in her tight skirts and sweaters. She was an incorrigible and intoxicating flirt, a good-time girl with a “giving nature.” Why wouldn’t an exquisite boy like Gigi go crazy for her? Why would he even look at me if not for some ulterior motive?

“Miss Stone,” said Joan Little, opening the door of her apartment on Barrow Street. She touched the red-and-black kerchief on her head, embarrassed to be caught in house-cleaning attire. She wiped her nose with a handkerchief. “I wasn’t expecting anyone, please excuse the disorder.”

She stood aside to let me in. The apartment looked fine to me, with only a few books out of place and an afghan thrown nonchalantly over the couch in front of the television. On the whole, it rated very clean in my book, right down to the waxed end tables and dustless corners.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she repeated, and I could smell the alcohol on her breath. “May I offer you something? Some tea, perhaps? I have this terrible cold, so I’m drinking tea.”

Tea and gin, I thought. “No thanks,” I said, and she excused herself to go to the kitchen. When she returned with a cup of tea a few minutes later, I could see the kitchen hadn’t been her only stop; she’d removed the kerchief, and her blonde hair was now neatly combed. There was a trace of pink on her lips, the blush of rouge on her cheeks. She was a nice-looking woman in her late thirties, not svelte, but curvy. She smiled weakly and invited me to sit. I pushed the afghan aside and sat on the couch.

“Sorry to intrude on your weekend like this, but I was hoping you could help me. I’m trying to get a handle on the department’s personalities.”

“I’m not sure how I can help, Miss Stone.”

“Please, call me Ellie.” That seemed to please her. “Let’s start with Gualtieri Bruchner.”

“I’ve already told you everything I know about him. He’s a loner.”

“What about his personal history? Have you ever heard anything about his past?”

“If you mean the concentration camp, yes, of course. Poor man; that probably explains his reticence. I remember he arrived in New York last summer, right in the middle of a heat wave. We were holding a departmental meeting, and everyone was wearing short sleeves and open-collared shirts, except Professor Bruchner. He had on his usual gray suit, tie knotted tightly around his neck. Professor Chalmers finally invited him to take off his jacket. That’s when I saw the horrible tattoo on his wrist. It was ghastly. I felt so sorry for him.”