Styx & Stone (34 page)

Libby showed me to the study overlooking the Hudson. She brought me a tray of coffee and Danish and explained that the professor would join me shortly. A few minutes later, Franco Saettano, dressed in a paisley robe with an ascot knotted around his neck, hobbled into the room behind his cane.

“Good morning, Eleonora,” he said, offering a frail hand. “You’re visiting early today.”

“I apologize, but it’s important.”

He took a seat. “How can I help you?”

“Sometimes, asking the proper question is the key to finding the right answer,” I began. “I thought you might ask me the right question. So, I’d like you to listen to my scenario, and test me, question me about it.”

“
Va bene, avanti.
”

“Last October, my father ran into Gualtieri Bruchner in the steam bath at the gymnasium. He noticed a strange tattoo on Bruchner’s chest, and he began to suspect Bruchner wasn’t who he seemed to be. My father launched an informal investigation, writing letters to colleagues in Italy to inquire about Bruchner’s past. In the meantime, he may well have carried out other research here in the United States; I know, for instance, that he visited his cousin, Max Zeitler, in Washington last December.”

“What did he suspect?”

“I’m not sure. But he was convinced Bruchner was a fake. It seems to have something to do with his being Jewish.”

“Does this have to do with the destroyed phonograph records?”

“I think so. The importance of being Jewish is at the heart of these crimes. My brother’s grave desecrated, smeared with swastikas; my father attacked, his ‘Jewish’ music destroyed; and in the case of Bruchner, his Jewishness is being challenged.”

“Are you forgetting about Ercolano?” asked the old man. “He was not Jewish.”

“You’re right. That was a missing piece of the puzzle, and I couldn’t link the crimes until this morning. Last Friday, my father had lunch at the Faculty Club, as did Bruchner, and there was an ugly confrontation. My father tried to strangle him.”

“Yes, Victor Chalmers told me the story,” said Saettano, shaking his head. “But how does that connect the attack on your father to Ruggero Ercolano’s death?”

“Ercolano was the man with my father at lunch last Friday. He witnessed everything.”

“Interesting,” he said, ever the professor weighing his student’s reasoning. “But since Ercolano cannot tell us what he heard and saw, we can only speculate. What do you think happened?”

“A busboy at the restaurant told me that my father approached Bruchner’s table, exchanged angry words with him, then went for his throat, yelling in a foreign language the busboy thought was German. Ercolano helped pull them apart. I’m sure he heard everything and, therefore, as a witness, became a threat to Bruchner.”

“But a threat to what, Eleonora? You have not proven anything against Gualtieri Bruchner.”

“I may never be able to, but that doesn’t mean he’s not guilty. This isn’t a court of law, Professor Saettano, nor a simple intellectual exercise. This is life and death, crime and punishment, and I intend to catch him.”

“Very well,” he said, as if leaving an unsatisfactory answer behind on an oral exam. “Have you any other evidence? Something, perhaps, to illuminate these suspicions of your father’s? Something to compromise Gualtieri Bruchner’s credibility? So far you have not convinced me.”

“As a matter of fact, I do have more evidence. There is in Brooklyn a man named Gualtieri ‘Caronte’ Bruchner. He was born on the same day, the same year, and in the same town in Alto Adige as Professor Bruchner. I believe that Professor Bruchner stole his name and identity in the closing days of the war.”

Saettano leaned forward in his seat, intrigued by the coincidences. “And you have met this man?”

I nodded.

“This name, ‘Caronte,’ do you know what it means?”

“I do. And he explained how he got it. He was deported in 1943 to Auschwitz, where he worked as the train engineer between the station, the camp, and the mines. He took the Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz.”

“A cruel but clever sobriquet,” mused Saettano, sitting back. “A ferryman of doomed souls. Is his wrist tattooed?”

I nodded again. “With the same number Professor Bruchner wears.”

“You have seen them both, the tattoos? And they appear authentic?”

“To my eye, yes. They’re both real tattoos, if that’s what you mean; under the skin, and not since yesterday. The ink looks just faded enough, like an old sailor’s tattoo.”

“So, Eleonora, you have a dilemma, indeed. Which of the two men do you believe?”

“Bruchner,” I answered, smiling. “Caronte Bruchner.”

“But you have no proof.”

“That’s what I’m looking for.”

“So, you have come to me.”

He tapped his cane on the oak floor boards, gazing out the window at nothing in particular.

“What is your theory?” he asked. “How do you think Bruchner came to have the other man’s name?”

I shrugged and shifted in my chair. “I’m not sure. I’ve thought that maybe he was a fellow deportee. When the Russians liberated the camp, maybe he had no papers, so he assumed Bruchner’s identity.”

“Your logic is flawed, Eleonora,” said Saettano.

I looked at him, wondering where I had gone awry.

“Remember what you told me about the tattoos,” he said.

Of course, I thought. Of course! “They have identical numbers on their wrists,” I mumbled. “That means that if Professor Bruchner is the imposter, he could not have been a prisoner at Auschwitz.”

“Exactly. If he had been a prisoner, he would have had his own number.”

I considered my oversight and realized that my false assumption about the professor had cut off all other avenues of exploration. The idea that Bruchner had been a deportee was a brick wall; I could bang my head off it forever and come away with nothing more elucidating than a headache. Once I turned my nose away from the wall, I could see the exit. A new road opened before me, and the most plausible interpretation revealed itself to me effortlessly. The puzzle was far from complete, but I had filled in a lot more letters.

“What is it, Eleonora?” asked Saettano, shaking me from my rumination.

I smiled at him. “Thank you, Professor Saettano,” I said. “I think I’ve got it.”

“Indeed?”

“I’ve been in the habit of distrusting my father’s wisdom for so long that I didn’t even consider the ready-made analysis of what wasn’t quite kosher about Bruchner.”

“What was that?”

“My father knew Bruchner wasn’t Jewish; his inquiries showed that. But I was looking for another explanation.” I laughed, shaking my head, emotions straddling admiration for my father and relief for myself.

“Congratulations,” said Saettano, though not wholeheartedly. “Eleonora, you have proven nothing about Gualtieri Bruchner. Can you demonstrate that he is not who he claims to be?”

I nodded, my smile growing ever broader.

“Have you resolved the incongruity of Anton Bruckner’s presence among the Jewish composers?”

“I believe so. You see, I’m finally listening to my father.”

“You speak so strangely, Eleonora. How do you mean?”

“The tattoo,” I said. “The one on his chest. The one that sparked my father’s suspicions.”

Sitting in a downtown A-Train, I considered Saettano’s parting counsel: “You are a bright girl, Eleonora,” he said, shaking a bony finger at me. “But you must be sure that your deductions have solid foundations. Never fashion your conclusions to fit your thesis.”

I jumped off the train at Thirty-Fourth Street and hurried across town on foot, arriving at Bruchner’s building at a little before noon. The concierge shook his head when I asked for the professor.

“Left this morning about six,” he said. “And I haven’t seen him come back.”

“Was he carrying luggage?” I asked, fearing he’d fled.

“No, miss. Just an overcoat, not even his briefcase. He turned down Lex, but that’s all I know.”

If Bruchner had flown, I had blown it. Armed with a theory that I believed would disprove his identity as Gualtieri Bruchner, I had established a clear and compelling motive for murder. But without the quarry, I could prove nothing.

I knew nothing about Bruchner’s personal life. Where might he go in a pinch? Walking down Lexington in the wet flurries, I reviewed everything I’d learned about him, from visa information to the letter of support from Professor Nardone. Little there.

The wind picked up as I crossed Thirty-Sixth Street. I pulled my neck into my collar like a turtle and cut through the cold slush falling from the sky. A man crossing Thirty-Sixth heading north huddled in his brown overcoat, fedora tilted down to the wet pavement. He wasn’t looking where he was going. I stopped myself just before plowing into him, and we brushed against each other.

“Excuse me,” we muttered in unison, and our eyes met.

“Professor Bruchner,” I said in the middle of Thirty-Sixth Street. “I was just wondering where you might be.”

He squinted at me through the wind and precipitation, and a taxi blasted its horn at us as the light changed. We scooted to the north corner, out of the path of the slippery traffic, and faced each other.

“What do you want now?” he asked, hands jammed deep into his pockets.

“To talk,” I said. “I’ve discovered something you’ll find interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“About your lunch last Friday, the attack on my father, and Ruggero Ercolano’s murder.”

Bruchner sighed. “Let’s not stand here in the wet. Come, we’ll talk in my flat.”

We tramped two blocks through the collecting slush to his building, and five minutes later, he was boiling a kettle of water for tea. Taking a seat near the small kitchen, I glanced at his overcoat and hat, dripping from the rack by the door. Then I looked at my own coat on the next hook: streaked with water, but not soaked. I figured he’d been out walking for some time.

“Why do you say murder?” he asked, warming his hands near the flame on the stove. “Professor Ercolano died accidentally.”

“I don’t think so.”

He paused, looked at me, then took his hands away from the heat and rubbed them together. “What do you think happened, Miss Stone? I’m sure it ends with me throwing a radio into his bath.”

His boldness surprised me. He joined me outside the kitchen, eschewing a seat, standing above me instead.

“I know Ruggero Ercolano was the man with my father at lunch last Friday.”

His jaw tightened.

“His presence at that lunch creates a problem for you. You insisted you didn’t know who the man was.”

“I didn’t,” he said, flustered. “Your father jumped at me, and I never saw anyone else.”

“Are you telling me you didn’t see the man who pried my father’s hands off your throat? A man you work with every day?”

“There was a big commotion,” he said, turning away. “I didn’t see anything. I was in shock.”

“Not so much that you didn’t realize Ruggero Ercolano represented a threat to your security. My father surely gave him the whole story about your tattoo and your false identity at lunch that day. He must have found the damning evidence he’d been looking for, probably that very morning in the mail.”

“You’re mad!” said Bruchner, turning to face me again. “You have no evidence, nor has your father.”

“You’re right; I don’t have the letter. I think you found it last Friday night when you paid an unexpected visit to my father. You took the letter with you after you clubbed him on the head.”

“Preposterous!
Alles erlogen! Sciocchezze!
You have no proof, not for your father or for Ruggero Ercolano. I had no reason to hurt either one, especially Ercolano, who never did me any wrong.”

“But you did have a reason,” I said. “My father believed he had the definitive proof of your masquerade, and when you showed up at the Faculty Club last Friday afternoon, he exploded. Ercolano was with my father, heard everything, saw everything, then left with him. Don’t you think my father might have explained the situation to him, especially after he’d tried to strangle you? He may well have shown him the letter. At the very least, you had to assume Ercolano knew.”

“Knew what, Miss Stone?” shouted Bruchner, veins bulging in his forehead. “What proof have you that I am not who I say? I have a passport, visa, Italian driver’s license, and a tattoo on my wrist for proof!”

“And you have the tattoo on your chest.”

Bruchner’s anger gave way to alarm. The vein receded into his head and some of the red drained from his face. His expression begged for elucidation.

“I’ve already told you about that tattoo,” he said guardedly.

“You said it was an error of youth, if I remember correctly.”

“That’s right. The name of a girl I knew: Chiara.”

“I’m sure your tattoo was inspired by youthful zeal,” I said, “but not over a girl. Chiara is one word, and you’ve got two lines covered. Please don’t tell me you had her family name tattooed on your chest; it’s not very romantic.”

“How about
Chiara mia
?” he asked. “That’s what it said before I had it covered with this hideous tattoo that obsesses your father and you.”

“It never said
Chiara mia
, or any other such nonsense,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t know whether to believe you at first. You had more documentation than a double agent. You were a victim, a survivor of the Holocaust, I didn’t dare suspect the worst. I was so blinded by the belief that you were Jewish that I couldn’t see what my father saw in your tattoo. Then it hit me, like a bolt of lightning.” His eyes grew in horror. “Or should I say, two bolts of lightning?”