The Passover Murder Read online

“My God, I can’t believe it.”

  “He called her I, Mrs. Mandelbaum. He said, ‘I? Iris?’ ” I imitated Mrs. Garganus’s imitation.

  Shirley paled.

  “Who was this man?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t have the right. Abe is still alive?”

  “He’s dying, but he’s still alive.”

  “Go home, honey. Forget it. Pretend it never happened.”

  I got up, my head almost throbbing. There was something I had seen or heard and it hadn’t registered. Someone had said something to me, but what? There were so many people who had talked to me, so many bits of information. My head cleared and I saw that I was standing opposite Shirley, who was watching me as though I might do something violent or at least discourteous. But I was just searching, back through the people and the places and the memories.

  A loud shout went up from the family room. “Atta boy,” Shirley’s husband roared. “You can do it. All the way. They can’t stop you.”

  She smiled and I thought of her husband cheering on a ballplayer whose bat had connected thirty years ago. And then I had it.

  “What happened?” Shirley said, seeing the change in my face.

  “I know who it was. There’s something I have to check.”

  “Wait a minute. You don’t have any idea—”

  “But I do. He worked at the oil yards. Joseph was right.”

  “You’ve got me all confused.”

  “I’ll call you, Mrs. Mandelbaum. Thank you. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Whatever you do,” she said, taking my coat out of the closet, “don’t tell them I told you.”

  The answering machine was flashing, but I didn’t want to take the time to listen to messages. I called Marilyn.

  “Chris,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about you all day. You must have something to tell me.”

  “I do. I learned a lot this afternoon. Mrs. Garganus finally told me the whole story. Her husband is the person Iris went downstairs to see. He gave her something—I’ll tell you about it another time—and he saw her get into a car and drive away with a man.”

  “And he never told the police?”

  “She went willingly. It was someone she knew, someone who called her name, someone who called her I.”

  “I for Iris?”

  “Yes. Do you know anyone who did that?”

  “Not offhand. Mel said something like that when she was little, I or Ice, but I don’t remember any of the adults saying it.”

  “Do you know where Iris was intending to go to the second seder?”

  “Good question. Sixteen years ago I might have known. Usually my parents made the first one and they went somewhere else for the second. Maybe my brother that year. I think we were going to my in-laws’.”

  “Your brother Dave?”

  “Yes. He’s the oldest.”

  “What’s his last name, Marilyn?”

  “Gordon. Both my brothers changed their names.”

  My heart was absolutely thumping. I had met her youngest brother, Sandy, a few months ago and completely forgotten that his name was Gordon. “When you were outside the shack at the oil yards, the guard told me that a man named Gordon had worked there for a short time.”

  “Chris, neither of my brothers killed my Aunt Iris. Dave was at the seder and Sandy was with his wife’s family. If Sandy hadn’t been there, you can be sure his wife would have made a stink about it. She made a stink about everything else.”

  I knew that she and Sandy had eventually divorced. “I’m going to call the security guard and see if he remembers the first name of the Gordon who worked there.”

  “You’d better get back to me,” Marilyn said, her voice without its usual firmness.

  “I will.”

  I dialed the number in Manhattan, but there was no answer. A security guard has to make his rounds, I thought, and maybe this was one of those times. I cut a slice from the roast beef in the refrigerator, wrapped it in foil, and put it in the oven to heat. Then I opened a can of mixed vegetables, my way of seeing that I got a little of everything, and warmed it on the stove. A half grapefruit started me off and I read the morning paper while I ate it. Half an hour later, dishes done, I dialed Juan Castro once again.

  “Security, Castro.”

  “Mr. Castro, this is Chris Bennett. We talked yesterday.”

  “Oh sure, about the woman’s body.”

  “You said some people had worked for short periods of time as security guards.”

  “Right. Giordano was one of them.”

  “And there was a Gordon.”

  “Yeah, there was a Gordon. It was a long time ago.”

  “Do you remember about how old a man he was?”

  “Not young. He could’ve been sixty.” That was almost Iris’s age.

  “Do you remember anything about him?”

  “A little. He’d been around, traveled. Said he’d come back to New York because he knew people here. He’d lived here when he was young. You know, it’s not like an office here. You don’t get to talk to a guy very much because he walks in as you’re walking out. It’s just a few words now and then. I was interested because he said he’d traveled. It’s something I’d like to do myself.”

  “Do you remember his first name?”

  “Oh boy.” There was silence. “Uh, something like Morrow? Uh, Maurice? It’s hard to remember. It’s been a long time.”

  “Morrow or Maurice,” I repeated.

  “Something like that. Morris maybe. Yeah, I think that’s it. Morris Gordon. The old brain’s still working. Maybe I’ll go for a Ph.D.”

  “I bet you’ll get it, Mr. Castro. I can’t thank you enough.”

  I put the phone down and looked at the name I had written on the back of an envelope. Morris Gordon. There wasn’t any Morris Gordon that Marilyn knew about, so that had to mean there was one that she didn’t know about. My eye fell on the blinking answering machine and I pushed the Play button.

  “Hiya, Chrissie, this is Arnold. Got some very juicy news for you. Give me a call when you come in.”

  Arnold’s paralegal had been going to dig up some marriage and birth certificates. I dialed his number at work and, not surprisingly, found that no one was there. I checked my book and found his home phone number.

  Harriet answered. “Good timing,” she said. “Himself just walked through the door bitching about something. I couldn’t tell if it was the subway system or the legal system.”

  “It’s both,” Arnold’s voice said. “Get my message?”

  “Got a lot more than that, Arnold. Tell me what you know.”

  “Found her marriage license and the address Martin Handleman lived at when he married her, but the building’s been razed and I don’t have anything else on him. But we looked up your Iris Grodnik’s birth certificate. Did you know she was part of a multiple birth?”

  “She had a twin?”

  “Looks like it. We called the hospital, where they keep all those little details forever. Morris and Iris Grodnik were born of the same mother on the date you gave us.”

  “It had to be a brother,” I said. “Arnold, you’re wonderful.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. Thank the City of New York for keeping good records. Is he your killer?”

  “I think so. I don’t even know if he’s still alive, but I’ll pass all this along to the detective.”

  “If he killed, there may be a file on him.”

  “I doubt he got into much criminal type trouble. He once worked as a security guard at the oil yards where the body was found. They would have checked up on him.”

  “Not the way you think. Till recently they’ve been pretty lax on background. Half the crimes in New York are committed by security guards,” Arnold said with typical exaggeration. “But you made a connection the cops didn’t. Make sure you point out their failings when you call your detective.”

  I laughed. “He’s a very nice person and he was a brand
-new detective when he caught that case. You’ll be glad to hear it was Sister Joseph who made the connection for me. She said if she’d killed someone, she’d have dumped the body in Central Park.”

  “Woman’s as sharp as they come. Give her my best. I’ll send you a copy of the birth and marriage certificates tomorrow. Now I have to eat.”

  I had one more call to make, to Harris White at the Thirty-fourth Precinct. He wasn’t there, and I decided quite suddenly not to leave my name for him. Maybe I could do this another way. I pulled out our collection of phone books and started looking up Gordons in Queens. There were lots of Ms, many of them probably women, and three Morrises. One was an M.D., which left him out. I called the second and spoke to a woman whose husband had died thirteen years ago. Then I called the third.

  “Hello?” It was a man’s voice, elderly.

  “Is this Morris Gordon?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Shirley Finster gave me your name.”

  “Who?”

  “Shirley Finster. Iris’s friend. You remember Shirley.”

  I could hear him breathing. “You say Iris?”

  “Yes. Iris Grodnik.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m a friend of the family.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He hung up.

  My heart was going a mile a minute.

  25

  “How can you get out of bed with such enthusiasm when it feels like the middle of the night?” Jack turned over with a groan.

  It was 5:00 A.M. “When you’ve done it for fifteen years, it’s part of you forever. Don’t go back to sleep or I’ll be forced to use very unpleasant means to get you up.”

  “You thinking of pulling out my fingernails one by one?”

  “I’ll deprive you of coffee.” I was throwing clothes on as I spoke.

  “Anything but that.” He sat and stretched. “We really are going to do this?”

  “You bet. I’ll get breakfast.”

  We had talked about it last night and he had grudgingly agreed to drive to Queens with me early enough that he would get to the Sixty-fifth by ten, the time his tour of duty starts. Before talking to Harris White, I decided I wanted to see for myself what Morris Gordon looked like, sounded like, acted like. We were out of the house before six.

  Fortunately, Jack knows his way around New York as if he has lived in every remote corner of every borough, which he hasn’t. We went in two cars so we could leave in separate directions. When Jack finally put his turn signal on and pulled over to the curb, I got a case of serious butterflies. We had arrived.

  The street was filled with old houses with barely space for a narrow prewar driveway between them. Some were New York-style semiattached, some were one-family with an occasional front porch. All had tiny lawns or the concrete that replaced what had once been a small rectangle of grass. I got out as Jack did.

  “Across the street,” he said.

  It was one of the single-family houses, an unlikely place for Morris Gordon, I thought, unless the house had been converted. We walked up to the front door and Jack rang.

  A sleepy-looking woman in a bathrobe opened it and looked blankly at us.

  “We’re looking for Morris Gordon,” Jack said.

  “Can’t you people wait till sunrise?” she said irritably. “The door on the driveway. He lives in the basement.”

  Jack thanked her and we walked around the corner of the house. The door was at street level, and a few windows looked out on the driveway. Jack pressed the doorbell and we heard a loud buzz inside.

  “I’m a little nervous,” I admitted. “But I want to do the talking.”

  “Let’s see if he’s there first.”

  He was. The door was opened by an old man with sparse gray hair, wearing a navy blue terry cloth bathrobe, a two-day growth of beard darkening his face. He looked at us without saying anything.

  “Mr. Gordon?” I said.

  “What is this?”

  “I’m Christine Bennett, Mr. Gordon. We spoke on the phone last night.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “My husband, Jack Brooks. May we talk to you?”

  “What’s this about?” His eyes darted fearfully from my face to Jack’s.

  “Iris.”

  “You a cop?” he said to Jack.

  “Yes, I am.” Jack took his shield out, but Morris Gordon barely glanced at it.

  He opened the door and we followed him down half a flight of stairs. “Took you guys a hell of a long time,” he said. “How many years is it now?”

  “Sixteen,” I said.

  “Sit down.”

  Jack stayed near the door, and I found a place to sit on an old wing chair. Morris Gordon sat on a sofa and lit a cigarette. There were ashtrays everywhere, most of them overflowing.

  “I don’t get it. What are you doing here?” he asked me.

  “I’m a friend of Iris’s niece. She asked me to look into her murder.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “You found me?”

  “I found you. One of the security guards at the oil yards remembered you.”

  “The good-looking one with the Spanish name.”

  “What happened, Mr. Gordon? Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t remember anymore. It was a long time ago.” He blew smoke. His face was pale, as though he didn’t get out much. He was a small man, hardly as tall as I. Even when he sat he looked small.

  “It was Passover,” I prompted him. “You drove over to your brother’s apartment.”

  “Why not? I was part of the family, wasn’t I?”

  “What happened with Iris?”

  “She was trying to cut me off. I was just getting back on my feet. I had a job, she knew that, and I had debts. She was helping me out, but she told me it had to stop. It couldn’t go on forever, that’s what she said. Then she made up this cock-and-bull story that she had to go away, her boss was sending her to Switzerland for six months, she couldn’t help me anymore. Did she think I was stupid? She was a secretary. Secretaries don’t get sent to Switzerland by their bosses. She was going to see me the next day, give me a little something, and that would be it.” He stubbed out the cigarette and fished around for another. “Like a parting gift.” After sixteen years it still made him angry to think about it.

  I didn’t say anything. The old feelings were building in him, the memory of that time, of that night, resurfacing. I wanted them to break through so that the truth would burst out.

  “So I drove over to my brother’s. I hadn’t seen him in what? Forty years or more? He was my brother. It was a holiday. It was a good night to drop in and see the family.”

  And try to get on better terms with them so someone else would help him with his debts if Iris wouldn’t. He was a conniver, but on that night something had gone wrong.

  “I parked right near the building and I saw her come out of the front door. I was going to call her, but she walked over to a big guy who was standing there, waiting for her, a big, handsome guy. I could see even at night he was like a movie star. They talked for a minute and he pulled something out of his pocket, like an envelope or something, and gave it to her. Then they talked a little more and she left him and walked back to the door. So I called her and she came over to the car.” He had lit another cigarette and now he drew on it and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I just wanted to talk to her,” he said with a whine in his voice. “I asked her what was in the envelope and she said it was nothing and I grabbed it from her and looked inside.”

  He looked at me and I looked back, feeling almost breathless.

  “You know what she had?” he said. “It was like a thousand bucks. More. This guy is giving her envelopes of cash and she can’t help her brother out a little?” The anger was fresh and new again. “I drove somewhere, I don’t even remember where. We were fighting the whole time, shouting at each other. My own sister trying to cut me off.” He drew on the cigarette. “So I hit her.”

/>   Jack stirred for the first time, moving closer to where we were sitting. “I have to warn you, Mr. Gordon,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent. You—”

  “Forget the TV,” Morris Gordon said, waving Jack away. “I know my rights. I said it and you heard it. It’s done.” He leaned back on the sofa and smoked, but muscles in his face moved and the hand holding the cigarette shook slightly.

  I swallowed hard. “You must have been very angry.”

  He shook his head. “My own sister.” He looked at Jack. “You gonna take me in?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said. “You can put some clothes on first.”

  Monis tamped out the cigarette and went into the bedroom. I found the phone and called Harris White.

  “Chris. What a morning,” Harris White greeted me as I reached his desk. It was hours since Jack and I had walked into Morris Gordon’s basement apartment in Queens, and he was now being held at the station house in his precinct.

  “You can say that again.”

  “I can’t believe it. I swear I checked out everything.”

  “A lawyer I know got Iris’s birth certificate and talked to the hospital where she was born. That’s how I found out about the twin. I found his address in the Queens phone book.”

  “I did some digging after you called. Gordon’s been living there seventeen years.”

  “So he’d been there a year when Iris died.”

  “And he’d spent six months of that year as a night watchman at the oil yards. It’s all falling into place. I’ll be going over to Queens this afternoon to interview him, but I gather he’s made a pretty full statement. You want to fill me in on what you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s have lunch. My treat.”

  “I’d love to.”

  I told him what had happened that morning and everything else I thought would be helpful. Although Wilfred Garganus was long dead, I described what had happened between Wilfred and Iris to explain Morris’s motivation, and Harris promised to keep confidential what the Garganuses preferred not to become public. By the end of our lunch he was showing me pictures of his children, and I was asking his advice on building a family room.

  I drove home, knowing I would have to tell Marilyn everything and feeling squeamish about it. An uncle she had never known existed was alive and well and being questioned by the police for the murder of her aunt. Somehow it wasn’t the stuff of a friendly conversation.