Father's Day Murder (12 page)

“Your friends say wonderful things about you, Dr. Greene. I don’t want to take a lot of your time so let me start asking questions. What was your relationship with Arthur Wien?”

“As I said on the phone the other night, I had almost no relationship with him. I saw him infrequently, usually when we had one of our reunions, and that was all. I went to his first wedding but not to his second. I think I met one of his children once. He lived in California most of the time and I only go out there for medical conferences. There wasn’t much of a relationship to talk about.”

“Did he ever come to you for favors?”

He studied me. I had the feeling he was looking right inside me, discerning my motives and determining their worthiness. “For a long time, back when we were all younger, Artie Wien was a man perennially without money. To hear him talk, you would think he owed half of California. He borrowed from everyone he knew and that included me. About thirty years ago he came to me and said he was desperate and could I lend him five hundred dollars. I gave him the five hundred. He spent the next two years calling and telling me he would pay it back, not to worry, he was good for it. The long and short of it is that eventually I told him to consider it a gift, that I didn’t want it back, with or without interest, and that he was never to ask me for another penny again. He never asked me, and I wrote it off as a bad debt and haven’t really thought about it until this moment. But that was my relationship with Artie.”

“You said he borrowed from everyone he knew. Did that include the other men in your group?”

“Of course it did. I have no reason to believe that he singled me out. I’m not a rich man, and I certainly wasn’t very well off thirty years ago.”

“That’s interesting because I’ve asked the others and not one has said he lent money to Mr. Wien.”

“I suppose every man’s honesty has its limits. Maybe they think that to admit having lent money—and possibly
not having it paid back—makes them look like suspects. I haven’t been eating my heart out over the five hundred I gave him. I didn’t kill Artie, I don’t know who did—I’m sure it wasn’t any of us—and I’m very sorry that he’s dead. He was a talented man; he had a sense of humor; if he made mistakes in his life, well, haven’t we all?”

“What was his relationship to Fred Beller?”

“Fred Beller? I haven’t seen Fred in—I couldn’t tell you when the last time was.”

“I had lunch with him on Saturday.”

“You flew out to Minnesota to talk to Fred?”

“Fred and his wife were in New York for about a week. They were here on Father’s Day.”

“What exactly are you saying?” His rather smooth forehead showed an incipient vertical line.

“Just that. I found out by accident that he was here. I called and we arranged to meet for lunch at his hotel.”

Dr. Greene shook his head slowly. “And he never came to our party.”

“I guess not. Can you think of a reason why he didn’t? Was there something between him and Arthur Wien that prevented Fred Beller from being near him?”

“If there was, I’m not privy to that information.” He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and set them on the table in front of him. “I’m stunned,” he said. “I thought Fred never came to New York.”

“Can you tell me anything about his mother’s suicide?”

“Just that it was the disaster you can imagine it was. He came home from school one afternoon and there she was. She was a sad woman. In those days ordinary people didn’t go for psychiatric help. She might have benefited from it. On the other hand, how could she have afforded it? Our families weren’t rich. It was terrible for Fred. I
don’t blame him for wanting to get away from where it happened and never coming back.”

I opened my bag and pulled out the book. As I set it on the table I saw the doctor smile.

“You’re reading our life history, I see.”

“Mrs. Kaplan gave it to me yesterday. I could hardly put it down last night.”

“Artie had a gift. Until that book came out, I had no idea he had been observing us and thinking about our lives. To me the D train was just a subway, but after I read that book, I realized that to him it was a way out. It’s an interesting book from many perspectives. It’s not the kind of book I ever read, but I can tell you I devoured every syllable of that one, even if Artie took Morty Horowitz and me and made us one rather schizophrenic creature. Or maybe a more accurate description would be a possessed soul and the possessing dybbuk.”

“Excuse me?”

“A dybbuk. That’s the demon that possesses a person. You need to exorcise it to get rid of it.”

“And you see the portrayal of that character that way?”

“Loosely.” He smiled and it struck me he was a man that didn’t smile much. “It’s a graphic way of describing Artie’s doctor character.”

“Wien seems to love all the boys very much, from what I’ve read.”

“He did. We all did. We were friends in an era when friendship meant something.”

“What can you tell me about Bruce Kaplan’s troubles?” I asked.

“If you know about it, you probably know as much as I do. He got in trouble. He always struck me as a pretty
honest guy. Either he made a mistake, or someone else did and he paid for it.”

“I heard Arthur Wien had an affair with the wife of a member of your group.”

“I never heard that.” It was quick and dismissive.

“At the reunion, was there a problem with who should sit next to Arthur Wien?”

“There’s always a seating problem. This one is left handed; that one has to sit next to someone he hasn’t seen for ten years. There’s nothing new about that.”

“Did someone make a fuss that night?”

“I think so. I didn’t pay any attention to it.”

“As of this moment, I’ve spoken to everyone in the group except Bernie Reskin. I haven’t been able to reach him by phone.”

“Keep trying. He’ll talk to you. Bernie loves to talk.”

“David Koch drove me through the streets in the Bronx where you all lived,” I said, coming to the end of my questions and not feeling that I’d learned very much.

“David doesn’t drive,” the doctor said.

It struck me as a strange response. “He had someone drive us. He showed me where you played stickball.”

“And touch football. That was my favorite. Then you must have seen the window of his bedroom that looks out on Morris Avenue.”

“I did.”

“Did he tell you how we used to crawl through the window in the summer and drag him out of bed?” He was enjoying the memory.

“You were a happy bunch of boys.”

“We were that, except for Fred Beller.”

“Do you believe it was his mother’s suicide that made him feel the way he does about New York?”

“It takes a lot less than that for many people. I think from that day on Fred wanted to get away, physically as well as spiritually. For Artie it was more a spiritual thing, if that’s the appropriate word. He knew there was a world out there and he wanted to see it, to become part of it. For Fred, he just wanted to get his tail out of there, resettle in some neutral territory, which he did.”

“I gather from the little I’ve read that Arthur Wien wanted to get his parents out of the Bronx. Was he successful?”

“Not that I know of. I think they lived out their lives there and died in the old homestead. And not that long ago.”

“What about your parents?”

“They never gave up their apartment. All our parents were the beneficiaries of rent control. You’re probably too young to know much about it, but the rents were frozen during the Second World War and didn’t rise very much from the fifties on. It cost my folks so little to hang onto their apartment that they kept it although they bought a co-op in Florida and spent most of the year there. But the Bronx was home, even though the neighborhood changed drastically.”

A young woman came over to the table and whispered something in Dr. Greene’s ear.

“That’s all right,” he said gently. “I can take care of things when I get upstairs.”

The young woman dashed away, and I realized that before he came downstairs he had asked someone to call him at this moment, to save him from my questioning. Obviously, our conversation hadn’t been as bad as he had feared.

“I know you’re very busy,” I said. “I’m very grateful
that you’ve given me this much time. If you think of anything that might help me, I’d appreciate a call.” I had a slip of paper ready with my name and phone number.

“I promise I’ll think about it,” he said, putting his glasses back on his nose. “You know, there
was
some kind of fuss about the seating. I didn’t take much notice of it but somebody in the crowd wasn’t happy.”

“A man or a woman?” I asked.

“A woman, I think. It could have been Robin Horowitz, but I’m not sure.”

“I’ll see if I can find out.”

He shook my hand, walked me to the front desk, and then nearly flew to the elevator.

11

I had learned one thing: Dr. Greene had lent Arthur Wien money (and assumed all his friends had too). I tried to think how much the five hundred dollars thirty years ago would be in today’s dollars. I had heard my mother mention the monthly mortgage payments once, perhaps twenty years ago, and they were a little more than a hundred dollars. So five hundred dollars thirty years ago was a substantial amount of money. I wondered how I would feel if a friend of Jack’s, someone who appeared to be making a good living, came to us and asked for two or three thousand dollars. The thought sent shivers through me.

It passed through my mind that Arthur Wien might have blackmailed his friends into lending money to him, money that he failed to repay. But that would assume he had something on all of them. It didn’t seem likely. And no one else I had spoken to had admitted to lending him anything more than pocket money.

I walked up to the restaurant where the Father’s Day dinner had taken place only to find the door locked. There were lights on inside and I tapped on the glass in the door, hoping to attract someone’s attention. Finally, I did.

He opened the locks at the top and bottom of the door, then at the midpoint. “I’m sorry, but we’re—” It was the
maitre d’, and he looked at my face and recognized me. “Come in.” He didn’t sound welcoming, but he probably wanted to get me inside where no one would see us talking. “What can I do for you today, Ms. Bennett?”

“I’d like you to check your reservations for the evening of Father’s Day and see if anyone named Fred Beller had one.”

“I just don’t see—”

“Please,” I said. “It’s very important.”

He frowned and got the book, turned back several pages and moved his finger down the page. “No one named Beller,” he said, snapping the book shut.

I took out the photo. “Do you remember seeing this man—this couple—that night?”

He studied the picture carefully, more carefully than I expected. “They look familiar,” he said unhappily. “I’m pretty sure they were here. But that’s not their name.”

“I wonder if you’d check the receipts for that night. Even if he made the reservation in a different name, the waiter wouldn’t know that name and he might have charged the meal using his real name.”

“Are you telling me this man could have committed the murder that night? The police have never asked me about him.”

“The police don’t know he was here.”

“Why don’t you take a seat? I’ll be right back.”

There was a small bar in the front of the restaurant and I sat on a stool with my back to the bar. Sitting on a bar stool is not something I’ve done in my life, ever. Since I dated very few men, and none of them took me to a bar, this was a new experience for me. I didn’t find the stool particularly comfortable, but then, I didn’t have my feet resting on the rail. Instead, they were on a rung of the stool.

I didn’t have much time to think about it because the maitre d’ returned quite soon. He was holding a small piece of paper that I recognized as a credit card receipt. Although I don’t carry plastic, Jack does, and he generally charges our dinners out and often charges the things he buys in the hardware store.

“There you go,” he said. “Fred Beller. Looks like dinner for two. I can tell you what name he used if you give me another minute.” He opened the reservation book again. “Olds. F. Olds. The reservation was for six-thirty. He and his guest sat over there along the banquette.”

The banquette ran almost the length of the restaurant with tables for two and four spread out along it. If Fred Beller had sat with his back to the restaurant, no one would have seen him. Nor, I thought, would he have seen his old friends as they entered the restaurant. But perhaps he could have seen them after they had passed and were on their way to the back room.

“Thank you very much. I’m sorry to have put you to this trouble, but it’s really quite important.”

“Should I tell the police?” he asked.

“I’ll be telling them if it turns out to be important.”

I walked out onto the street. Fred Beller had been there, no doubt about it. Had it been because he wanted to be near his friends or because he wanted to do away with one of them? Surely he would not tell me, and I had no idea who might know. Although these men had varying relationships with other members of the group, it was clear they stuck up for one another.

I found myself in front of a coffee shop and I walked in. This would be as good a place as any to have some lunch before driving to the West Side for my meeting with Alice Wien.

* * *

For me the West Side of Manhattan is principally Broadway and the streets that cross it, numbered streets from the Sixties on up. I had come to know the area a couple of years earlier when an elderly friend of mine was murdered in his apartment in the high Seventies. I spent a week or more talking to his friends, who lived as far north as Columbia University and as far east as Central Park, people who had settled there before and after the Second World War. A divider runs down the center of Broadway; what grass it has is usually weedy. At many corners there are park benches facing the cross street, and mostly elderly people sit there to take the sun and talk to their neighbors.

Alice Wien wasn’t my idea of elderly, and indeed, she turned out to be a good-looking woman in her sixties, her hair professionally set and her clothes well cut and in style. She welcomed me, and we sat in her living room, a comfortable room with a beautiful oriental carpet covering most of the floor.