Read Better Dead Online

Authors: Max Allan Collins

Better Dead (8 page)

“At the time of the supposed espionage,” I said, “David was twenty-nine and a soldier working as a machinist at Los Alamos on the fringes of big doings. In his testimony, he described two family meetings in New York with you and your wife while he was on furlough. This was 1945. He claims to have passed secret information about the atomic bomb project to you, which your wife Ethel then typed up.”

Contempt curled his upper lip. “Nonsense. Lies.” Then his forehead tightened under the dark comma. “But that is …
is
what he claims.”

“There's no substantiation,” I said, “because these supposed events took place in your apartment.”

“That's correct.”

“No outside witnesses present.”

“Also correct.”

I turned a page. “David admits, on one occasion, to passing secret information to another person, somewhere
other
than your home, and not in your presence.”

He seemed to be taking my every word and turning it over for a better look.

“Yes,” he said. “To this Harry Gold character.”

“Your sister-in-law Ruth rented an apartment in Albuquerque, to be near David. There, both she and David claim this Gold picked up handwritten notes and rough sketches of a high-explosive device. Something David was familiar with from working at the Los Alamos machine shop.”

Rosenberg nodded.

“He identified himself with your name—‘Julius'—as his password.”


They
say.”

“And Gold further identified himself with a cutout part of a Jell-O box that fitted a piece that you supposedly gave David—after cutting the box up for that purpose, in your kitchen. At one of the furlough get-togethers.”

Again his upper lip peeled back in disgust. “The Jell-O box farce. Cloak-and-dagger claptrap. Ridiculous.”

“But Gold confirms it. The Jell-O box recognition device.”

His eyebrows climbed. “
Coached.
The man was coached, likely by that weasel Cohn. I
told
you, Mr. Heller. It's a frame-up all the way. This is your government at work! Aren't you proud?”

I risked a grin. “I'm from Chicago, Mr. Rosenberg. I'm neither proud nor surprised. Well, I
am
surprised that you were convicted on such thin ‘he said, she said' evidence … with nothing to back it up but this half-assed corroboration by Gold, likely the result of him cutting a deal.”

Now Rosenberg smiled just a little. He was getting comfortable with me.

So much of what I'd been reading about the case, including the trial transcripts themselves, seemed lame even for a frame-up, much less one that would send the parents of two small children to the electric chair. Hell, Ethel was getting a ride on Old Sparky for typing up some notes! Julius was getting his ride in part because the name “Julius” had come from the lips of a couple of confessed spies who didn't claim ever even to have met him.

“Mr. Rosenberg, I'm not going to ask you if you were ever a member of the Communist Party, card-carrying or otherwise—I'm not Senator McCarthy. Unless you think that's something I need to
know
for my investigation…”

I turned the notebook toward him, proffered the pen. But he shook his head.

I went on: “Back in the early forties, a lot of us who lived through the Depression saw the Soviet Union as a successful political experiment. For the benefit of anyone besides yourself who might be listening … I wasn't one of them. And of course eventually the Russians were our allies against a guy named Hitler who lately a lot of people seem to have forgotten about. What the hell, when was the last time he made the papers?”

He was expressionless. Tough audience. My Hitler jokes usually kill.

“So to me,” I said, “whether you're a Commie or not matters not a bit.”

No flinch at “Commie.” Good.

“But,” I went on, raising a cautionary forefinger, “if you're a spy who sold atom bomb secrets to Russia, I'm not all that inclined to try to help clear you.”

“I'm not,” he said flatly.

Then he held out his hand and wiggled his fingers, indicating the notepad. I slid it to him and rolled the pen his way.

He wrote something, held it up for me to see:
INNOCENT!
Then he flipped the notebook to me and tossed back the pen. This was, I guessed, his way of emphasizing that he wasn't just speaking for the hidden mikes.

“Now,” I said, “your brother-in-law David also said you introduced him to a man named John, on the street somewhere—a Soviet spy. Did that or anything like it happen?”

“No.”

He didn't bother prompting me for the notebook this time.

“Your loving brother-in-law says that when he was on furlough, you invited him and his wife Ruth over for dinner, and that a woman named Natalie Ash was there.”

“No.”

“That the purpose was to introduce the Ash woman to Greenglass so she could go southwest to play courier with atomic secrets.”

His mouth tightened and so did his eyes. “I know her, she's a neighbor … but no such thing happened.”

I leaned forward again, holding his gaze. “Do you remember what
really
happened, the night Greenglass claims your wife typed up atomic secrets and you cut up a Jell-O box to make a two-piece jigsaw puzzle out of it?”

A full shrug this time. “Just idle conversation. The war effort. That the Russians were carrying a heavy load, and we should have a second front. Nothing treasonous, or conspiratorial either for that matter.”

I asked, “What about this Gold character? Do you know him?”

“I never met him in my life.”

“What about this woman Elizabeth Bentley, who says she had calls from you?”

His nostrils flared. “The professional ex-Red? She said she had calls from someone named Julius. I'm not the only one with that name, starting with Caesar. But my understanding is that these spies use code names. So if she
did
talk to a ‘Julius,' it was someone else.”

“You didn't know her.”

“I
don't
know her.”

“And your codefendant, Morton Sobell?”

“He was at City College, an acquaintance. I bumped into him years later. Purely social and not much of that.”

“There was a witness who claimed Sobell turned over some film to you.”

“Never happened. But
what
film? This witness, Max Elitcher, was a friend of ours going back to City College days. First, Saypol and Cohn put the fear of God into him … then they put words in his mouth.” He shook his head. “On
this,
Sobell gets thirty years? Incredible.”

I finished my notes on that, then went back to the main point.

I asked, “Did your brother-in-law, on either of his two furloughs, come to your apartment and deliver to you—at your request or otherwise—information about an atom bomb?”

“Certainly not.”

“What about a sketch of a cross section of the atom bomb?”

“No.” A deep dismissive laugh came up and out from his chest. “Even if Dave had been capable of such.”

“Why do you say that?”

Rosenberg smirked. “He's a machinist with a high school education. It's laughable to think that he would even
know
what he was looking at—much less memorize the ‘secret' and carry it home in his head.”

I held his eyes; they didn't waver. “What about the claim that your wife typed up notes David brought to you?”

“She did no such thing.”


Can
she type?”

“Certainly. She was a clerk, a secretary, when we met. But she didn't type any such material.” He shifted in his seat. “Mr. Heller, Ruth claims her husband's handwriting is illegible, and that's why Ethel was enlisted to type from it, since only his sister could decipher it. But Ethel says her brother has excellent handwriting.”

I frowned. “I don't remember seeing where your attorney introduced samples of David's handwriting into evidence.”

His eyes widened a little. “He didn't. Should he have?”

Underlining something in my notebook, I said, “Well. Let's just say
I'll
be looking for samples. My understanding is—after the war—that you and David went into business together, and that he left that business, a machine shop, under a cloud.”

He tilted his head. “There
was
a strain. David felt I owed him money. I felt the failure of the shop was due to his lack of concentration, his general incompetence.”

“But you finally paid him off.”

“Certainly. A thousand dollars.”

“Only to have him come back wanting more?”

Rosenberg nodded emphatically. “He said he needed badly to raise two thousand dollars. He was in some kind of jam but couldn't specify. I told him I didn't have that kind of money, then he sort of … shifted gears. Wondered if I'd check with my doctor for him, and see what kind of injections are needed to get into Mexico. Actually, he just wanted the doctor to give him a phony vaccination certificate.”

“Did anything come of that?”

“Well, the answer was no.”

“Yours or the doctor's?”

“The doctor. I conveyed the bad news to David. He started right in on the two thousand dollars again, that he needed it to get out of this, this
jam
 … getting very agitated, saying I'd be
sorry
if I didn't help him out. I just walked away at that point. I don't respond well to empty threats.”

Said the man on Death Row whose brother-in-law had put him there.

I asked, “
Was
he in some kind of jam, do you think?”

He thought momentarily, then said, “I think he was trying to squeeze me for money he felt was due him from the business. Of course, it could have had something to do with this … espionage activity of his.”

“Which is why he considered skipping to Mexico.”

He shrugged. “Possibly.”

I sat back. Rubbed my chin. “What we need here, Mr. Rosenberg, is evidence. Physical evidence would be best. But testimony from witnesses would also help, people who saw the kinds of volatile interactions you had with your brother-in-law—possibly saw the two of you firsthand, him hitting you up for money, threatening you.”

He stared into memory, then shook his head. “I can't think of anyone. He never approached me at the shop, so coworkers would be no help. Possibly somebody at Knickerbocker Village, where we live. Lived.”

I let some air out. “What about this so-called console table in your living room? The special spy table given you by a Russian friend, according to the prosecution—outfitted for microfilming. Cohn made it sound like it did everything but play the banjo.”

He turned his palms up. “It's in the transcript, Mr. Heller. We paid something like twenty-one dollars for that, at Macy's.”

“Just a table from Macy's.”

“Table from Macy's, yes.”

“And where is it now?”

His eyes widened as he shook his head again. “That's the problem. We paid the rent on our apartment for a while after our arrest, but finally our funds ran out and we had our attorney, Manny Bloch, get rid of our household things. All the furniture was sold to a Lower East Side secondhand shop.”

Poised with the pen, I asked, “Could you give me the name of that shop?”

“No, but Manny might be able to.” He was shaking his head again. “But Mr. Heller, our things are surely scattered all over the Lower East Side.”

I shrugged. “I may get lucky. And we can check with Macy's about whether a console was available in the price range you mention. Maybe even track the purchase itself. That could blow a nice hole in the prosecution's case and even get you a new trial.”

“A table could do all that?”

“This is the kind of table that could turn the tables.”

“Why on earth?”

“Well, it indicates bad faith on the part of the prosecution—that they exaggerated that console table into some kind of exotic spy gear, to paint you as a master espionage agent. This is a damn good lead, Mr. Rosenberg.”

This prompted the only full smile out of him in our session. “That's music to my ears, Mr. Heller.” That sparked a thought and he sat forward. “Are you seeing my wife today?”

“Yes. As soon we wrap up here.”

His expression turned instantly distant. “She's one hundred feet away from me when I'm in my cell, you know.”

“Really.”

“Sometimes I can hear her sing, above me, like an angel. Arias. She would have made a fine opera singer.”

“Have they let you see her?”

“Yes. Once a week. They take me to her, up here on this floor. They drop a wire-mesh screen between us. We have an hour. A heavenly hour.”

“And your boys?”

“They've been here a number of times. Manny brings them. They were living with my mother, but got to be too much of a handful. You know boys. They're with some friends of ours in New Jersey.” He looked from side to side, as if somebody might be sneaking up on us. “Is our time about up?”

“Afraid so.”

He gestured with his free hand toward my notebook and pen. I slid them to him. He wrote something down, halfway through the book, then slid it and the pen back.

I flipped pages till I found it: “
N.A.K.V.

A rap on the door confirmed our time was indeed up. But I'd been keeping track on my wristwatch so it was no surprise. Not that it wasn't disconcerting in these surroundings.

Rosenberg didn't jump, either, just gave me another faint smile and a barely audible “Give my love to Ethel.”

Two guards came in and undid his wrist from the metal ring and carted him off, his shackles making dissonant if rhythmic music.

I was told to keep my place—I'd be taken to see Ethel Rosenberg in a few minutes. As I waited, I sat staring at the notebook page, with initials that might have been a Russian secret police designation, like MVD or NKVD.

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