The Girl Is Trouble (20 page)

Apparently not. She clicked off the lamp and closed the door.

I counted to a hundred before I got up. Then I removed my sweater and placed it along the bottom of the door so no light leaked through to warn Lydia that something was once again amiss.

With the lamp on I scanned the room, looking for somewhere someone might squirrel away a love letter. There was a bookcase full of phone directories and other tools that helped Adam locate people. I searched under and behind the books but only came up with dust that indicated that not even Lydia was let in here regularly. There were also a series of framed illustrations of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. I lifted each one, expecting to see a safe like in the movies, but the wall was bare behind them. The rug proved a little bit more insightful. Underneath the corner farthest from the door were two magazines depicting naked women.

What’s the matter, Uncle Adam? Weren’t Mama and Miriam enough for you?

I could feel time ticking away. The only place remaining to check were the cabinets where Adam’s case files lived. I picked the lock on each one and opened the first drawer. What was I looking for? A folder with Mama’s name on it, perhaps? There was nothing so obvious in any of the drawers. Each file was neatly labeled with the name of the client whose case it represented and cross-referenced with the files for anyone he was being asked to watch on that client’s behalf. It was a clever system—one that Pop might be wise to emulate, if he ever let me back into his inner sanctum.

Maybe Adam used a pet name for Mama, or filed her things under a name that held a special meaning for him. I went through the drawers twice, but I didn’t see anything that made me think of Mama. Then, on the third pass through, something caught my eye: Rheingold Accounting.

I knew that name. Pop had a client with the same moniker. The file had been in his safe. There had been photos in it that I’d thought might have been of the man he had had me tail before I’d learned I was actually tailing his old friend Jim McCain.

The coincidence was too much. I removed the folder and sat behind the enormous desk to see what it contained.

The file was thick, so thick that it took two hands to lift it. Page after page of notes were inside, all neatly typed, some on onionskin that made it clear that copies of whatever information Adam had put together had circulated among more than one person. Everything was arranged chronologically, and relevant photos, invoices, and other materials were carefully paper-clipped to each day’s notes.

Whoever did Adam’s secretarial work was pretty impressive. And, I was willing to bet, not fifteen.

I started at the beginning. Those notes detailed a visit on September 14, 1941, from Jude Rheingold and Edgar Valentine, senior partners of an accounting firm on the Upper East Side. They suspected that money was being skimmed out of their accounts. After conducting their own investigation, they identified the culprit most likely behind the theft: Karl Hincter.

Hincter was a controversial hire. He was German but claimed to have left Germany to get away from Hitler. Rheingold suspected he was taking the money he was stealing and sending it home to family still living abroad. He had no proof of this, of course, and had asked Adam to find it.

Hincter, unfortunately, lived in Yorkville.

My heart picked up its pace.

Adam wrote:
I explained to Rheingold and Valentine that as a devout Jew, I cannot easily maintain surveillance in an openly German community, especially since Hincter has an active social life that starts at sundown on Friday and continues into the wee hours of Saturday morning. I suggested to them that they seek another detective, but both are quite passionate in wanting to use me. If I’m going to be able to assist them, I’m going to need to enlist the help of someone who can more easily infiltrate Yorkville, ideally someone who speaks German.

The next page was a list of names, each one with a red-penciled “no” beside it. I wasn’t sure what the list meant until I saw Jim McCain’s name on there. Detectives—he had contacted detectives to see if he could get someone to help him. Or at least, some of them were detectives. As I scoured the list, my eyes landed on one name that hadn’t been bisected by a red “no”: Ingrid Anderson.

I gasped. So there it was: Mama wasn’t just having an affair with Uncle Adam. She was working for him.

The next pages were simply a record of her work:

Ingrid has made contact with Hincter and has spent several hours in his company at the Spotted Pig, a dance hall and brewery on East Eighty-sixth Street. She said he was very cordial and eager to talk about his family back home. She turned the conversation to her own desire to help those she left behind and, hopefully, get them out of Europe. His tone changed and he seemed agitated at the suggestion, telling her that he would much rather be in Europe than here, where being a German means constant scrutiny. Ingrid agreed that it was hard and said she finds it particularly difficult since so few of her friends are German. He suggested that she accompany him to a meeting of “like-minded Germans” the next night. She agreed.

It came as no surprise that the meeting Ingrid attended with Hincter was for an offshoot of the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization that we had hoped had been squelched in New York but apparently is thriving underground. Ingrid successfully made it through the meeting, no mean feat given the anti-Semitic content my sister-in-law had to endure. She assures me that she raised no suspicion during the proceedings and that, when questioned about her background, talked of her family back in Germany and described herself as a recent widow who was hoping to find friendship among like-minded individuals. Given her Nordic coloring, a complexion Hitler himself would envy, I believe it’s safe to say that no one would have mistaken Ingrid for a Jew. At the end of the meeting she said that an appeal was made for contributions to help fund a number of activities the group had planned over the next several months. While those activities were not enumerated, she suspects that they are talking about terroristic threats.

I found myself holding my breath. How had Mama gotten the courage to go to a group like that? What horrible things did she hear at that meeting, things that were said about people just like us? It must’ve been so hard to go through each day with the memory of all that in her head. And yet she had. For months, apparently, she’d walked around our apartment like everything was perfectly normal.

No wonder Anna Mueller thought she was a Nazi.

I glanced at the clock and realized I’d been at it for more than an hour and a half. I picked up my pace, skimming the notes as best I could. Hincter eventually confessed to Mama that not only did he work for Jews, he was stealing from them and using their money to fund Bund activities. He found the irony of all this terribly amusing and suspected that it was the fact that he was stealing from Jews that increased his esteem among the Bund members more than the dollar amount he’d given to them.

Mama reported all this to Adam, who relayed it to the clients. They wanted to fire Hincter immediately and begin legal proceedings against him, but Adam encouraged them to wait a little bit. After all, this was no longer about stopping one man from stealing. They might be able to halt an entire sect of the Bund from whatever it was they were plotting.

So Mama continued going to the meetings, and reporting what she’d learned. The problem was, Hincter didn’t know anything about what the group was planning to do. While he contributed to their coffers, whatever he had given them wasn’t enough to get them to tell him how his money was going to be used. And Hincter didn’t seem to care. It was enough to know he was helping, and besides, it wasn’t his money to begin with. The person Mama needed to get close to was an S. Haupt, who was the leader of the organization.

Thus far,
wrote Adam a few weeks later,
Ingrid’s attempts to get close to Haupt have been unsuccessful. She believes he may be suspicious of her and is concerned that she has been followed on more than one occasion. She has mentioned these concerns to Hincter, who confirms that it’s a modus operandi for new members of the Bund to be tailed to verify that they are who they claim to be. Ingrid is, naturally, quite concerned. While she has not been attending synagogue or any other activity that might raise suspicion, I have been to her home several times and she has taken Iris to and from school on a daily basis. I have suggested she discontinue escorting her daughter for the time being and try to restrict her activities to those of a wealthy widow living on the Upper East Side.

I looked at the date: November. I remembered it well. Mama abruptly stopped accompanying me to Chapin. She also started shopping more, going to lunch more—both activities she used to claim bored her silly.

Ingrid’s attempts to get close to Haupt are finally paying off. She had a private audience with him in which she gushed about her desire to help the Bund. Haupt talked to her about making a financial contribution to the organization and seemed very aware of her personal finances, though fortunately he seems, as of now, unaware of my brother’s existence. Ingrid concluded the conversation by saying that she would be interested in making a substantial contribution, but was not content in being a silent partner like Hincter. If she was going to be funding the Bund, she wanted to be part of the conversation about how the money was going to be used. Haupt agreed to talk to the other group members about this, but cautioned that they may be unwilling to welcome a woman’s insight about their plans.

Another week passed, and Adam wrote,
Haupt has contacted Ingrid and invited her to a meeting on December 8, this one of just the most crucial members (no Hincter, etc.). I have suggested that we might want to contact the authorities before proceeding any further.

(Later the same day.)
I have been advised that this is a matter for the Office of War Information, not the local police. Repeated attempts to contact the OWI have failed to put me in touch with anyone of authority.

Then, on December 8:
In light of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ingrid has canceled her meeting with Haupt. Understandably, she is too distressed to pretend all is well. She told him she’s concerned that Pearl Harbor means that even more Germans will be targeted by the local authorities and wants to lie low for a few days.

A few days later Uncle Adam noted that Haupt had been trying to contact Mama about her financial contribution. He wrote:
I have advised her that if she wishes to cease contact at this point, I completely understand. She said she’d like to think about it. Right now her main concern is Art and the severity of his injuries. I have a meeting set up with Rheingold and Valentine to find out how much money they might be willing to commit to “give” to Haupt under the auspices of Ingrid.

A week passed before Uncle Adam recorded any other notes. It was now the last week of December and I could feel time ticking away as the remaining span of Mama’s life could be measured in hours. How did I spend those days? I was off from school, hanging around friends, ignorant of everything but that Mama’s mood had changed and Pop was soon going to return from Hawaii. And I wasn’t happy about that, not because of his injury, God help me, but because of the changes his return would spell for me. More rules, perhaps. Less of Mama to keep to myself. A militant household where discarded boots and misplaced drinking glasses would no longer be tolerated. I remember thinking I had to cram as much living as possible into the weeks before he came home, and so I seized every opportunity that presented itself.

And then the last of Adam’s notes, dated December 26, 1941. The message was brief:
Rheingold and Valentine have decided they are not comfortable putting up money to catch Haupt. The case is closed and they will now proceed with prosecuting Hincter based on the evidence we were able to secure against him.

An invoice was attached, indicating Adam had been paid in full.

So what had happened between December 26 and when Mama was found on the first? Had Adam decided he wanted to pursue the case anyway and strong-armed Mama into continuing to help him? Did he manipulate her into putting up her own money in order to secure Haupt’s trust?

I tried to recall what I knew firsthand from those five days. Mama had deposited me at Adam and Miriam’s on the Monday before New Year’s. She had to go out of town, she said, and so I would be staying with my aunt and uncle until she returned. I remember being excited about staying with them and not initially questioning Mama’s absence. They kept me busy, but insisted I stay with one of them at all times, an arrangement I found bothersome after the weeks of freedom I’d just enjoyed. I thought Mama would be gone a day, but then it stretched to two, then three. I asked Adam and Miriam when she was coming back and was told that they weren’t sure, it was a family matter, nothing for me to worry myself over. I began to suspect she’d gone to Hawaii to bring Pop home. It made the most sense, after all. She’d been so worried about him, and I knew he was due to return to New York at the beginning of the New Year.

But it made no sense that no one would’ve told me that, unless something terrible had happened to Pop and they couldn’t tell me where Mama was until they knew for certain what his prognosis was.

That was right. I’d forgotten about that, so marred was my memory of that week by Mama’s death. As those days stretched on and Mama didn’t return, Adam and Miriam grew more anxious. And they were curiously careful with me, planning elaborate meals and outings to help fill my time. I convinced myself that they were delaying telling me bad news about Pop. I was certain he had died and Mama had gone to claim his body, and she’d asked them not to tell me until she returned and could break the news to me herself.

And I was a little relieved, because if Pop was dead, maybe everything wouldn’t be changing after all.