Father's Day Murder (13 page)

“Dave Koch told me you might be calling,” she said. “I don’t know what I can tell you because I wasn’t at the restaurant the night it happened.”

“I think I’m interested in hearing some background from you. When you met Mr. Wien, how long you were married, what you know about his books, especially the first one.”

“That sounds pretty easy since I lived through it. Art and I met when I was at City College. We got married after I graduated.”

“Were you from the Bronx?”

“I was from Brooklyn. In those days it was practically an intermarriage.” She smiled. “He used to take the subway
all the way to where I lived to pick me up. What a trip that was.”

“The famous D train,” I said.

“Art had a real romance with the D train. He saw his little neighborhood in the Bronx as a village, almost like an English village, with the train running through it. He could imagine kids watching that train taking lucky people to London. In his case, the D took him to New York which was the center of the world, and by extension, he could see it taking him across the ocean, maybe even up to the moon.”

“So I guess you didn’t live in the Bronx after you were married.”

“Oh no. We got a darling little place in the Village. I just loved it. My parents thought it was terrible; Art’s parents thought it was terrible. But it was the most wonderful place to live you can imagine, right where everything was happening. It was one big room with a little bathroom and a little kitchen. We had a bed and a dresser in one corner, a little sofa in another corner, a table for eating, a little desk for Art to write his book at and a typewriter table.”

“Then he was writing his book when you were married.”

“He started—let me see—well, he was talking about it the night I met him. He was making notes back then, trying things out, you know, sketches of people and places. He’d think of a good phrase and he’d make a note of it. He lived that book.”

“Did he work besides writing?”

“Sure he worked. He taught high school English. He wasn’t any slouch. We both worked. But later on, he spent most of his time on the book. And it was worth it. It was a great book. It’s still in print, you know.”

“I know. I was given a copy last night by Mrs. Kaplan. I started reading it before I went to bed and I could hardly put it down.”

“That’s how Art wrote. He couldn’t stop writing and readers couldn’t stop reading.”

I was surprised at her enthusiasm. She was talking about the husband who had left her for another woman, for other women, and still she spoke well of him.

“The boulevard in the title is the Grand Concourse. He describes it like some kind of dream.”

“It was a dream to those boys. If you were rich, you lived on the Concourse. If you were poor or middle class, you aspired to it. The truth is, if you were rich, you probably lived in Manhattan, but he wrote from the boys’ point of view. That was how they perceived the world they lived in.”

“He says right from the start he wanted his parents to move there when they became able to afford it. What happened?”

“Well, I don’t want to spoil the story for you. Eventually, his folks had a nice income and the kids were gone so they could have afforded a more expensive apartment, but they wouldn’t leave the old one. Art was only in his late twenties when he finished writing the book, but the observations he made were sound. He could have said the same things twenty years later.”

“Did you know Fred Beller?” I asked without making any transition from what she had been saying.

“Oh Fred.” She smiled as though he were a happy memory. “I knew Fred.”

“How is that?”

“I met him at City. I knew him before I met Art.”

“Did you go out with him?”

“For quite a while. A year maybe.”

Somewhere in my memory I heard one of the men say that Fred and Art had dated the same girl. It had not occurred to me that the girl was the one Arthur Wien had eventually married. “Was there—did anything happen to make you switch from one man to the other?”

“We’re talking about a pretty long time ago. If my memory isn’t sharp, you’ll understand.”

“I just wondered whether there was some kind of incident that made you break up with one man and start dating the other.”

“You might say there was an incident. I was very fond of Fred. He was such a dear thing, so good, so very kind and thoughtful. I would have married him, I’m sure of that, if things had gone along. But one night—it was in the spring, I think—Fred took me to a party down in the Village. It was a big party in a big apartment—I don’t know whose it was—and Art was there. Fred introduced us—he was surprised to see him there, I remember—and it was like something you read about. Fireworks, chemistry, bells ringing—it was scary and exciting and overwhelming. Art called me in the middle of the night after I got home. I thought my parents would kill him. He wanted to see me again. I broke up with Fred a week later.”

The monologue had deflated her. She seemed exhausted by the memory, by the act of recounting it. I found myself feeling very sorry for her. She had described meeting the great love of her life, a man who had been unfaithful to her, who had left her, who had been murdered only eight days earlier.

“I know this is difficult,” I said.

“It’s hard to remember such happy times after all that’s happened. And an awful lot has happened.”

“It sounds like a wonderful relationship while it lasted.”

“It was. Art wrote about it in the book. You probably haven’t gotten to it yet. It really gave me a great feeling when I read it, knowing what emotions I had stirred in him, and was still stirring.”

She rearranged herself in her chair. “I had to make him swear he wouldn’t write all of it. My parents—” She blushed suddenly and I saw that it still affected her. “You’re quite young. It’s awkward saying these things to you, but people who came of age in the sixties thought they had invented sex. I can assure you it was invented at least twenty years before the sixties.”

It was my turn to smile. “I suppose every generation needs to feel it’s cornered the market on something.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“Did anything happen between Fred Beller and Mr. Wien when you broke up with Fred?”

“I think so. They talked, but I wasn’t there so I can’t tell you what was said. I know that the night I broke up with Fred was one of the toughest nights of my life. He really loved me. And he’d had such a rotten life as a kid. His mother—do you know about that?”

“I’ve been told.”

“Imagine doing that to a kid, knowing he would come home from school and find you.”

“She must have been very depressed, very unhappy.”

“She was. But even so.”

“Do you think Fred Beller could have kept a grudge against Arthur Wien for the next forty years?”

“You think Fred killed Art?” It was clear she found the idea incredible.

“I think anything’s possible.”

“Fred was too good, too kind to hurt anyone. And he never comes to New York so that lets him out.”

“He was in New York when Mr. Wien was murdered.”

It was the same reaction, disbelief all over her face. “Who told you that?”

“I found out by accident. I had lunch with him and his wife just this past Saturday.”

“It seems impossible, but if you say so, then I have to believe it.”

“Does that change how you feel? About Fred Beller’s being a suspect?”

“Not for a minute.”

“Maybe we can talk about the book,” I said. “Did you read it as your husband was writing it?”

“Oh yes. I was his first editor. He would finish a chapter and hand it to me, or he would leave it on the table so I would find it when I came home from work. At first I was afraid to make corrections, afraid his ego was so involved that he would be angry at my suggestions. But he wasn’t. And I was a gentle editor. I loved the story, I loved the writing, I loved all the people in it.”

“I guess you got to know them pretty well.”

“Very well. I laughed with them; I cried for them. I read that book so many times that after a while, I could almost recite long parts of it from memory.”

“I saw that he dedicated it to you.” The dedication had read: To Alice, my great love.

“That’s quite a dedication, isn’t it? I was almost afraid he would change it after the mess of our divorce.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I knew he was unfaithful. Eventually, I told him I couldn’t take it any more. The kids were very upset, but I couldn’t live with him. So we called our lawyers.”

“That sounds pretty civilized,” I said.

“Take my word for it, it wasn’t. I wanted him to support me. I wanted his estate to support me if he died before I did. I was angry and hurt, and I wanted him to pay. And I also wanted what I believed was mine.”

“Which was?”

“The original manuscript of
The Lost Boulevard
. That was a problem.”

“He wanted to keep it for himself?”

“Partly that, but the real reason was that he didn’t have it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Art was a man who was always short of funds, or at least he claimed to be. I can tell you I wasn’t a spendthrift, but I think he was in ways that I didn’t see and didn’t always benefit from. Keeping a woman is expensive. Taking people out lavishly costs a lot. And although you hear a lot nowadays about authors’ making millions, I can tell you that wasn’t the case back in the fifties. But Art wanted a home in New York and a home in California; he wanted people to think of him in a certain way. So he borrowed from friends and paid it back when he could.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling confused. “I don’t see the connection between that and the missing manuscript. Had he sold it?”

“He gave it to someone as collateral against a loan.”

“I see.”

“Don’t ask me who it was; he never told me. But at the time that we were negotiating our divorce, he didn’t have the manuscript or the typewritten copy.”

“There were two copies?”

“Art wrote in longhand on lined pads using number two pencils sharpened to a fine point. That’s the manuscript I edited. He wasn’t a very good typist himself. When he was
satisfied, I typed the whole thing up for him on his old Royal portable. That was the copy he sent to the agent.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “All those hundreds of pages written in pencil.”

“Nowadays everyone has a computer, and all they have to show for their work is a floppy disk and a printout. His manuscript showed every change, every hesitation, every place where he struggled to find the right word. The manuscript itself is a history of the book. I’ve had it appraised. If the time ever comes that I need money, I can sell it.”

“Is that why you wanted it?”

“Partly. Mostly I felt it belonged to me. It was dedicated to me and my blood, sweat, and tears are on every page.”

“I’d love to see it,” I said.

“I’d be glad to show it to you, but understand, I can’t let it out of my apartment.”

“I do understand. Tell me, how does the original compare to the published version?”

“It’s quite close. The editor took out a couple of chapters that he felt were weak and didn’t contribute enough to the main story. But they’re still in the original.”

“So how did it work?” I asked. “How did he get the manuscripts back?”

“He probably borrowed more money to pay off the loan, although there was something else going on there, now that I think of it.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. Whoever it was didn’t want to give the manuscripts back. I don’t know any more than that, and at the time, I assumed Art was lying. He’d lied about so many things at that point, I thought this was just another excuse not to give me what was my due.”

“How long did it take for him to get the manuscripts back?”

She looked away. “Months,” she said. “I don’t remember how long, but long enough that our lawyers were screeching at each other.”

“Is Fred’s mother’s suicide included in the book?”

“In a way. Art made it someone’s father instead. He didn’t want people to be identifiable, not because he thought they would sue but because he respected their privacy.”

“Was Fred angry about it, do you know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he was. And that’s not the reason he doesn’t come to the reunions. He just doesn’t like New York and the bad memories. Or I thought he didn’t.”

“When the book was published, was anyone hurt or angry at his portrayal or the portrayal of some event?”

“If they were, I didn’t hear about it. Art did a wonderful job of disguising the real people who were the basis for the characters. You know, he reduced nine to five.”

“Yes. One other thing, the man who died, George Fried, did you know him?”

“I met him. I can’t say I knew him. He was another one who didn’t like New York. In fact, I think Art may have combined him and Fred in the book, but the character is mostly Fred.”

“Mrs. Wien, did anything happen when the men were young that might have had repercussions later in life? Some incident which they all participated in or some of them did, which came back to haunt them?”

“You mean something criminal?”

“Possibly.”

“I don’t know about anything like that and I don’t think
such a thing happened. I know what you mean—robbing a bank or accidentally killing someone. They weren’t tough kids, Chris. I don’t think what you’re suggesting is possible, given the men involved. You think there was some kind of blackmail going on and it ended up in Art’s murder?”

“I’m looking for a reason why someone walked into that restaurant carrying an ice pick.”

“I don’t know any reason for what happened. I grew to hate him at one time, but I came through that. He always sent me my alimony payments, most of them on time. He was unfaithful to me when we were married, but after the divorce, he didn’t treat me shabbily. I didn’t hate him these last years. If anything, I felt sorry that he never felt secure enough to be a happy person. I’ve made a good life for myself without Art.”

“One last thing,” I said. “I heard he had an affair with the wife of one of the men in the group. Do you know anything about that?”