Red Love (12 page)

Jerry Burns

A sensitive dog.

—G. L.

I remember blazing klieg lights, armed guards escorting me down aisles of reporters and photographers to the waiting arms of red-faced, beaming senators and congressmen with shining shoes. I always saw “Jewboy” on their rich lips, but it never came out. I would be wearing a very nice suit. (Joe would often toss me a hundred bucks and tell me how important appearance was after I went out to get him some Jim Beam). The microphones would be adjusted.

The Rubells had just been executed. I remember a truck going by on the street with streamers that said, “Two hot Rubellburgers coming up.”

There I’d be on one side of the aisle with the oily and the powerful. Facing me would be some progressive, some fish wriggling on the hook. Someone who’d befriended me, most likely. My mouth would open, and I would speak.

I knew what was expected of me. Ever since I’d announced that the Communists used sex to ensnare teenagers; the next chance I got, I said the Reds were deep into the Boy Scouts.

That’s how I became an expert.

It was a long climb from the Labor Youth League sessions at the Brighton Beach Community Center. I guess I saw a golden opportunity and I plugged into it. I was always an impatient person. When I got out of the army, I missed the camaraderie of group life. I thought I found it in the Party. Probably the high point was when I sold 236 subscriptions to the
Daily Worker
and won myself a free trip to Pago Pago.

That was the stage at which I really thought I was progressive. But when I got back from my trip, I found myself still treated as a political beginner. I was twenty-six. I had considerable acting skills, a poetic sensibility. This really meant nothing to the Party. I came to realize this. You were a number to them; they looked right through you. The thing they hated most was the F.B.I. I looked up the F.B.I. in the phone book. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. “I have information for you,” I said curtly, my voice deepening with authority.

Basically it was like leaving a sinking ship. I see that now.

They gave me some assignments at that point.

Later they asked me: “At any point, did you hear anyone advocating the violent overthrow of the government?”

I had read the newspapers: Winchell, Pegler, Jack Lait, Lee Mortimer. I explained how the Reds used sex with young people to exploit them, “to undermine everything we hold dear.”

Glances were exchanged, phones lifted, reporters arrived swiftly.

The title of the series in the
Echo
was: JERRY BURNS—I WAS A CHILD COMMUNIST. I received a hundred dollars for each article, which I dictated to an attractive secretary who admired my courage. That was the beginning.

You fall into these things. I didn’t lie most of the time—I just added a key detail here and there.

When I first faced the comrades across the aisle, it was very embarrassing. But the rewards outweighed the drawbacks.

Many of the progressives had treated me like a son. Now this new rich world I had entered reacted in much the same way to me. We would all stand around with drinks in our hands discussing the next world war. They would ask my opinion. But they also regarded me as green, a boy to treat gently, to instruct.

Joe McCarthy drank a lot; he was into a very good thing; he had a real affection for me. This is how I knew him. I did little errands for him. A very attractive supporter of his who had contributed money to his campaign had to be shipped out of the country for a while. Joe slipped his arm around me and explained that someone would have to take care of her for a few months. That’s how I got to go on a cruise to Tijuana, and how I met my beautiful and rich wife, Pippy Paris. The marriage was a sad, disjointed affair, but an experience I do not regret.

At first Joe had liked me, but he was a little squeamish with a Jewish boy on the make from Brooklyn. One night in West Virginia, I blazed into town with the usual drama. I was hurried into a police car by soldiers who stood at attention and was taken to the courthouse. Armed guards stood by me as I testified against a left-wing labor official, and some union members were expected to get rough. The guards took me back to my hotel and told me to be careful.

Then they left, and I proceeded to go ahead with my usual routine in these towns where I testified. I lit a candle, took my notebooks out of my briefcase, and for several hours I wrote poetry. Near midnight, I had a snack, popped into a taxi and rode out to the next town, where my agent had booked me as a burlesque comic and harmonica player.

Sherry Britton was the headliner (they still used pasties in those bygone days). I will never forget that night. Halfway into my act, Joe walked into the club. When he saw me, his mouth popped open. Then the broadest smile I’d ever seen came over his face. We understood one another truly. “You dog,” he said. From that night, he was my greatest benefactor.

That was the night he showed me his war wound, a scar that sliced his back in half.

For a year or so, things went well. This, at least, was what I told myself. Yet deep down inside, I was not so sure. My marriage faltered almost from the beginning. Pippy was not happy about my place in the limelight. It was looked upon at her level of society as “gross.” In fact, some of her friends nicknamed me “Gross” and called me that behind my back. It seemed a contradiction that my wife should take such an attitude (being such a supporter of Joe) but that’s the way things stood.

I began to take quick flights to New York, where I haunted my old progressive hangouts. I would disguise myself: sport a moustache, color my hair, and attend a few Party functions, nibbling at the home-cooked delicacies like knishes and latkes that the little old Jewish women baked. They loved to see a young person among them again, and as in a time warp, once again I was being given socks, milk, delightful rooms filled with flowerpots on windowsills in sunny apartments on the Grand Concourse. After all, young progressives needed support. They invited me in, gave me their food, their hearts. I made notes of my conversations with them for the F.B.I., but my heart wasn’t in it and sometimes I burned them. Sometimes I didn’t. I would rush back to my wife’s mansion in Arlington, guilty and confused.

I also began to deal in a little pornography at this point, but I soon found this was a dead-end street and abandoned it.

I guess the point is that I began to notice (and this is an indication of maturity) that my deeds had consequences. I hadn’t meant any harm in putting myself forward, and yet now I realized that innocent people were losing their jobs or even going to jail. My acting career was at an impasse; my poetry seemed lackluster.

On a midnight flight back to Arlington one night, I could not eat or drink. I was in a profound state of crisis. What had I done?

On the plane I tried to set down my confused thoughts to Joe in a poem. The next day I mailed it to him. I waited anxiously for his response.

Steve Tabackin

Solly lowers his head.

—G. L.

I

Sid Smorg had led us to Hershie, Dolly Rubell’s brother. That night Hershie told us that Solly had recruited him into the ring.

At this point I was formally assigned to the Rubell case. It was one o’clock in the morning in the U.S. courthouse, 26th floor.

There was, oh, a little bravado about Hershie. A bit. And a smile. I know his smile. But not fresh or anything like that at all. We were very careful with him. Very careful with him. Then he started talking about Solly, how Solly told him he had to get away to Mexico, the F.B.I. would take him next.

When we finished with Hershie we all slept on cots in the nurses’ room. At eight o’clock we woke. We didn’t even have a car with us. We walked to Catherine Street; it wasn’t too far away.

We knocked on the door. Solly answered it. We told him who we were. Can we come in. Dolly was there and so were the kids. The apartment was a shambles. We didn’t have a search warrant. We asked if we could search the house. Solly said no. But would he come down to the office with us? Oh yes, he’d come down to the office.

Did you ever see anyone transfixed? They were in complete shock. I don’t think Dolly had any change of expression whatsoever. Joseph said, “What’s the matter? What are you doing here?” I said, “I want to talk to your father.”

I didn’t know Solly Rubell from a hole in the wall. None of us did. How could we? We didn’t know who he was. We had no case on him. We were going from that hermit Sid Smorg to Hershie to Solly. That was the whole thing at the beginning.

And you know, I knew in my heart, my head, and everyplace else what was going to happen. And we walked him down to the office. And Solly was scared to death. We got him to the office. Solly could hardly talk, he was so frightened. He had phlegm on his mouth. We said, “Solly, you’ve read about Herman Rolle, you’ve read about the hermit Smorg, now you’ve heard about Dolly’s brother Hershie, it’s all over the papers.” I can’t say he did know. I think he was so—stunned—and so down, there was no real reaction from him at the beginning.

And we started to talk to him. Now the extent of that conversation was an hour, maybe an hour and a half on the outside, if it was that long.

I said, We have Hershie, we have the hermit, we have Rolle and everybody else who was involved in this thing. Remember, we’re just starting, Solly. We just heard about you a few days ago. And by the time we get finished with you, we’re going to know everything about you. So if there’s anything that’s bothering you, that’s troubling you, why don’t you tell us about it now? Or whatever you want to do.

And Solly put his head down like this. When people do that, they’re thinking, well, should I, should I not, and they raise their head and say, Okay, fine, or they say, I have nothing to say. That happened with Solomon. Because he put his head up.

There was no yelling, no threats of any kind. Why should I threaten the guy? I didn’t know anything about him. Except I knew by that time he had been thrown out of the Signal Corps. (They had found out about his membership in the Party.) But other than that, and that he went to CCNY, I knew nothing about him. So I said, We’re going to have to check everything, Sol, all about you, whatever Sid and Hershie said, we’re going to go through the whole thing. Where it ends I don’t know. But if it ends where I think it might, all this happened, all we’re talking about, during the war.

Sol said, “May I speak to my lawyer?” I said, “Sure.” I think it was Luke Rogers of FAECT. They were all members of that union. So he picked up the phone. Turned to me and said, “Mr. Tabackin, he wants to know if I am under arrest.” I said, “Tell him, no, you are not under arrest.” Sol put the phone down and said, “Mr. Tabackin, he told me to leave the office right away.” I said, “Okay, I’ll walk you out.” I walked him out. Solly said goodbye to the other agent sitting there, and I walked him to the elevator.

After Solomon left, I went to my boss and said about Solly putting his head down: “Bill, this guy is not going to go anyplace with us at all. No place at all.” I knew it. Because he put his head up. He never put it down again. He was, like, ready to go, and I thought he would go, he would talk, and I think he was in turmoil in his mind. As soon as he sat up and sort of got hold of himself and said, I’d like to speak to my lawyer, that was the end of it. If he was going to go, that was the time to go. I knew then it was a waste of time to even think of this guy as cooperating at all, saving himself, saving his wife, saving his kids. His mind was made up long before he came into the office.

II

Solly knew. He was just waiting for somebody to come. He told Hershie that Rolle was the one, and Sid Smorg, the man who came to you in Albuquerque, would be next, and you’ll be after that. And that was the way it went.

What their problem was was that we had informants all over the place. All over the Party and in the Party. And we found out afterward through them that after we took Solly down to the office, Dolly took the camera in her bag and six or seven thousand dollars and went to New Jersey someplace. Now I don’t know where that Jersey place was. We never did find it and I didn’t waste any time looking for it.

Anyway, that was it. Solomon went home. Or to the lawyer.

When we sat down and put everything together, we knew we had something. We also knew that Hershie would be a linchpin in this whole thing. We knew he was going to talk.

He didn’t say everything at once. It doesn’t happen that way. He’s a human being. You want him to jump out a window or go nuts or whatever? And he can’t remember all at once: his whole mind is a turmoil. You won’t know this unless you interrogate people and arrest them for killing, robbing, or whatever. And I had a lot of experience with that. You go ahead, Joe—whatever you want to tell me, go ahead. Talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. “All right, all right, I’ll tell ya.” At their due time. You try to force them, they’ll balk on you. You’re not trapping them; he’s either going to come around or he’s not.

Well, that was Solomon. After that I’d go and look at his house. I didn’t have enough men; I didn’t have enough time. We opened up a surveillance on them and I said, Hershie and Solly aren’t going to go anyplace.

And so I’d drop by the machine shop once or twice a week. I’d wait out there. I told Solomon, I’ll be outside waiting. I’ll be there. I said, If you want to see me, come my way and we’ll walk across the park. Or I’ll go your way. The guys in the shop saw me and came out; they’re all looking.

And then Solomon came out. I said, If you want to come over and say hello? He didn’t. But I thought, give him a chance. They don’t want to come down, I’ll come up. I don’t stand on any formalities. That was the last I heard of Solomon—until I arrested him. And that was that.

Maury Ballinzweig: here’s the picture. That’s the smug face he had on the first day he came into the office. Solomon was so much more tense: no expression. Just looking straight ahead. Mouth closed. Not a word.

Maury’s wife was a dish. The Committee to Resurrect the Rubells had a meeting. My informants went. A rabbi stood up and asked Mrs. Ballinzweig about the finances of the committee. She fainted. There was pandemonium all over the place.

This was no isolated case. This was just one of many. We had so many things bouncing at the time.

For instance, a man born in Scotland of good Protestant parents who came to this country and spent his youth in the Midwest. Went to college, then Fort Hamilton, Texas, U.S. Army Air Force. Graduated, became a second lieutenant. 1923. He met this girl, a Party member, and she recruited him. They were married. I had the marriage certificate, the whole bit. And he became a courier all through the U.S.

In 1937 he picked up a beautiful blonde, she had a baby, he left his wife and they went to Moscow. He was a courier through central Europe. Also an instructor at the espionage school in Moscow. He was there during the Yerhoz purge.

Later he came back to New York City. On a day in January 1953, I and another agent went up to see him in Mosholu Parkway, cold as hell. He wouldn’t let us in. He had sneakers on, on this cold day. He came out, we walked around the parkway. I showed him pictures of his wife. I said, What are you going to do? He cursed me, got a little violent. I told the other agent to stay out of it. I said, Let him alone, Jim. He’s not going to go anyplace, Jim. He’s going to go right back to me. He had no place else to go.

So he came back in ten minutes and apologized. Now this was a cultured gentleman. So I said to him: “Listen, I have no objection whatsoever. If I were you, I’d feel the same way. I’ll tell you why. You’ve been active for a long, long time—thirty odd years? And you never thought that someone like me would come up here and talk to you about it on a cold, cold day in January. Correct?” He said, “That’s right, Mr. Tabackin.” “If I were you, maybe I’d get even more upset than you’ve gotten,” I said. “Your whole life is going to unravel in front of you. Don’t worry about the cursing. It doesn’t bother me. You’re cold now; why don’t you go back home?” So it ended pleasantly. And I really wanted this guy. I concluded: “If you want me, I’m in the office.”

This was Tuesday. He called me Friday afternoon. He said he’d like to see me. He said, “You’ll have to have a lot of time for me.” He didn’t want to come to my office or for me to go to his house. I said, Okay, you pick a place. He couldn’t make up his mind; finally he said he’d see me Tuesday at eleven at my office.

I spent all weekend in the office. I reviewed that file. I knew every word in there. On Sunday around ten-thirty I got a call: that he had jumped under a subway car at 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue. His remains were at the police department.

I was really sick about that.

I hate to see someone die unnecessarily, not as in war or to defend your wife, but for some silly thing. Like Solly and Dolly did.

There’s a guy who knew more than Rubell. A damn sight more.

So you see, all these cases taken together sharpen you and cut the edges off your square head.

You get tempered after a while; you know what to say and how to say it and what to look for. You get a sense of what’s going on.

And never be mad at these people. I was never mad at anybody. I call it opposite thinking: putting myself in their place. Give me a problem 12 and 13, and give me 8, 9, and 10, and I will fill them all in for you. “I’m you.” You’re dealing with a human being. I have never forgotten that. Agents don’t go around whacking people with clubs, throwing them into a patrol car. No. With these cases, we were dealing with a different kind of person.

Ruth Stern, the mother of Dolly and Hershie, became my friend. I first met her when I went to her house to speak to Hershie. Ruth was so nervous she wasn’t able to hold the baby, and her daughter was in the hospital. I told her to make a bottle and I’d feed the baby for her. She just didn’t know what to do. She knew this was coming. Absolutely she did. It was always Mr. Tabackin and Mrs. Stern. Later on it was Steve and Ruth. She said, “You realize how badly I feel about this situation. This whole time Solomon had been after Hershie. And he had my daughter in there with him. How I feel about it. I’m glad my husband is dead. We came from Russia to escape persecution. This country I love; it was our salvation. If my husband was alive today this would kill him. Or he’d kill somebody. That’s the way he felt about this country. So to have my own son and daughter do this—for the Russians!”

As I said, at the beginning you just want something. Don’t try and disembowel a person. Wait for him to come back. And then of course by looking at Solomon, by looking into him. We went to City College and found out about every classmate he had. One was Jed Levine. We brought Jed down. And I remember Jed saying one day, “What are you bothering with me for? The guy you want lived in back of me.” Who was that? “Maury Ballinzweig. I’ll tell you all about him.” We went to Ballinzweig’s house. The old newspapers were all outside on the step, the milk bottles were there, the mail was there, and Ballinzweig was gone. Didn’t cancel anything. He just left. So when the fellows took a look at that, they said, Hey, what the hell is going on here anyway? Who is this guy?

So Jed told us about Maury. Other fellows checked the airline terminals and found his flight to Toronto. Then of course we found him. Not at first, because of his aliases, but we had agents there with legal attaches. There were fliers about Ballinzweig all over the place—on trains, all the buses.

Now I knew nothing about Ballinzweig at this point. I didn’t even know who he was. I had enough problems of my own. Now the Canadians decided they wanted no part of this thing at all. They realized what it was and got rid of him. They put him in a car and drove him to the border. Some place along the line, driving home, Maury grabbed, or tried to grab, a gun from the officer. They got him and they whacked him a couple of times. Now he was a tough guy—absolutely. You play games like that in a foreign country with a guy like that driving eighty miles an hour… .

Maury was stocky. Not a pleasant man at all. When he was brought back by the marshals, the U.S. attorney had Maury brought over to his office to talk to him, and he asked me to sit in on the conversation. Maury was five foot nine, big head on him, and how do you do, I’m Mr. Tabackin … and so on. Maury sneered. He said something fresh to me and to the attorney—he got really fresh. Without any necessity, since we hadn’t said anything to him. Something about he didn’t like us, didn’t like the government. It was something absolutely uncalled for, arrogant and fresh. I said, “Now listen, Mr. Ballinzweig, don’t you get fresh with me. If you want to try something, go ahead. But you’re going to get hurt. You can bet your ass on that, mister. And this conversation will end right now.” He said nothing more. It was, go ahead, you guys, prove what you can.

He was absolutely nothing like Solomon. In the first place, he wasn’t involved on the level that Solomon was. He was working for Solomon, but he wasn’t running things. And there was a difference of personality. Maury was a very surly fellow.