Summer Accommodations: A Novel (24 page)

“Are you okay dad?” Harlan asked with evident concern.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said waving a hand at his son. “This is how it's been all week. I think those fires are too smoky for me. I'll just wear a sweater at night, that's all.” His voice, authoritative and confident, had a harsh New York accent.

“I've been telling Jack about you and how we came to be the Hawthornes, but I thought it might cheer you up to tell him about your decision yourself, you know, how the routine got to you and you just had to break away.” The old man smiled and looked over at me.

“You interested in this?” he asked cocking an eyebrow and smiling at me.

“Yes sir.” He started to chuckle but that action triggered yet another fit of coughing and wheezing. Harlan hurried to his side and offered two more tissues.

“Maybe we should do this another time,” I said.

“No! No, I'll feel better when I get started with this story. It'll get my juices flowing and that always dries up the cough. How much have you told him Harlan?”

“That you were a judge, a very famous judge, and about your speech to me about routine becoming a prison. I didn't get to how you decided to break free and the weekend in Maine when it all happened.” The judge smiled.

“It was a very corrupt time. It's important that you understand that and not just see me as a middle-aged man running off with a showgirl because he was bored; a very corrupt time. Judgeships were for sale if you knew the right people. As a lawyer all you had to do was lay out one year of the position's salary in advance and the job was yours. The money went through the usual channels of the party into many, many pockets. I did not do that, Jack, I want you to know that. My appointment was made by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, probably the only man in New York politics who didn't know the rules of the game. All he knew were his presidential ambitions and for them he groomed and courted people who were high above the political hurly burly. Robert Wagner knew, but he wanted me to get me on the court cleanly. I had been his law clerk years before. The Senator probably had other things in mind for me, but he didn't get the chance to lay them out because I was gone before the court's fall session began. At the time I was married to a woman named Mary. We lived on Fifth Avenue near Washington Square and we had a summer cottage in Maine. In August I would take the month off and we'd go away to the cottage. By that August, in the summer of 1930, I had already laid the groundwork for my escape.” The judge coughed once, cleared his throat, and poured himself a glass of water. “I had begun to stay late at work the previous December. My practice was busy and successful so it did not seem at all unreasonable for me to be at work into the evening. Then there was my political work for the Democratic Party as well. But I wasn't always at work. Some nights I'd go to a speakeasy, you must remember there was still prohibition in 1930, Jack, and meet some of the boys. There were always dancers and actresses, girls who liked to come to the bars too and that was how I found my Helene.” He smiled and took a sip of water. “As soon as I met her I was in love in a way I had never known. The dull routine of my life became intolerable but I had to plot out an escape route that would let us disappear completely.” He started to cough again and while Harlan slapped his father's back and tended him with tissues I thought of how the judge had divided himself in half just like the part that divided his hair. One half was the serious attorney in starched collars and expensive suits, the other, the half that lied about working late at the office, was a hard drinking fun loving friend of the theater. It was easy for me to imagine which life he came to love more. “I'm sorry Jack, but that one wasn't as bad as the last few so let me continue. I made a lot of money as a lawyer but by then practicing the law felt as bad as this chronic affliction that has laid me up in my bed. When Senator Wagner told me of his plans for me, an appointment to the State Supreme Court, I saw the way out. By leaving a trail of evidence that would suggest impropriety I could then expose the system and make myself appear to be implicated. In May, Roosevelt appointed me to the court and immediately I went into action. I withdrew money from several accounts and sold stocks and bonds adding up to the sum of $52,000, the annual salary of a supreme court justice, the amount it ordinarily would have cost for such an appointment, and I went on with my dual existence. Mary, my wife at the time, was a devout Catholic so divorce was out of the question. We'd been unable to have children and that might have allowed me to seek an annulment—the Church is always partial to those who wish to multiply—but to have suggested that to Mary would have raised other suspicions when I disappeared, so I held back. Then, in June, I called the district attorney, anonymously of course, and with my voice disguised like this,” and suddenly he was a Boston Brahmin, “I informed the gentleman that one George Ewald had paid $10,000 for the honor of being appointed to the bench in one of the lower courts of The State of New York. When the D.A. requested more information I hung up.” Then his voice returned to its casual and comfortable New Yorkese, his verbal equivalent of an old but treasured robe. “I didn't like Ewald and was happy to turn him in. I waited for August knowing from my contacts in his office that the D.A. was likely to act early in that month. Mary and I left for Belgrade Lakes on Friday August the first. Before we left I arranged with Helene to call me on that coming Sunday so I could tell Mary that something had come up requiring my return to New York.” He cleared his throat, took a sip of water, but didn't cough. His enthusiasm, as he'd predicted, had released a drying flood of adrenalin. “When her call came that Sunday I said I had to go back to New York for business reasons. I told Mary it was nothing serious, just a few things to clear up, a few people who needed straightening out, and then I had the driver take both of us to the train station. Promising to be back the following Saturday in time for her birthday I left her on the platform of the station, waving goodbye. I never saw her again. After returning to New York I saw a few friends and did a little business at the office and some socializing at the restaurants. I went shopping at the Abercrombie and Fitch store in midtown and had them send a red canoe to Mary for her birthday. Red was about the last color I would have associated with that dour woman. It was my private joke of a sort. For the next few days I lunched at Schrafft's as usual and hung around the office waiting for the district attorney to go into action, but I was getting impatient and a little careless. I caught my finger in the door of a taxi and had to visit my doctor who was also a friend and we had dinner at his home that night. That calmed me down a bit. What I had come back to town for happened on my third day in the city. The district attorney announced he was going to investigate Judge George Ewald. The alleged $10,000 bribe had shaken up the whole system. That announcement freed me and I went into action immediately. I had my assistant, Joe Mara, cash checks on separate bank accounts for more than $5,000 while I remained at my office and spent the morning tearing up old files. It was to look like a panicky effort to destroy evidence, but for me it was a joyful celebration of release. I would have thrown all the papers out of the office window, strewing them like bits of tickertape for a parade, but that was not the tone I wanted to set. Then I stuffed papers and files into two large briefcases and several cardboard boxes. When Joe returned it was an effort not to laugh out loud when I saw the expression on his face. That poor bastard, he looked like he'd just been caught with his hand down a young boy's pants. The impression that I had done something horribly wrong and was now in a panic had been made. I had my assistant help bring all the boxes back to my apartment on Fifth Avenue and told him I was going swimming in Westchester County, but that was not what my plans were. Instead of going swimming I went to a ticket agent and bought a single ticket for a new show called ‘Dancing Partner'—I couldn't resist the irony—and arranged to have a friend pick it up for me at the box office later that evening. Then I had a showgirl friend of Helene's and mine, Sally Ritz, stage a chance meeting. Sally was dating a lawyer friend of mine and she got the lawyer to take her to Billy Haas's Steak House on West 45th Street where I would just happen to arrive at the same time as they did. Do you see what I was doing?” I shook my head no, already dizzy with the lurching pace and course the judge had traveled. He laughed a hearty laugh and rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I was planting evidence and laying false trails all over the place. The theater ticket, the story about swimming in Westchester, acting like I was desperate in one place, hail fellow well met in another. Who was lying and who was telling the truth would be the question to answer when the police started to look for me and tried to piece together what had become of the missing judge Crater. I managed to be even more confounding by staying at dinner well past the curtain time of the play. When my lawyer friend asked what I was doing I simply said I was having too good a time and enjoying myself too much to leave. A while later, on cue, Sally excused herself to go to the little girl's room, but what she actually did was to call Helene and tell her that it was time to pick me up on Tenth Avenue and 46th Street as we'd prearranged. Shortly after Sally returned we all left the restaurant. I said goodnight, hailed a taxi and drove off towards the Hudson River at nine fifteen p.m. on Wednesday, August sixth 1930. No one, besides Helene, ever saw judge Joseph Force Crater again. I was free.” The sick old man I had been introduced to was now gone. In his place was a revived man who sat up, motioned to Harlan to approach, and lifted a Lucky strike from the pack in his son s shirt pocket.

“Do you think that's a good idea dad?” Harlan gently challenged.

“Read your pack, my boy. ‘L.S./M.F.T. Lucky Strike means fine tobacco.' This fine tobacco isn't hurting me, it's the pneumonias I've been getting in that drafty house in Newburgh.” Harlan frowned. “Now, have you spoken to Jack about the ring?”

“Not yet. I thought I'd get to that on the way back to the hotel. I didn't want to overwhelm him, though just meeting you is probably an overwhelming experience in itself,” he said with a chuckle. I shrugged, but neither was paying any attention to me.

“Well then, it was very nice to meet you Jack White. Harlan says you're planning to become a doctor?”

“I'm not sure about that.”

“Well, what ever you do don't become a lawyer. It's a den of thievery and iniquity that they live in.” He took a long drag on the Lucky and went into another fit of coughing. “Those damned pneumonias,” he growled.

“I'll see you tonight dad,” Harlan said with a wave. Despite the muck the Judge had warned me about I approached him and extended my hand.

“It was an honor to meet you sir,” I said. He looked at my hand, smiled, and grasped it in both of his.

“The pleasure was all mine young man, my pleasure to meet you and my pleasure to recount my tortured tale of deception.”

When we were back in his car Harlan lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and let the smoke out through his nose. I looked into my pack of Salems but did not withdraw one. Harlan tossed me a Lucky. I lit up, crumpled up my pack of Salems and threw it on the floorboards. My hands were shaking.

“Now you know why I say judge Crater is not buried in that well. I have to say it again even though I know I can trust you, you must not say anything about your meeting or the fact that my father is still alive to anyone. There are still people out there who might want to find him.”

“You don't have to worry about me, Harlan, my lips are sealed,” I said, like a tough guy in the movies, and it was easy to do because none of the experiences I'd had that day felt real to me.

“Now, you're probably wondering about this ring we all kept referring to. Well, it's a very special ring, a ring that my father got from his father. It had been in the family for many centuries. It dates all the way back to the Crusades …” I must have gasped because he stopped and turned towards me to ask if I was all right.

“Yeah … yes, yes, fine. Boy! Are you ever full of surprises. And Ron is wondering about Harvard!” I laughed and he joined in and we must have laughed half the way back to the hotel. “Well, it's true; the ring, the Crusader, my father the judge, all of it. This ring is very unusual and my father is very sentimental about it. It's a gimmal ring, do you know what that means?”

“I know alef, bas, gimmel, dalid, but not gimmel rings,” I said in a giddy voice.

“Its s not Hebrew Jack. It's a ring with a hinged part, or a ring with a hidden compartment. The ring has a picture of my great, great, God only knows how many greats there are, we're talking about almost a thousand years, grandfather. And it's somewhere here on the grounds of Braverman's.”

“I don't understand. What's it doing here on the hotel grounds?”

“Remember what Lenny said about this being a road house once, a place of gaming and gambling, remember?” I nodded. “Well, this is where it gets a little touchy, Jack. My father did like to come here to gamble back during prohibition, as did many others I might add, and the night that Lenny told you about, with the gunshots and all, well … let's just say there were gunshots. There had been a quarrel, an argument between … there was a fight.” He was very fidgety and a film of perspiration formed on his forehead and face. “There was a man from Chicago that night who had an incredible run of luck. He was on a streak that most poker players only dream about and he was getting cocky about it. My father had been losing most of the night and was running out of cash. And then, around midnight, he did something to spook the guy from Chicago. He took off his ring and opened the gimmaled setting of the stone to look at his ancestor's portrait. He kissed the picture and laid the opened ring on the table asking his remote grandfather for good luck. Whether it was a coincidence or not no one will ever know, but suddenly the tide turned and my father began to win. By some time after one a.m. he was dead even with Lou, the man from Chicago, who had come with a big wad of bills wrapped around an empty shotgun shell secured with a rubber band. Lou got more and more upset as his luck changed and my father kept winning. The other poker players had been cleaned out and had quit; by 2 a.m. just the two of them were left. The man from Chicago was rattled. He asked for a single winner take all hand, seven card open, five card roll ‘em poker to be dealt by Ben Braverman. The betting was outrageous from the start. Before either one had more than one card open the guy from Chicago began to bet laying piles of cash in the center of the table. Every time another card was dealt Chicago Lou bet and answered every raise with ‘see you and raise you' through the dealing of all four open cards. Then they each sorted through their hands, the four face up and the three face down cards, and each selected the five cards he would play. Then laying them face down in a pile they began turning them over one at a time, betting back and forth with each flip of a card. Every bet was again met with, ‘I see you and raise you' until, finally, my father didn't have enough cash to meet the last bet. He had a very good hand, most of it the cards that had been hidden from view during the open part of the game, and he was sure he could win if he could meet Lou's bet. He picked up his golden piece of heritage, his Crusaders s ring, a ring that had been in his family for a thousand years, and he laid it on the pile of bills. His gimmal ring, the ring that he had worn proudly most of his adult life, this precious heirloom, was all that he had left to bet. The man from Chicago looked the ring over and refused to accept it as being of any value. Stunned, my father argued that it was in fact a rare ring, an heirloom of great value that by itself was worth many times more than the entire pile of money on the table. They went back and forth about it each one getting more heated as his turn arrived when, abruptly, the man from Chicago took the ring from the pile, scrutinized it closely while turning it around in his fingers, and then suddenly went to the window, pushed out the screen and flung the ring deep into the woods. ‘Fuck you and your goddamn ring, you lose.' he said. That was when the shooting started.” Barely turning his head Harlan looked at me from the corners of his eyes. “Do I need to say anymore?”