The Girl Is Trouble (5 page)

Part of my discomfort with Betty had to do with how close we were in age. She was only a few years out of high school. Sometimes, like when she was talking about which movies she’d seen, her youth showed, and yet other times, like when she told me to mind my studies, she acted like she was the same age as Pop. I found it very confusing—was I supposed to treat her like an adult or a friend?

“Is ready.” Mrs. Mrozenski came into the parlor, wiping her hands clean on her apron. A cacophony of scents wafted in from the kitchen: onions, beef, cabbage, tomatoes. My stomach growled with approval. She peeked into Pop’s office. “Is ready, Arthur.”

I could hear Pop struggle to get back on his feet. I don’t think it occurred to him when the safe was installed that putting it on the floor was the least convenient place possible for a man with one leg. But then there were days when I thought Pop was surprised to wake up and find his leg was missing. Just like there were days when I awoke and expected to find Mama in the parlor.

We all piled into the kitchen and filled the chairs at the round table. On Thanksgiving we’d eaten in the dining room, but it was apparent that that was a once-, maybe twice-a-year treat and that the rest of our meals would take place, like this one, in the overly hot kitchen. The air was hazy from the stove, which belched coal every time it heated up. The icebox leaked a steady drip of water that filled moments of silence with a soothing tap that I often unconsciously mimicked with my fingers on the tabletop.

“You have good day, Betty?” Mrs. M. asked her daughter as she passed around the platter for us to serve ourselves from.

“Busy. My dogs are barking.”

“I thought you’d be here sooner. You get off at two, yes?”

There was tension in the air. Betty seemed determined to stare at her plate. “I had to work late. One of the girls had to take her kid to the doctor, so I stuck around for her.”

“You get paid for this?”

“I do for them, they do for me.”

“You make sure that happens. You don’t want to be taken advantage of.”

Betty finally looked up from her food. “Trust me, Ma—ain’t no one going to take advantage of me.”

Over dinner the adults talked about the recent happenings at Guadalcanal. Betty seemed flushed as she sat across from Pop at the table. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.

“You are getting sick,” said Mrs. Mrozenski. “Your face is like tomato.”

“It’s hot in here. I’m fine.”

“Eat more. You’re too thin.”

Betty rolled her eyes. “I’m filled to the gills, Ma. Any more and I’ll have to retire this skirt.”

Mrs. Mrozenski wasn’t taking no for an answer. She left her seat and proceeded to scrape another stuffed cabbage roll onto Betty’s plate. “This won’t keep. You don’t waste,” she said. “There are starving children in Armenia.”

“And Poland and England and who knows where else,” said Betty. “Let them eat your overcooked cabbage. I said I’m full.” She pushed her plate away and stared down her mother. She suddenly looked very young. I half expected to see her stomp her feet and begin a tantrum.

“I’ll take it,” I said, even though I’d also reached the point that I was going to bust a button. I was embarrassed for Betty. And a little sickened at the idea that we had so much while so many had so little. But mostly, I was mad for Mrs. M.’s sake. Who was Betty to criticize her mother’s cooking?

“Is overcooked?” asked Mrs. Mrozenski. Betty pushed her plate my way, the petulant look never leaving her face.

“Not to my mouth,” I said as I scooped up the limp, colorless cabbage onto my fork.

We finished the meal in silence.

When the food was done, Betty cleared the plates and started washing up. I probably should’ve offered to help, but after eating far more cabbage than I should’ve, I was feeling worse for wear.

Instead, I followed Pop into the parlor to listen to the news.

“Is it true, what they’re saying about the Jews who’ve been killed in Poland?” I asked him.

I half expected him to ask what I was talking about. It would’ve been a relief, honestly, to know that I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been paying attention.

“The sources seem to be reliable,” said Pop.

“How can we let the Nazis get away with that?”

Pop lit a cigarette and stared at the radio. “I don’t think we’re letting anyone do anything.”

Moments later laughter escaped the kitchen. Then singing. A Polish folk song escaped in bits and drabs.

“They made up,” I said.

Pop shook his head. “Mothers and daughters.”

I looked toward the picture of Mama on the radio. When she and I squabbled, it was usually because she was trying to treat me like a little kid. If she’d lived, would that have changed? Would our arguments have become about curfews and boys and my failure to write thank-you notes promptly?

I left the picture and took in Pop. He was absentmindedly rubbing his leg where the stump met the prosthetic. Usually he took it off after a day out and about. I had to imagine he left it on because Betty was there.

“What else is bothering you, Iris?” asked Pop.

I didn’t want to talk to him about Mama, so I reached for the next available topic. “There was a man here when I came home. In front of the house. He told me to tell you hello.”

“Any idea who he was?”

“I’m not sure. He said, ‘You must be Iris,’ and when I asked if I knew him, he told me to tell you Stefan says hello.”

Pop sat taller, his back rigid. “What else did he say?”

“That was it.”

Pop’s hand found my arm and squeezed. “He knew your name?”

“Yes, he knew my name.” He was grabbing me as hard as the man I’d tailed on Fifty-sixth Street. “You’re hurting me, Pop.”

“I’m sorry.” He released me and put a hand through his hair.

I rubbed his handprint off my wrist. “Who’s Stefan?”

“Just a client.”

“Then why are you upset that he knew my name?”

He forced a smile and slumped his shoulders. He wasn’t fooling me: I knew a put-on when I saw one. “I like to keep business and personal separate, is all. My clients don’t need to know who you are. And they certainly shouldn’t be talking to you when I’m not here.”

“Oh.” It was that old chestnut: Pop couldn’t stand the idea of my possibly being in danger. And let’s face it: his clients were hardly the kind of people you wanted hanging around your fifteen-year-old daughter, whether she was working for you or not. “It’s not like we had a conversation. I barely said two words to him.”

“Good. In fact, in the future, if there’s anyone you don’t know lingering about, don’t even give them those two words. Just keep on walking and go someplace where there’s a telephone and call the house. All right?”

“All right.”

Betty entered the room and paused at the coat tree. “
Bonne nuit
, Iris. Arthur. It was lovely to see you both.” She began to bundle herself into a smart winter coat.

Pop rose to his feet. “I’ll walk you. It’s too dark for you to be out there by yourself.”

“Are you sure?” asked Betty. Her eyes momentarily lowered to his leg.

“Absolutely,” said Pop. “And that will give us a chance to talk.” With more vigor than he usually had after a long day on his feet, he retrieved his coat and hat.

I told Betty goodbye and then returned to the office to see if there was any work I’d forgotten to do. My report on the calls tracking Mickey Pryor still sat neatly on top of the other folders. Pop hadn’t even looked at it yet. There was also the small pile of mail he’d brought with him from the P.O. box. Two were invoices he needed to pay—the phone company and the printer he used for his stationery and business cards. I put them with my notes. Two other envelopes had been sliced open and their contents neatly removed. A third one had also been opened, but the check in it was still shoved deep inside. Pop must not have seen it.

I pulled it out and was about to leave it on the desk, when it occurred to me that he might be more likely to see it if I left it on the safe. As I went to put it there, I pulled the safe’s lever out of habit. Instead of remaining barred, it slid easily to the left.

The safe was open.

CHAPTER

4

EXCITEMENT TAP-DANCED DOWN MY BACK.
Pop must not have secured the safe before dinner. I could’ve closed it and spun the dial, but something stopped me. I pushed the edge of the heavy door with my fingertips, daring it to stay almost closed under my light touch. If it did, that would be that—I wouldn’t go any further. But it didn’t. The door creaked open and the contents lay before me. There was a gun, which I’d always suspected Pop had, even though he’d denied it, several folders, and an expandable envelope that held checks awaiting deposit.

I added the check I’d found on the desk to the envelope and told myself to close the door, but I couldn’t. I didn’t like being in the dark about anything, not even something as seemingly insignificant as Pop’s other cases.

I strained for sounds of Pop returning. How long had he been gone now? Surely not enough time to walk to the subway station and back.

I picked up the first folder. The tab was labeled “Rheingold Accounting” in Pop’s hurried hand. There wasn’t much in it—just notes in handwriting I didn’t recognize and several photographs of a man taken at a distance. Was this the man I’d helped him tail? I couldn’t tell. I set the folder aside, planning to read his case notes if I had time.

The second folder held photographs of me, all of them taken from a distance.

Irritation made me slump. Had Pop been tailing me to make sure I wasn’t skipping school? Or was this part of some exercise about surveillance to which he was going to introduce me?

I didn’t have time to ponder it, not if I wanted to see what else was in the safe.

The third folder appeared to be full of personal papers: my birth certificate, Pop’s passport, his marriage license, his discharge papers.

I exchanged this folder for the last one.

That was a mistake.

It was also full of a series of eight-by-ten photographs, only these weren’t of me. I stared at the one on top. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was depicting, but as the image came into focus, recognition dawned on me: it was a bed made up with sheets decorated with a bold modern design. No, it wasn’t a design; it was blood. A lot of it, splashed onto the wall beside the bed and spilled onto the floor beneath it.

Mrs. Mrozenski’s stuffed cabbage fought its way back up my throat. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes long enough to quiet my nausea.
Easy, Iris. This is crime. It isn’t pretty. But you have to get used to it if you want to be part of Pop’s world.
Once my stomach was settled, I flipped to the next photo and caught the same room at another angle. More blood spatter. My head felt like it might float away if it wasn’t tethered to my body. I took slow, deep breaths and forced myself to keep looking at the photo. A pillow had been moved to demonstrate where blood had pooled, presumably beneath the victim’s head. The top sheet had also been moved, making it clear that some of the blood had landed on an object that had been removed from the room, but whose outline remained courtesy of the tremendous amount of liquid that had spilled around it.

I looked at the other things in the photo, searching for clues as to what I was really seeing. The furniture was plain, the room barren. A hotel, maybe? Out the window I could see a church steeple in the distance and other buildings whose height made it clear that wherever this picture had been taken, it wasn’t on the first floor of this particular building.

I flipped to the next photo. Oh, God—there was a body in the picture. A naked woman whose head was turned toward the wall, her face obscured by a mound of hair and blood. This was a person. A real person who was murdered. Stop, I told myself. Think about this objectively, not emotionally. But try as I might, I couldn’t distance myself from what I was seeing. All those dead Jews in Poland were people, not numbers. They were parents, children, wives, and husbands. And whoever this woman was, she was a person, too, not a fact for me to skim over because I didn’t want to have to think about what her death meant. Those arms had once held a lover. That hair had been tied into pigtails. Those legs had wobbled unsteadily on high-heeled shoes. Who was she?

It was this question that forced me to look at the next photo, where her face was turned toward the camera.

Not a stranger’s arms. Not a stranger’s hair. Not a stranger’s blood spilled across a bed. Mama. Oh, God—it was Mama.

*   *   *

HOW LONG DID I STARE
at her picture? Ten years? Twenty? All I know is I would probably still be sitting there, my heart ripped in two, if Pop hadn’t come home.

“Iris? What are you doing?”

There was no point hiding the folder from him. It was too late. Instead, I lifted it toward him as though it were Mama’s body in my hands and he had the power to revive her.

“Put those away,” he said quietly. “Shut the safe and spin the tumbler.” His tone made it clear that I had no choice but to do what he was telling me. I returned the folder to the safe, closed the door, and spun the dial.

“You left the safe open,” I said.

He nodded, clearly accepting the blame for what had just occurred.

“Why do you have those?”

“Iris, we’re not going to talk about this. Not now, not ever. Understand?”

Maybe I would’ve demanded otherwise if I’d had my wits about me, but I was so stunned by what I’d seen that all I could do was nod.

“I want you to go upstairs and go to bed. That’s an order.”

I did as he said, but I knew there’d be no hope of my sleeping. If I closed my eyes, she would be there waiting for me, and I couldn’t bear to see Mama like that again.

I wanted to retch. I wanted to sob until the sound blended into a seamless wail of grief that would rival the sirens of fire engines headed to a call. But for some reason, I couldn’t. Pop had been so calm, as though it were perfectly normal to have pictures of his dead wife in his safe. Surely I was misunderstanding what I had seen. I’d been told that Mama took too many pills the night she died. Perhaps the pills had been a story all along, meant to cushion the knowledge that she’d killed herself by assuring me she’d done it in a peaceful way when the truth was she’d shot herself. Yes, that had to be it. She shot herself and Uncle Adam, Aunt Miriam, and Pop couldn’t bring themselves to tell me, so they invented the pills, hoping it would make the fact of her death a little bit easier.