The Night, The Day (17 page)

chapter 29

D
an Gifford found himself flustered
by the inquisitive expression of the bartender.

“Haven’t seen you for quite a while,” the man said, waiting for Gifford to say something.

Gifford eyed the selection. Gin had always been his drink of choice, usually some cheap house brand, but on special occasions Beefeater or Tanqueray. He wondered what this particular evening called for.

“Need a minute?” the bartender asked.

Gifford nodded, staring at the bottles as if he were alone. The bartender took the cue and wandered away.

Gifford’s thoughts were racing. From the moment he had stopped drinking, he suspected that he would never be completely beyond this. And now it was clear.

The bartender returned with a shot of gin and a chaser of club soda.

“I didn’t ask for that,” Gifford said.

“It’s a gift from Marjorie.”

Gifford shifted his gaze to the other side of the bar, and there sat Marjorie Phillips, one of his old drinking cronies. She was as thin as ever – the product of years of drinking her meals – and her face was encased in makeup to hide its wear. Her blouse was tight, her nails bright red, and her hair bleached glistening blond. Sadly enough, at that moment she looked tempting.

She smiled and held up a glass to toast, as if to say, “Welcome back, Danny boy.” He lifted his shot glass, painted on a polite grin, then sat the glass back down on the bar. He knew he had but a few moments before she walked over and offered to sit with him, and the next thing he would remember would be waking up beside her in that shoddy SRO she called home. It scared the shit out of him that he could even consider this.

He thought about Martin Rosen. Boy, he really screwed up that one. Maybe he should follow Bobby Marcus’ advice: just forget this Schwartz thing, erase it from his mind. If he did, then he could return to Rosen and get his life back on track.

He felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Hi, Dan,” Marjorie said as she eased onto the stool beside him.

“Marj,” he responded. The power of her perfume was enough to make him wish he had a facemask.

“Long time no see.”

“A while,” he said. “Thanks for the drink.”

She ran her nails down his neckline, onto his chest. “I see you haven’t touched it.”

He looked at the shot glass.

“Shame to let good booze go to waste.”

He nodded.

“So, where you been?”

“Here and there.” He wasn’t being evasive. She was asking for the hell of it and any answer was fine.

“Really? I’ve been there too,” she said.

He feigned another smile.

“So, you gonna drink or what?”

“I haven’t decided.”

She moved her hand down to his lap, then up the inside of his thigh. “Wish you would.”

He swallowed. “I bet.”

She stroked a little harder and felt him rise. “Nice to know you’re still healthy.”

“You always do it for me, Marj.”

“Then why not let old Marjie take care of you now?”

No response.

She rose from the stool, pressed her body close to his. “You know I can,” she whispered. No one in the bar seemed to notice.

He took a deep breath, moved her back a bit, and looked into her bloodshot eyes. “I’m sorry, Marj. I just can’t.”

Her mouth was open. It was hard for him to tell if she was angry or stunned. But he decided he wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out. “Thanks again for the drink,” he said as he turned on his heel and left.

He put the key in the ignition and sat in his car, staring at the door to the bar, wondering if he should go back in. He knew that even when he got home and was lying in bed, the temptation to get dressed and return would still be with him. Marj would still be there, she would always be there. And never with hard feelings or resentment, at least none that couldn’t be washed away with a drink or two.

He pounded the dashboard with his fist. Would it always be this hard, he wondered. Would he ever be able to make a clean break, and never be tempted again? Dr. Rosen had assured him it would get better with time,
lots of time
, and hard work. In AA, they had touted the same line. But he had become a mite too negligent these past few weeks, and had eased up on the meetings. Rosen had brought this up a few times, and Gifford had promised to go back. He just hadn’t gotten around to it. Now he was on his own.

He reached into his pocket, took out his phone and dialed. Depending on one’s perspective, it was either late in the evening or early in the morning. He didn’t care. He had to make the call.

A woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello?”

He didn’t respond.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Danny, is that you?” Stephanie Gifford asked.

He knew she would figure it was him; he had done this so many times before, only never sober. “Yeah,” he said, his voice laden with vulnerability.

“Where are you?”

“Outside McNally’s.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“Wait!” she said.

He waited.

“Did you drink?”

“Not yet.”

He sensed relief from her end, and wondered if she still cared for him or if her concern was strictly the byproduct of his being the father of their child.

There was some interference on the connection.

“Dan, you still there?”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“I guess.”

She hesitated, then said, “Do you want to come by?”

He was surprised by the offer. “That’s all right, I’ll be fine.”

“I’d like you to.”

“Steph, you don’t have to…”

“I’m not feeling sorry for you. I just think you should come home tonight.”

Home
. It struck in him a sense of longing, yet the thought of actually going there brought wariness. Was he ready? Could he return to her arms without telling her what had happened earlier in the garage? He knew he couldn’t. Yet he also knew that it wasn’t right to burden her with fear. “Maybe another time.”

“Dan, are you in some type of trouble?”

“Nothing more than usual.”

“There’s a policeman sitting in a car down the block. They’ve been watching and following us.”

“I know.”

“They’re trying awfully hard not to let me know they’re there.”

“They don’t know who they’re dealing with.”

“I had a good teacher.”

He smiled.

“Is there something I need to be concerned about?”

“Yes.” He couldn’t lie.

She was silent.

“They’re on you twenty-four seven,” he said, referring to the cops.

“Is that good enough?”

“I think so. They’re handpicked by Bobby Marcus.”

She didn’t ask who the bad guys were, because she knew. She was always aware of his cases and how they intruded upon their lives – that was part of the problem. “Should I go to my mother?”

“No. If these guys wanted you, they’d find you. I really think you’re safer the way things are now, and I want you and Danny Jr. close by.” There was one more thing he needed to say to her, but he didn’t know how to word it. “Look, just to be careful, I think you should…”

“Don’t worry, Dan, I already have it. I put it in my bag the moment I made those cops.”

“Where is it now?”

“Under my pillow.”

“Good.”

“Like I said, I had a good teacher.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that in past tense.”

“Maybe I won’t… some day.”

“That would be nice.”

“Yes, it would.”

chapter 30

T
he three Mossad agents sat
around the table, examining fifty-year-old photographs and comparing them with recent ones. The older pictures were weathered and too imprecise for definitive conclusions. But this was all they had.

“We have to be certain it’s him,” Galit said, her tone betraying her frustration.

“Don’t worry,” Kovi responded. “Once we have him, plenty of witnesses will come forward, believe me.”

“A lot of good the
witnesses
did us with Demjanjuk!” she snapped.

She held up a dated photograph of Benoît that had appeared in an Israeli newspaper a year earlier, when the tycoon was negotiating to build a resort on the Red Sea in Aqaba, Jordan, adjacent to the Israeli border. Since Benoît had been adept in avoiding photographers over the years, the enterprising young journalist who authored the article had managed to dig up an old copy of a passport photo. A week later, an elderly Israeli gentleman came to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and research center, claiming that the photograph in the paper was of one Theodore Lemieux, former captain in the Vichy police in Lyon between 1940-1944, who had personally supervised the roundup of thousands of Jews for deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Because such accusations were common, and because Lemieux was believed to have been killed in the summer of 1944 during the Allied liberation, the old man’s claim was noted, filed, and ignored. That was until two other witnesses also came forward with the same assertion.

The case was then referred to a particular Hebrew University professor, a Holocaust historian who had been writing a book on Vichy France’s collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. The professor, compelled by the witnesses’ accounts, traveled to France, where he toiled through piles of official state archives searching for a connection between Theodore Lemieux and Jacques Benoît. While he had managed to find an old photo of the Vichy police captain, it was too tattered to make an absolute match to Benoît.

In searching through employment records, however, the professor discovered that Lemieux’s parents owned a small inn on the outskirts of the city and that, surprisingly enough, there was a young man of Theodore’s age named Jacques Benoît who happened to work for them. He also learned that the first hotel that the billionaire Jacques Benoît had built was on the French Caribbean island, Guadeloupe. There were no records of how Benoît obtained his financing, but there were travel documents showing that he had arrived on the island in the fall of 1944, shortly after the reported death of Theodore Lemieux. Taking the eyewitnesses’ claims seriously, the professor surmised that the real Benoît was killed during the Allied liberation, either by Lemieux or by some other means, and that Lemieux switched identities with the dead man and fled to Guadeloupe where no one would recognize him.

Documents revealed that the new Benoît remained in Guadeloupe, married there, had a son, and hadn’t ventured off the island for several years. When he finally did begin to travel, he visited France only sporadically and steered clear of Lyon and its vicinities, fearing he might be recognized. The professor wondered why the French government hadn’t adequately investigated the supposed death of this potential war criminal, and concluded that its embarrassment over its ineffectiveness and complicity during the war had created within its ranks a strong desire to close the history books for that period. The politicians had probably turned their eyes away from several similar scenarios.

“It may be circumstantial, but I’m convinced,” Arik said.

“You being convinced isn’t enough, we need hard evidence, something concrete, identifying Benoît as the Monster of Lyon,” Galit responded. “Has there been any information from his house?”

“Schwartz has it wiretapped, every room and telephone. They’re also running constant surveillance outside. Nothing yet,” Kovi responded.

“Why don’t they bug Martin Rosen’s office?” Arik asked.

“Because no judge would allow that, and Schwartz would never do it without a warrant,” Galit said.

“Maybe
we
can tap it?” Arik said.

“That would be a very bad idea,” Galit answered. “The Justice Department is watching this investigation very carefully. They’re tired of these Nazi cases, and eager for any reason to pull the plug and send us home. If we go breaking their laws, they’ve got one.”

“I don’t believe that anything we might get from the shrink’s office would even be usable in an Israeli court,” Kovi added.

“Probably not,” Galit said. “We’re just going to do this one the old-fashioned way.”

Kovi offered an agreeable look. “I still wonder why Benoît is going to a Jewish shrink,” he said.

“Stop wondering,” Galit replied. “He is simply trying to confuse us, to make us question if he is who we think he is.”

“Do you really believe that Rosen will help us in the end?” Arik asked her.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “His father is a rabbi and both his parents are survivors. On the other hand, he has the rules of his profession.” She pondered a moment, then added, “He is quite independent-minded, only I don’t know whether that will work for us or against us.”

chapter 31

M
artin Rosen grabbed the phone
on its first ring. He let out a drowsy “hello,” then looked at the clock and realized it was 7 a.m. He had been up most of the night, ruminating about where Cheryl Manning might be and why she hadn’t returned his call.

“Marty, hi, it’s Cheryl.”

Even on half throttle, he could sense tension in her voice; perhaps guilt over not getting back to him sooner. He didn’t want to make an issue of it. There were no strings between them. She had a right to do whatever she had been doing.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night,” she said. “I got in late and didn’t want to wake you.”

“That’s okay,” he lied. He was bothered by his jealousy. “Hey, are you ever in that office of yours? I must have gotten your voice mail three or four times before I left a message.”

“Actually, I’ve been out coddling my latest client.”

He was silent.

“When am I going to see you?” she asked.

“I was hoping for tonight. Elizabeth has a playdate with her cousins after school today. We’ll probably spend a couple of hours at the park, get some kosher pizza, then I’m all yours.”

“Kosher pizza?”

“Elizabeth’s cousins are Orthodox. It’s a long story.”

“And an interesting one, I’m sure.”

“That too.”

“I look forward to hearing it.”

“Then why don’t we meet for dinner, say around 8?”

“Sounds good to me. Where?”

“Millie’s okay?”

“You’re such a creature of habit.”

“That I am.”

“Then Millie’s it is. Eight sharp.”

“Good. See you there.”

“Marty,” she said, changing her tone. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” he answered defensively. “Why do you ask?”

“Only because you seemed a little strange the other night as you left.”

“It was just a moment. I’m over it,” he said, troubled by his own duplicity.

“Okay,” she said, adding her own pretense, “I’ll see you tonight then.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“Me too.”